Today the subject is gender and sexuality. I'm obsessed with it. I keep reading about studies and books online. The whole concept of a gender role, a sexual role. It all adds up to mere stereotype when you think of trying to fit yourself into some narrow space defined by other people. Groups tend to do it: they're all clubs formed for the sake of inclusion, but there's always the inverse. Inclusion necessarily creates exclusion when you congregate. That doesn't mean I'm against congregation, by any means. It's a beautiful thing. I just know that the group I most identify with are displaced people and exiles. Point is, everyone's usually looking for some kind of home, a mirror to soothe their own conflicts. Among the most rugged individual, I think we'd be hard pressed not to find someone who's looking to make the "other" understand. Even the "Other" needs understanding. So I sympathize with the Other. The outcast, the misfit. That's my phat society. Those are my loves. The writers who explore it and had lived it.
So, beyond that, I was reading about transgender teens, which sparked all kinds of other thoughts and curiosities: intergenders (hermaphrodites) and us inverts (homos) and heteros who don't fit, bisexuals, crossdressers, fetishists...oh on an on. Then it starts to feel like we all have so much in common. I wish I could get to what I'm actually trying to say, but the more I talk about it the less I know what I aim to say, except that I feel like we're all -- I don't care who you are -- displaced people on the plane of sexuality. We're all true individuals and at some points feel a little weird if we let ourselves be absolutely honest about what we're feeling at those heightened moments of clarity. Life is surreal during those moments. So crystalline it almost doesn't make sense.
And how weird to bring such private things public as a way of defining oneself. Some can't avoid it being noticed, in the case of gender and hormones and appearances, but for the rest, we speak, so the private then becomes public. God, the line between politics and privacy, between turn-on and statement. When we really just all want to feel good. Why do some of us have to fight so hard for that simple, sweet desire?
I found good links that made me think of this stuff. Here they are:
Resources I bitched about not having after seeing Brokeback Mountain (ie, hope and encouragement)
http://glaad.org/eye/brokeback_mountain.php
She's Not There -- book about a writer going from male to female
http://www.randomhouse.com/features/shesnotthere/
There are more, but I'll elaborate later. I'm tired. And SO excited about my escape from New York and my first return home to New Orleans since before Katrina. More later.
