Breaking Boundaries: The Tragic Consequences of Gender Policing in the Life of Rose Boy

Rose Boy: Individual Nonconformity and Social Hostility

The protagonist in the documentary, Yeh Yung-Chih, was a 15-year-old Taiwanese boy who was highly praised by his mother and neighbors for being overly thoughtful and caring. When he was at the 3rd grade, his teacher complained Yeh for being effiminante and persumed this trait to be mentally ill and have psychological disorder. After talking to a psychologist, Yeh's mother realized that this was not a weird behavior, and that Yeh was trying his best to be "normal" even though he was aggressively rejected by society and scripted norms. Yeh was afraid to go to the bathroom during recess because his classmates always wanted to check his genitals to make fun of him for being androgynous because of his unconventional and freaky gender expression. Deemed a sissy, Yeh has long been subjected to insidious gender violence and bullying at school. As a minority, Yeh and his family felt a deep sense of passivity in defending their rights, if not outright social justice.

Long suffering from such toxic environment and social hostility, on April 20, 2000, Yeh Yung-Chih left the classroom early to go to the bathroom and was found lying on a pool with unconscious mind and bleeding noise. He later died in a local hospital, although the school administration was considered innocent in such a mysterious incident, whether suicide or murder, in court proceedings, claiming that Yeh's cause of death was heart disease regardless of the fact that school administrator asked to clean the toilet floor by unauthorized act.

Roses withering away, there’ re abundant cases in which being different translated into otherness and subjected to discrimination, harm, and violence under Asian contexts, also a universal phenomenon. Gender-nonconformity, transgender, and sexual deviance are all considered intolerable and need corrections. Then, what’s the guideline of such correction? What is the unexamined scripted we, in general, have buy in, have consistently sticked to, and reiterate to amplify its social dominance and hegemonic status?

Behind the Scenes: Ideology of Gender-Binary

Gender-binary, arguably, is the assumption that undergirds such dichotomy, the strict boundary that hardly tolerates transgressive acts. Gender-binary has its root from sex-binary: a concept that a person’s biological sex is determined by the type of gamete (sperm or ova) a person produces; that’s one’s reproductive ability. That said, it is problematic to have such dualistic worldview in which we set up categorization based on hasty generalization and translate the difference into mere two dichotomy. Rather, sex is not essentially there; it is a social construction, and people just layer ideas with these biological variations: this the process in which differences has been interpretated. By denying the existence of intersex folks or establishing the “True” and “Authentic” sex, sex-binary’s interpretations reinforce the ideology of a binary worldview, excluding deviations from the established structure and leading to internalized-pathologization of intersex people. Gender-binary is an inevitable consequence of this ideology: male-figured man should be masculine and female-figured woman should be feminine. Categorizing gender into a dualism, it necessitates the gender-role that we have long been subjected to.

Moreover, masculinity and femineity are the by-products through such construction of ideology. Instead of thinking masculinity and femineity as essential features that we all processes, it is beneficial to comprehend how these concepts evolve, engrain, and stabilize to achieve its prominent status where we buy into and internalize such belief as something essentially there. Michael Foucault’s theorization of power and knowledge helps explain such internalized process. There’re natural variations in human in terms of mental, physical, and psychological differences. When the differences begin to reveal itself, the one who is more capable in dominating would receive such “natural” power. Exerting and wielding the power, they have the ability to establish boundaries that establishes the physical, mental, and psychological differences. With power, the dominant group can better interpretate the differences and alienating the other with social construction. For the construction of masculinity and femininity, masculinity is not defined as what it is, instead it is defined by what it is not: femininity. That is to say by designating meanings to femininity, a social construction, with passivity, inferiority, and fragility, masculinity have the ability to establish itself through opposite recognition with femininity. This is point revealing the misogyny nature and essence of our gender system, while it is pathetic that we take on gender roles without examining its toxic foundation and the insidious power dynamics.

From there, it is justifiable to argue what is behind the tragic of the Rose Boy. The systemic (ranging from judicial system, social expectations, education, etc.) oppressions supported by such ideology again victimize the victim, attributing the harm, oppressions, and marginalization on one’s own term.

Reinforced the Ideology: Homophobia, Gender Policing

The ideology of gender binary is enforced and enacted through two keyways: homophobia and gender policing. The binary gender role has implication for sexuality: that is, masculine male-bodied man is sexually attracted to feminine female-bodies woman, and vice versa. Thus, compulsory heterosexuality is the natural consequence of gender binary, effectively translating into the normative narrative of heteronormativity, in which heterosexuality is the natural default and the only (normal) choice of human sexuality, distaining, pathologizing, and criminalizing others as abnormal and in demand for conversion to the normal state. One strategy is homophobia. In general, homophobia refers a range of social attitudes that include prejudice, fear, hatred, or discomfort with non-heteronormative sexual orientations, then translating to actual harm, violence, social exclusion, and internalized shame and self-hatred practices among Queer community. Not only gay/lesbian are subjected to the persecution of homophobia but people portraying gender deviances. As shown from Yeh’s persecution for being feminine, he was stigmatized for having wrongly expressing his “innate” gender and supposed behaviors, further doubting him as a homosexual, which further victimizes him, reinforce the underlying ideology, and justifies the persecution. Gender policing is a similar idea that has interconnected relationship with homophobia, which involves a range of social, institutional, and medical practices. With these regulatory practices, gender norms and expected gender roles are reiterated and establish itself as if it were the ultimately appropriate, authentic, and true behavior of gender with regulatory practices, while concealing the very construction of gender.

Deconstruct the Ideology: Gender Performativity

From the regulatory practices of gender-conformity, it is self-evident to observe this paradox: if gender were innate, universal, and predetermined, why there are so many regulatory practices to exclude other sexual and gender possibilities?  Judith Butler in Gender Trouble address this problem by claiming a postmodernist notion of gender. Instead of claiming a fixed, essential, and universal feature of human beings, Butler argues that gender is not who you are, instead is what you do. This reveals the performative feature of gender, a contingent, culturally specific, and performed behavior that we possess. That said, gender is not performed through a single act instead through ritualized repetitions. The way we perform is influenced by the social attitude towards what is acceptable and what is not, so that we have the agency to be recognized as a full, “real” subject. Our conscious and unconscious awareness of gender constraints means we are always performing gender to an audience, even an imagined one. Through ritualized repetitions, we buy into the norm dictated by the social expectations (aka. Heteronormativity), internalizing such impersonated, imitative, process to have an illusion in which we feel gender is legitimate and real. Though gender performativity is regulated under heteronormative criteria, there’s potential for us to flip the script, since excluded possibilities of gendered behavior and sexualities serves to invoke anxiety of heterosexual performativity.

The concept of gender performativity reveals that Yeh was constantly judged by society based on how well he performed masculinity. Because his gender expression did not align with societal norms, he was deemed abnormal, which further justified the mistreatment he endured. The regulatory practices of homophobia and gender policing ensured that Yeh was continuously marginalized, and the failure of institutional systems to protect him underscores how deeply these ideologies are embedded in society. His death tragically exemplifies how the enforcement of gender conformity and binary norms can have deadly consequences for those who do not fit within the prescribed roles. By connecting these theoretical concepts to Yeh’s lived experience, we see how systemic oppression manifests in real, harmful ways, ultimately leading to the tragic loss of life.