written, not spoken

I've almost said, in several different circumstances recently, that I'm tired of everything being about gender all the time. I haven't said it, though, because I'm very afraid it will be taken the wrong way, that things don't have to be all about (my) gender if I didn't choose to make it that way, that it's all up to me. Whether an accurate anticipation or not, that way only lies frustration, heartache, and mega pissed-offedness for me. So, rather than talking organically about it, I'm writing instead.

What I mean is, I'm sick of not fitting into the perpetually gendered world around me. I'm sick of always experiencing being out of sync, of running afoul of the white blood cells of gendered culture. I'm sick of being looked at as though I'm speaking a private language when I try to talk about the omnipresence of gendered expectation, punishment and reward. I'm sick of it being all largely invisible to most people who, no matter their own frustrations with how they navigate their particular place in the scheme, don't have to question the validity of the core concepts every waking social moment. I'm really, really fucking sick of the essentially private nature of this.

I really don't think I can fit myself into the system as I encounter it. Wait, that's not quite right; I am currently fitted into it in a way that is increasingly painful and disjunctive, and I'm losing the ability to be productive and happy in it. I don't think there is a likely place where things would be better for me, only different, but it's incredibly difficult to work up the motivation to shift to a different world of suck. I retain hope of better, but it's starting to take on the feel of a utopian, post revolution religious faith rather than a possible world, and I kinda suck at faith, especially when it seems like a necessity.

I want to ball up my fists and howl to someone, in a Petrovian plea of hopeful desperation, "Make it better!"