Response to Main Post 09/28/2010

Better Be Labeled "IT" not "HE" or ''SHE''
“In my more ambitious and perhaps foolishly hopeful moments, I imagine a world in which there is no simple categorization by sex, no gender, but only people. I imagine a world in which I am no longer stared at. I imagine a world in which people are attracted to me not because of what sex I am (or appear to be) but rather because they find me fascinating. I imagine a world in which I am at home.” (Listen Up p.88, One Bad Hair Day Too Many, or The Hairstory of an Androgynous Young Feminist by Jennifer Reid Maxcy Myhre) What Jennifer want is exactly what I want the world to be! Jennifer is often insulted by people calling her “butch”, “dyke”, or “androgynous”. Because she quits to shave her legs and has a crew cut by which actions she used to declare her feminist’s stand. She behaves in ways that most people would consider as “unfeminine” behaviors. And she also thinks that it is wasteful to spend an hour in front of mirror to dress and wear makeup because the time can actually be used in more meaningful things such as reading. If it was not for reading Anne Fausto-Sterling’s Sexing the Body first, I would be strongly against Jennifer’s view and drop feminists’ books immediately in fear of that I may become one of the stereotypical feminist just like Jennifer. Thanks god that I did not read Jennifer’s work first! In Anne’s work, she addresses about gender and sex. She says that sex is determined by physical facts while gender is determined by people’s own conviction. Our society interests in “pigeonhole” people, people with penis must be put in the box of male while people with ovarium in the box of female, and there is no appropriate place for people possess both penis and ovarium so they must be abnormal and need to choose one of the box to stay. Previously, I never doubt the “fact” that people can only be female or male, but now I do. I think, as Anne also points out, that the so-called “fact” is not real fact that nature gives but what people consider as “fact”. While people consider only two sexes exists as “fact”, the fact given by nature may be there are only different individuals without sexes. And generations by generations, people in the society are taught about the “fact” and most people do not bother to doubt it. The categorization of sex is actually the origin of inequality towards sex in the world. Jennifer suffers because what being female with a crew cut means to the society is what people possess both masculine and feminine characters mean to it.