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adrienmundiThe image:
Wielding a long pole weapon, with a head almost like a curved lacrosse mallet, but metal, of such a curvature that, when spun creates a clear metallic circle, with the wielder in the protected, but empty, center. Active defense/aggression in the service of protection, as a calling, not a job or choice. Perpetual determination because the only other choice is surrender and defeat.
Goddamn, but I get tired of feeling like I have to defend myself, and yet I almost always feel like I must. Others seem to project strongly, from a more solid core or sense of self, and even without intending to, can damage me, can pierce the shell around my hollow core. See, I don't believe in an essential self, and yet it seems like that's a default setting for almost everyone else. If I don't defend my hollow chocolate bunny of self, the whole thing could be shattered and fall away to... nothing?
Wielding a long pole weapon, with a head almost like a curved lacrosse mallet, but metal, of such a curvature that, when spun creates a clear metallic circle, with the wielder in the protected, but empty, center. Active defense/aggression in the service of protection, as a calling, not a job or choice. Perpetual determination because the only other choice is surrender and defeat.
Goddamn, but I get tired of feeling like I have to defend myself, and yet I almost always feel like I must. Others seem to project strongly, from a more solid core or sense of self, and even without intending to, can damage me, can pierce the shell around my hollow core. See, I don't believe in an essential self, and yet it seems like that's a default setting for almost everyone else. If I don't defend my hollow chocolate bunny of self, the whole thing could be shattered and fall away to... nothing?
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no subject
Date: 2006-07-18 11:18 pm (UTC)What are you defending? Should you be?
no subject
Date: 2006-07-18 11:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-07-19 12:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-07-19 12:16 am (UTC)i'd take on onslaught of bubbles over a whole bagful of baubles any day.
no subject
Date: 2006-07-19 02:44 am (UTC)woes of a 14 yr olds mum
Date: 2006-07-19 12:19 pm (UTC)perspective?
Date: 2006-07-19 11:48 am (UTC)We are all hollow chocolate bunnies.
If that is so, then is not your recognition of this fact a blessing?
Or is ignorance (of others) bliss?
Re: perspective?
Date: 2006-07-19 12:23 pm (UTC)Re: perspective?
Date: 2006-07-19 12:27 pm (UTC)It's social, connective, human interaction that is dangerous and invasive to me. Others project from points of unquestioned solidity, such that even the most casual contact can be injurious. If this sense of self is illusory, it matters very little in my day to day interactions. Buddhism holds no tips for daily life for me, that I have been able to discern.
Re: perspective?
Date: 2006-07-19 01:09 pm (UTC)Or as Dreama once inadvertantly put it, "Chop water, carry wood."
Aphorisms aren't much when it comes to solid practical advice, but that's religion for you. Maybe you'll find something useful in your own reflections on it.
Re: perspective?
Date: 2006-07-19 04:53 pm (UTC)Isn't that just *your* perspective of others?
Would it surprise you to learn that I used to see *you* in that way? ...i.e. possessing an unquestioned solidity of self... I was very envious of you for that.
Re: perspective?
Date: 2006-07-19 06:06 pm (UTC)Unsurprisingly, what I'm talking about primarily is gender. In general, I get that I get things others don't, and others get things I don't. What makes it difficult for me is that, at least in this instance, I don't get something that damned near everyone else gets; everywhere I look, damned near every human interaction I have, that point is driven home to me.
Re: perspective?
Date: 2006-07-19 10:08 pm (UTC)You and I say the same words, but we're almost speaking completely different languages here.
I must admit that I am often confused when you express such dismay with "gender", because it seems to me that you mean 'sex' when you say 'gender'.
I try and express this point and you get frustrated with me. In the past, for example, when I have said that I have never felt my "gender" you have claimed that I am saying the same thing as you, when to me, I am saying something that couldn't be more different.
I'll try and be concise. When I say "gender" I am using the term in an anthropological or sociological manner, meaning that "gender" is a proscribed role, based upon a society’s perception of an individual’s sex. As such, gender is most definitely _not_ universal, because different cultures proscribe different ways that men and women behave. Gender is also fluid within any given society because of sub-cultures and sexual orientations. So when I say “gender” I do not mean sex or sexual orientation.
When you say gender I often hear a “male” and “female” subtext. I think this has to do with your background in liberal arts. You have a high degree of education in literature and language; when students of language use the term gender, they are using a paradigm that refers to certain nouns and pronouns in terms of masculine and feminine syntax, which are applied to particular nouns and the other grammatical constructs associated with those words.
You know this, of course, but I felt that I should point this out in order to bring this to your attention, so that you would be aware of the different meanings that you and I have when we use the term “gender”. Perhaps you've considered this different perspective, perhaps not...
So when I say that I have never felt my “gender” I mean that there is nothing inherent or essential in me that defines how I relate to my sex. I have never doubted that I am male, I have never been unhappy to be male, and I have never wanted to be anything other than what I am - male.
But, I _have_ doubted whether I can fit into the role of what this society says a male should be. I think that is far different from what you have expressed. Maybe... maybe not...
But again, I don’t mind saying that I get confused over what exactly it is you are going through. But then again, that isn’t important. I don’t have to completely understand your dilemma to empathize with you and wish the best for you. You are a dear friend, and I hope you always will be, but ….
I wish there was something I could do or say or help with so that you could let all this baggage go. Stop caring how others see you, stop caring about whether you fit into society’s cookie cutter mold of what sex and gender is supposed to be. You have plenty of friends you could care less about that garbage. Why do refuse to let this go when it obviously causes you so much pain?
Drop the polearm and just be.
Remember the parable about the king who sent his chamberlain to gather all the world’s knowledge? The chamberlain came to him with 500 books… which the kind didn’t have time to read so he sent the chamberlain away with instructions to edit it down… the chamberlain returned 10 years later… and still the king didn’t have time to read [ this continued for 50 or 60 years] until finally the king is on his death bed and he asks the chamberlain to sum up all the world’s knowledge.
The chamberlain said:
A person is born.
S/He lives.
S/He suffers.
S/He dies.
When the king heard that, for the first time in his life he knew contentment.
---Drop the polearm and just “Be.”
Re: perspective?
Date: 2006-07-19 11:16 pm (UTC)But, now for some questions:
You say you're "male"; what does that mean to you?
You say you don't question your maleness; how does it feel to you when people assign you manness?
You say you've never felt your gender, yet you willingly step into proscribed male roles, and claim them for yourself (son, husband, man); how is this congruent or discongruent with that comfort?
It is my suspicion that people generally conflate man/male (used in this case, since the discussion began on you in specific) much more so than they realize, even assuming they acknowledged a difference. *I* bristle when others assign me "man" because, firstly, I'm not a fucking man. It isn't a question of being a "different kind of man"; I have no interest in laying claim to that categorization. Here, most people automatically act as though male=man=(their particular set of beliefs around that conflation), and that is *naturalized*. It doesn't matter if people in other cultures, or down the street, or at the next table have different beliefs; because people share the concepts of binary gender, and the assumption that sex=gender, they all tend to naturalize their own assignments.
I imagine you move through the world comfortable that others view you as male, still knowing full well that with that assumption, there are other assumptions attached to them. I can only assume that those other associations are not as painful to you as they are to me, and I further assume, perhaps incorrectly, that it's because you deviate less from socially proscribed definitions of meaning of your genitals than I do.
It's very hard for me to take goodwill in a response that opens with what reads as dismissal of my education, past and present, and my perspective, and ends with what reads like a dismissal of my concerns with the suggestion to just "let it go", when it seems very obvious to me that you don't experience things similarly, and certainly not on the same scale; you don't perceive the danger, because for you it isn't real.
Re: perspective?
Date: 2006-07-20 10:35 am (UTC)And yet again you misunderstand me. First off, _ no _ I do not believe that gender has anything to do with genitalia. If it did there wouldn’t be: drag-queens, drag-kings, ganymedes. bull-dykes, androgynes, dandies, or any of the other diverse flavors of human gender. I think it’s pretty damn self-evident that genitalia does not equal gender.
Obviously I haven’t read as much on this topic as you. But I what have read is confusing babble of voices - all arguing - that can’t even come to consensus on common language. The fact that people who read, think and study on this topic as their life’s work can’t even seem to agree should serve as an object lesson.
You should understand that you are essentially trying to describe 'aquamarine' to a color-blind person. I don’t believe in the essential-self. I don’t believe that there is anything inherent in me that makes “me” “male”. I still say, I have never **felt** my sex nor internalized my gender.
Why am I a man? Because I’m in a male body! I am pretty damn sure that had I been born in the body of a woman, I’d see myself as a woman. For the life of me I can’t understand how someone can **feel** a particular sex because I’ve never “felt like a man” I just take it as a default setting because I’m in a male body. I believe it is society that has caused me pain over this, not my “internal” self.
As to your questions about what others think or assign to me –
Yes, I’ve been hurt by that. I grew up being called, sissy, faggot, queer and every other derogatory name you can imagine. I’ve had several relationships destroyed because I was trying to be something I’m not. I lost a relationship with a wonderful man once because I couldn’t come to terms with my sexuality, because I was trying to conform to what “other people” think. I lost a relationship with an awesome woman once because of similar issues. I can still remember holding myself and sobbing, “I’m not a man… I’m not a man” over and over again when that relationship was ending.
I’ve been committed twice to mental health hospitals and spent a damn week in ICU after a failed suicide attempt. All because I was obsessing on how others viewed me. …and yes my perception of gender was at the root of a lot of these issues. I often think that one of the underlying reasons I went into the Marines is that I was trying to prove something to myself, my family and all those other people who ridiculed me for being different.
I’ve had more pain and aguish because of these issues than I would wish on my worst enemy….And somewhere along the way a few years back, I just quit caring. I got over it. I don't mean to sound trite or pat about that, but I don't how else to say it. I realized that I was giving others power over me and that I was wasting a lot of energy obsessing on what others cared. I don’t know what it was that allowed me to do this… but somehow I just quit giving others that energy…
I am not saying to acquiesce to injustice or abide intolerance; but internalizing all those feelings of negativity, of anguish… of trying to conform… jesus…
...When I say that I wish you could “get over it”, I’m not referring to your desire to be whatever or whoever it is you feel you have to be to be happy. I’m not trying to shoe-horn you into any gender or sexual role whatsoever. I’m not telling you to be “a different man”. Be whatever it is that makes you happy.
When I say, ‘I wish you could you get over it’, I’m referring to all the pain you feel from obsessing about what other people think. Fuck 'em. I don’t mean to make light of your dilemma by using the phrase “get over it”. However, the only person that can give you peace of mind on this issue is you. I truly wish you that peace of mind.
Re: perspective?
Date: 2006-07-20 11:15 am (UTC)But really, this is the crux:
Why am I a man? Because I’m in a male body!
*This* is why I think you're conflating sex and gender more than you think you are. That male=man is not questioned for you, at least based on what you present here and elsewhere. You've struggled with what kind of man, and that's real and legitimate, but it's not what I'm dealing with, not by a long shot.
Me, I'm not a man, and I'm not a woman. Note, please, that I have *never* said I'm not male; to the best of my knowledge, I fall into the category all the way down to my chromosomes. I've never had them checked, because to me, it frankly doesn't matter; I am not merely my sex, no matter what that sex may be. For me, sex is *not* the basis of gender.
Have you missed the multiple posts where I've said I explicitly do not believe in an essential self, as well as the ones in which I've said my problem is social? You seem intent on assigning me something that I've never claimed.
And I call privilege when you claim the source of my pain comes from obssessing about what other people think. You clearly seem to have carved a niche for yourself, such that you can say "I'm this kind of man, not that kind", and to a large degree, it seems understandable, and in many cases accepted, if not even celebrated. Even if/when you get, "What the hell's wrong with that guy?", it's a question of definition, not category. Me, I don't have that.
Try this: assume, for a moment, that absolutely no one granted the existence of bisexuality. I'm not talking about the legitimacy, I'm saying the category just doesn't fucking exist, to anyone, anywhere. Imagine going through life literally always having people insist you're either gay or straight, not taking issue with professed bisexuality, but simply not understanding the term, the concept, and any evidence presented to them. Then project that a bit, such that the issues of your sexual preference came up in everyday life as often as someone looks at another and decides if they're a man or a woman, which pronoun to use for them, how to interact with them. Then, project that over the span of an entire conscious life.
Once you've done that, revisit the idea that it's all in my head, that I'm the one obssessing. Fuck, our society is positively obssessed with binary gender, to such a degree that no one ever notices it. *I'm* not the one obssessed. I am the one who pays the price for that obssession, the one who feels the effects of it in just about every interaction with another person. Don't fucking tell me it's just a matter of ignoring it, because that's patently offensive.