Shaving my beard feels different on Election Day 2022

Beards, binaries and the dangerous hypocrisy of Republican gender essentialism

A couple weeks ago, I shaved my face for the first time in several years. It was only the second time I’d used a blade to scrape away my beard in the last two decades. And, because I had not done it in so long, the act felt exceedingly strange and … unnatural. I’d had that realization as a young hippy, as well. But now, as many on the political right turn the gender binary and our physical expressions of it into a political platform, face-shaving hits differently.

Now, as many on the political right turn the gender binary and our physical expressions of it into a political platform, face-shaving hits differently.

Mimicking my dad, I pretended to shave for the first time when I was probably 4 years old — before I ever started school. And my parents talked about it in terms of “grooming,” to echo another word increasingly deployed by right-wing gender essentialists. Fox News host Tucker Carlson, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and plenty of other high-profile Republicans and their allies have spent the past few months targeting and demonizing drag queens, trans people and anyone not fitting into their specific definition of how someone should look or act. (Meanwhile, both Carlson and DeSantis have cultivated a look that is smooth and impeccably groomed — not exactly in line with the gender essentialist version of a testosterone-filled male.) 

Of course, logical consistency isn’t driving these attacks against trans, queer and nonbinary people — the point is to stoke hatred.

But, as the razor buzzed away my secondary sexual characteristics, and the hair fell onto the folded newspaper I’d placed over the counter, I thought of the countless, traumatic ways the gender identity of “straight male” was forced upon me. This gender indoctrination was violent and constant. I had hoped that the younger generations might be freed of this tortured relationship with gender. But as we’ve seen and experienced acutely these past few years, the bullies have returned to stoke fear and panic, including among parents. That, too, feels familiar.

https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/shaving-beard-feels-different-election-day-2022-rcna56243

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