Opinions
Witness to a gender revolution in Obama’s America
Once controversial book now registers a yawn among my students
(Image courtesy Routledge)
My story is that of a teacher who has witnessed a revolution. I saw no blood; no barricades; but a radical change nonetheless — and one that largely bubbled from the ground up. The revolution manifested itself in a graduate course, and this little story of mine hinges on big books.
I routinely teach a graduate seminar on historical methodology and contemporary theory at the University of Maryland in College Park. It is a difficult course, but well attended. I possibly delude myself by deeming it quite popular among our students. They and I tackle difficult ideas and we argue about everything. Intellectually, I usually come out of our 150-minute sessions exhausted, both elated and bruised. The books I assign fare similarly. From year to year, I have varied the syllabus, but I have included some repeats. Teaching the same book across time, I am able to gauge how some ideas become accepted, or not, and how fast.
Everybody seems to agree that class struggle exists, but Michel Foucault’s notion of biopower has not become transparent. Yet, another of these “big” ideas went from “crazy” to “banal” in the eight years of Obama’s presidency. The first time I taught this seminar in September 2008, I assigned Judith Butler’s “Gender Trouble.” Published in 1990, Butler’s prophetic book was still cutting edge 18 years later, an activist assault against the creation of a sexual binary based on the supposedly a-historical notion of biology. Sexual organs, Butler notes, are only one of the many physiological traits humanity can use to divide itself into groups. Our obsession about this sexually defined binary world needs to be interrogated. It is not just the notion of male and female that is subject to the wearing and tearing of history.
Biology is no destiny either. Historical process and power relations may also motivate dividing humans into men and women. Butler writes powerfully and cogently, but her prose does not suffer lazy readers.
When I first discussed the book with a baker’s dozen of doctoral students, the seminar attendees were puzzled. It was the fall of 2008, and the students were a representative sample of graduate students in the humanities at that time. Mostly on the liberal side of the political barricade, the group comprised gays and straights. We understood gender – itself a category fully accepted as “useful” by historians only in the 1980s — as historically determined, but we took for granted the stability of a biologically determined sexual binary that produced subjectivities encapsulated in words like “men” and “women.” Butler was not so sure, and my students were puzzled: admiring, yes, but still puzzled.
Now jump to eight years later to the fall 2016. I again assign Butler’s book: I want to see whether it is still a challenging read. During Obama’s presidency, American public discourse changed and the pace of change accelerated: marriage equality is farther on its journey into federal law, and millions of people have populated the notion of sexual difference with their own desires, loving themselves and others as gay, bisexual, non sexual, transgender, gender-neutral, etc. New words have been created to express the articulation of the many ways we can “be.”
Butler’s prophetic, intellectual activism seems no longer confined to the margins of academic discourse. My seminar’s date with her book arrives. By then, I have had time to know my audience. It is as representative of 2016 graduate students in the humanities as my older, 2008, cohort was. But it is different, more varied. We have had heated arguments about Marx’s notion of class and commodity, about the silence of oppression, and the clamor of empire. But “Gender Trouble” does not make a splash. Eyebrows are not raised. It is almost a big, polite, yawn, a silent “so what?”
The pulsating and prophetic core of this profoundly forward-looking book has finally arrived in its moment: it can be retired as a venerable landmark in American intellectual history. I go back to my office and consider that I have witnessed a revolution: America has changed, and it has done so largely from below, by the simple act of people having the courage to be who they felt they were, in a society that finally recognized their freedom to do that. It was an overdue change that also came out of decades of political and intellectual struggle and that, I hope, cannot be reversed.
Saverio Giovacchini is a professor of history at the University of Maryland College Park.
Today, on World AIDS Day, we honor the resilience, courage, and dignity of people living with HIV everywhere especially refugees, asylum seekers, and queer displaced communities across East Africa and the world.
For many, living with HIV is not just a health journey it is a journey of navigating stigma, borders, laws, discrimination, and survival.
Yet even in the face of displacement, uncertainty, and exclusion, queer people living with HIV continue to rise, thrive, advocate, and build community against all odds.
To every displaced person living with HIV:
• Your strength inspires us.
• Your story matters.
• You are worthy of safety, compassion, and the full right to health.
• You deserve a world where borders do not determine access to treatment, where identity does not determine dignity, and where your existence is celebrated not criminalized.
Let today be a reminder that:
• HIV is not a crime.
• Queer identity is not a crime.
• Seeking safety is not a crime.
• Stigma has no place in our communities.
• Access to treatment, care, and protection is a human right.
As we reflect, we must recommit ourselves to building systems that protect not punish displaced queer people living with HIV. We must amplify their voices, invest in inclusive healthcare, and fight the inequalities that fuel vulnerability.
Hope is stronger when we build it together.
Let’s continue to uplift, empower, and walk alongside those whose journeys are too often unheard.
Today we remember.
Today we stand together.
Today we renew hope.
Abraham Junior lives in the Gorom Refugee Settlement in South Sudan.
Commentary
Perfection is a lie and vulnerability is the new strength
Rebuilding life and business after profound struggles
I grew up an overweight, gay Black boy in West Baltimore, so I know what it feels like not to fit into a world that was not really made for you. When I was 18, my mother passed from congestive heart failure, and fitness became a sanctuary for my mental health rather than just a place to build my body. That is the line I open most speeches with when people ask who I am and why I started SWEAT DC.
The truth is that little boy never really left me.
Even now, at 42 years old, standing 6 feet 3 inches and 225 pounds as a fitness business owner, I still carry the fears, judgments, and insecurities of that broken kid. Many of us do. We grow into new seasons of life, but the messages we absorbed when we were young linger and shape the stories we tell ourselves. My lack of confidence growing up pushed me to chase perfection as I aged. So, of course, I ended up in Washington, D.C., which I lovingly call the most perfection obsessed city in the world.
Chances are that if you are reading this, you feel some of that too.
D.C. is a place where your resume walks through the door before you do, where degrees, salaries, and the perfect body feel like unspoken expectations. In the age of social media, the pressure is even louder. We are all scrolling through each other’s highlight reels, comparing our behind the scenes to someone else’s curated moment. And I am not above it. I have posted the perfect photo with the inspirational “God did it again” caption when I am feeling great and then gone completely quiet when life feels heavy. I am guilty of loving being the strong friend while hating to admit that sometimes I am the friend who needs support.
We are all caught in a system that teaches us perfection or nothing at all. But what I know for sure now is this: Perfection is a lie and vulnerability is the new strength.
When I first stepped into leadership, trying to be the perfect CEO, I found Brené Brown’s book, “Daring Greatly” and immediately grabbed onto the idea that vulnerability is strength. I wanted to create a community at SWEAT where people felt safe enough to be real. Staff, members, partners, everyone. “Welcome Home” became our motto for a reason. Our mission is to create a world where everyone feels confident in their skin.
But in my effort to build that world for others, I forgot to build it for myself.
Since launching SWEAT as a pop up fundraiser in 2015, opening our first brick and mortar in 2017, surviving COVID, reemerging and scaling, and now preparing to open our fifth location in Shaw in February 2026, life has been full. Along the way, I went from having a tight trainer six pack to gaining nearly 50 pounds as a stressed out entrepreneur. I lost my father. I underwent hip replacement surgery. I left a relationship that looked fine on paper but was not right. I took on extra jobs to keep the business alive. I battled alcoholism. I faced depression and loneliness. There are more stories than I can fit in one piece.
But the hardest battle was the one in my head. I judged myself for not having the body I once had. I asked myself how I could lead a fitness company if I was not in perfect shape. I asked myself how I could be a gay man in this city and not look the way I used to.
Then came the healing.
A fraternity brother said to me on the phone, “G, you have to forgive yourself.” It stopped me in my tracks. I had never considered forgiving myself. I only knew how to push harder, chase more, and hide the cracks. When we hung up, I cried. That moment opened something in me. I realized I had not neglected my body. I had held my life and my business together the best way I knew how through unimaginable seasons.
I stopped shaming myself for not looking like my past. I started honoring the new ways I had proven I was strong.
So here is what I want to offer anyone who is in that dark space now. Give yourself the same grace you give everyone else. Love yourself through every phase, not just the shiny ones. Recognize growth even when growth simply means you are still here.
When I created SWEAT, I hoped to build a home where people felt worthy just as they are, mostly because I needed that home too. My mission now is to carry that message beyond our walls and into the city I love. To build a STRONGER DC.
Because strength is not perfection. Strength is learning to love an imperfect you.
With love and gratitude, Coach G.
Gerard Burley, also known as Coach G, is a D.C.-based fitness entrepreneur.
I hope you have a great Thanksgiving and can enjoy it with family and friends and that you have things you can be thankful for this past year. That you have your health. Now here is the column I would have liked to share with you this Thanksgiving:
To all my friends and family. This year I am thankful the felon has left the White House. It feels we can all finally breath again. I am so happy his idea of a ballroom at the White House was a joke, and we can once again walk in Jackie Kennedy’s rose garden, and visit the beautiful East Wing. I am thankful the felon’s personal Goebbels, Stephen Miller, lost his job when the reality that he was a fascist was too much to take. It was wonderful to see the Supreme Court wake up and do their job once again. They stopped drinking the MAGA Kool-Aid and voided all the executive orders calling on museums to hide the history of Black Americans, women, and the LGBTQ community. They told the president he didn’t have the right to place tariffs, and that he couldn’t fire legally appointed members of commissions under the rubric of Congress’s control.
Then I am thankful the Congress began to do its job. That so many Republicans grew a set of balls and decided to challenge Speaker Mike ‘sycophant’ Johnson, reminding him they were an independent part of government, and didn’t need to rubber stamp everything the felon wanted. I was thankful to see them extend the SNAP program indefinitely, and the same with the tax credits for the ACA, agreeing to include these important programs in next year’s budget. Then they went further, and paid for the programs, by rescinding all the tax benefits they had given to the wealthy, and corporations, in the felon’s big ugly bill. Finally realizing it is the poor and middle class who they had to help if the country was to move forward. Then I can’t thank them enough for finally passing the Equality Act, and doing it with a veto proof majority, so the felon had to sign it, before he left office. They did the same for the Choice Act, and the Voting Rights Act. It was a glorious year with so much to be thankful for.
Then I am so thankful Congress finally stood up to the felon and said he couldn’t start wars without their approval, and the Supreme Court ruled they were right. That attacking Venezuela was not something he had the right to do. Then the final thing the court did this year I am thankful for, is they actually modified their ruling on presidential immunity, and said the felon’s grifting was not covered, as under their decision that was private, and not done in his role as president. Again, can’t thank them enough for waking up and doing that.
Then there is even more I am thankful for this year. It was so nice to see Tesla collapse, and Musk lose his trillion-dollar salary. The people finally woke up to him and insisted Congress mandate the satellite system he built, basically with money from the government, was actually owned by the government, and he could no longer control who can use it. It was determined he alone would not be able to tell Ukraine whether or not they can use it in their war defending against the Russian invasion. Then I am so thankful Congress went even further, and approved the funds needed by the Ukrainians for long-range missiles, and a missile defense system, accepting Ukraine was actually fighting a proxy war for the West, and Ukraine winning that war would help keep our own men and women off the battlefield.
And speaking of our military, I thank Congress for lifting the ban on transgender persons in the military, and honoring their service, along with the service of women, Black service members, all members of the LGBTQ community, and all minorities. It was fun to see Pete Hegseth being led out of the Pentagon, and being reminded he wasn’t the Secretary of War. There is no Department of War, it is still the Department of Defense, with congressional oversight. Again, so many things to be thankful for this past year. It seemed like my heart runneth over.
Then my alarm went off and I woke up from my big beautiful dream, only to realize I was still living in the Trumpian nightmare.
Peter Rosenstein is a longtime LGBTQ rights and Democratic Party activist.
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