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| quote: | Originally posted by Fledz
There's the opposite extreme end that apparently think gender doesn't exist. Errr it does, and you have to be clinically insane to not see that. Just like someone who says they aren't racist because they can't see colour. I can see colour just fine and I'm not a racist. It's all in the way you frame it. |
Come on. Race isn't a mere color. Race is a concept laden with all manner of cultural baggage.
Yes it's true that genetics can in fact determine a scientific/anthropological definition of race, but the simple fact is, 'race' is a social concept that is extraordinarily fluid. For example, a hundred years ago in the United States, even having a small amount of genetic inheritance from a black person automatically made you 'black' by definition.
Similarly, gender is a social layer that has been built on top of actual sexual characteristics. When people claim that gender doesn't exist, it means that these historical social layers are meaningless at best in contemporary society (most people who would claim this would say they are oppressive).
What is 'gender'? Gender is a program, a blueprint for a life, an autopilot, a template, social lubricant. It tells you what your skill set can be, what your goals are, your rules in social exchange, how you look, how you fuck, what your should spend your money on, etc. Gender is the part you play, not who you are.
We're given a part to play at birth based on the way our genitals look. And in some cases (actually more than you'd like to think, and more than doctors would like to admit), when doctors can't tell what sex someone is based on their intersex genitals, they are mutilated to fit into one or the other category, and forced to play the part.
When people say that gender doesn't exist they mean that you can deprogram yourself at any time, and simply be a person. I personally can change my gender every morning as easily as i can change clothes. I have favorite genders like I have favorite colors. I feel comfortable shifting genders because I am a transsexual woman (which is something different than transgender, though i am transgender as well - transsexual means that there is a subconscious (possibly neurological) basis for the experience of dissonance with one's physical sex) . Having known my entire life that my given gender is not congruent with my subconscious sex afforded me a lot of freedom in terms of gender. Once you pull back that curtain and see it for the sham it is, I feel you can operate more freely in the world. In my personal experience, the lack of freedom I felt before breaking out of my given gender mold was probably intensified by the dissonant mind of a young transsexual in a cisgender world.
It's an amazing feeling to experience human interaction when the walls have been leveled and all that's left are two people talking and sharing. For family, friends, and relationships in particular. Gender is a source of conflict because it creates borders. It creates a pleasure/pain dialectic which rewards a gendered person for certain things and punishes them with the same hand. For example, a woman can be loved and rewarded for her attention to beauty and fashion, but followed home, raped, and killed for it as well.
If social code can be deprogrammed, it's also true that it can never be totally done away with. As long as we have an individual experience of consciousness, the ego, we will always create the 'us versus them and 'i am that' dialectics. That's simply unavoidable because the human brain is a machine for creating individual experience of consciousness... that is its purpose. But like any code, it can be hacked, if you understand it. So I think the most important thing is that we do understand that it is a social code and nothing more, a language which we can use to give us individual power, freedom, and our own voice. Pull back the curtain, and see yourself for who you are, a loving, connected, talented, creative, soulful human being.
Last edited by nefardec on Oct-02-2011 at 17:04
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