adrienmundi | (no subject)

I need to change something, probably about myself, but I don't know what that is, yet. I'm not happy with the default interactions I have with too many people, but I'm not sure there's a good or easy (not that there is any real relation, one to the other, there) way to do that. I think a lot of this goes back to gender shit, and a fair amount of it is my own susceptibility to the expectations of others, socially. It feels like a horrible closed system from which there is no escape, and all too many people have proved all too many times that the known, the comfortable, takes precedence over honoring that which I am trying to develop (not everyone does this, and those who don't, rock). I don't know how to break out of this, and cringe at the seemingly unavoidable acts of my own which reinforce it, like language (I don't think I do it culturally, but I could be blind to that). If it's hard for me, how hard must it be for others, who don't live on the point of it all like I do?

I want to start fresh, to come to things, to people, to interactions with no preconceptions, no restrictions, no culturally mandated lists of can/should and cannot/should not. I don't know how to do this, or if it is even possible; seems like it requires buy in from the other participant(s) of the dialogue/dialectic, and I don't have a lot of faith today that people want anything other than the comfortable, the known.

This isn't quite where I wanted to go, to end up, in this, but that certainly doesn't invalidate it. Journey, not just intended destination, and all that.

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Perhaps I misunderstand your meaning behind the phrase, "default interactions," however you don't strike me as the type of person who'd bother with typical social formalities...

To start fresh in a quite literal sense would require going somewhere with no social parameters - at all - pre-defined. i.e. Another planet? Cultural standards exist everywhere you go no matter what you do. Even mere dialect becomes so ingrained frequently that some have difficulty helping it.

Partially out of respect, and partially because I believe in similar ideals as you in regards to gender neutrality - I've personally made attempts over the past months to negate sexual identifiers from my vocabulary in conversation with you - i.e. such as I might say, "Hey man". Though this might be something I might say to my own WIFE much less any other female - the point still stands - it's difficult...

I've just sorta came to the point of deciding, "I can't change the world around me - but they can't change what's inside of me, either..."

To an extent, maybe, I don't bother with social formalities, but.... it's like, to have a conversation, there has to be a language in common. For there to be interactions, people need some common ground, and it's my position that for ages and ages, it's been, if nothing else, the unquestioned idea that you can tell what someone's parts look like by how they look/act, and that everyone "just knows" this (despite the fact that no one can agree what traits are exclusive to men/women and always match up with anyone else, or that it's not always possible to tell without inspecting the goods, or that the goods themselves are always clear and unambiguous). It's like I see that it's not "natural", but expected, and everyone else just seems to take it as a natural, ontological given.

And I'm not sure that there's that distinct a boundary between the world around me and what's inside of me. If nothing else, the relationship between them is close and Gordian (though I don't believe anything in me arises in a vacuum, and that it's obviously possible for me to manifest my gender different-ness in ways I do and envision, but that societal convention says it's not possible).

It's maybe a holdover from a Tuesday night engagement that leaves me feeling unsettled and gross, and partially from the cold and grey, and poor sleep, and stress, and... but, still, all the above comes from somewhere.