Ever since that dude decided that females deserved to die because they didn't openly invite him to play with their junk, I've been paying much more attention and noticing--aghast at times--how obsessed people are with gender.
I find it really bizarre. Period. Personally, it makes no sense to me whatsoever, although I care enough that I have actually asked people to think of me as not being female because I don't think of myself as being female. At all. Or male. I don't know what either of those things mean because it seems to be cultural and arbitrary.
Thinking of someone as a gender brings all these predefined conditions along with it, and I don't think anyone should be subjected to someone else's ignorance.
To add to the frustration, people have trouble differentiating gender from sexuality, so gay couples constantly get this "which one is the man" thing. That's like asking two apples which one is pretending to be an orange, or two oranges which one is pretending not to be an orange. It makes no sense.
And then, if you're a genderless pan- or bisexual who often has long periods of being rather unconcerned about anything of the sort, people just think you're confused. But I'm not confused, at least, not about that. I see beings. Beings who have particular bodies for a little while. What does the form matter? What do the pieces matter? When you take away the arbitrary, what do you have left?
When I was little, I overheard this talk show featuring people who had had gender reassignment surgery. It made me really relieved that it was a possibility because I did not like being a girl. I had to wear skirts even though boys tried to look up them, and I'd get admonished about not being lady-like.
For a really long time, I really didn't like many girls. Girls (with some exceptions, of course) were horrible to me my entire childhood. I wasn't thin or pretty, I didn't have nice clothes, and I was pretty quiet. It was a lot easier to talk to boys because they were a lot less judgemental. I wasn't trying to be anything.
All of this made me feel like there was something wrong with with me. Throughout childhood, it felt like there was a lot of stress on gender. People freaked out about boys being in the same places as girls or girls doing the same thing as boys. God forbid there be a mixed gender sleepover.
I only had one He-Man figure and it was Tila. No Ninja Turtles, no Transformers; She-Ra, My Little Pony and Skipper because my mom didn't think Barbie was good for a little girl to play with.
But then things change. When kids start "liking" each other and if it's a boy and you're supposed to be a girl, it's automatically seen as a crush. It's absurd. Maybe they were just totally rad folks and we just wanted to enjoy totally rad times.
At some point, the girls around me seemed to go boy-crazy and everything became about how they looked, being attractive and clothing and acting cool.
I was seriously falling behind. I was also acutely aware that I was never going to be any of those things. Firstly, I wasn't allowed pretty much anything I might have asked for, which is okay, because it would have been me ridiculously trying to be something for social purposes.
I'm not sure when my mom started thinking I was gay, but I remember that she tried to get me interested in a movie by telling me it was Sara Gilbert playing a lesbian. But I wasn't particularly interested in girls either.
The girls I knew were generally pretty awful to me besides the little band of misfits I hung out with in middle school. But eventually, they all seemed to get better at being girls than I did. Whatever that meant. They went out with dudes, got married, had kids, and I... didn't.
Eventually, I did fall in love with someone, who happened to be a male, but it really could have been either way, since we met online. We were instantly head over heels, and we were just talking about a video game. There really was no reason for it except some kind of past-life/fate thing. We talked at least six hours a day most of the time, and it was super awesome. After about a year, I hopped on a plane, crossed the country and stayed with him and his family.
The two of us were fine--really incredibly happy when we were alone. But his parentals wanted him with a pretty Latina girl who would have lots of babies and stay home. Turned out, that's what he wanted too (minus the Latina part) and we went our separate ways. I'm not going to play housewife broodmare for anyone.
I had once mentioned to him the high probability that I was bisexual (I definitely find females more physically attractive) and he kind of freaked out. "Women are for men" was his attitude, and it was very much not mine.
People are for themselves. And much of the time, it's good for the self to share with other selves. Sharing. Not control. Not guilt trips. Not possessiveness. Not any of the horrible things people do to each other out of their own misguided fears.
I'm no longer convinced that there is some special person out there for everyone. I'm not convinced there's one for me or for you or for that guy over there. Every single entity manifesting in this plane has its own reasons for doing so. Some people might have come to experience femininity or masculinity, to be straight or gay or something non-exclusive.
You can never know how someone thinks, feels or what they've experienced. Be kind. There is no point in picking out a few external characteristics to base how you treat someone. I thought, when I was little, that it was a silly thing children do, and they learn to stop when they grow up. Instead, it's turned out that I should have been thinking that just because someone looks like an adult doesn't means they aren't still children.
And all of it, all the selfishness and the fighting and the killing--all of these intense reactions--are all based on things that are socially arbitrary and completely made up.
I still don't understand.
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