Written On The Body Pt.1

I’m sitting here at my desk trying to make sense out of this book and doing a horrible job of it I might add. Not really the book, more the issues in the book that I have to think about for myself. And so I think to myself, perchance if I were to reason it out in writing I could get somewhere. So for now let us begin with the biggest question in my mind after this novel.

Where do my gendered perceptions come from and why the hell is it such a big deal to begin with?

So I guess that I will have to be horrible and cliché about the whole thing and begin with blaming the culture that I was raised in. Not that my other reason is that much less cliché, it’s family, but as I know in my best way of knowing, gender is a learned thing, and those are the main two places you learn any social behavior.

Okay, Society. A great deal of it has to do with power. Gender is one of those things that keeps the social hierarchy in place. Look at it as a pyramid, which it is. On top in that small minority is the white, heteronormative, patriarchal male. The more “masculinized“ you are within this the higher you are. And of course I should qualify this with the fact that I can only speak of my Amerocentric upbringing and society, this apex is socially different across the globe. Without fail though no matter where you look throughout the world, it is the heterosexual hyper-masculine male at the top of society.

So since the idea of gender keeps people in their places, ensuring power for those on top, I begin to see why it is so essential to our society.

And to segue for a moment, I want to clarify that is is a big deal. I don’t care how ”liberal“ or ”open-minded“ you think you are. You are just as caught up in the gender game as I or anyone else is, with perhaps the exception of a very few people on this planet. I’m not going to argue that point. Accept it.

Back to power though, you can see why it is a fairly nice system. A mode of labeling, that feminist and misogynist alike buy into, a system that equally cripples both of them, leaves those on top with a lot of power. After all, if you can disenfranchise most of the population they are a lot easier to dominate.

From before we even get ready to exit the womb we are engendered. We are put into one of two checkboxes M or F. And for those who are not clearly one or the other, well the doctors butcher them into one of the boxes. And that is not a rare occurrence either. It’s more common that red hair. The fact that there is an entire medical process for forcing people into the generally accepted gender binary must mean that it is a construct. If things that common were ”anomalies” there would be a hell of a lot more people dying their ”defects“ away.

I can site examples of the gender binary in society until I’m blue in the face, but I think you get the point.

To be continued in part 2...