To break rules and challenge power

She didn’t have a problem with nail polish itself. It was only after I had affirmed my identification as a boy that she verbally punched me to the periphery of acceptable society. By painting my nails red, I had broken a normative rule; I had asked her to recognize my subjectivity and distinct gender expression.

She said no.

Of course she did. Our society is built on an imbalance of power that makes it far easier to reject the other than to adapt to unfamiliar realities.

What this has to do with feminism

Femininity in boys blurs the black-and-white boundaries of the social order, which is why a 2011 clothing ad featuring a young boy wearing pink nail polish was called blatant transgender child propaganda. It’s seen as a danger to good and proper binarism—a challenge to traditional power structures.

It also clashes with patriarchal values, which associate femininity with weakness and inferiority. By displaying a typically feminine trait, I was seen as abandoning a superior position as a man. As Lori Duron asked: “How come when girls play with gender it’s a sign of strength and when boys play with gender it’s a sign of weakness?”

Effeminate boys are viewed as having given up power, because masculine concepts of physical and emotional toughness have largely remained unquestioned as a boyhood ideal. Somewhere along the line, feminine qualities have become “weaker.” For the girl on the tram, being queer meant being less.

“Girls can wear jeans and cut their hair short and wear shirts and boots because it’s okay to be a boy; for girls it’s like promotion. But for a boy to look like a girl is degrading, according to you, because secretly you believe that being a girl is degrading.” — Ian McEwan, The Cement Garden

My red nail polish really didn’t have anything to do with my gender identity, but so what if it did? Why are we so afraid of those who don’t conform to rigid binaries? Why do we consider boys who are effeminate to be “lesser than?”