Right-now.
IdentityTBD wrote…
I’m not looking for a forever gender. I’m just looking for gender right-now.
What’s your experience?
Posted by julian on October 19th, 2010 at 08:00 am
Category: your voice 8 comments »
8 Responses to “Right-now.”
Leave a Reply
October 19th, 2010 at 9:21 am |
I dig this. I’d settle for being confident in my gender, even if it was only for a little while.
[Reply]
October 19th, 2010 at 3:18 pm |
Precisely…Referring to a previous question on the blog about being outed or not–I think this is a pivotal point about gender which makes it hard to be out of the binary. To say that one is not within the well defined boundaries of female or male is one thing, but to try and communicate that one is trekking through the continents of gender without a permanent state of residence…that seems to throw a lot of people. This is unfortunate, cause there’s a lot of cool stuff to see and do in the countryside.
[Reply]
freiya replied:
October 19th, 2010 at 4:09 pm
i LOVE the continents/countryside analogy, this creates beautiful pictures in my mind :)
[Reply]
Eliot-Anna replied:
October 19th, 2010 at 4:21 pm
Thank you! That is putting it so, so beautifully and I know exactly what you mean because that’s exactly what’s happening in my life right now. My Mom has totally failed to understand what that’s like or even that is possible and I have thus far not had the words to convincingly explain it to her.
[Reply]
October 19th, 2010 at 4:42 pm |
Gender isn’t like a set of clothes you put on. It is more like the community in which you live and the role you play in that community with others. You don’t always choose to do the same things or to be with the same people. You discover new and different things and interests. You feel drawn to some things and get turned off by others. Like everything real, it’s like the river you take from where you began to where you end up.
For me it’s not about a man being a woman or a woman being a man. It is about being me. Pretending to be something you’re not can be fun and exciting, scary and exhilarating – but it just isn’t real.
I don’t want to be in a box, not just because I don’t like this box, but because I don’t like any box. Putting me in a nicer box with cool clothes and people who are interested in someone in that box – it just doesn’t satisfy me. I love being a feminized man and a masculinized woman. I am both and neither.
Aw, it’s just Jessie being verbose again… she’ll climb down off that high horse soon.
And don’t think I look down on people who are sincerely transsexual. If that’s right for you, go for it. Just because it wouldn’t be real for me is no reflection on you – you are every bit as real as I am, maybe more. And maybe if I was 30 years younger without grown children I’d be right where you are. Maybe not. I’ve always been too ready to see all the sides and take none.
[Reply]
October 20th, 2010 at 6:37 am |
@eliot-anna/freiya…thanks.
and @jessica: I concur. well put.
[Reply]
November 4th, 2010 at 8:18 am |
I can identify. I’m sick of trying to pigeon-hole my gender into a category, be it woman, man, genderqueer, genderfuck, trans, etc. It’s too exhausting and limiting. When I verbally identify myself, people generally assume permanence, not seeing that gender continual process and that being something, right now, is really all there is.
[Reply]
November 23rd, 2010 at 12:03 am |
This really resonates with me. Thank you :)
[Reply]