[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.

[jsmith]

Your post strikes a chord with me, koffeewitch. When I was a very little girl (like you, around 5), I was keenly aware of the things you mention, but what really got under my skin was when I would see TV ads for phone sex agencies, ads for pornographic magazines, movies that depicted women as sex objects, etc. These things baffled me. I would ask my parents over and over "Why are they making fun of women?" (yeah, I looked at these things as 'making fun' of women, I wasn't articulate enough to phrase it in a different way). I knew these things cheapened my sex, and it made me furious. I'd sit and try to read the bible when I got a little older, but never got past genesis because the obvious misogyny in it (I now reject Judeo-Christian theology. Well, actually, all theology) made my blood boil.
Eventually I took a closer look at the things you mentioned that angered you, and naturally, I got angry. To this day I'm angry. I can't watch movies where a woman is depicted as a sex object, I can't walk by a magazine stand with porno mags without having my blood pressure spike, I refuse to watch crime shows where they're discussing an instance of rape (I get so unbelievably angry), I bust a vessel when I see ads for GGW and the like, I will jump down someone's throat if they try to tell me a certain behavior is unladylike or they use a slang word for the female genitals as an insult to another person, I'll probably lynch a fundie if s/he tries to justify the oppression of women using the g*****n bible, etc. It's all very distracting.
I deemed myself a feminist as soon as I heard and understood the word, and I would always tell anybody who seemed to want to know, and would take great pride in it. It's funny... one time my mom and I were arguing about some little thing (this was when I was a pre-teen, I think), and I held to my (militantly feminist) stance on the issue, when my mom disgustedly declared "You're a feminist!" to which I replied "You bet your ass I am."