There have been a few interesting posts in response to my post Eyeliner, Razors, High Heels, and Bras. I really think that much of what different authors are describing is tangential to my original post, but…that doesn’t mean I didn’t find what they had to say interesting.
To sum up: it bothers me when feminists claim that women aren’t under pressure to dress/groom/act a certain way, and seems pretty akin to saying “sexism doesn’t exist anymore” because it’s plainly untrue to anyone who critically observes the world. It also bothers me when feminists assume women have no agency because of those social pressures, and set up a feminist anti-standard which says you can only be a “good” feminist if you don’t shave/don’t wear makeup/burn your bra/etc. The problem is that women have to make a “statement” politically in an arena which should be a matter of personal comfort and preference. Women are unable to make informed decisions for the sake of their health — shaving is bad for the skin, and so are many cosmetics, people fry their hair into submission rather than styling it in a way which keeps it healthy, and wearing or not wearing certain shoes or bras is uncomfortable for different women. The problem is that we feel we need to choose one way or the other, either for sake of fashion or feminism. Neither is the solution.

I think part of the problem is that I didn’t try to pretend to offer a solution other than “maybe we all ought to carefully examine our motivations before claiming that social conditioning doesn’t affect the way we present ourselves”. People can read a lot into something when you don’t pretend to know the answer; therefore, it seems that people had some wildly divergent ideas of what I was trying to get at when I was mostly making a pretty focused point (I’m sick of people claiming social pressure on women to dress/groom a certain way doesn’t exist) rather than a broad one (do I know how to fix this? hell no. dress how you want).

Right now, since I don’t want to make a massive post from hell, I’ll just address what Bitch | Lab had to say:

I don’t think young folks believe it — though it may still exist — but there was pressure on feminists to wear a kind of uniform. Anyone who wore make up or a dress? She had to have a really good fucking reason to get away with it and it would only be something temporary — like making your parents happy for their yearly visit. Your car should be appripriately “green” or a Volvo. Certainly not a beat up Plymouth that I had to crawl into from the passenger side.

But those things really aren’t the issue — though they are signposts marking the path I took to get to where I am now. Signposts that mark a rejection of what some might otherwise call hypocrisy. I was interested, not so much because it was hypocrisy, but to wonder why it existed at all. What seemed to make it impossible for us to not reproduce taste and style, even a feminist taste and style, which was enforced with its own judgments about what was feminist and what wasn’t, who belongs and who didn’t? Why, in spite of wanting to get away from that, did we reproduce it?

Where I differ is with Earlbecke is with the seeming certainty that it might be possible to create a world where everyone just wore whatever they pleased because they possess a self capable of making those decisions based on their little ol’ desires. It is a potentiality, this self, but it is a potentiality that’s being banked on: the potential for a self untouched by society in the self’s expression of its _true_ desires.

On this model, our true desires are like something we carry around with us in a little knapsack. In an ideal society, we’d be free of social structural systems of oppression and the stufff in the knapsack — our desires — would magically express who were are. We’d have this self beneath all the gunk and junk of oppression. It’d be our own special, unique self.

This really isn’t much different than the famous billiard ball model upon which classical economic theory is built. The little selves just bang up against each other: there are no internal relations. They carry around their properties and attributes, unfazed by banging up against all the other little self-encapsulated monads in a Leibnizian universe. (Leibniz is a philosopher who spoke of a world composed of monads)

On this model, we have our monad selves with attributes called preferences. We whip those preferences out of our knapsack when we go shopping, making decisions based on those preferences.

From a lefty perspective, the problem is that those preferences (desires) carry with them the mark of a structurally oppressive society. That society shapes our preferences and desires. We aren’t free. Our freedom is constrained by the demands of the system. We are, in other words, ideologically blinded by hetero/sexism, racism, ablism, and class exploitation and oppression.

Here, the problem is the knapsack — structural forms of oppression — that crush our true desires like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich that got tossed around in a poorly designed knapsack.

But the problem, for me, is that this assumes that we just need to fix the knapsack so it doesn’t crush the peanut butter and jelly sandwich. That, underneath the massive weight of those oppressions, there exist selves that could otherwise be free to have and express true needs and desires. They’ve just been prevented from expressing their true desires.

And what does this remind you of? Well, it reminds me of the essentialist gender categories that Butler worries about. Butler says that, even while social constructionists recognize that gender is largely socially constructed, you can still read an essentialism. It’s not just imported into the theory by accident. It’s also not simply a mark or trace left over by an ideology that hasn’t been completely erased from the theory. Rather, it is an essentialism that is constituted by social constructionist thought itself. Not shaped, but actually constituted by it.

Which is a fair enough point, and, I think, important to keep in mind when arguing just about anything. (Have I mentioned I love Bitch | Lab? Well, I do. She’s, like, so much more educated than I am.)

Read the rest of this entry »

Building on my last post, I’m reminded of Maia over at Capitalism Bad; Tree Pretty (both sentiments, by the way, with which I wholeheartedly agree), and her recent post Many Stones Can Build an Arch; Singly None.

What is important in feminism? In political activism? I am a person who lives mostly inside my own head. I work off of ideas. They feed me, they fuel me, and thoughts and ideas are really my chief area of concern. This is simply the way I am. This is not to say that I’m not willing to do things, to act when I think an issue is important, but it’s not really my area of expertise. I need other people to do the groundwork, to help me be effective.

This is not to say that I’m totally out of touch with the world around me. I think I’m fairly well-grounded. I both derive my ideas from and connect them back to the world I see and experience all the time. I try to make my musings useful or applicable to everyday life. Maybe they aren’t useful to everyone, perhaps these aren’t ideas which really make their presence known from day to day in the worlds of other people, but in my life, the issues that I write about manifest every day, and honestly are important to me in a very real way.

But I often find myself wondering, “am I helping anyone? changing anything? doing anything useful at all?” I’m not out there organizing and drumming up support. I’m not an extrovert and I don’t enjoy being in charge of groups of people, even groups that support the causes I care about. I don’t like belonging to and regularly attending large groups, even if I’m not in a position of leadership or responsibility, because crowds shut me down. It’s too much input all at once; it exhausts me.

I think, that while the points raised both in Maia’s post and the article she quotes are valuable, that not everyone is really able to contribute to the causes that they care about in the same way. I don’t think I’d be useful to anyone if I tried to head a group, organize a campaign, reach out to the masses. Thankfully, there are other people who are more talented in these sorts of areas, and, hopefully, they are the ones who will try to make these contributions.

What I do best is write. Writing is what I spend my time doing, provided I have no other obligations, responsibilities, distractions. Fiction, poetry, nonfiction…it doesn’t really matter to me what it is, one way or another. Every other thing I do is merely an unfortunate, necessary condition of my being able to write and continue writing: eating, cleaning, sleeping, working. If I can manage to live my life in such a way that I can spend as much time as possible writing, not needing to waste valuable hours in order to make the money I need to survive, I’ll be in heaven.

And so I think, even in isolation, this is really the best contribution I can possibly make. Some of us are theorists. Some of us are thinkers. I’m not saying that other people don’t think…but that thinking isn’t really their motivation, not the means and the end all in itself. Some of us are only useful if we’re theorizing. I can try to go out and “do” things, but I won’t be half as effective, talented, or useful as I will be writing. Isn’t writing doing? Isn’t writing a verb, an action? Isn’t writing a way of organizing? Isn’t it a form of protest?

We all have our own talents and areas of interest. We are all good at different things. I think the best contribution any feminist can make is to do whatever it is ze is best at, and do it with complete, unwavering dedication. Do what we do best, and always strive to do our best at it.

Every activist has hir pet issues. Feminists, especially. Mine are gender and sexuality.

It’s not that I don’t care about abortion rights; I do. It’s not that I don’t care about the wage gap. It’s not that my range of concerns isn’t far-reaching and wide. It’s not that I don’t care about racism, or poverty, or war, because these are all things I feel very strongly about. It’s not that I’m not keeping track of the news and not as if I don’t talk about it with friends and family, but why post about it here when there are plenty of other blogs which already do so and so much better than I possibly could?

What I mostly find myself concerned with writing about are the politics of gender and sex and sexuality. The concepts and constructs. Thus, even though I am not trans (not exactly cisgendered, either — genderqueer? maybe) I find myself talking about trans issues all the time, as an example, or reading up on intersex conditions, etc. I’ve been trying to pinpoint exactly why this is. Why should I have such a profound interest in areas which have only very little to do with me?

I suppose it’s because I’m radical. Radical feminism is critical analysis, it’s seeing the whole picture, examining the entire framework, and finding the roots. Dismantling all the false assumptions on which the entire system thrives; because patterns of thought and behavior, especially those which are deeply embedded in the larger cultural psyche, are like weeds. Ideas are a living, growing, dynamic process. You can try to cut them down by hacking away at the growth, at the visible, conscious manifestations and their results and, in fact, this is necessary in order to allow a clear view of anything. However, until you take out the roots from which these ideas issue, the growth will always spring back, again and again. This is why feminist theory is just as important as feminist action and feminist organizing.

And all flawed systems, it seems, from sexism to racism to organized religion, any hierarchy you can imagine, depend on artificial constructions arising from the idea of duality. The construction of false dichotomies. The framework of diametrically opposed points, when, in fact, everything is a spectrum: male and female, masculine and feminine, good and evil, mental and physical, spiritual and material. It’s not that none of these things exist, it’s that they’re not a simple binary as so many people suppose.

So perhaps my pet causes aren’t always visible in the real world, not totally apparent to the untrained eye, perhaps too abstract and theoretical for everyone to readily grasp all the time — that doesn’t mean they’re not important. That doesn’t mean that they have nothing to do with me, or only a narrow application to certain small groups of people. Theoretical constructions affect everyone and have a huge impact on how we view the world. And so the basic assumptions which make a sexist social hierarchy possible to begin with — our current narrow concepts of sex and gender — need to be challenged. It’s only when these assumptions are dissected that the corrupt system issuing from them can be effectively dismantled.

For me, these two topics are inextricably linked. Obviously, there is the moral component that provides the foundation for the belief that there is imbalance in the world which must be corrected; whether one is religious or not, human rights are essentially and necessarily a moral value. There is no other justification for the idea of natural rights, nor do I think there needs to be. Perhaps moral justifications are not entirely defensible using logic, though I suppose one can turn to evolutionary psychology and explain that, as social creatures, it is in the best interest of everybody for all people to be treated with equal dignity, but that rings as disingenuous to me. When we need to philosophically or biologically justify acting in a decent manner, I think the point has been missed, though I suppose it makes for an interesting exercise in thought. However, how one approaches or interprets the issue is a personal matter.

The spiritual aspect of my feminism is much deeper than merely a guiding sense of right and wrong. Though I hesitate to assign myself a particular set of religious dogma, or, really, to be labeled in any area, the ideas I like best and fall most in line with are those of Buddhism. (And, ideally, I think, the same philosophies are also at the heart of the teachings of most prophets; the difference is that Buddha never said anything about needing a God.)

If I can be said to believe in God at all, it is a blind God. It is not a being, not a consciousness, at least not in any sense of the word which implies desires or wants or direction. It has no will of its own other than simply to be, to exist, and therefore favors no particular parties and bears no malevolence or benevolence to anyone in particular. And this is because I believe in no other divine motivating force behind the universe than the universe itself. I think the need to personify and symbolize things is understandable, but ultimately only gives rise to confusion and conflict. Perhaps abstract ideas are harder to understand, less convenient to explain, but they are also simpler and make more sense once one has a grasp of them. This kind of pantheism doesn’t really conflict with any other system of belief, because they can all be explained and incorporated into it. (This does not go both ways, of course, because faith in one particular personification of the divine usually precludes a belief in any other, which I think is part of the problem of using symbols to begin with. Mutual incompatibility of belief leaves no room for common ground, though a cynic might say it’s certainly a convenient way to perpetuate the ancient tribal survival-of-the-fittest mindset, keep the population in line ideologically, and generally control every aspect of people’s lives with relatively little effort. But someone wouldn’t start a religion just to control people, would they?)

I believe that God is just, and in the idea of karma. This is only because, as every being is a divine being, as every creature or substance arises from the same source, when one hurts another, one hurts oneself. Equal and opposite reactions don’t have to be limited to the realm of Newtonian physics. Realistically, we are all made of the same atoms and particles and charges in different and temporary, constantly changing arrangements. There’s no clear delineation on the subatomic level between anything; it’s mostly just empty air, infinite space that gives the illusion of a physical boundary from a wide enough perspective. Most of an atom is simply that: empty. There is just enough bound together within it in order to allow what seems to be a unit to form. And, essentially, on the quantum level, everything is simply part of a shifting tapestry of charged particles. We’re all part of the same vast sprawl of loose energy, frozen just enough to form into physical mass.

Whether or not one believes literally in the idea of reincarnation, I think the idea of rebirth is real enough to justify it as a useful metaphor. All matter is eventually recycled. One thing dies or decays and other life is nurtured by the same matter, up through the food chain. No energy is ever essentially lost, it simply shifts in form and configuration. (There’s entropy to account for, I know, but that’s another topic altogether — so I’m going to be general and gloss over that, for now.) We are also the sum of our genetics, and our culture. None of us is a completely new and original being; we all come from somewhere, and inside our cells we hold the lives of thousands of years of ancestry. All death creates life, as food or fuel, as natural selection, as written or spoken history. Rebirth is used in the Buddhist sense not simply to mean the reincarnation of a particular consciousness, but, at the most basic level, this vision of the universe, as a creative cycle of destruction and disintegration in order to form something new.

This in mind, I think it is, therefore, absolutely necessary (for me) to adopt a feminist position. Everything is, broken down to its constituent elements, essentially part of the same thing. This is why I cannot accept any other position than that, though everyone and everything may be a minor variation on the same universal energy, everyone, by virtue of being a part of this system, deserves to be treated equally, to be allowed the same rights and dignity. Though we do not live in a universe where it is possible for life to be sustained without deriving energy from other life, in the process destroying and assimilating it, this does not mean that it is desirable, justifiable, or right that one group of people should always oppress another in order to survive and have the advantage. This hurts all parties involved, and is the essential injustice in any hierarchical system of oppression. This is also why feminism must fight not only sexism, but racism, classism, and a host of other discriminatory prejudices based on physical or social characteristics.

We are not all the same. We do not all have the same resources, abilities, or needs. But we are all similar enough that we deserve the opportunity to express our abilities to the fullest extent, and to have all our basic needs met. It is only when allowed to exist in this state, able to express our potential, whatever it is, that we can give our life meaning and express our ultimate purpose. Our purpose is ours alone to decide and define, and it is different for everyone, but what is important is that it must be ours — not altered or limited by anyone else.

So… I think I missed the part where I was part of some kind of militant lesbian feminist police state that kills anyone who disagrees with me. Apparently, I have the power to “force” people to agree with me while not being subject myself to scrutiny. Because my impression of what I’m doing here was advocating for all people to be treated with respect, and for their opinions and ideas to be dismissed on their own merits rather than based on an arbitrary judgment of the body the person putting the ideas forth happens to inhabit.

Here’s what I believe:

1) Every person deserves basic human rights. Every person deserves the right to live in relative comfort (with shelter, enough to eat) and should be able to live life however makes them most happy, according to their personality and who they define themselves to be. No one else can tell a person what makes them happy, or who they are.

2) When any person, ever, is prevented from living life in this state through the actions of another person, this is a source of injustice. Thus, if one person’s “happy life” consists of raping, murdering, killing others, etc., obviously, the right to the pursuit of “happiness” no longer stands.

3) I, as a fellow inhabitant of this world, have a duty and obligation to speak out and attempt to do something about the situation when I perceive injustices of this sort being perpetrated, and to criticize the structures of power which I believe are responsible for them.

I don’t think any person who actually cares about other people could possibly argue with the essence of 1 and 2. The particulars vary from religion to religion, but I think this idea is at the heart of any genuine moral philosophy. Obviously, there are people who don’t care if other people live or die, and if it’s fair or not, and these people I clearly do not hold in particularly high esteem. 3 is merely my own belief, and I recognize that not everyone is willing or able to expend time and energy into trying to change the world. I respect that.

On any statement other than 1 or 2, I’m willing to accept any difference of opinion as having some possible validity. People all have different life experiences, and process these and their meanings differently. Obviously, the universe is far more nuanced and complicated than just these two statements and there is plenty of discussion necessary to determine exactly how these ideas apply to the real world. People are free not to agree with me in the abundance of gray area surrounding. All I ask is that they disagree with my opinions respectfully and address my ideas, if they seem problematic, rather than attacking me personally in order to avoid a real discussion.

The problem is that any argument justifying oppression in any form does not agree with statement 1. A person who does not believe that all other human beings are deserving of basic rights and respect obviously cannot respectfully discuss such an assertion. The fact that I’m not willing to go along with, or accept as valid, any argument which assumes people are not fundamentally deserving of the same basic equal rights does not mean I am “forcing” my ideas on anyone. It means I have principles.

Another principle I’m committed to is absolute freedom of speech. That’s why I and other feminist bloggers are free to speak our piece, on our own websites, and why we are free to ignore, delete, and not publish comments which disagree with our core principles. If you somehow can find a way to actually justify disagreeing with the concept of treating others with respect, buy your own webspace. It’s no God-given right of yours to waste my time and bandwidth in the name of your freedom to disagree.

Obviously, this will not come as new information to everybody, but I feel it is important enough to warrant repeating again and again, especially where issues of gender and sex are going to come up more than once. I believe that in the few comments I’ve already received this requires clarification.

Listen carefully:

There are not two genders. There are not even two sexes.

This is fundamental to understanding my point of view and any feminist or queer discourse. Without realizing that this is the underlying assumption within my arguments, misunderstandings are certain to arise. Even those who know what I am talking about without an explanation could stand to keep it in mind, because the people who do not fit into these narrow categories of male and female, masculine and feminine, are too often forgotten and marginalized within the greater context of feminist debate, which is entirely unfortunate. I know I do this too on occasion, in order to simplify my explanations, however, I hope that everyone will realize that I do carefully consider every gender when I form my opinions, not simply a narrow binary of male and female, and that I try to carefully craft my language to be as inclusive as possible, even if it goes unappreciated by those unfamiliar with the idea of gender and sex as a spectrum.

Sex:

A person’s sex is dependent on genitalia. A penis is a male sexual organ, the vulva, female. Sex is physical a combination of medical, biological, and genetic characteristics. Not everyone’s sex is purely male or female — there is a wide range of variation. Intersex people are born with a medical condition where they possess ambiguous or mixed physical sexual characteristics. Usually, in the past, these people were called “hermaphrodites” (now an antiquated term which can be considered offensive). Advances in medicine also allow for sex-reassignment surgery and hormonal treatments which may leave a transsexual patient “in between” sexes, so to speak, and therefore sex is a continuum between male and female features.

For this reason, rather than discussing “male” and “female” medical issues, I will always refer to “people with testicles” if I am discussing testicular cancer for example, “people with uteruses” if discussing women’s reproductive issues, “people with vaginas” if discussing the vagina, et cetera. This is also more inclusive and acknowledges the existence of women who have had hysterectomies and men who have had their testicles removed, as well; thus, no one’s gender identity is contingent, in my writing, on the presence or absence of a certain set of narrowly defined physical characteristics.

The idea that a woman is not defined by a vagina, by a vulva, by a womb, is one of the basic ideals of any truly meaningful and inclusive form of feminism. Any feminist who defines a woman based on her genitalia is fundamentally no better than the systems of oppression that we try to fight. I am a radical feminist, meaning I believe in the deconstruction of every assumption and framework used to define and oppress women and other marginalized genders, but I am willing to accept almost anyone under the feminist umbrella who has the basic ideals of male and female equality, even if we have wildly divergent ideas about what this means or what is important. However, any so-called “feminist” who defines women based on their bodies will not be considered truly feminist by me, because that is the same attitude utilized by the patriarchy to strip women of their identities.

No one would say a cisgender woman without a womb was no longer a woman if she’d had uterine cancer and had it removed. I don’t see why this is any less true for a transwoman born without one — any argument that these issues are not the same is nothing more than hypocrisy and transphobia. The problem is, a transwoman may need specialized medical care based on the body parts she does have, and this is why the recognition of those organs is still important despite the wide range of variation in physical sex.

Because sex is changeable and sometimes is not clear due to birth defects, genetic abnormalities or whatever other reason, I think sex as a category is a useful tool of categorization for the vast majority of the population but from a real standpoint, essentially a meaningless concept with no real definition. I rarely speak of physical sex for this reason. It may be based in statistically relevant biological human trends, but that does not make it a reasonable indicator of very many things beyond the chromosomal level — and, sometimes, not even then. It is good for sweeping generalizations and nothing else.

This is, incidentally, also why I think any claims of inherent biological differences between the sexes are bunk. We can’t even clearly define what sex is, at least not from a two-sexes perspective, because it’s entirely too complex. A binary division of sex is totally arbitrary and ignores the reality of many individuals who do not fit within either category. They are only a very, very small percentage of the population, but that makes it all the more important to recognize their existence because otherwise they will not receive the specialized medical care that they need. They are effectively rendered invisible by the assumption of an absolute binary system.

The problems with gender and sexual identity raised here are easily solved through simple, conscious re-structuring of language. Hence, I refer to people with certain body parts when I mean to talk about certain body parts, rather than relying on sex as an indicator. This is more precise and accurate language anyway. I do not see why this would be an issue of contention, though I know some people are very defensive about having their dualities challenged and will rail loudly in favor of their right to free speech even when it hurts, dismisses, and denies even the existence of certain groups of other people. These people are being cruel, dismissive of others’ unique experiences and issues, and enforcing their own views of what other people are onto people who do not themselves subscribe to that identity. This is Wrong. I am not willing to say that many things are absolute moral wrongs, but the absolute sense of entitlement over another person’s very being is one of them.

This is not up for debate in this forum: the entire premise this blog is based on is the basic human right of every individual to self-identify, and that another person questioning the existence or validity of another’s identity is a violation of that right. If you do not agree with this idea, even in the abstract idealism of a perfect world, you need to stop reading and leave now, or otherwise realize that I will never engage you in a debate on this topic and will not allow you to post comments questioning this subject. This is not censorship; you’re free to disagree elsewhere and I’m free to judge you and believe this to be not only unspeakably rude behavior, but a fundamental moral flaw. You’re free to call me a bitch, and I’m free to ignore you and continue a blissful life which does not involve rude people derailing, invalidating, and clogging up my blog.

Gender:

Gender, at least in the modern academic sense, as used in feminist and queer theory and thus in my writing, is a function of personality. It is not in any way necessarily connected to physical sex. It is an identity, a label one gives oneself. (It goes without saying that the paragraph above applies to this definition of gender, too. Debate elsewhere.) That is the point of self-definition. Gender is a characteristic integral to one’s identity which is defined only by oneself to define oneself. No one else can tell an individual what hir gender is. Ze can only decide for hirself. (Note: confused? Ze and hir.)

Most people are cisgendered. They identify strongly with their physical sex as male or female. For them, this issue is simple and the words “gender” and “sex” seem synonymous and interchangeable. However, they are not. I will never replace one for the other because I use them with extremely specific definitions. I try to refer to “wo/men” in terms of gender identity, “fe/males” in terms of sex. There is evidence that gender is a product of brain structure, which does not always correlate to physical sex, however, I’m inclined to say that the reason is a fascinating scientific inquiry but largely irrelevant. People ID as they ID. The reason why has no bearing on their identity, and identity can be fluid.

Some people ID as the “opposite” gender from the sex they were born into. They are transgender. Often, the traditional social role of gender is confused with gender identity. It is assumed that certain behaviors are part of gender identity, when, in fact, there can be many reasons for a person to behave as they do and form the preferences they have which have absolutely nothing to do with either gender identity or biology. (As some who believe either in brain structure differences or the correlation between sex and gender would have us believe.) This is a huge issue with trans people who are attempting to medically transition — the medical establishment is usually discriminatory and assumes that a person who does not act the part of a certain gender role cannot possibly really be the gender they ID as. This is a very real and extremely harmful effect of people’s personal identities not being taken seriously, and is exactly why the right to self-definition is not up for debate. There are too many real victims in this and many other cases for me to give any ground on the pretense of being friendly or approachable. The search for radical change in the name of justice and human rights is not going to be soft and fluffy and accessible to those who oppose this goal.

Cisgender people are given a greater range of expression within the confines of the social gender role, although when they step outside of that box, their sexual orientation or, to a lesser extent, gender identity is often questioned. This is often more lenient for women than it is for men — which may be counted as a blessing but not a feminist victory. The fact that women can act in a “masculine” way, but men who act in a “feminine” way are often mocked, derided, and sometimes even targets for physical violence is unfair and horrible for the man who does not fit the masculine gender role. However the patriarchy hurts these men, it is a side effect of the real problem; they are still not the real victims, because the idea that being feminine is inherently “bad” or “lesser” is evidence of the deep misogyny of society. Women’s relative freedom in this regard compared to men may seem to be the oppression of men at the hands of the patriarchy, but it is merely an incidental effect of the oppression of women. This is not to say that this is not horrible for everyone involved or that it should be accepted, but that the continued fight for feminism is the solution to this problem as well.

Not everyone’s gender identity fits into one of these categories, and most people’s fall somewhere between gender roles. Genderqueer is a blanket term used by anyone who IDs somewhere outside the binary and wishes to describe hirself this way.

Sexuality:

Because of the complexity of the gender and sex spectrums, sexuality is an increasingly difficult subject. I find most existing terms to be problematic because they equate sex with gender and operate based on binary assumptions. In general, heterosexual people identify strongly as one gender and are attracted to people who either have the “opposite” sex, gender identity, or gender role. It can be a combination of these. Homosexuality is the compliment. What it means to that individual is up to them to decide. What attracts people to certain partners is a deeply individual thing which may have more to do with appearance than sex, sex than gender, gender identity than sex or appearance, or, well…you get the idea. And it can be none of these things.

Bisexuality, strictly speaking, by operating on the assumptions of the binary, excludes genderqueer, trans, and intersex people. Many people who ID as bisexual do not actually feel this way (some do), but I still see the binary assumption to be an issue. For this reason, I ID as pansexual, meaning that I have the capacity to be potentially attracted to members of any sex or gender, although I will not lie and say there are not certain physical or aesthetic characteristics which appeal to me more physically, and that there are not certain self-identified characteristics which I find more attractive. However, I, personally, fall into the “primarily attracted for none of the above reasons” camp and am mostly only physically attracted to people with attractive personalities.

So there is pansexual and the synonym, omnisexual. There is pomosexual, or Post Modern Sexuality, which rejects gender as a social construct and not an actual meaningful descriptor, which is, again, problematic, because while I believe gender roles are a social construct, and think that in many cases gender identity is similar — I do not have the right to question that identity, an artificial social construct in my mind or not. All that matters is that others ID that way, and by labelling that identity a “construct” I would be implying it is false. I don’t have the right to do that. I think that pomosexuality is well-intentioned and, at heart, mostly a good idea, but it skirts shady ethical territory for me.

In Conclusion:

Well, there really is no conclusion, except to say that gender, sexuality, and even physical sex have no real boundaries, and work together but don’t necessarily have anything to do with one another. All of them exist on a wide and diverse spectrum upon which the individual in question has the right to place hirself, however ze likes, wherever ze likes, whenever ze likes, and for whatever reason, without needing to explain, justify, or prove hirself to anyone else. This is the one basic underlying principle upon which all of my philosophy is based.