Systems

I happened to read a piece of web “conversation” about “gender-neutral first names”. It wasn’t much of a conversation, really – mostly bashing other people with your words as hard as you can and then running for shelter. Something one nick wrote got me thinking: the person’s idea was that there are always exceptions to any system, but that it’s not the majority’s job to do anything about it. So basically, being genderqueer, I’m an exception to the rule that the only gender options available are Man and Woman, and that’s my problem.

When I studied philosophy for a while, I learned that the best system is the one where the most “exceptions” fit in. So, a good system is complex enough to allow for as many diverse situations as possible. The old “sex equals gender equals sexuality” system is clearly outdated, as it doesn’t allow for any other options than the Hollywood-esque Boy meets Girl; that is, if you’re a Woman, you love a Man, and the other way round. Looking from the viewpoint of this system, I truly am an exception. Which is fine by me, c’mon, this finally proves I am exceptional. But I also believe there could be a better option for this system. Let’s look at the rule again.

Why the second part of the mantra doesn’t work, seems to be something anybody (even my grandmother) could understand. Gender doesn’t equal sexuality, because boys can love boys, girls can love girls etc. We don’t necessarily understand why anybody would feel differently from us, but it’s clear that some people do, and it’s OK to more people every day.

But the other equation – sex equals gender – is quite a bit trickier to disassemble than the first. It’s like a Zen Buddhist koan, or locked box with the key inside – you have to get it to get it. And even if you do, that still doesn’t mean you have to allow for people being outside the binary. I mean, yes, many people know that there are transgendered people, in the sense of being X trapped in Y’s body. But you can fix that without breaking the binary gender system, can’t you? It’s just a matter of the right medical treatment. Biological man becomes biological woman, happy ever after, end of story.

How then to deal with the fact that many people believe that the two-gendered system is not enough? Maybe we just have to build a new, better system to show around. It would have to be one that allows people to be men and women if they want to, but also clearly states that that’s not all there is. We live in a world with seven billion people in it. Why force them all into just two little boxes, when there could be a free-flowing, dynamic space open for everybody? If the dualistic gender system wasn’t invented yet, would we need it?

PS. Two great resources here and here.

Should, should, should

I went to a Seta Transgender Support Center meeting yesterday. It was great to meet people with (a kind of) the same kind of situation. It was easy to talk about my feelings or experiences there, because there were people who had felt or experienced something of the same.

Afterwards, I’ve been thinking a lot about the “shoulds” I have set for myself. There are a lot of those in my life – beginning with the relatively simple ones like “I should practice my bow technique today but I feel more like playing the electric bass now”, and going on to “I should eat only vegan food, but doing so I always feel hungry” and even “I should always be proud of being qenderqueer and never conform to the binary gender system even when I’m tired of being noticed and would love to blend in with the normal people.”

The balance between the short and long term goals of my life (feeling happy right now vs. achieving something greater sometime in the future) is a precarious one. It’s so easy to slip into either a hedonistic mood, taking one day at a time and not caring about the future at all, or take a martyrlike stance, thinking of the rewards I will one day get if I neglect my current happiness for long enough.

And these both are, so I feel, quite nice ways of looking at life, because usually, I slip out of one and into another quicker than I even notice. But right now, I feel stuck inside both of these viewpoints. This means that there aren’t enough hours in a day to do all I would like to, and so I find myself collapsing to a complete standstill, not doing anything worthwhile. I fear this is what Finland’s winter has in store for me once again.

Take me dancing tonight

I was at a gig yesterday at the Helsinki Music Centre. The band in question was Tsuumi Sound System, ” #1 etno cannon in Finland.” Everybody was there, so it felt – so many friends from different circles gathered there at the same time!

TSS’s music is hugely dancable. From the first note, I couldn’t resist first tapping my foot, then going to the dance floor when it began to fill with people. Between these two, there was a moment of unhappiness on my part.

I love dancing, I love to be aware of my whole body, co-existing, sharing the space with other bodies on the dance floor. But yesterday was my first time to go dancing after becoming aware of my “gender trouble”. So, while I was enjoying the music immensely, at the same time I was aware of other people, not knowing me, seeing me in a way I don’t see myself, and making assumptions based on what they see. This is a form of dysphoria I’m only too familiar with, and has to do with the social invisibility I wrote about a couple of posts back.

There is a certain built-in paradox in the way I feel about the relationship of a person’s mind and body – call it my philosophy of the body, if you like. Because, as I wrote earlier, for me mind and body are necessarily two quite different things – how else could there be a feeling of “gender dysphoria”? I really don’t like thinking like this, because it puts me in mind (heh) of Plato’s hierarchical dualism, where mind/spiritual world is the only thing that matters, and the body/material world is of no use, or even a bad thing. This is a view held by some people even today, and it makes me feel a bit uncomfortable, even seeing where they are coming from.

But at the same time, I see in myself and others the old proverb coming true, “mens sana in corpore sano”, that is, “a sound mind in a healthy body.” A human being functions as a whole, and if a part of a person is feeling low, it will show on their whole being. So I have a philosophy of the body that is essentially illogical and thus of no practical use.

Feeling slightly dysphoric, I decided to give this illogical set of beliefs an empiric try. I let the music suck me in, to the dance floor, lift me up and in the end leave me sweating and gasping for breath after an hour of very intense free style dancing. What a night!

Another day in drag

When I pass you on the street, and you look at my direction – what do you see?

I’m invisible.

And so are you. I realized something when I became aware of being genderqueer: we humans don’t really see each other. When I look at you, I see clothes (usually), a hairstyle, a body of a certain shape, perhaps a face – and from them I figure out a “you” that fits the type of “yous” I’ve learned to know with this kind of a combination. Even naked, I only see an outside, not you. That is why it is so dangerous to “judge a book by its covers.” You really can’t know how a person wants to be seen, before you ask or get to know them.

For a time, I felt really bad when shopping clothes, either at the women’s or the men’s part of a shop (usually thrift or second hand places, my economy being what it is), because I’m neither. I thought if I only could dress androgynously, I would feel better. But then, a couple of weeks ago, I had a little sentence pop in my head, that has made me feel increasingly confident:

“Every day is another day in drag.”

I can’t dress in a way that would make people see me as I see myself, because for them, I don’t exist – yet. But if I tell them about myself, make myself visible to them, they will eventually see me as I want to be seen, no matter how I dress. So when I put on some clothes in the morning, or even take them off for sauna, I, in choosing how to appear to other people, create a symbol of myself that is visible socially. The symbol, my body, clothing, even behavior and way of talking, beckon others towards my own sense of myself, a thing apart from these but still in some way inseparable from them.