[culturehandy]

I pitched this in the Community Forum and it was well recieved.

This thread is all about the politics and cross cultural and societal views on gender.

I started thinking increasingly about gender when the media frenzy about Caster Semenya emerged. It is my opinion that the only reason people questioned Ms. Semenya's gender is because she appeared to be "masculine". That is, she looked masculine according to the ideas of society at large. Had she had softer, more "feminine" features, questions of her gender would not have come up.

So, what is gender? We know that there is sex, your biological sex, but gender is a social construct.

[koffeewitch]

Wow! Thanks to all you who responded to my questions. I loved reading what each of you had to say; what a special place The Lounge is! (Busties are the greatest)! I wish I had had friends like you when I was a young girl. I, too, considered myself a feminist as soon as I was old enough to comprehend the word. JSmith your "you bet your ass" story absolutely thrilled me. It reminded me of the time my exasperated father yelled that I was such a "nonconformist". When I got him to tell me what the word meant, I was delighted. There was a word for me and what I felt! (Somehow I imagine this was not the reaction my father had been going for...)

Now what bums me, is I refused to learn so many of the skills that would've given me more independence as a very young woman. I was too proud to learn to cook, sew, knit a blanket, darn a pair of socks. NOW I love being able to do these things. Our culture thinks of genetically-modified, processed, cardboard crap as food. It seems if a person wants to take proper care of her/his own body, they must be able to cook with natural whole foods. I think of these skills as my rebellion against corporate capitalism...and I wish I had not been too defensive to learn them as a child. I think these are neccessary life skills all children should learn.

Stargazer, thanks for the interesting link. I have always reserved my opinion on drag queens for each individual. I love it when drag artists mess with society's preconceived notions. I think there are a few drag queens out there who are straight up mysogynist...and why not? There are also plenty of women out there who are clearly mysogynists.