Editor's Note: This weekend marks the 25th anniversary of the Harvard Gay & Lesbian Caucus. The Crimson Editorial Board has taken this opportunity to compile a series of op-eds written by and about members of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) community at Harvard, past and present.The perspectives included in this series will cover a range of issues the LGBT community has faced, the progress that has been made, and the challenges that remain.

I love football.

Many who know me, or who know my politics, are surprised by this fact. After all, as the director of a women’s center, and a committed feminist, shouldn’t I feel ambivalent about—if not downright opposed to—the degree to which American culture celebrates such a brutal, macho sport, and glorifies those who play it? Shouldn’t I want a kinder, gentler game—like synchronized swimming, or equestrianism—to rule the day?

Not really. I am in awe of the both graceful and guttural physicality of the game, the full-contact, heady delirium of the pileup, and the breathless climax of a perfectly executed 60-yard Hail Mary pass. Just about the only thing I don’t like about football is the knowledge that women will likely never get to play it side by side with men.

Since 1982, when the Harvard Gay and Lesbian Caucus was founded, the movement for gay rights has come a long way. For most of us who are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (LGBT) at Harvard, we can live openly and without fear in our jobs and as students. We can pursue both our degrees and employment with the protection of the law behind us, we can hold high positions of leadership and esteem, and we can even legally marry our sweethearts in Memorial Church. Although I wasn’t at Harvard in 1982, I understand that it was a very different place then, and that silence and social sanction were de rigueur for virtually all queer folks.

Despite these changes, what remains true about the experience of being gay in this country was just as true almost 40 years ago when our visible, political movement started with the Stonewall Riots at a little bar in Greenwich Village, as it is today. Being LGBT is socially sanctioned not simply because of who we choose to love, but because of the fact that in that act, we are flouting what certain heternomative values that tell us we must be as men and as women. I propose that the true and most noble goal of the movement for LGBT equality is the same goal that would enable qualified women to play football with men: A real, complete, and lasting emancipation of gender expression for all people. A commitment to building a world where every individual decides for him, her, or hirself exactly how they’d like to identify, and express, their gender. A world where rigid boundaries of appropriate gender expression no longer dictate what it means to be a “real man” or a “real woman” in this culture, forcing conformity, or risking sanction.

As things stand today, each of us decides each day to what extent we will adhere to these rules. But no matter how well we fit in appearance-wise, the reality is, those of us who are gay, lesbian, bisexual, queer, and transgender are already gender non-conforming. In our quest for normalcy and acceptance, we’ve lost sight of the goal which will make the world an infinitely better, safer place for all people, everywhere—total freedom to be, and express, gender however we see fit, without fear for our safety, our sanity, or our livelihoods.

In the midst of continuing our push for legal marriage and the ability to join the military without being hidden, a commitment to gender liberation is the goal that asks more of gays, lesbians, and bisexuals. It asks more than many of us are currently doing to support the full participation of transgender people in the movement. It asks more than we are currently doing to consider their rights and freedoms as important as the desire to be able to partner with people of the same gender. It asks—it demands—more than the organizations that lead the gay rights movement must start to consider that the situations of transgender people are just as important as the circumstances of gay and lesbian people.

It’s also the goal that liberates little boys who don’t like football, and little girls who do, from feeling like they are weird or wrong. The goal that enables every child to imagine being vice president without fear of being called a cold, power-driven harpy, or criticized for daring to want the job after giving birth to five children.

In the end, everyone would enjoy a world that is safer and more humane if true gender liberation were to take root. Only when gender isn’t presumed or enforced, by peers or others, will we know that we have achieved this goal. Until then, there’s more work to do. There’s more for our movement to consider, more people’s concerns to include, more to stand up about, and fight for. There’s more for us to become.

We can get started at halftime.



Susan Marine is the Director of the Harvard College Women’s Center.