Species vs. Gender
Nov. 14th, 2010 10:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
teleen_fictionCorrect me if I'm wrong, but men are human beings, right? Which means that the following sentence:
plus he is not attracted to the male species.
is incorrect or at the very least, incomplete. One could say, "He is not attracted to the male OF the species," or, "He is not attracted to the male of the Vulcan species." (Note: I did not see this line in a Star Trek story - Vulcan was just the most ubiquitous alien I could think of.)
However, saying, "plus he is not attracted to the male species." breaks my brain for one very simple reason:
MEN ARE NOT A DIFFERENT SPECIES! IT'S MALE GENDER, NOT SPECIES.
I realize that for some, thinking of men as a different species allows them to, in effect, dehumanize them and explain all of their differences as them being somehow otherworldly; a la, "Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus." Yeah, and that book is from Uranus, as in, it's total shit.
Male, female, two-spirit, hermaphrodite, third gender, transsexual, Hijra, asexual, neuter (and all variations thereof) are all individual parts of the human species. Period.
In truth, I'd be happy if we could all just be human, with gender identity being as fluid and changeable as a person's hair color (in that if you felt more natural as a redhead, you could be a redhead and have people notice the change as a positive (or at least be polite about it, even if they thought it didn't look good on you)), rather than having to be forced to be a brunette if brunette was the hair that happened to grow in. Rather, I'd be happy if we were all truly equal without something that it essentially private and personal to each individual having so very much bearing on our society as a whole. That is not to any way malign those for whom gender is an integral part of their identity, it is simply pointing out that no matter what a person on this planet identifies as in terms of gender, even if they only identify as a person with no gender assignments whatsoever, we are all still HUMAN and therefore, the same SPECIES.
Which brings me (without me meaning for it to when I started this) back to the question of whether or not I'm third gendered? One comment on that post really got me thinking. The person who made it was angry at society on my behalf for making me feel as though I needed to behave in a certain fashion in order to be female.
Clothes don't make the gender. A man who dresses as a woman is not necessarily transsexual or even gay or bisexual. He may not even be a transvestite in the sense of gaining sexual arousal from wearing feminine clothing (definition from "To Wong Foo" and therefore is possibly/probably inaccurate). None of us are born wearing a dress. We're socialized from a young age to say that girls wear certain clothes and men wear others, but really? In Scotland, men wear kilts.
Clothes don't make someone's identity. They may play a part, but they aren't the sum total of what a person's body is telling them that they are.
So what designates a man from a woman in a biological sense?
Men have more muscle mass. Men keep their reproductive organs on the outside, though if you dissect male and female reproductive organs and examine their structures, the differences aren't really that great. Men have narrower pelvic structures. Men have Adam's apples. Men carry both X and Y chromosomes, which means that gender of the child that the female carries is determined by his sperm (and how many women have been murdered over the years for not bearing sons? Knowledge is better than ignorance, kids).
I know I've probably forgotten something, but really, that's about it.
My body is female. I have perfect, natural breasts (and yes, I brag on them because I'm 34 and a lot of effort on my part has gone into keeping them as nice as they still are). I menstruate every month and have mood swings according to that cycle. When I think the word 'female' an image close to this one fills my mind (I couldn't find the actual statue that I think of, but that one's pretty close). To me, this is the intrinsic example of what that word means to me. I think of pregnancy and breast feeding and how very much I'd like to do both of those things.
So what do I think of when I think of male? I think of Rambo pulling back his bow and killing the bad guys. I don't immediately think of him using his penis to penetrate a female and how that would feel for me if I were the one penetrating instead of being penetrated (though I have had that thought from time to time). No, when I think 'men' my first thought is of a male whose form I admire doing something that I've been told that females don't do.
I've had fantasies about being male and having sex with men as a male, but my fantasies of having sex with women are always with me as a female. I like having my strap-on penis, but I wouldn't want to grow a penis permanently.
And that, I think, is where my confusion is coming in. I'd be very open to the idea of being able to be male some of the time, so long as I could go back to being female when it came time to get pregnant and breastfeed, which are both activities that I find (long pause while I think of what I feel for those activities and I have to say that 'normal' is the first that comes to mind, but 'normal' isn't quite right.... Natural. Getting pregnant, carrying a child and breastfeeding that child - all of that feels natural to me). Even so...
I'm always of two minds on this issue, which was what led me to question in the first place.
I don't feel strongly enough towards being male for me to want to give up being female completely, if that makes sense? But I identify with a lot of what society seems to identify as male. And I do like the male form, but now that I really sit down and examine my feelings. I admire it - I don't want to be it. Most of the time.
I think that I'd be happiest as a fully functioning hermaphrodite, able to choose completely, depending upon the wants and needs of my partner(s). But even then, I think I'd have problems because I'd still never be wholly one or the other and a lot of the time I prefer to be 100% female. But some of the time, I'd like to be 100% male, with no confusion whatsoever.
For the purposes of the real world that we live in, if you force me to check a box, I'm going to check 'female' because that's the one that's closest to me most of the time, but I really don't like having to check that box. I don't like that 'woman' automatically means so many things to so many people. I don't like that I don't feel that I can travel to about 70% of the world because of the sexual organs that I happened to be born with.
So I want to be male for the privilege? That seems rather shitty.
Before this post goes even further off the rails, I want to make something absolutely clear.
The source of my questioning has nothing to do with society. It has to do with an erotic dream I had in which I had a penis and was having sex with another man, penetrating him with that penis. I had a very strong reaction to that dream - it's stuck with me for years. In my dream, I felt that I knew exactly what it felt like to have a penis and how that penis felt while I was having sex with someone else. It was amazing.
Amazing enough that if I had the option of doing so, I'd shapeshift into a male for having that moment again.
I guess what I'm saying is that I want the ability to change my gender at will, to be male or female depending upon my mood and how I feel that day. I would be choose female more than male, I feel sure, but if I truly had that opportunity, who's to say?
Come to think of it, my questioning goes back further than that dream. It goes back to series of fantasy books I read as a child (the title of which escapes me) where there was a supernatural creature called a Challing (spelling half-remembered) that was a shapeshifter. It could be male or female at will and when it was one or the other, it was wholly that gender. I thought that that would be an amazing thing to be able to do, to be able to be either male or female and truly feel that you were one or the other when you were that gender? It would be incredible.
So what do I really think about all of this, with no more bullshit or fantasy?
I think I'm female. I think that if I could be male from time to time, I would because there are things that I associate with being male that I feel ill-equipped to do as a female. My perfect boobs get in the way of archery and I lack the upper-body strength for rock walls. But when I look at the male form, do I really want to BE it all the time? No. The thought of having to worry about testicles makes my ovaries ache.
I admire men. I love men. I don't want to be permanently male in any way other than a fantasy or to find out what it's like. I can't deny that finding out what it's like is definitely a fantasy that I wish I could make come true, but I don't want to permanently make myself something other than what I am now.
I enjoy being female. I enjoy the feeling of my body as it moves, though sometimes it feels alien to me. Men are born with a penis and testicles. Women grow breasts and get our periods. I'm not saying that men don't have significant changes when they go through puberty, but you don't grow entire NEW ORGANS. For a very long time, I'd look down at my chest and feel amazed that my breasts were actually a part of me in a way that's difficult to describe. And not every woman has significant amounts of breast tissue, so I can't even point to that and say - hey, that's why I'm female.
That's what I'm missing and why I'm questioning. What the hell is it besides biology that makes me intrinsically female? Earlier in this mess of a post I thought it might be because I identified with pregnancy and breastfeeding, pregnancy especially, but it's unnecessary for me to do either of those things if I wish to be a mother, which is the source of my wanting to be pregnant and breastfeeding. I can be a mother through adoption.
Okay, let's go with that then - I want to be a 'mother' and mothers are female. Not according to Ricky Martin, :), who has said he'll tell his kids that he's both mother and father to them (something I found amazingly cool, seriously).
I'm feeling frustrated and even more confused than when I started this, so here's where I am for now:
I think that I'm a human being who honestly doesn't care about genitals or gender identity as anything other than an aside to who someone is as a person. I feel that biology dictates only what we allow it to and that, we as a species need to move past worrying so much about biology if we want to continue truly evolving beyond our animal roots.
plus he is not attracted to the male species.
is incorrect or at the very least, incomplete. One could say, "He is not attracted to the male OF the species," or, "He is not attracted to the male of the Vulcan species." (Note: I did not see this line in a Star Trek story - Vulcan was just the most ubiquitous alien I could think of.)
However, saying, "plus he is not attracted to the male species." breaks my brain for one very simple reason:
MEN ARE NOT A DIFFERENT SPECIES! IT'S MALE GENDER, NOT SPECIES.
I realize that for some, thinking of men as a different species allows them to, in effect, dehumanize them and explain all of their differences as them being somehow otherworldly; a la, "Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus." Yeah, and that book is from Uranus, as in, it's total shit.
Male, female, two-spirit, hermaphrodite, third gender, transsexual, Hijra, asexual, neuter (and all variations thereof) are all individual parts of the human species. Period.
In truth, I'd be happy if we could all just be human, with gender identity being as fluid and changeable as a person's hair color (in that if you felt more natural as a redhead, you could be a redhead and have people notice the change as a positive (or at least be polite about it, even if they thought it didn't look good on you)), rather than having to be forced to be a brunette if brunette was the hair that happened to grow in. Rather, I'd be happy if we were all truly equal without something that it essentially private and personal to each individual having so very much bearing on our society as a whole. That is not to any way malign those for whom gender is an integral part of their identity, it is simply pointing out that no matter what a person on this planet identifies as in terms of gender, even if they only identify as a person with no gender assignments whatsoever, we are all still HUMAN and therefore, the same SPECIES.
Which brings me (without me meaning for it to when I started this) back to the question of whether or not I'm third gendered? One comment on that post really got me thinking. The person who made it was angry at society on my behalf for making me feel as though I needed to behave in a certain fashion in order to be female.
Clothes don't make the gender. A man who dresses as a woman is not necessarily transsexual or even gay or bisexual. He may not even be a transvestite in the sense of gaining sexual arousal from wearing feminine clothing (definition from "To Wong Foo" and therefore is possibly/probably inaccurate). None of us are born wearing a dress. We're socialized from a young age to say that girls wear certain clothes and men wear others, but really? In Scotland, men wear kilts.
Clothes don't make someone's identity. They may play a part, but they aren't the sum total of what a person's body is telling them that they are.
So what designates a man from a woman in a biological sense?
Men have more muscle mass. Men keep their reproductive organs on the outside, though if you dissect male and female reproductive organs and examine their structures, the differences aren't really that great. Men have narrower pelvic structures. Men have Adam's apples. Men carry both X and Y chromosomes, which means that gender of the child that the female carries is determined by his sperm (and how many women have been murdered over the years for not bearing sons? Knowledge is better than ignorance, kids).
I know I've probably forgotten something, but really, that's about it.
My body is female. I have perfect, natural breasts (and yes, I brag on them because I'm 34 and a lot of effort on my part has gone into keeping them as nice as they still are). I menstruate every month and have mood swings according to that cycle. When I think the word 'female' an image close to this one fills my mind (I couldn't find the actual statue that I think of, but that one's pretty close). To me, this is the intrinsic example of what that word means to me. I think of pregnancy and breast feeding and how very much I'd like to do both of those things.
So what do I think of when I think of male? I think of Rambo pulling back his bow and killing the bad guys. I don't immediately think of him using his penis to penetrate a female and how that would feel for me if I were the one penetrating instead of being penetrated (though I have had that thought from time to time). No, when I think 'men' my first thought is of a male whose form I admire doing something that I've been told that females don't do.
I've had fantasies about being male and having sex with men as a male, but my fantasies of having sex with women are always with me as a female. I like having my strap-on penis, but I wouldn't want to grow a penis permanently.
And that, I think, is where my confusion is coming in. I'd be very open to the idea of being able to be male some of the time, so long as I could go back to being female when it came time to get pregnant and breastfeed, which are both activities that I find (long pause while I think of what I feel for those activities and I have to say that 'normal' is the first that comes to mind, but 'normal' isn't quite right.... Natural. Getting pregnant, carrying a child and breastfeeding that child - all of that feels natural to me). Even so...
I'm always of two minds on this issue, which was what led me to question in the first place.
I don't feel strongly enough towards being male for me to want to give up being female completely, if that makes sense? But I identify with a lot of what society seems to identify as male. And I do like the male form, but now that I really sit down and examine my feelings. I admire it - I don't want to be it. Most of the time.
I think that I'd be happiest as a fully functioning hermaphrodite, able to choose completely, depending upon the wants and needs of my partner(s). But even then, I think I'd have problems because I'd still never be wholly one or the other and a lot of the time I prefer to be 100% female. But some of the time, I'd like to be 100% male, with no confusion whatsoever.
For the purposes of the real world that we live in, if you force me to check a box, I'm going to check 'female' because that's the one that's closest to me most of the time, but I really don't like having to check that box. I don't like that 'woman' automatically means so many things to so many people. I don't like that I don't feel that I can travel to about 70% of the world because of the sexual organs that I happened to be born with.
So I want to be male for the privilege? That seems rather shitty.
Before this post goes even further off the rails, I want to make something absolutely clear.
The source of my questioning has nothing to do with society. It has to do with an erotic dream I had in which I had a penis and was having sex with another man, penetrating him with that penis. I had a very strong reaction to that dream - it's stuck with me for years. In my dream, I felt that I knew exactly what it felt like to have a penis and how that penis felt while I was having sex with someone else. It was amazing.
Amazing enough that if I had the option of doing so, I'd shapeshift into a male for having that moment again.
I guess what I'm saying is that I want the ability to change my gender at will, to be male or female depending upon my mood and how I feel that day. I would be choose female more than male, I feel sure, but if I truly had that opportunity, who's to say?
Come to think of it, my questioning goes back further than that dream. It goes back to series of fantasy books I read as a child (the title of which escapes me) where there was a supernatural creature called a Challing (spelling half-remembered) that was a shapeshifter. It could be male or female at will and when it was one or the other, it was wholly that gender. I thought that that would be an amazing thing to be able to do, to be able to be either male or female and truly feel that you were one or the other when you were that gender? It would be incredible.
So what do I really think about all of this, with no more bullshit or fantasy?
I think I'm female. I think that if I could be male from time to time, I would because there are things that I associate with being male that I feel ill-equipped to do as a female. My perfect boobs get in the way of archery and I lack the upper-body strength for rock walls. But when I look at the male form, do I really want to BE it all the time? No. The thought of having to worry about testicles makes my ovaries ache.
I admire men. I love men. I don't want to be permanently male in any way other than a fantasy or to find out what it's like. I can't deny that finding out what it's like is definitely a fantasy that I wish I could make come true, but I don't want to permanently make myself something other than what I am now.
I enjoy being female. I enjoy the feeling of my body as it moves, though sometimes it feels alien to me. Men are born with a penis and testicles. Women grow breasts and get our periods. I'm not saying that men don't have significant changes when they go through puberty, but you don't grow entire NEW ORGANS. For a very long time, I'd look down at my chest and feel amazed that my breasts were actually a part of me in a way that's difficult to describe. And not every woman has significant amounts of breast tissue, so I can't even point to that and say - hey, that's why I'm female.
That's what I'm missing and why I'm questioning. What the hell is it besides biology that makes me intrinsically female? Earlier in this mess of a post I thought it might be because I identified with pregnancy and breastfeeding, pregnancy especially, but it's unnecessary for me to do either of those things if I wish to be a mother, which is the source of my wanting to be pregnant and breastfeeding. I can be a mother through adoption.
Okay, let's go with that then - I want to be a 'mother' and mothers are female. Not according to Ricky Martin, :), who has said he'll tell his kids that he's both mother and father to them (something I found amazingly cool, seriously).
I'm feeling frustrated and even more confused than when I started this, so here's where I am for now:
I think that I'm a human being who honestly doesn't care about genitals or gender identity as anything other than an aside to who someone is as a person. I feel that biology dictates only what we allow it to and that, we as a species need to move past worrying so much about biology if we want to continue truly evolving beyond our animal roots.
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no subject
Date: 2010-11-15 04:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-17 01:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-17 01:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-17 02:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-15 09:25 pm (UTC)So agree on that Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus, what a load of stinking crap. Written by a former monk, as I understand it. No surprise there.
no subject
Date: 2010-11-17 01:37 am (UTC)