S/HE: Gender in Our Society

Minnie Bruce Pratt is a writer, a poet, a mother, a lesbian. She was raised in a traditional southern family, where southern morals and behavior guided her every move. For years she played into this façade, marrying and having children with Martin E. Weaver. In graduate school, however, she met and fell in love with a woman named Leslie Feinberg and soon after came out as a lesbian. Weaver was outraged and attempted to sever ties between Pratt and her two sons with an ugly divorce. With the legal climate at the time, Pratt could be labeled as an “unfit” mother by the courts just for being a lesbian. In S/HE Pratt says that people told her she couldn’t be “both a mother – a good woman – and also a lesbian – a perverted woman (Pratt, 11).” As a result, she was forced to sign a less-than-favorable agreement which allowed Weaver to move the children to a different state.

Minnie Bruce Pratt’s Southern “proper” upbringing clearly outlined gender roles as male and female with no grey area. She references the “compulsory heterosexual quiz” she was forced to take in high school where there were “two ways to answer: straight or gay, heterosexual or queer. One choice would lead us into adulthood, the other directly to hell (Pratt, 13).” Pratt was forced to conform to society’s expectations when she was growing up, but as she matured these clear lines between the sexes began to blur. Her sexuality is very closely tied to her writing and seems to be an outlet, a way for her to make sense of the world; a world that is not defined by obvious categories of gender. As she says, “I began writing poetry again when I came out as a lesbian, not because of that specific sexuality, but because I came back to my body, after a time of terrible numbness and self-denial. It's hard to write poetry if you are completely alienated from your body. And coming out as a lesbian brought me back to physical experience in my own body (Rapp, 2).”
S/HE was published in 1995 and is a collection of poems that explore sexuality, desire and gender roles. Pratt identifies all the different ways in which a person can be a boy, a girl, a man, a woman and all those in the middle. Throughout the collection she highlights the “inconsistencies, the infinities, (and) the fluidity of sex and gender (Minnie Bruce Pratt, par.6).” Her poems bring to light the many facets of the queer community, specifically discussing what it means to be a transgendered person. In one poem labeled “Stripped” she comments on a story she read about a transgendered woman who was raped and murdered. The police labeled the victim as “it” and refused to take action. Pratt speaks about the author of the article and the police officers saying that to them “everything has to match – genitals, clothes, pronouns (Pratt, 174).” She also speaks from personal experience with her partner, Leslie Feinberg, who identifies herself as transgendered. In Stripped and other poems, Pratt delves into her fears and anxieties of the dangers and trials associated with living in a hostile, unwelcoming and rigid society.

While her books have won several awards, including a 1990 Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, “S/He” has been labeled as “high risk.” Her poems push the boundaries and force people to question their own identities. With this kind of work she is exposing the limits of traditional ways of thinking and providing people of all types with a world they can identify with and live openly in. Pratt “’breaks traditions, restrictions, and taboos (Rapp, 2)’" by letting the reader into her personal life, unveiling the inner conflicts, emotions, beauty and love of lesbian women. By writing about her story and openly discussing issues of gender definition and sexuality, she is enacting change. As she said in relation to writing poetry, she is not only freeing herself from numbness and self-denial, she is encouraging others to break free of this conformity and be comfortable in their own skin.

"S/HE, issued by Firebrand Books in Spring 1995, was one of the five finalists in Non-Fiction for that year's American Library Association Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Book Award, as well as one of the three finalists for the Firecracker Award in Non-Fiction (Kriesel, par. 2)."

Geri Courtney-Austein

Works Cited

"Biography of Minnie Bruce Pratt." Minnie Bruce Pratt. March 2006. Web. 10 Nov 2009.
http://www.mbpratt.org/index.html

Kriesel, Deanna. "S/HE." Belles Lettres: A Review of Books by Women 11.1 (1996): 54+. General OneFile. Web. 8 Nov. 2009 http://find.galegroup.com.ezproxy2.library.arizona.edu/gtx/start.do?prodId=ITOF&userGroupName=uarizona_main

Linda. "Minnie Bruce Pratt." Literature. May 2008. glbtq, Web. 10 Nov 2009.
http://www.glbtq.com/literature/pratt_mb,2.html.

"Minnie Bruce Pratt." Poets. September 2007. Poetry Foundation, Web. 10 Nov 2009. http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poet.html?id=81985.

Pratt, Minnie Bruce. S/HE. First. Ithaca, New York: Firebrand Books, 1995. Print.