GENDER IS A CONSTRUCT. I AM NOT.
Mood: Friggin pissed
MSN Name: BUTTERFLIES!

*Disclaimer: This is a gender rant. If you are uninterested, don't read it. As I said above, I'm angry.*
OK. So, here's the thing. Historically, I have tried to be sensitive to ignorance and realize it really is just a lack of knowledge. More and more, I'm starting to be less forgiving. For example, today, I present to you: the good, the bad, and the ugly. I have had more fights than I would like to count over the past month (though, to be fair, they were interspersed with occasionally useful conversations) about gender: as a construct, it's usage, fair application, inclusionary and exclusionary criteria, gender vs. sex, and so on. I've come to feel that we've gotten so far off the pathway of usefulness by trying to figure out how exactly to work with gender that we've missed the point. While there is value in talking about theories, the application of gender applies to real world scenarios, and affects real people. Yes, I'm talking about trans people, and yes, I'm talking about everyone else just as much. Each and every one of us lives a gendered existence and I'm so sick and friggin tired of hearing otherwise. We live in a society where the concept is constantly employed, whether we are conscious of it or if it slips us by. The amount of ignorance that I sense is driving me ballistic.

I wish that when people would start to ask questions (which is good), and think about things (which is also very good), that they would stop putting them in this holier-than-thou, intellectualist, othering conceptualization and realize that this is not useful, nor is it practical (for what use is examining something that, in the form in which it's being conceptualized, does not apply to anything?) Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that we need to abolish gender and live our lives in peace. Ok, I am, but I'm not saying it to threaten notions of gender that people hold near & dear to.

This is a touchy subject. I'm not doubting that. I'm just angry. Especially when I repeatedly hear groups suffering from a variety of institutional oppressions discussing subjects in the *exact* same way people discuss them, though they hate it when it happens to them.

So, after this rant, what is it I'm trying to say? Well, I'm just saying that people are people, human beings, with feelings, with thoughts, with emotions, and with other points of view to boot. We fear the unknown. Gender is not something that needs to be so unknown. We can stop fearing. It could be fun, we could have a party! (I'll bring the spinach dip. Yes, it's now a potluck. OK, it can also be a shindig. I need to stop quoting Buffy.)

I'm sorry if this makes no sense, and I'm sorry if you read it for no reason, but I'm not sorry I'm angry.

- Peace.