[Serious] Please convince me gender is binary

[arewethereyet]

I think where people get confused is with others who are clearly working toward presenting themselves as being other than fitting with the genitals they were born with. Since many of us don't have feelings of being the 'wrong' sex it a difficult concept to understand. That doesn't mean it can't be accepted or that it shouldn't be accepted.

Maleness and femaleness, for lack of better terms, are fluid in pretty much everyone. The extreme of either is the popular conception of what is a man/what is a woman/what is a boy/what is a girl. It's societal in nature. We all know guys we went to school with who seemed to display more feminine traits than the other boys...the reverse being true for the girls- girl jocks being prime examples. As a society we tend to see the male as being better at math and mechanics while the female is seen as more of the caregiver type. The range is so vast and it can change as a person ages and matures.

There's a range of the male and the female stereotype in everyone.


That said, there is a person on my new assignment that I cannot figure out. I haven't gone so far as even designating that person in my mind as he or she. I simply don't know. This person is the most androgynous person in my world right now. But, MEH, I really don't care. This person in friendly, always smiling, and isn't looking to me for anything other than my throwing out a pleasant good morning or how are you today.


Why is it that rock bands from way back were able to go androgynous and no one gave a damn? When the lead singers of bands started showing up in fringe and sparkly clothes and guyliner...no one said a thing. I have to assume that appearing onstage with an obvious package and sporting makeup and glitter wasn't as important as the music. Well, if someone wants to 'bend the rules' who isn't on stage...why the hell do we care?


I am older than a lot of the people here...I simply don't dwell on who is what when it comes to male/female/a blend/homosexual/heterosexual and all other labels and flavors of being any more than the color of a person's skin matters to me, and it never did. Even growing up in the middle of a cornfield surrounded by Catholics didn't cause me to give a damn about a person's individuality.

The only person whose sexual/gender nature that has ever mattered to me is the person I am in an intimate relationship with.