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Aug. 14th, 2005 10:11 pmI mean to bemoan the paucity of conventional symbolic language, and the interpretive difficulties that arise from a lack of contextual referentiality tonight (looks like I did retain something from grad school after all).
We had dinner tonight, my sweetie and I, with a friend of hers from Boston. This friend is a developing artist of some note and interest, who examines, among other things,sex and gender pretty directly in her work. I have very little personal context with this person, save that I see her every time she comes into town, when she wants to catch up with Janiene, and by extension, me. Aside from a brief discussion about gendery stuff back in... 2000?, we've never really gotten into it, and to be frank, I feel like it's not really my place; she's my sweetie's friend and contact primarily.
That being said, something about the interactions seemed, well, unsatisfying to me tonight. I think this goes beyond the awkwardness of a year's absence, and limited contact, or at least I perceive it that way. I think probably because of the focus of much of her art, that maybe I expected something... different, at least in interactions. I felt like the warmly regarded SO of a friend, which I expected, but I also felt like a part of that was being the boyfriend, at least in her eyes. As much as I hate it, I know that's what just about everyone assigns me when they see me with my sweetie; there just isn't a perceptive vocabulary in the part of most viewers to even entertain another interpretation other than the rigid either/or. But, I guess maybe it surprised me to end up feeling that way in my dealings with an artist who works to blur and deconstruct sex and gender, *and* who is aware, at least in some version, of what's going on with me. When I made reference to not being able to swim because of my developing breasts, there seemed to be a moment of noncomprehension that threw me, because this is something we've talked about before, she and I.
And that got me to thinking about hearing from a good friend about running into a college acquaintance we both knew, from back when I thought I was a transsexual, and wasn't too shy about saying so. This acquaintance asked my friend if I had ever "done anything" in reference to gender, and while I didn't think to ask what my friend might have said, I felt a sense of... almost of being a failure, because to external eyes, no, I've done nothing, and to be honest, some of my largest frustrations are with the social world because of the inflexibility and relative permanence of either/or.
There seems to be no intelligible cultural symbolic language for anything other than man or woman, and even within that construction, there is no possible or permissible movement between them, save for the ritualistically expensive one way ticket allowed to some. It's also a part of privilege that "maleness" is the default, and only abrogated by the collection of enough non-"masculine" traits and actions to tip one over into the devalued category of other. I don't view myself as an "in between", or as either a "feminine man" or a "masculine woman", and yet that's pretty much all the symbolic language seems to allow. Gender is a messy, stupid game in which everyone loses something, but the only thing keeping it in place is that everyone keeps playing. I want to quit this game, and work very hard to do so, but I want to be socially intelligible, want to maintain social contacts and contexts, and the rules seem rigged to make that pretty much impossible. I believe that structurally these things can change, at least in theory, but I honestly haven't seen much proof of that, and don't really expect to in my lifetime. Still, my stupid optimism won't let me give up, and my painful idealism won't let me compromise or mutilate myself in order to just get along. So where does that leave me?
We had dinner tonight, my sweetie and I, with a friend of hers from Boston. This friend is a developing artist of some note and interest, who examines, among other things,sex and gender pretty directly in her work. I have very little personal context with this person, save that I see her every time she comes into town, when she wants to catch up with Janiene, and by extension, me. Aside from a brief discussion about gendery stuff back in... 2000?, we've never really gotten into it, and to be frank, I feel like it's not really my place; she's my sweetie's friend and contact primarily.
That being said, something about the interactions seemed, well, unsatisfying to me tonight. I think this goes beyond the awkwardness of a year's absence, and limited contact, or at least I perceive it that way. I think probably because of the focus of much of her art, that maybe I expected something... different, at least in interactions. I felt like the warmly regarded SO of a friend, which I expected, but I also felt like a part of that was being the boyfriend, at least in her eyes. As much as I hate it, I know that's what just about everyone assigns me when they see me with my sweetie; there just isn't a perceptive vocabulary in the part of most viewers to even entertain another interpretation other than the rigid either/or. But, I guess maybe it surprised me to end up feeling that way in my dealings with an artist who works to blur and deconstruct sex and gender, *and* who is aware, at least in some version, of what's going on with me. When I made reference to not being able to swim because of my developing breasts, there seemed to be a moment of noncomprehension that threw me, because this is something we've talked about before, she and I.
And that got me to thinking about hearing from a good friend about running into a college acquaintance we both knew, from back when I thought I was a transsexual, and wasn't too shy about saying so. This acquaintance asked my friend if I had ever "done anything" in reference to gender, and while I didn't think to ask what my friend might have said, I felt a sense of... almost of being a failure, because to external eyes, no, I've done nothing, and to be honest, some of my largest frustrations are with the social world because of the inflexibility and relative permanence of either/or.
There seems to be no intelligible cultural symbolic language for anything other than man or woman, and even within that construction, there is no possible or permissible movement between them, save for the ritualistically expensive one way ticket allowed to some. It's also a part of privilege that "maleness" is the default, and only abrogated by the collection of enough non-"masculine" traits and actions to tip one over into the devalued category of other. I don't view myself as an "in between", or as either a "feminine man" or a "masculine woman", and yet that's pretty much all the symbolic language seems to allow. Gender is a messy, stupid game in which everyone loses something, but the only thing keeping it in place is that everyone keeps playing. I want to quit this game, and work very hard to do so, but I want to be socially intelligible, want to maintain social contacts and contexts, and the rules seem rigged to make that pretty much impossible. I believe that structurally these things can change, at least in theory, but I honestly haven't seen much proof of that, and don't really expect to in my lifetime. Still, my stupid optimism won't let me give up, and my painful idealism won't let me compromise or mutilate myself in order to just get along. So where does that leave me?
