too much thought before coffee

[adrienmundi]

I made the mistake of paying attention to NPR this morning, in which some sports commentator went on at great length about why the ovary-enabled teen golfer who has been competing successfully in the men's leagues should stop (in short: women will never be as good as men; women are special, beautiful magical creatures that should be seperate; it's unfair to women's sports to draw attention away by a superstar competing with men; it's a fool's errand to try to compete where a woman is bound to fail). For a bigwig at Sports Illustrated, this sexist idiot seemed painfully uneducated about developmental research and the narrowing gap between 'male' and 'female' high performance athletes over the years (a trend that's accelerating, btw). That this pissed me off should come as no surprise.

It got me to thinking. Lately, I've been diving deeply into liberal blogland, and a big chunk of that are feminist blogs. I experience some disjunct there sometimes, as well. I'll be reading along, agreeing with much that is being said, and get suddenly jolted out of the groove, confused and frustrated by the 'us' vs 'them' mentality.

I think both above situations are linked. In both cases, I think what's going is line drawing and border policing, and in each case, there is an implicit attempt to erase or overwrite me, and anyone else who does not wholly and unquestioningly endorse the binary-only paradigm. Speaking personally, it hurts me more when feminists do it, because one, they should know better, having been on the receiving end of sexist oppression, and two, every time they talk about 'men' and 'women', I know they're assigning me to the 'man' side, and have no interest in hearing otherwise.

This takes me to the point I woke up thinking about this morning; how can I live and exist as myself in a sociocultural world that refuses to believe I can exist? How can I interact with a system that I believe is unethical and unfair, but which allows no alternatives?

Like most days, I still don't have answers to these questions.

Comments

[grendel317.livejournal.com]

I certainly agree with your suggestion that appearing to fit in to broadly accepted catagories probably makes it easier not to care how I'm being categorized. I think I've even made this point myself at times. The differentiation I was trying to convey (not very clearly, in retrospect), was between a) concern for repercussions, and b) intrinsically caring what people think. Also, to clarify, none of those points was intended as any sort of advice or suggestions. I was just relating my (probably irrelevant) experiences in tangentially related areas, in the lack of anything useful to say.

I've been thinking lately about individual cases and generalizations. It seems like there's some useful insight in there somewhere, but I haven't been able to put my finger on it. On the one hand, assuming things about a person based on generalizations is often going to be inaccurate, and could be construed as specifically offensive or hurtful. On the other hand, generalization can be a valid and useful tool when considering many subject matters - geology or what kinds of food you like to eat, for instance. I'm not sure exactly where the distinction lies. I think perhaps it's to do with seeing the generalized group as a single entity, and a willingness to revise assumptions, but like I said, I haven't been able to put my finger on it.

[adrienmundi]

I like to think that I don't care, per se, what a given person may think (unless they're important to me), but I am often quite concerned with potential repercussions for transgressing the "natural". I suspect sometimes the latter may look like the former, and maybe sometimes they blur in such a way that even I can't tell the difference, even when I think I can. I don't know, honestly.

I think this carries over to individual vs general points, as well. While I'm generally open to people not sucking, to not being self-satisfied bigots or close minded, at the same time it seems, on a certain level, a question of safety to realize that odds are they likely will be, particularly where my own issues and body/role (and why my body is anyone else's business, when most others would fiercely resist me doing similar things to them, is beyond me) are concerned, at least initially. The balancing of those two are tricky, naturally, but I like to think that I leave room for people not to disappoint me.