androgyny

Someone told me the other day that I obviously hate my femininity. I loathe the fact that I’m female. It really made me stop a minute and think, because I’ve never thought about it. I’m a girl. Oh yeah. It reminded me. But, then, I think they’re wrong. I don’t hate that I’m a female, nor do I wish I were a male. Either thought seems repulsively outdated and fruedian to me. I don’t think of myself as either. Why is it something I should dwell on? Because I have breasts? Because I don’t like high-heels?

What I dis-like is the ideal of femme. The, oh-I-have-a-vagina-so-I’m-a-brainless-fashion-victim. Especially that whole victim thing. So of course I go EW, when I’m being girly. I also go EW at the male aspects of socialized behavior. Football watching masculinity with beer in hand. We all know our stereotypes. Why go into it? More importantly, why be one of them? Why buy into that? Women are no more mysterious than men, our naked bodies no more interesting. Nor are all men chauvinistic droolers after women who think in sports and cars.

I think I blame the generational thing for this. I can think of a few reasons – the internet; the way we were raised; the changes in interaction, in the world view of today.
We live in a world where you may never meet your closest friend except over the screen of your computer. So why would gender matter?
We weren’t raised by hippies, so there’s no ultra-feministic backlash in our childhood constantly informing us that we’re bad people because we don’t treat women right. We were raised by the generation after. By the people that grew up still with that sexist, “women are special creatures” thing and decided that they didn’t want to be their parents.
Importantly also – we have been raised with a death threat. We are the AIDS generation. Sex is death. Body fluids kill. And you might not even know that you have it.

It is more than likely now that you will cuddle under blankets with your friends when it’s cold. You will sleep in their bed when you stay the night. You will sit in their laps on a crowded bus, and you will huddle up with five other people to crash after a party. And your sexuality will not enter into it. Your sexuality doesn’t matter, nor affect the situation. Your gender is nulled, unimportant. It will not even be considered.

Course, a decade or two back, and if you were sitting in someones lap, cuddling whilst you talked, apparently that meant that later you were going to sneak off and have sex. Now? Ghods no! Why would you? Our social interaction doesn’t work like that. You don’t know that this person has bodily fluids that aren’t going to kill you.

We wander about thse days, not usually thinking about our gender, nor the boxes that they used to trap us in. Unless, of course, we believe in gay. Which I personally don’t see as relevant. Feminism and homosexuality both had wars to fight for equality, but to fight a war, there must be a united front. There must be rules as well as passion. You are either/or. You are for or against. All very black or white. All very not us.

We are gray. Neither black or white, we are not playing by the rules. Gay is dying, almost dead, being replaced by a lack of strictures. I am neither gay, nor straight. “I don’t think of myself as straight – I think of myself as bi. It’s just I haven’t met any guys yet who turn me on.” Sexuality is now an open field. Play where you want to, but we will wander everywhere.

They cannot take this away from us. Their jealousy doesn’t touch on the truth. Hate is just fear, little kiddies. Hate is getting old, and weak. I will hold hands with my friends, and they with me. I am glad to have friends who love eachother, who aren’t afraid of themselves.