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Sexuality/Gender Norms (pg. 6)
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| DJ RANN |
| quote: | Originally posted by SYSTEM-J
You have no idea. I don't want to spill my guts in front of the COR, but I've never connected with any other human on this planet like I do with this girl. I didn't believe there was "the one", but she is "the one". But she isn't, because she's gay.
This situation has ed me up beyond all measure. |
Makes me think of:
Gary Johnston: But, I thought you weren't gay?
Spottswoode: This isn't about sex, Gary, it's about trust!
Jack, if she's really the one, then adapt to survive. Time to chop it off and start the hormones. If she doesn't like you, then change. Drastic, I know but better than a life spent thinking it could have been yours, "if only....". |
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| SYSTEM-J |
| quote: | Originally posted by Zyklon_Jay
both these cases suspiciously sound like the faking of the gay. trust me I take great pride in putting women off of men.
this 4 months then pow imadyke thing sounds like an out to me. |
My life would be much easier if you were right. You aren't. |
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| Arbiter |
| quote: | Originally posted by -FSP-
I don't identify myself a male or female or androgynous. |
Good for you.
Personally I find the whole concept of gender identity quite inane. It's almost as fatuous as racial or ethnic identity. That sort of metaphysical navel-gazing is a foolish activity. Your genotypic sex is real, it is a fact, and it is fixed. On the other hand, how you "identify" or label yourself is irrelevant; you can identify yourself as a lamp for all the good it will do you.
Furthermore, I'm not terribly interested in gender "norms" or how people are "socialized." People who seek to be normal or who rely on others to tell them how to think or act are merely fungible commodities with no purpose on this planet aside from to be used by their betters. I suppose, hypothetically, that for my own purposes a different set of norms might permit me to exploit them more efficiently, but the current ones seem satisfactory enough, and I have much bigger fish to fry than trying to optimize the herd's gender norms. |
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| Fledz |
| quote: | Originally posted by SYSTEM-J
You have no idea. I don't want to spill my guts in front of the COR, but I've never connected with any other human on this planet like I do with this girl. I didn't believe there was "the one", but she is "the one". But she isn't, because she's gay.
This situation has ed me up beyond all measure. |
Nah, "time heals all wounds" is an appropriate yet incredibly cheesy saying here. Just depends how long and how deep the wound.
When you decided to move on and look back at that chapter in your life, you find it a lot easier to cope. Sometimes even quite funny when you remember just how much you let it affect you, and for what?
I'll bet most people here have in that sort of mindframe before, probably more than once. Obviously not the same situation as yours but definitely caring about someone and not having that reciprocated, or them screwing you over in different ways. You'll live. Be an optimist.
Regarding gender norms, I have no major issues with anything. I think people get far too caught up in what should and shouldn't be done. 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. |
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| SYSTEM-J |
| quote: | Originally posted by Fledz
Nah, "time heals all wounds" is an appropriate yet incredibly cheesy saying here. Just depends how long and how deep the wound.
When you decided to move on and look back at that chapter in your life, you find it a lot easier to cope. Sometimes even quite funny when you remember just how much you let it affect you, and for what?
I'll bet most people here have in that sort of mindframe before, probably more than once. Obviously not the same situation as yours but definitely caring about someone and not having that reciprocated, or them screwing you over in different ways. You'll live. Be an optimist. |
I've been in this kind of situation before Fledz - like you say, everyone has. The problem is the person usually outright rejects you, or they give you a reason to hate them, and after a while you start getting irritated by them and realise they were never that perfect for you, you were just infatuated. I can't do that here, because we get along so ridiculously well and are so close - we do everything together, and everyone thinks we're dating. We had two months of not seeing each other, and it didn't make me feel better. I'm very slowly getting over this, but I can't just cut someone like that out of my life because it's causing me pain. In the long term, she's going to be one of the most important people in my whole life.
The only good solution I can think of is to meet someone else. And I don't mean ing some random girl I've met in a club, I mean forging an emotional connection with someone else. Trouble is, someone else hasn't been very forthcoming. |
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| Fledz |
Oh no, don't take what I said as advice to cut the relationship. There might be a fantastic friendship there as you pointed out which would be a shame to lose, but as long as you come to terms with there not being a romantic one. I think the biggest problem you may run into is letting yourself believe there is a chance. It's only once you're past that barrier that you can really move on, but yea.... easier said than done. Life is complicated, but a lot of what your life in the future is like depends on how you deal with the present.
I've learnt an important lesson in the last few years. Don't dwell on the past. At the end of the day, there's very little I can change and once I came to understand that, magically my life was better and has been getting better ever since. |
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| nefardec |
| 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 , 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. |
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| Silky Johnson |
| Goddamn your personality sounds so achingly contrived. |
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| nefardec |
| quote: | Originally posted by Miss Pie
Goddamn your personality sounds so achingly contrived. |
Goddamn you sound insecure. |
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| Zyklon_Jay |
| goddamn I can't believe it's not butter! |
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| MSZ |
you all look like gays.
i also look like gay. |
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| Zyklon_Jay |
| quote: | Originally posted by MSZ
goddamn you all look like gays.
i also look like gay. |
goddamned fixed! |
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