Gender Identity In David Levithan's Two Boys Kissing?

Narrated by the voices of the generation of gay men who lost their lives during the AIDS epidemic, in Two Boys Kissing by David Levithan, two teenage boys attempt to set a new Guinness World Record for the longest kiss. During the livestreamed 32-hour kiss, the two internally wrestle with their feelings for each other and reminisce on their lost relationship while simultaneously becoming a centerpiece in the lives of other teenage boys struggling to come out, figuring out their gender identity, and navigating their own relationships whether they be online hook ups, a new fling, or a long-term love. Levithan, through the development of his central characters, examines gender norms, fag discourse, and the intersectionality of race and sexuality.

Avery colors his hair pink, a “strange color choice…for a boy born as a girl who wants to be seen as a boy” (Levithan 65). He suggests that people might assume that he would want to stray from feminine attributes in order to prove a level of masculinity that he must claim by identifying as trans. However, he says that he just likes pink, and that the idea that “pink is female” shows just how arbitrary gender is (Levithan 65). Why is a person’s gender identity instantly accompanied by an infinity of social implications? And why is everything from colors, toys, clothes, or even professions and temperaments considered either masculine or feminine? The construction of gender starts at birth. The assignment to a sex category based on the appearance of genitalia determines how babies are dressed, named, and treated throughout their lives (Lorber 20). Even when discussing their newborns, parents tend to respond differently, describing their baby’s physicality using gender stereotypes. Often, newborn boys are described as “tall, large, athletic, serious, and having broad, wide hands.” Newborn girls on the other hand are described as “small and pretty, with fine, delicate features” (Renzetti and Curran 77). Children learn from a very young age

By including these scenes of humiliation for the young gay boys in this novel, Levithan aims to bring awareness to fag discourse that is most prevalent among adolescents. Fag discourse perpetuates the idea that “adolescent boys become masculine through the continual repudiation of a ‘fag’ identity,” which is tied to both gender and sexuality (Pascoe). Through sociologist, professor, and author C.J. Pascoe’s research on fag discourse, she found that adolescents consider being called gay and/or a fag the lowest thing you can call someone because “that’s like you’re saying that you’re nothing.” Many adolescents explained that guys are just innately homophobic – not when it comes to lesbians, however, because they hold a place in heterosexual male fantasy. However, homosexual boys, or those perceived as homosexual, are not the only victims affected by this word and its negative connotations. If a heterosexual guy fails to live up to “masculine tasks of competence, heterosexual prowess and strength or [reveals] weakness or femininity,” he too is at risk of labeled a fag by his peers (Pascoe). When drunk high schoolers repeatedly yell “faggots” out their car window toward Craig and Harry, the two boys publicly trying to break the Guinness World Record for longest