I'm not even getting started on North Carolina or the declaration by Obama, because, really, what else needs to be written about these things? Also I'm not entirely sure I don't feel pandered to by Obama, so I'm not really ready to commit to an opinion on his statement.
I don't know, maybe if he quit defending DOMA in court, I'd feel a little better about his sudden change of heart.
We've been here before and we'll probably be here again. If you still don't know why equal marriage rights are so fucking important, here's yet another story from someone impacted by not having the same rights as heterosexual couples. It's worth your ten minutes. Honest.
I found this List of Cisgender Privileges floating around my facebook feed. "If you’re not familiar with the term, “cisgender” means having a biological sex that matches your gender identity and expression, resulting in other people accurately perceiving your gender. If you are cisgender, listed below are benefits that result from your alignment of identity and perceived identity. If you identify as cisgender, there’s a good chance you’ve never thought about these things." It's a great read and something the majority of us don't have to think about.
Finally today, an excellent article about Christianity's same sex marriage rites. To listen to the Right Wingers of today, you'd never guess that same sex marriage was once an integral part of Christianity.
"A Kiev art museum contains a curious icon from St. Catherine's Monastery on Mt. Sinai in Israel. It shows two robed Christian saints. Between them is a traditional Roman ‘pronubus’ (a best man), overseeing a wedding. The pronubus is Christ. The married couple are both men."
Wait. So not only did the Christian Church have multiple forms of same sex marriage rites, but Jesus Fucking Christ actually stood as best man in the marriage of the men who would become Saint Sergius and Saint Bacchus? Explain to me again how your Christianity bars you from supporting same sex marriage. Because I must be missing something.
I'm sure there's lots of stuff floating around this week that I missed. Feel free to leave some link love in the comments.
If you missed the Gender Bender Ball, you missed out on something rarely seen in public:
That's right. I wore a dress.
It's been two and a half years since the last time that happened and I was probably pregnant the time before that. And, yes. I wore it with flip flops.
SweetPea went dressed as She-sus, Jesus' fraternal twin sister.
The Gender Bender Ball was a huge success. Easily double the attendance of last year's Ball. The venue (Beatnik Studios) was perfect and allowed us to sell drinks and actually keep the profit. Last year the Ball was held at a restaurant/club. This eased a lot of the logistics of staffing, food and drinks, but limited the options for making money. Hoppy Brewing Company cut us a great discount on beer & provided all the accessories needed to serve it up. There was also rum based mixed drinks.
MonkeySee & I worked the drink ticket sales table and, judging by the number of tickets sold, everyone had a thoroughly inebriated good time.
This kid rocked the drink ticket sales table for three and a half hours solid. He rules. Also? Water in a can.
I think what I enjoyed most was seeing representatives from two of the sponsors - Hoppy Brewing & Maita Subaru - partying with us. And, between the two of them, they probably were the biggest bidders on the Silent Auction items. The guys from Hoppy Brewing were also frequent visitors to the drink tickets table.
I am overjoyed by the success of the evening and cannot wait to see how it grows next year. Maybe you can join us, too!
The first thing I want to say is that I'm overwhelmed by the response to "Gender Isn't Simple" and I want to thank everyone for their comments, feedback and, holy shit, the link love!
And I have no idea how I ended up on SacConnector linking to Beautifully Invisible's post, but, hey. I'll take it?
I also got several "retweets" and a couple of re-postings on facebook.
I'm still not entirely sure how I ended up involved with such awesome people, but I'm pretty grateful.
I wanted to say a few more things on the subject, less related directly to gender and more related to the "mom eat mom" world of mommy bloggers.
The biggest issue I see here, the big, fat elephant in the room that everyone seems to be missing or avoiding is
Tolerance.
As a mom, I am well aware that the society we live in seems perfectly entitled to cast judgement on any number of parental transgressions, whether real or perceived.
As a parent, you're wrong if you cloth diaper and you're wrong if you disposable diaper.
You're wrong if you bottle feed and you're wrong if you breast feed.
You're wrong if you breast feed too long and you're wrong if you don't breast feed long enough.
You're wrong if you vaccinate and you're wrong if you don't.
You're wrong if you homeschool and you're wrong if you public school and you're wrong if you private school and you're wrong if you Montessori and you're wrong if you Unschool.
What.
The.
Fuck.
People?
Because that's not enough, we have to seek out things parents do that seem odd or "wrong" to us and then we all feel free to jump down their proverbial throats because, obviously, we know best.
Do I know if my way is better than their way?
No, I do not.
Do I know if their way is better than my way?
No, I do not.
What I know, I know for certain:
These parents are doing their best to raise their kids the best way they know how. Not because society has said they should raise them a certain way. Because their hearts, their educations, their instincts have told them to how.
I believe that some people misunderstand what they're trying to do. I've read posts that sound like Storm's parents have said "no gender for you!". The impression I get, however, from the main article and from the words of Storm's parents contradict this.
It's not that they want Storm to live completely free from gender. Rather, they want Storm to have the opportunity to discover who Storm is without the underlying and overt societal pressures that dictate how boys and girls should be.
Who am I or you or her or him to say they're wrong? Who are we to say they should be parenting differently? What right have any of us to judge their decisions as parents?
And my questions to the doubters remains the same:
Why does Storm's gender matter?
What changes then?
PS: I found this incredibly interesting and remarkably timely. It seems like what Storm's parents are doing is closer to "traditional" parenting.
I hadn't planned on blogging about this, but when people uneducated on the subject post vocal opinions in your twitter feed, you realize you have to speak up.
And I want to be real clear and upfront that I don't believe anyone whose opinion I'm citing here is stupid or ignorant or intentionally dismissive. I understand that, by virtue of the circles I travel in, I have spent a lot more time in consideration of gender than the average gender normative straight person. This post is meant to educate and enlighten, and not to call out.
An article was recently published about a Canadian couple who have refused to identify the gender of their four month old baby, named Storm.
The first that I heard about this was from facebook postings by some of my transgendered friends and while I was intrigued, I didn't feel the need to comment until this showed up in my twitter feed. And all I could see when I read this post is someone who doesn't get it.
And that's fine. Like I said, when you live in a gender normative, heterosexual world, you may not ever get exposed to the myriad and complex issues that gender presents.
You really don't even need to dive into the world of transgenders and genderqueer to find out how much is affected by gender.
As a feminist*, I can tell you that being born with a vulva automatically changes how you're treated, what's expected of you, how much you'll earn. Being born female means you're less likely to be taken seriously by the medical profession, law enforcement, educators. It means you'll pay more and get less for a wide variety of services, including health care, personal care and products marketed gender-specifically.
Being female means that your health insurance can deny coverage for your birth control and your infertility treatments while covering treatments for erectile dysfunction.
Sometimes, babies don't even get the chance to be born with a vulva.
In the world of babies and children, boys and girls are treated differently, dressed differently, bought for differently. No matter how much you try to be gender-neutral, our society has ingrained in us an understanding of what boys are and what girls are. Deviations from this standard are taunted, mocked, ridiculed, punished.
Even "minor" deviations, such as my son's long hair or my daughter's shaved head are considered open invitations for ridicule (and who the fuck decides this kind of thing is ok, anyway? It's 2011, people. Get the fuck over yourselves.).
Departing the world of gender normative heterosexuals, that is individuals whose gender identity matches their genitalia who are sexually aroused by individuals of opposite gender identity, which matches their genitalia.
For those of you who are not transgendered or genderqueer, I'd like to ask you to perform a little exercise.
Close your eyes and picture yourself as your own gender, which is, I'm assuming, how you identify and what you feel comfortable and "normal" with. This is your identity. This is who you are. This is what's right for you.
Now imagine opening your eyes and finding that your genitalia does not match what's in your head.
If you are a woman, imagine that you have a penis instead of breasts and a vulva.
If you are a man, imagine that, when you turned 12, your breasts enlarged and you got your period.
Just imagine.
If you can visualize this, you have but a taste of what it must be like to live as someone who is transgendered. Whose brain, heart, soul tells them one thing and whose body tells them the exact opposite.
Because it can take decades for someone who is transgendered to finally receive treatment, they often spend much of this time in self loathing. Not only does their body not reflect who they are, society expects them to act in a manner that is unnatural, foreign, wrong to them.
Because of their perceived gender.
Gender is simple.
Until it isn't.
My final point, the question I have for those of you who still don't get it, who don't see what the big deal is, who maybe don't see that there's that big of a disparity between the treatment of boys and girls, is this:
Why does it matter what gender Storm is?
What changes then?
*That's right. I know at least one of you (and you know who you are) will be glad to hear I'm finally claiming it. I'm a feminist. A makeup wearing, pushup bra loving, misogyny hating feminist.
