After reading Dean Spade Mutilating Gender essay I am baffled and saddened. It seems as if gender binary is causing more strife in society than one cares to recognize or admit. Why does every entity in life need to be categorized in order to be accepted? Due to the ancient history of gender roles/identity and my new achievement of joining Biologist I am sure the discovery of karyotyping is throwing a wrench in the system. I’m assuming it was simple to label someone as male or female based on their external genitalia and give the presumed female a doll and cooking utensils while the male received hunting tools and armor. Science has to introduce people to the fact that organisms aren’t this simple, and we shouldn’t base our quality of life or acceptance of others on gender identity. Which labeled box do we place those with XXX, XYY, X, Y or XXXY? I assume gender is important for government tracking and identification. Does anyone know how other societies past and current accepted transsexuals, and intersexual individuals? Were gender roles non-existent?

I am baffled as to who is the judge of an individual’s femininity or masculinity and why do we need to join a side? How can the “rule” book be changed, who determines if we’ve passed the test, is acceptance our reward?

Years ago I was passionate about my affection for women. My partners and I were content when we were enjoying each other’s company alone. I realize that those assumed gender roles crept in and poisoned connections. The way outsiders viewed it, my relationships couldn’t be real unless someone was penetrating another and/or dominating the relationship. An unimportant person actually told me that someone had to be the man in a relationship. I guess that’s why some women I dated had an alternate “masculine” persona in public to legitimize our relationship.

Despite the commonly accepted gender roles I am optimistic for the distant future. I think people will continue to be more open minded while following gender norms will be old-fashion. I’m notably blessed to be married to an affectionate, non-sports watching, crying during Armageddon, wanting to be a stay at home dad man. While reading Dean Spades description of what was considered masculine I wondered if my husband was born in the perfect decade. I hope that we are not naïve by trying to teach our children non-gender norms and shield them from those that want to limit our babies’ options. Is this a futile effort in a society that examples of “acceptable” gender roles are ubiquitous? I hope rights for women in the last few decades and homosexuals is a sign of a break down in gender norms and gender binary.

The body has been used to justify a person femininity or masculinity. An endowed women is very sexy and feminine as one with a smaller bosom is boyish (personal experience). There are so many efforts to make our hips more prominent, boobs and breast voluptuous. Our thoughts are poisoned with the need to be more “feminine” or “masculine”. Why has this need to be labeled been pumped into our mind?