[crosspost from genderfuck]
Dec. 1st, 2002 10:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
adrienmundiAs of late, I feel more energized, almost to the point of emboldened, in regards to the potential energy I can bring to bear on my own identity and gender issues. It's as though I finally feel that there is something I can do, some action I can take. Unfortunately, it's just a feeling; I don't have a plan of action as of yet. I do feel like I have a perspective, but it's not always a good thing.
I feel acutely the prejudice and injustice I see and experience by way of the assumed essential nature of binary gender. It feels like damned near everyone splits every person they encounter into one of two (and only two) categories, and then draws assumptions based on that act. Worse, it feels like I'm one of the few voices in the wilderness, yelling "Isn't this wrong?" to the trees, who generally don't care one way or the other (probably why I like trees; that, and the Lorax).
I feel like, now that I've identified something I see as a problem and/or limitation, that I should do something about it. But, I don't know how to begin confronting a potentially unconscious assumption about the nature of human existence. I have my doubts that Socratic dialogue or Hegelian dialectic would be a useful methodology, but I also have serious doubts that offering strings of counterexamples to gendered ideas and norms will only be seen as a procession of individual deviations, not patterns that suggest flaws in the structure. (ZB, I get just about livid when people assume I want to be "a different kind of man"; of course, I should be defined by my genitals, and not my own choice).
I'm desperate to find a way to use this potential energy: in part, because I feel like I finally have enough to overcome inertia; in part, because I fear my mind will turn it inwards, eventually to my own detriment. Now, if only I had a plan.
I feel acutely the prejudice and injustice I see and experience by way of the assumed essential nature of binary gender. It feels like damned near everyone splits every person they encounter into one of two (and only two) categories, and then draws assumptions based on that act. Worse, it feels like I'm one of the few voices in the wilderness, yelling "Isn't this wrong?" to the trees, who generally don't care one way or the other (probably why I like trees; that, and the Lorax).
I feel like, now that I've identified something I see as a problem and/or limitation, that I should do something about it. But, I don't know how to begin confronting a potentially unconscious assumption about the nature of human existence. I have my doubts that Socratic dialogue or Hegelian dialectic would be a useful methodology, but I also have serious doubts that offering strings of counterexamples to gendered ideas and norms will only be seen as a procession of individual deviations, not patterns that suggest flaws in the structure. (ZB, I get just about livid when people assume I want to be "a different kind of man"; of course, I should be defined by my genitals, and not my own choice).
I'm desperate to find a way to use this potential energy: in part, because I feel like I finally have enough to overcome inertia; in part, because I fear my mind will turn it inwards, eventually to my own detriment. Now, if only I had a plan.
