Nancy's Musings

After years of frustration as I think of gender, modes of gender definition, and how the modes interact, I think I may finally have come to some conclusions and I hope that if you read what I think I think, you'll be patient and keep my purpose in mind, which is to arrive at a "working" truth - a paradigm by which I can have and spread peace. I have encountered three modes of gender definition, and it isn't always easy to tell them apart. The first mode is the common-culture mode I encountered in public school that divides maturing children carefully into "male" and "female," prescribing and attributing behaviors to each, and punishing transgression with bullying, and descriptors like "tomboy" and "sissy." The policing of gendered behaviors continues for most people well into adulthood, and these divisions can sometimes seem arbitrary when you stand on the wrong side of them (a man who likes the convenience of carrying a hand...

Words are kind of funny. I think they're an amazing way to communicate, I mean giving sound combinations meaning. . . it's a cool thing. But (I think) because ideas in our heads are so close to and influential of our central identities, when we are tasked with interpreting somebody else's words, they can shift our ideas in ways that question our identities, or make us feel pain or at least discomfort. This is not new for most of us: we're always meeting with ideas that make us uncomfortable, whether that's the near-porn of alcohol commercials, or vitriol against a protected class, or even well-meant criticism. The discomfort of strangeness is a commonplace. I think each person creates a pattern for meeting and dealing with other peoples' ideas, and I think this pattern can vary along a vast spectrum from "if I didn't have the thought, then it must be wrong" to utter boredom with any thought that comes around a second time. I know people who w...