What it boils down to….
Someone wrote…
At the end of the day we are all the same thing;
Human beings.
What’s your experience?
Posted by Chris on June 10th, 2011 at 08:00 am
Category: your voice 23 comments »
23 Responses to “What it boils down to….”
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June 10th, 2011 at 3:56 pm |
Yep, still human here. As for gender? It is in the eye of the beholder and I tend to play to others perceptions of me. Mostly that’s female but anatomically where it seems to count I am male. I’m trying to be more fluid with my gender presentation but people still tend to put you in the either or camp.
Most folks tend to like their sexes well defined. Heaven forbid we find ourselves attracted to the wrong sex. Hence gendering.
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June 10th, 2011 at 4:13 pm |
To be honest, “Human Being” is the closest I’ve really come to a term I’m happy with for my gender identity. That and “Miscellaneous”.
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June 10th, 2011 at 5:54 pm |
At the end of the day, it boils down to:
I’m (a) queer.
-radical/rebel
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Jessica replied:
June 13th, 2011 at 1:33 pm
Isn’t everybody, really?
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radical/rebel replied:
June 13th, 2011 at 2:30 pm
In short: no.
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Lyn replied:
June 13th, 2011 at 6:39 pm
I wonder, why not?
There is no person on this earth, who isn’t pathological, who is entirely feminine or entirely masculine. Male and female, masculine and feminine are words that are used to describe societal conventions. Conventions vary greatly around the world. What is queer is also an expression of those conventions. As everyone is ultimately an ever changing gender range, how can everyone not be genderqueer? If we expect everyone to accept us and love us, for who we are, today and tomorrow, how can we not believe them to be genderqueer. If we believe that attraction should be to the human person living in a body, not just to the outward sex characteristics of that body, how can we not believe that everyone is, in some measure, genderqueer.
How is it possible to believe the myth of the binary when faced with the endless evidence of human variation?
June 14th, 2011 at 9:29 pm |
As long as I’m using “queer” to mean intentionally challenging and deconstructing homophobia/transphobia/systems of oppression, then there are a million ways to not be queer. As long as “queer,” for me, indicates a politics of resistance and subversion, then there are going to be plenty of people that aren’t queer.
I’m not saying the myth of the gender binary doesn’t exist. I’m saying that people upholding the myth are not. queer.
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Lyn replied:
June 15th, 2011 at 8:28 am
And, oddly enough, I am saying that the people who seem to spend the most time and effort upholding and defending the myth of the binary are. self identified as. queer. and related gender expressions.
Pure and absolute binary as fiction, dreamt up to give us a standard by which to define ourselves. Without such a standard there can be no nonconformity, no bending or blurring of lines. There can be no transsexual without rigid gender identities to transition to or from. Who would we be if we did not believe in the binary? Not. queer.
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Anonymous replied:
June 15th, 2011 at 10:10 am
Your comment makes positively no sense to me. I’m not sure where you’re coming from.
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Lyn replied:
June 15th, 2011 at 10:42 am
Try this: The binary is a figment of our collective imaginations, without which we could not be gender variant. We created our version of what constitutes the binary, because we need that binary.
There are no absolutes in the human condition. Every person is a gender range that changes from moment to moment, day to day. The binary that we believe is our myth, not a cismyth.
June 15th, 2011 at 12:48 pm |
………………………………believing that something is a MYTH is not the same as believing IN THE THING. I don’t believe in the gender or sex binary, and I did /not/ create those binaries in order to not believe them: I reject them as societally created fictions and advocate for the necessity of living outside those binaries.
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Lyn replied:
June 15th, 2011 at 1:19 pm
Do you advocate for the necessity of living outside those binaries for everyone? Or just for transfolk?
Seems to me that you can’t live outside of the boundaries of something without believing in that thing. A lot like being stuck in Puzzle’s stable because the stable is the real world.
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June 15th, 2011 at 2:02 pm |
For everyone. Why do you think you understand me to be transsexual or genderqueer? Your comments are reading like you’re attacking me for my positions and I don’t think I’ve offered you any way of knowing those.
The necessity is for everyone, because even cissexual heterosexual males benefit from being allowed to cry and to cook and from not being forced to conform to masculine gender norms.
I’m not speaking on behalf of, or about, transfolks. You’re the one who’s doing that and who thinks that I believe in some kind of binary-supporting transsexuality, and none of this is accurate.
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Jessica replied:
June 15th, 2011 at 2:24 pm
We’re all here to learn and grow and support one another in that process. Some do this by applauding what they feel is worthy and others by questioning to gain more/deeper understanding. To sincerely inquire is not to attack, nor to deny the validity of what has been stated. We all have things we can learn from others and things we can teach and sometimes we learn most by teaching.
We do not have to all agree with one another for each of us to be right, each in their own way about themselves. What I love best about this place is the support everyone gives to whatever, whoever and whyever that may be.
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radical/rebel replied:
June 15th, 2011 at 2:28 pm
Thanks for a very calm and civil comment. I need to consider why I got so upset about this and try to articulate that for myself.
What I like most in your comment is that you said we’re all right (some of the time) about ourselves, and I think I need a good deal of practice accepting that my perspective isn’t the only correct or valid one, and that people not concurring doesn’t necessarily mean we disagree, but only that we are different, with different ways of saying what we mean.
Thanks again.
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Jessica replied:
June 15th, 2011 at 2:44 pm
You are very welcome.
In real life, if you get angry at something someone said, you can have them over for coffee and figure it out together. You laugh and you hug. It’s over.
I know I take myself far too seriously online. I am not alone.
And if you do have really irreconcilable differences, you can always talk about cats.
Please have a chocolate biscuit :-)
Lyn replied:
June 15th, 2011 at 3:04 pm
I’m sorry that you feel you were attacked, it was no part of my intent.
I feel that there are questions that need to be asked, assumptions that should be questioned, ideas that are worth exploring. If we aren’t willing to do these things then we truly are as rigid and hidebound as those who will not consider any life choice to be true but their own.
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radical/rebel replied:
June 15th, 2011 at 4:19 pm
Trust me–I’m exploring the ideas, the questions, and the assumptions. It’s part of my day to day existence. And I’m always changing my mind, learning new things, and trying to imagine differently.
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radical/rebel replied:
June 15th, 2011 at 4:21 pm
And I felt attacked because you implied that I might be, to quote our shared sarcastic phrasing, “not. queer.” and being queer is positively, completely, inevitably the most important part of my life, and I’ve twice in the past week had people carelessly fling accusations of “not being queer” at me via the Internet and it is not okay. When people are still dying for being gay, I’m absolutely not going to sit back while someone via the Internet say that I might not be queer, think queer, or live queer. No way.
June 15th, 2011 at 5:12 pm |
I’m sorry, again. I did not realise that you were being sarcastic. I’m still not sure where you were being sarcastic.
I did not question your queerness, I questioned whether everyone might not be at least a little queer. And also wondered, how it would be possible to be queer without something to be queer from.
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June 15th, 2011 at 5:38 pm |
“how it would be possible to be queer without something to be queer from.”
as long as gender and sexuality norms are as pervasive and damaging as they are, I don’t think it’s important for me to wonder whether I am queer qua being myself, or queer qua not fitting the norms, and I think your comments are down an unproductive road.
Feminism works to combat heteronormativity: are you trying to contend that feminism is somehow weakened by working against heteronormativity? We could take this in a Butlerian direction, but as long as we’re not, I don’t know why you keep trying to frame queerness as bound up in the binary. It doesn’t really make sense to me or seem interesting. And I don’t need to keep rehashing this with you, Lyn.
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June 16th, 2011 at 6:47 am |
I believe unicorns are mythical beasts. I think that someone who believes in unicorns and who uses that belief as a diving rod for defining their identity is asking for trouble.
If society generally supported a belief in unicorns, I would not believe in them any more than I do now. What if the general belief was that women did believe in unicorns and men did not? Would I then be right in concluding that I am a man? Many trans folk use just this kind of logic
to prove their self-identified gender.
More and more, in many Western societies, gender roles are transitioning
from important rules to general guidelines. People are becoming free to
express their gender identity outside of rigid norms and they are doing
so in record numbers. Given the chance to be, without immediate retribution, many (if not most) people will behave genderqueer, even if they do not consciously choose that label for themselves. Soon, if the trend continues, there will be less and less difference in gender roles and so genderqueer will become less and less important and meaningful for most people.
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Anonymous replied:
June 16th, 2011 at 12:38 pm
Gender expression/role /=/ gender identity.
Just sayin’.
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