So I’m not really sure when I first thought about this cartoon as worth mentioning, but I know it was in a different class (I will not name it for fear of being found out about my inspector gadget daydreaming when I should have been learning about something….well….not animated).
I LOVED this show when I was little. The Obvious: Penny is a little blonde girl who does cool things like save the world…..I was a little blonde girl who pretended to save the world. Woah. Uncanny.
But in all honesty, this show is great. Inspector Gadget is a detective who routinely makes foolish mistakes and has to be bailed out by either the awesome gadgets built into his body or his really smart niece Penny. Gadget’s ineptitude always gets him in trouble. Everyone in the show (other than Penny’s talking dog Brain) has noooo idea that Penny is really the master of technology and investigation. Granted she does sometimes play the whole damsel-in-distress bit, but still it’s never Gadget who saves her (oh yeah that’s right it’s the dog…who happens to be a master of disguise by the way).
I think I took this show for granted when I was growing up. I see the stuff that’s on today for kids….I have an eight-year-old brother… and I don’t recall seeing anything that has a strong female character in a technology position (where she isn’t treated as a freak or outsider). And I know what your thinking…”But he’s a boy of course you’re not seeing shows like that!” The way I see it, isn’t it important for both boys and girls to see females in non-traditional roles? There is always all this talk about how girls need to be taught that women can do anything, but boys need to be taught that too.
P.S. Favorite Inspector Gadget gadgets: Gadget’Copter and Gadget Springs. I soooo want the gadget’copter.
Representations of transgender in the news
My friend Barbara sent me this interesting story about a reckless homicide case. The main actor in the story, a woman named Christine Newton-John, happens to be transgendered, which has absolutely nothing to do with the case, but a good couple of paragraphs were dedicated to her gender reassignment surgery. I have to wonder if her status as a transgendered person was known and if that’s why the case was under such scrutiny. It just seems odd to mention.
Barbara sent the following letter to the editor:
On Saturday February 14, PD reporter Michael Sangiacomo penned a story about a tragic death of an elderly Geauga County man (“Transgender Woman Pleads Guilty in Husband’s Death by Excessive Exercise”).
The circumstances of James Mason’s death are indeed sensational and troublesome. But did we, as a readership, need to know about Christine Newton-John’s medical history as part of this story?
These irrelevant and totally unecessary details transform the sad and unfortunate demise of Mr. Mason into a salacious affair. The PD does not routinely include this kind of information when reporting on other confessions to crimes. Why now?One can only wonder how such reporting will affect Ms. Newton-John’s sentencing, or how the choice to include this woman’s personal details will affect the public’s opinion of the many –other– community members who lead honest and decent lives, and yet who don’t necessarily fit the body into which they were born.
Biased journalism such as this makes the world a more fearful and dangerous place for everyone.
For shame, Plain Dealer. I expected better from you.
What do you all think?
Let me start by saying that I’m so glad Ryan and Alex spoke to us on Monday. It was an eye opening experience for me as I had never been in such a forum to ask such questions. I do regret not taking advantage of being able to ask open-ended questions but I was a little uncomfortable with the thoughts I had running through my head during the discussion. How personal is too personal? Alot of the questions I wanted to ask seemed inappropriate in a classroom setting but I suppose that was the general idea: to have our thoughts outload for everyone to learn. I do thank them for speaking as I know talking about their personal struggles with gender and identity must not have been easy.
It seems I can’t help but talk about this class outside of the classroom. I’m learning such debate-worthy topics that I tend to bring up the subjects in conversations with friends. I had dinner with my best friend in Philly this weekend and I brought up how this class has made me think of make-up as a technology and how it was so ingrained in the daily routine of my family that it was enlightening to think of the material as “technology.” Tiffany then went on to say how she had written a paper (while she was at Bryn Mawr also) about the gendering and de-gendering of strippers. She asked me, “What did your father tell you while you were growing up? That you were smart or that you were pretty?” I replied,” I suppose I heard smart more than pretty.” She then asked me a rather different question; “What do you suppose stripper’s fathers told them when they were little?” She then tilted her head in a knowing way to me and I immediately knew that stripper’s fathers must have told them they were pretty. This got me thinking: I think it maybe isn’t all society that has molded us into what we are as men, women, or even both. Perhaps it started more internal, with people that love us the most. Yes, they in effect told us our strengths in order to avoid mentioning our weaknesses but they also made us into who we are. In my case, a math student at Bryn Mawr College but in other cases, a stripper in Reno.
I know this may sound harsh and I am not degrading those women who choose to live by their bodies (I would never be able to have a career like that physically and I give them all the credit in the world for having that courage). But I had previously thought technology to be for the more intelligent individual and I do have the stigma in my mind that strippers are not as educated as most. But linking makeup as technology I suppose would make strippers the ultimate wielders of technical power in that the use this technology to engender themselves to be anything male, female, or even both. It’s such a cool concept.
*I do apologize if I have offended anyone. I’m learning gradually in this class to change what I know into more dynamics of what I know.
Ok, so this started as a comment to Roisin Foley’s “Apparently I’m a Man on the Internet?” Post. But then it grew, and grew, and grew, so I’m putting it up as a post.
Analyzing The Gender Genie at this point, I’d say a more complete/complex understanding of people would lead to a better computer model. We should also realize that just as we have the ability to change technology / this model to fit our diversity, such a technology might also impact us. For instance, some people using the Genie (like might as a result try to act more stereotypically “male” or “female”.
In my computational linguistics class, we saw that statistical tests often prove to be very accurate (and computational linguistics is pretty related to what we’re talking about — analyzing text, just in this cased based on the gender of the person using it). I think it’d be really interesting (I mean, I’m just personally curious) to use statistics as a way to test someone’s gender — could a computer model of gender writing be accurate? This still brings up issues surrounding a technological tool enforcing gender stereotypes. Plus there’s the whole issue of categorizing people into “male”/”female” when we’ve just seen how gender is more a fluid expression than a binary categorization.
Final thought: the genie seems to be a kind of reverse “turing test” on gender. As I think we discussed, according to the test, a machine is deemed “intelligent” when a human communicating with it can not tell the difference between it and a fellow human. So a turing test on gender would deem a machine “male”/”female” (now that’s an interesting thought, isn’t it?) when a human communicating with it can’t tell the difference between it and a person of the same gender. A reverse turing test on gender, then, would deem a human “male”/”female” when a machine communicating with it can’t discriminate between the human and other people (or some model) of the same gender.
In response to Hannah Mueller’s essay “Thinking Outside the Frame”, within a discussion of cinema as a technology of gender, she talks about a webcomic where the woman has a specific rule about watching movies. I find intriguing the idea of having this woman’s rule that you only watch movies in which more than two women are presented in non-male oriented discourse. I was trying to think of movies for which that is true. The one that came immediately to me was this really fun movie called Go Fish, by Rose Troche and Guinevere Turner (which I watched as part of a paper project for my Women and Cinema class). Indeed, a number of the movies we watched for that – all directed by females – might fit the criteria. But back to Go Fish. This movie is about a community of women, of lesbians, who live near each other, inter-date, and get together to hang out. They certainly don’t talk about men much. But I do think a good deal of the movie is them talking about other women whom they want to date. Does that pass the rule? They’re still ultimately interested in a connection with another human being. It’s just that person doesn’t happen to be male. If we consider ourselves within a patriarchy, this kind of movie (technology…) would be subverting it, and allowing female discourse. Also it brings up lesbianism/homosexuality, and openly and happily portrays people who don’t entirely fit “the norm”.
Since it does accomplish this subversion of norms and acceptance of difference (and simply because it’s a fun movie), I appreciate the movie. But what about a movie that promotes female discourse about something other than sex/dating/relationships (whether with females or males)? A movie for asexuals, perhaps? Maybe relationship movies are just more fun or interesting to many people than platonic or intellectual movies. Why is that? Is that not the case? Seeing as Go Fish is outside male-focused action/discourse, does it fit the rule? I guess the first thing that I thought of when I heard of the rule was movies where women are talking about life, their emotions, thoughts, interesting things that happen to them, intellectual discussion, the beauty of everyday events and nature, etc. By painting a portrait of women who are still focused on relationships, is this movie continuing some “norm”/gender expectation or standard for women that they will only be interested in relationships (while still accomplishing a good deal of norm-bending)? In other words, is it still upholding the women as romantics ideal?
An example of a Gender Genie decision.
So a friend of mine recently started a weird, slightly mean internet project of sorts which I thought spoke to a lot of what we’ve been talking about in this class. Let me just preface by saying I do not approve, and I have made this clear to my friend. So, my friend knows a guy at college who keeps a blog, which my friend describes as “hilarious,” and not in an intentional way. It’s one of those personal blogs that maybe three people read, and those three people all know the author personally. So my friend (and my friend’s roommates) decided to start a blog pretending to be a girl, and have slowly started posting on the guy’s blog– with the objective of eventually striking up an internet relationship of sorts. My friend and his roommate are all guys. They’ve described what they’re doing- the act of pretending to be someone else on the internet, as “fun.” They can talk about the personality of “Mel” (their female alter-ego) at incredible length and detail, as well as her relationship to the internet and her blog. In order to seem “more female,” they’ve been using The Gender Genie , an application which analyzes text and tells you whether the author is “male” or “female” and how many points “male” or “female” they are.
I decided to test the Gender Genie myself, and it told me I was male three times (I used the paper I wrote for this class, a personal blog entry, and an entry from this blog). When I pasted in a short story I wrote, it told me I was female. I’m female-bodied and identify as such. The algorithm that the Genie is based on, from what I can tell, basically thinks that analytical= male, personal= female. One of my friend’s roommates (who has been participating in the “Mel” blog farce,) used the Genie on his personal writing and came out “female’ every time, which he reacted to rather badly.
So, my question is, if something like this is “wrong” most of the time, what’s the point? Does it retain any of it’s usefulness as a tool? Or, does it’s usefulness lie in the very fact that it is wrong, which allows us to further explore the constructs that surround the idea of gender as dichotomous?
So I grew up without cable, which ment I really only ever watched PBS and now when I go home, we still really only watch PBS. So while I was researching for my paper I came across some interesting shows and rememberd some other one’s that I thought fitting for this class.
This is an episode from Sectrets of the Dead about the East German female athletes that were part of a huge government run doping program so that the country would win in international sporting events. The episode shows what happened to these women and where they are now. VERY INTETRESTING, I really recomend that people watch it (you can steam the video from the website)
This is the coresponding website for the NOVA episode about Rosalind Franklin, the person I picked for the pannals. She was a scientist in England in the 40’s and 50’s and was crucial in the discovery of the structure if DNA, but she is often over looked.
This is an episode of NOVA that tells the story of women in Ethiopia who are left with fistulas after childbirth. A fistula is a hole/tear/rip between the birthcannal and either the urithra or the anus. The documentary is about a hospital run by an English ex-pat Doctor and how the relatively simple surgery has changed these women’s live completely. They go from being treated lower then dirt, to humans again. This is the compainion website, but you can also watch the episode online.
This is just a little profile from NOVA Science Now about a woman at MIT, Cynthia Breazeal, who is making robots, and they are very cute robots!
Just thought I should share some of the things i’ve found in the last few days. There is alot on the NOVA website, and alot of episodes you can watch. Hope you all enjoy!
I enjoyed reading Kalyn Schofield’s post about the transexual women’s website. I know she talked about successed from that cannot be measured, but I would like to discuss the ones that can. I am curious about how societal the female persona is, when applied to certain careers. After having listened to both Alex and Ryan’s stories, I wonder about careers as a trasexual. I mean if a man with a “successful” career becomes a woman, will it be harder for him/her in the workplace? Not just as a transexual, but from a different gendered point of view. I wonder how much of the oppression for women in the workplace is historical. The situation could also be vice versa if a woman passed for a man, he would enter a differeent societal circle. I wonder how it would affect his career. For example “Lynn’s Story” talks about how she began life as a boy and transitioned to a girl. She is an inventor, electrical engineer, and computer scientist. I just wonder if she would have gone into the same fields if she had been raised a girl. It seems to me that our female history perhaps, has a lot to do with the carreers and fields we choose. I guess I am just curious about the extent to which children are raised and how it affects their gender and thus, their carreer choices.
On Friday I went to the Comp Sci majors tea and a few people from our class were there (Natasha, Marwa, and aaclh). We got to talking about our papers and came up with a few things that I found really interesting.
In class we’ve spent a lot of time talking about labels, especially the negative connotations associated with them. Aaclh mentioned how not everything has a name. At first I wanted to argue with her about this, but she’s right, there are concepts that do not have names. For example, (leading back to my own paper) there is no recognized name for an asexual relationship. Which got me thinking about labeling as a way to form legitimacy. Labeling something is like saying “This concept is worth talking about, it is important enough to have a name.” Aaclh acknowledged that she thinks it works both ways. She talked about how labeling something also creates concepts that are harmful. For example, she said that creating the word homosexual, also made it possible to create the concept of homophobia. Personally, I don’t think I agree with this. Just because something doesn’t have a name doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist (i.e. an asexual relationship).
In our conversation, my classmates also helped me dig deeper into my own paper topic and by the end of our conversation I realized a lot of important concepts I didn’t address. I think the reason AVEN was/is so successful in the media is because David Jay, is a seemingly completely “normal” guy in every respect except one: he considers himself to be asexual. If a woman was the face of asexuality however, I think the media would have taunted and poked fun at her. They would have claimed she was just frigid and cold, a man-hater. But because Jay is a young, reasonably attractive man, being asexual has more legitimacy. As one of the authors of the articles I read said:
“Jay is no Calvin Klein model, but he’s not unattractive either; in fact, he’s kind of got the air of a young JFK Junior, tall slender, with warm dark eyes, and the mouth of a Greek god I can imagine the young girls dying to kiss. He’s living proof that it is absolutely wrong to assume asexuals shun sex simply because they can’t get any” (Westphal).
A woman never would have been viewed in this light.
“So, how’s the smut business, Jackie?”
“I wouldn’t know, Dude. I deal in publishing. Entertainment. Political advocacy.”
“Oh. Which one’s ‘Logjammin’?'”
“Yes, regrettably, standards in adult entertainment have fallen. It’s video, Dude. Now that we’re competing with those amateurs, we can’t afford to invest in little extras like story . . . production value . . . FEELINGS . . . You know, people forget that the brain is the biggest erogenous zone.”
“On you, maybe.”
“Of course, you have to take the good with the bad. New technology permits us to do very exciting things in the field of interactive, erotic software. Wave of the future, Dude – one hundred percent electronic!”
“Yeah, well, I still jerk off manually.”
“Ah ha ha . . . ‘course you do.”
[-The Big Lebowski]
I sense there’s a paper to be written on this subject, whether or not it’s a paper for this class. I’m interested in what the pornography industry has done for (or against) gender relations.
I’m going to go ahead and start by saying that I believe that you can have works of fiction produced for the primary purpose of being sexually arousing without it objectifying or demeaning anyone. I think, however, that most people will agree that this just doesn’t happen very often.
Erotic writing and depictions have been around forever. I would have thought that things really took off for porn in the ’60’s, but the Almighty Wikipedia suggests that pornography has been widely produced for as long as there has been the technology for it. But that’s a pretty common thing, really; as soon as the means exist to make something sexy, someone makes it sexy. This is somewhat related to the Internet meme refered to as Rule 34: “If it exists, there is porn of it.” (Do not test Rule 34; it will only bring you unhappiness.)
And now we’ve come to the Internet. oh god, the Internet. If you’ve ever tried to look for anything on the Internet you know that it’s mostly porn. The traversable Internet is a web of long, plastic corridors at the bottom of an ocean of porn, and the slightest crack in the thin walls will release a torrent of distressing images and debilitating viruses.
But what does it MEAN? The porn of the Internet is not the porn of the pimply teenagers or grimy service-sector employees of yesteryear. It’s over-the-top. It’s people uploading grainy webcam videos of themselves. It’s content blatantly stolen from other websites to be re-sold. It’s riddled with hazardous software. It’s anthropomorphic foxes doing unspeakable things to one another. There’s no sexual special-interest group without representation somewhere within our series of tubes.
I’ve definitely heard complaints about porn being demeaning/objectifying. These I think are both true in a lot of cases. To me, though, more of the problem is what a lot of porn does to sex itself. I remember that last year my customs group as a whole watched a porn DVD my friend got for her 18th birthday. We would watch a scene for a few minutes, then someone would say ” . . . Does everyone basically get the gist of this scene?” and we’d fast-forward to the next scene (and let me say now that there are few things funnier than bad porn on fast-forward). Essentially, it made sex pretty boring. It was people with ridiculous outfits in ridiculous positions doing ridiculous things and it just wasn’t sexy. It reminds me of a rap video I watched with a bunch of women dancing around in bikinis. I thought as I watched it “Wow, they’re all exactly the same shape and doing exactly the same things. Could they BE any less interesting?”
I know erotica is interesting to a lot of people. Haverford has started up an erotica ‘zine that’s released one issue, and hopefully more to follow. My question is, how can you have something that’s arousing to read, watch, or look at but not completely base and offensive? There are people of both genders who want access to erotic media, but who can’t find anything that’s not appealing to the lowest common denominator, that insults their intelligence, desires, and morals at every turn. It’s depressing, but it seems that people don’t see the money in making truely engaging sexually exciting materials.
As the man says, people forget that the brain is the biggest erogenous zone.
I found this really interesting website that provides detailed information, links, and articles about the life of transexual women and supporters.
Website: http://www.lynnconway.com
Please go to the bottom of the website and click on “Transsexual Women’s Successes” and then from that page scroll to the bottom and select from “Photo Galleries of Successes”. From there you can read about a number of successful people and what they’ve overcome. From the main page there is numerous subjects that range from “college Transition Issues” to “Sex Reassignment Surgery.” I encourage you to glance through them all.
To quote from the Transexual Women’s website :
I wanted to address one of the questions we left class with on Wednesday… is there a difference between butch and transgendered?
Personally, I feel pretty strongly about this distinction. I can understand why people might view me as being “butch.” My hair is short and I typically wear masculine-looking or men’s clothing (although I also have a decent-sized stash of feminine clothing and makeup that my mother bought for me), and I happen to be gay. But my “butchness” stops at the outside. Correct me if I’m wrong, but transgendered refers to your internal gender identity. I suppose I’m “butch,” but I identify as female, as a woman, and I embrace it whole-heartedly. I love every part of being a woman. The way I look on the outside is completely based on my own comfort and sense of fashion (let’s face it, men’s clothing is much more comfortable). Even though I fully embrace my femininity and feel like a woman, does it mean I have masculine tendencies if I don’t look stereotypically feminine? And why should “my tendencies” even matter? To me, I am female and woman, inside out.
For some reason, I cringe at the idea that I might be perceived as “butch.” And this brings me to the whole idea of labeling, which Ryan and Alex talked about. I cringe at being perceived as “butch” and although I’ve accepted the label of “gay,” I identify with what it represents, rather than the label itself, and it still makes me uncomfortable (especially the word “homosexual”). I think labeling has huge relevance on Bryn Mawr’s campus, where sexuality is relatively fluid and homosexuality is widely accepted. Even so, there’s a overwhelming pressure to label people, to the point where straight women are pressured to be gay or people feel the need to conform to the label they have been given by the rest of the community… does anyone have any thoughts about the problem with labeling on Bryn Mawr’s campus?
Following on Sugar Spice’s post about robots and pondering how much is too much, I bring you the EyeTable, an artificially intelligent table that can let people know how a date is going. Although the project is a proof-of-concept type project, it’s funny to me how we often want technology to help us in the areas of human emotion. At least the EyeTable is conceived of as a partner here and not as the one doing *all* of the thinking.
I apologize in advance for the scattered chaos that will be this post…
first off, having Alex and Ryan as speakers in our class was an absolutely amazing and eyeopening experience for me. I know I wasn’t the only one who had questions, though it seemed like I asked most of them– its definitely easy to second guess everything that comes out of your mouth when confronted with a “topic like this”.
the reason “topic like this” is in quotes is because I have already second guessed myself in saying it. The fact that it is such a rare opportunity (within AND outside of the bi-co) to be able to hear about the experience of trans individuals firsthand and in person is in it of itself evidence of the effect of gender norms present and pervasive in our society. No trans man or woman should have to walk down the street or into a classroom and get “oohs and aahs”, passing or otherwise. Alex’s story about the issues with top surgery that hes had are beyond belief. Frankly, learning about transgender, genderqueer, intersex, hemaphrodite, and everything-inbetween individuals is new to me… and absolutely intriguiging– but again, should I feel bad for being so interested? Why do we tiptoe so naive around minority? actually, I’ll answer my own question. we do it because the minority is something that “mainstream society” is inherently naive about.
in class today my definition of gender was something like “societal categories individuals are placed into, heavily influenced by one’s biological sex”. Clearly neither Alex nor Ryan were the first trans men to grace this earth… its wild to think that in all of human history the best we can do is two gender options? Look at the progression of race in our society– I would guess that at one point (not even that long ago!) there were no legal forms that even asked for race; anyone filling out such forms would be white. duh. Today we have access to white, black, pacific islander, asian, hispanic, blue, orange, tye-dye and OTHER, is it that difficult to add another box to the gender section?
the topic of passing is mind-boggling, in an amazing psychology-major sort of way. How does one pass.. who decides that they pass.. how many people knowing alex is a boy is enough for him? Must you pass internally 100% before you can begin to be concerned with passing externally? I had a huge AHA moment today in class, on this subject exactly. Someone asked if we were all passing, and where the issue of passing I believe is linked to gender for trans individuals, passing as a female every morning (or any morning for that matter) has not once crossed my mind. I remember in 6th grade having days that I would “dress like a boy”– ironically because I had a crush on a boy– but really this meant “dress like a girl who dresses like a boy”. not like a boy.
Then I considered the issue of race. AHA. there was my moment. that was it. Didya see it?
I’m bi-racial, black and white (err.. transracial? bi-gender? hmm…), but am usually seen as white. Or, people say “I knew you were somethin weird…just didn’t know what”. I’ve never had a problem passing as white, but it usually takes some convincing when I tell people my dad is black. “like… all the way black?” is a common response. yeep, like all the way black. I’ve never in my life passed as “all the way black”, but I can pass as mixed. And on the issue of race in this society, its okay to pass as mixed. Has anyone heard about a woman having a mixed baby and saying “hmm.. yeah I think we’re gonna go ahead with that skin/nose/hair surgery for my baby, maybe I’ll tell her when she’s a little older”. I haven’t. (what happens when this technology does become available..?) It is okay to be in the middle of two races (or am I just biased because I am?). When I go out for dinner with my family, people stare– and I’m sure that there are still people who would look at my family in disgust, adjusting their confederate flag belt buckle. But most of the time, they point, smile, COME UP TO MY PARENTS and say “your daughters are so beautiful and exotic”. no… we’re American, doesn’t seem to exotic to me. (The only time I can think of that someone has come to my family to make a comment that wasn’t about our mixed-ness was in north carolina, when a burger king employee took the effort to come out from behind the desk and tell my dad he looked like OJ simpson. But thats a story for another day.)
The point of all this is that although I can somewhat relate to the issue of passing– a tiny portion of what some trans individuals may be dealing with (or, like ryan, not really concerned with at all)– its nothing comparatively. Being mixed-race and transgender maybe have some (one?) superficial things in common, but clearly they are drastically different. Not to mention, my experience with “passing as mixed” has been for the most part positive. and for the record, it is very clear to me that this is something I take for granted.
My other definition of gender today was, “gender is evolving.” Gender norms have come a long way, but they’ve got a long way to go. C’mon technology– make it a little easier– help us out here.
‘Is there a true, “natural” self that should/would indicate our true gender?’
Nope. Now, in further response to this questios written on the board during class today, I thought back to Hannah’s well thought out post on the various connotations of the words “nature” and “natural.” The anonymous questioner I quote uses the word “natural” to refer to something that is inborn, pure, untouched by society, intrinsic in one’s being. I’ve no issue with the first part of the question- is there something basic, inherent in people, under all the parts we play and masks we wear? It’s how I operate in the world, so yeah, I really think so. However, does this “natural” part indicate an equally “natural” gender?
In my eyes, gender is a tool. We use tools to make our lives better, to express ourselves, to slather some paint on our cave walls so we don’t get so mind-numbingly bored in the winter. But at the end of the day, I think it’s extremely important to draw a boundary between what is the tool and who is the tool user. Gender helps us express how we feel, deep down in the marrow of our bones, when we look at another self-identified female (or male, or trans, or Red Sox fan*) and go ‘Hey. Hey. That’s me. That’s what my mirror should show. And that person there? They’re another me too.’ Kinship, belonging, understanding.
But.
How you express yourself is not yourself, the same way that Monet isn’t real lilies and that Hatfield isn’t a real McCoy. I want people to realize this when dealing with me, and I need to keep it in mind when dealing with others in turn. We’ll never know another person’s true self, and not only is that okay, it’s necessary. It brings me immeasurable comfort to know that even when I’m judged, even if my known (or assumed) gender, orientation, religious preferences, or whatever come into play, there is a place deep deep deep in my marrow the the other person won’t ever see and is totally, completely mine. It precedes gender (and orientation, and religious preference…) by a lot. My “natural” self is the one pulling the strings, one of which is the fact I’m pretty apathetic on my gender, but accept “she’s a chick” for convenience’s sake. I think this is really really super important to keep in mind you guys because of the debate surrounding gender/sex/identity and whether or not these things are intrinsic.
That said, I’m nowhere near declaring that gender/sex/identity are things that we totally control, just that a gay man is, first and foremost, just some random, probably nice and average person on the streets who identifies as both male and homosexual. There is something that comes before either of those, something that would remain if you subtracted both ‘male’ and ‘homosexual’ from the equation. The real you. The natural you. This is part of what I wanted to get at in my first post about a utopia in which technology allowed people to completely strip themselves of gender. It is my fervent belief that something remains without it, and as with any tool, should be picked up and put to the side as the needs of the user demand.
__________
*-I know, I already used this joke in a comment today. My humor levels are easily met.
