(Jake "The Snake" Twin)

Anytime the word gender appears in our society it quickly becomes a loaded issue with people on both sides and a few numb-nuts on the fence, (Sorry to all numb-nuts, but you’d have to have something like that going on to sit on the fence for that long.) Anyhow, the phrase gender identity to some is a symbol of freedom but to others is as vile as Hitler ever was in the minds of people. But, point simply, society is having a gender crisis. Ask this guy. “Hi, my name is Jake (other head: No, we’re not) Anyways, I is Jake (other head: rolls eyes), and I like rocks, slithering, and mice that come in twins”. What I am getting at is the this issue is quite polarized, with more than just a little bit of aggression to be found on either side. Still people can’t agree, which the issue at hand aside, should be a surprise to no one.

People like to fight, and each person has their own point of view they want to fight for. Put more than one person in a room of different view points and you’ll likely see a disagreement unfold. But with the issue of transsexuality, gender identity, or even the plights of many transitioning intersexed people it’s a little less clear and definitive for people to understand the concept. For a person born with a penis who thinks sex, football, beer, and sex are the best thing since sliced bread, understanding the slice and dice (pardon the pun) of gender dysphoria isn’t going to be his strong suit.

(The transsexual bone, which science and medicine have yet to find the exact location of. Also known as "T-bone")

Likewise to any woman who was born with a vagina, likes Oprah, babies, puppies and kitties has a hard time understanding why you’d want to add an appendage and get rid of the other. Women, in my experience, are a little more understanding give the time to observe and absorb, but that is how women in our society are. Whether it’s a social thing, or a product of biology and estrogen is still yet undetermined. But the point is that people try their damnedest to “fix” transsexuals, as once done with homosexuals… “Oh, wait a second Rene. They still do” – Peanut Gallery. Western culture is steeped in making a point of ‘not getting it’. It is synonymous of a 5 year old singing “La, la, la, la” while plugging his or her ears so they can’t hear what their mom is saying. People don’t want to understand because their ego is supported by not understanding.

 

As the picture would indicate, this lovely skull now has to live in a world that hate her for being different, unless of coarse they find some way to remove it without lobotomizing her. What I have realized is that our culture is still in some senses trapped in the dark ages of logic when it comes to gender. But why gender at all? In our society we almost seem to work on a paradigm of one sex. There is Male, and Not So Male. It’s the consequence of patriarchal society, (created by the same guys who won’t use a map or ask for directions) that anything that brings to light it’s fallacy is a threat to it’s legitimacy. It’s at the at the heart of many peoples opinions of homosexuality, and is facilitated by religion in westernized cultures. See Gender Roles. In the past, the act of penetration was viewed as “female, feminine” and as such Abrahamic cultures deplored it as it could potentially effect the distribution of wealth. If a man accepted an act of being penetrated it meant he’d been reduced to the rank of female, which was only a little more than the rank of slave (Property).

Their are many people out there that all you have to do to make them commit the “Someone Pissed in my Cheerios” face is tell them you are Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, or Transsexual. What’s ironic about the previous paragraph, is that most rapes perpetrated against men are by other men, regardless of their sexual orientation. Because in western culture, penetrating sex has a tendency to be about power rather than about sexual orientation. It’s why most heteronormative men would never consider having penetrative sex performed on them, because it is considered weakness and stigma. In fact in our culture there is quite a lot of biasing regarding the power of the sexes. Maleness, and masculinity are considered to be all powerful, and femaleness, and femininity are considered to be weak or passive. Obviously these idiots need to have their asses handed to them by an angry woman, mom, grandma, et cetera. They’re not passive to you any more after you get your butt whomped on by a person of the feminine persuasion. Women can be just as violent and angry as men can, trust me.

But all in all, the image of women as passive is quite prolific in media, advertising and many other outlets which barrage the eyes of millions. It’s because of this that many women even believe this who ha. Here is an interesting article/blog on the matter. It would seriously appear that men are complaining because women are becoming more equal to men. I guess from a position of power, it would be seriously uneasy being dethroned right before your eyes, but give me a break. But this isn’t the problem, the problem is that an underlying doctrinal process has eluded most who observe and subscribe to such fallacies. In ancient times gender was male, and not quite male; in which across the world gender was equal to social status. Women, effeminate males, POW’s, slaves and such were all the property of men (with unmarred phallus and gonads might I add). In fact at some point in time rape was a socially utilized way to subjugate another person, male or female. See War Rape, and Sexism. Sex was a symbol of power, and those who administered this phallic justice were powerful, and those who received it powerless.

What does this have to do with me? Because it’s a bloody tragic struggle to free yourself of the bullshit. I like the things I like maybe in part because of my mother, and in some ways that makes me subject to the tragic reality of sexism. With as much as I have struggled with sexism in my life, and with stereotypes I hate falling into them and by default being scoffed at for it. I like certain things, some of them just also happen to be stereotypical female habits. The nails, the hair, et cetera. But I enjoy those things, I will give them up for no one. What is problematic though, is that these things wouldn’t be an issue if society wasn’t still gendering me with it’s sexism concept. This is where the tragic part comes in, that because of my stereotypically masculine habits (simply from being raised as a male), it places both my gender identity, and my behavior under attack from cisgendered, sometimes even intersexed or transsexual people. You end up in a catch 22 where your feminine traits are devalued to be obsessive behaviors (characteristic of your deemed psychosis), and your masculine qualities then viewed as your true gender identity by others. See Julia Serano, religioustolerance.org and Transsexuality and employment. It’s the your mentally ill so your opinion is invalid scheme. When it comes to gender dichotomies, I am beginning to feel that I should just say “NO”. As far as my physicality, it is mostly male; however I am a woman. Man is like, but not always equal to being male; likewise woman is similar to, but not always equal to female. And quite frankly I am tired of the shenanigans.

(Sorry Shenanigans, it sucks to be you)

In all honesty, this is my realizations of how this whole thing effects me. Fighting with the whole mockery of it all can be a difficult thing to over come. But it is my intention to be me, regardless of the circumstances of social acceptance, ideology or prejudice. But it is hard. Being stereotyped as weak or delusional isn’t any fun, nor is it any fun trying to clear out the patriarchal brain washing. In my own behavior, in trying to break with it’s rank tradition I myself have shown it’s fallacy through my own missteps, not on purpose, but because I couldn’t see where the feelings were coming from. Rather than debunking gender stereotypes I was endorsing them, and some of them are quite sexist while not deliberately or intentionally because I was trying to fit in and had no guidance to do it right. It can make a person narcissistic, because the system downs you in a way that you end up feeding off it in some twisted way. But it would stand to reason why so many Narcissists are also sexists. In a concept that boils who you are and can be down to what’s between your legs, it makes sense that everything would be about sex for you. Moreover, it only hurts me to get stuck in them. Because does it really matter if I am feminine on this or masculine on that? Furthermore, gender expression (generally) really has nothing to do with my core identity more than the culmination of experiences, and the nature of my self with that which makes me who I am. But I digress.

Myself

Wonder how long it will take to completely rid myself of this bane. I’d say I have come quite a long way in this process, but that it takes more than just observing that I have a pattern to break. But from this point in my life on it’s not going to matter how feminine I am, or how masculine it’s going to be about being myself. But it can be hard to self validate, which is what most of my turmoil has been about. Being accepted and validated as being who I am, and not for whom people want or believe me to be. This is my statement to say that I don’t need it, because in the long run it makes you dependent on someone or something else. My life speaks for itself as does the truth of who I am. And so on I will be true the that and continue to understand myself in what has come of my life. Breaking from the social hierarchy such as the one we live in is a long process, hardly easily finished overnight on some epiphany laden rant.

Remember this though, it’s these same men who doctor history, edit medical literature, and do all they can to suppress the fact that human sex and gender is not nearly as dichotomous as they want you to believe it is. These insidious ideologies about gender, sex, and likely narcissistically fueled propagandist will continue to push their Orwellian oppression unto the point that it’s no longer feasible to do so, probably even beyond that. Intersexed people prove this time and time again. I read in medical literature that cases where HRT (hormone replacement therapy) to affirm the sex and gender fails to conform them to social normative standards, that the doctors blame the patients. Basically saying, “well all these people are better now, what the fuck is wrong with you?” The conflate the situation by assuming that non-compliance is patient related rather than re-evaluating and realizing blanket treatment of the condition is flawed. While much of the social pressure from the medical establishment to force intersexed people through “normalization” is changing, the medical literature is blatantly dishonest about the prevalence of dysphoric transitioning intersexed people. With particular bias, is the culture around AIS (Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome), and KS (Klinefelter’s Syndrome) patients which have a tendency to be biased towards the doctor’s initial sex assignment. It’s likely because of medical bias towards sex assignment based on the closest match in normal genital anatomy, and partly because of the difficulties of creating a normal phallus after birth. It reinforces the sexist tenant that only a doctor can declare you male or female, and that this can’t be changed. I have read plenty of stories of the medical establishment trying to force hormonal therapies on patients that were simply not appropriate. In many cases now, intersexed transitioners are treated under the same standards as transsexuals, but with much less consensus or sometimes fewer hoops to jump through.

Don’t get me wrong though, I am not saying men are bad and women are better, (Female Chauvinism) though I joke about it from time to time. Sexism is nearly an oligarchy with plenty of nitwitted peons carrying unknowingly supporting that message. The majority of men aren’t the primary perpetrators and women aren’t innocent either, it’s a smaller much more powerful group of men and women (likely rich white men, but still semi-diverse), and a lot of people just going with the flow of the culture cultivated by these interests. However, what I seek to point out about the treatment of intersexed people, and show in comparison to transsexuals is that the establishment is at least partially engaged in a campaign designed to maintained these false dichotomies on which their power is based. So they hide, modify and edit published information demonstrating truthful depictions of gender variance as normal, much as they do for organizations who engage in reparative therapy like NARTH. If you talk to anyone who has been through Ex-gay ministries you’ll find out that it rarely changes orientations, or gender identities, and usually results in pyschological truama. If you don’t think these attitudes exists you should check out the Toemaggeddon piece on the TheDailyShow.com again, and see the abrasive and aggressive responses that people had about perceived (not actual) gender variance. The Dr. Keith Ablow of the world are so homophobic, and transphobic that they rant and rave on national TV about gender variance. Christian conservatives of the type like Dr. Ablow have a high tendency to ignore scientific and medical facts, and spout nonsensical pseudoscience about gender identity and gender variance.

(All people should be free)

The problem isn’t science, but the cultural phenomenon occurring in the liberation of a previously oppressed, misunderstood, socially taboo, and not talked about group existing with in our culture. Those who control those sources of information are to blame, not our culture as a whole (though in truth sexism in culture is). So new science coming out is proving to be a culture shock to heteronormativity. Science proves time and time again as well as the medical side of it in psychology and other fields that gender identity is not a choice, though no specific mechanism is clear, the pattern is obvious. But, this information isn’t wide spread, and there is a political game being played in suppressing it, creating a counterculture against it, and in authoring studies (mostly opinion based) by well know experts to refute something with little or no supporting evidence.

People of my dad’s generation would say “That shit didn’t exist when I was a kid”, which would be wrong, as it has existed for all of human history. My dad’s generation born in the 50’s would have seen the publicity of cases like Christine Jorgensen.  But, it reflects the culture of the time, that it simply wasn’t talked about. In their reality, it didn’t because they don’t share those things with their children and that became reality. Something that is now changing and bringing to light the ugliness in the world in regards to sexists and discriminatory social gender dichotomies. But, the only part of this that is truly important to me is that I heal from the past lived in such a system, and seek to see to the means that will inevitably lead to it stopping one day. This blog is a little satire, a little serious, very real, and as truthful as I can present it with what I know. It’s things like this that help me move on with my life and root out the things that are counterproductive to that ends.

FORETHOUGHT:  What has occurred to me is this.  It is clear to me  that there are distinct gender identities, and sexual orientations which seem to be predetermined, but little else in our neurological configuration is.  While in some parts my article I could both appear to be rejecting sexism while at the same time supporting oppositional sexism (or sexism of mutual exclusivity), I am not.  Mutual exclusivity dictates that males are masculine and females are feminine which is a false assumption.  In our society though, it is quite common for people to assume that this hierarchy of gender is both real, correct, and as well a part of some divine providence, which in some senses is the core of sexism for some.  I am a spiritual person of Christian persuasion and I don’t by that mumbo-jumbo.  It is these perpetual attempts by sexist patriarchies to proliferate an image that because women are different that it makes them less worthy of certain roles, and more worthy of others (all of which happen to align with classical sexist virtues).  To put it mildly, trying to use science to prove sexism.  While men and women have certain innate differences, they are by and large equal in ability across the boards, and capable of almost all of the same skills.

This is what equality should look like!

However, when you get sexism into the picture it would have you believe that a female scientist is less competent than a male one.  Is in part due to the sexist teachings they push upon our children, that encourages them to only endorse and follow stereotypical gender paths.  The same is true of the treatment of transsexuals, and intersexed people who don’t conform to normal gender hierarchy.  The problem isn’t that men and women having essentially different skills and abilities per say, but that they are conditioned to have those predispositions through peer pressure, gender specific rearing and by sexist who later use those differences to justify sexism, specifically oppositional sexism.  Oppositional sexism’s point, is to prove that women and men aren’t alike (equal), by both making them that way, and by scientifically proving they end up that way to thereby justify the unfair treatment of women in our society.  Essentially, girls are bad at math, sports or mechanic trades not because of a predisposition, but because of the stigma of breaking gender roles.

Just do an internet article, image, and video search for the following words and you’ll see how sexist society can be.  {Female Police Officer (likely you’ll find a lot skimpy outfits, and porn)  Female Solder (less likely to be bad but still some sexually provocative content)  Female Scientist (probably the best by far) Female Doctor (is sort of okay until you search videos)}  Point is, that you can do general searches and find clear evidence of sexism, either in the objectification of women, or in the manner in which they are portrayed.  As a matter of fact if you look for female, woman, et cetera you’ll find a lot of sexual, degrading and marginalizing images to women.  But it’s not just females per say, but all of femininity that is viewed in this light.  Although I’d say if you’re intersexed, or transsexual it’s a little worse in some regards.  Actually met a man ones who wanted to meet a “hermaphroditic woman” so he could have “the best of both worlds”.  I only pray that one day this bull crap ends and for good.

But, this also to me highlights the disconnect from women and feminist (natal, not intersexed) in some cases and intersexed transitioning, and transsexual transition people.  Because of the way the medical establishment works, you must still subscribe to sexist ideas of male and female to present for treatment, which in some cases is counter productive to feminist goals.  For some the concept of dichotomous gender behavior is the crutch one which they stand.  It is not what we do and like that makes us who we are, it is who we are that determines those things.  Sexist dichotomies work by polarizing gender roles, and forcing people to chose on stereotypical gender or another through subterfuge and manipulation.  Creates a confusing dynamic for many who lack the courage to say “I am me because that is who I am”.  Seems circular, but it only seems that way.  Everyone is an individual because we are each different in subtle to dramatic ways.  Doesn’t make you an ally in some peoples books though to say that behavior has no effect on gender identity, but gender identity has everything effected with in our behavior.  In the end it boils down to saying “No” to socially sexist gender roles, and yes to just being yourself, and whatever gender you happen to feel you are.