it's not peer pressure, it's a choice!

If you comment...

1. I'll respond with something random I like about you.
2. I'll tell you what song/movie reminds me of you.
3. I'll name something we should do together.
4. I'll say something that only makes sense to you and me (or just me).
5. I'll tell you my first/clearest memory of you.
6. I'll leave you a quote that is somehow appropriate to you.
7. I'll ask you something that I've always wondered about you.
8. If I do this for you, you must (if you wanna, anyway) post this on your journal so you can do the same for other people.

just... fkn A*...

Bleh
(identity rambling, terminologogical internecine strife, and an apparent "missing the point" on my part)



*my monicker on the site in question

identity ping pong

The most gender privileged (some say 'patriarchy', but I have issues with that term for historical reasons) tend to break the world down to good/powerful/male vs bad/weak/not-male. For most people, I think not-male often is assumed to be female. From there, with the (in my opinion) mistake that male/female is always the source of "man/woman" identities the gendered aspect of power and privilege becomes "naturalized". That some people don't fit the "male/man, female/woman" paradigm is grudgingly accepted culturally, and thus we get the popular conception of transsexuals, males who are "women" and females who are "men". The scorn and derision often heaped upon these people doesn't negate their existence ideologically, as no matter how "unnatural" they may be, they make sense categorically. Some take the position that the existence of transsexuals only serves to reinforce the concept of binary-only gender; sometimes I am among them.

The ping pong volley begins in earnest thusly for me:
serve
"You're not a man? Well, I suppose you can go be a woman, FREAK!"
return
"OK, you might be sort of, maybe an almost woman, but you'll never be REAL"
counter return
"Well, in theory, you don't have to be a man or a woman, but... you're not one of US (women), so we won't watch out for you (though please continue to be feminist, because that's just the right thing to do)"
power return
"We don't care that you're not a woman; you're not a man, so we'll treat you like one of THEM"

winners: uncertain
losers: me

It's not just that there's no place in language for me, it's that, in the ways that most people connect or identify themselves, I'm always other, on the outside.

It hurts, some days more than others.
Like today.