a wrote me an email that i guess asked all the write questions, cause i just went off on her. it was rather cruel in places, and deserved a much better forum than a "kicking you while you're down" email, so i thought i'd repost it here, so y'all know what i've been thinking about, as always.
as far as your body, i'm sorry if it's painful to hear, but your body image disturbs me. what shape do you want your hips and ass to be, goddamn it, a triangle? what the fuck do you thing women look like? who taught your ideal to you? do you know the source of your ideal? why do you believe it? why are you content to live in such a boring world where everyone is achieving the same sort of identicalness? (also, as a side note, i read that the ideal ass is changing in the newspaper. apparently these days people want their asses bigger and bigger, and their partners are obliging.) there was an artist at michigan womyn's music festival who did breast portraits. what a concept, that peoples breasts could be as different and identifiable as their faces. maybe it's different for me because i have both my images of the woman i am and the woman i want in bed with me, but let me tell you my body's pretty fucking perfect (except for maybe an extra cowlick) and i wouldn't sleep with anyone who didn't think so. which is my next question- if you're so alien looking why do you fear all these boys just sleep with you for your body ? are they into aliens? (early on, s wrote "I also don't mind if you're butch, femme, andro, or an alien." to which i replied "i'm 2'3", moist skin, green/green, cute perky antennae, and pointy ears..." ) i am sick of this american ideal of corporate consumerism and competition. like there is only one perfect product which is only cost effective if we produce as many exactly the same as quickly as possible. so we have to consolidate it all down into a binary code, on/off, 1/0, ugly/beautiful, happy/sad, male/female. THE WORLD IS NOT A PLACE OF ONLY TWO CHOICES. we are all skilled and talented and beautiful in different ways, and no one is considerably better or worse than others. just some people are kinder. that's all.
i guess that fits in nicely with your first gender lesson. today's gender question: what makes gender so important? why is it the first question that people ask new parents? why do we gender our pets? we blame it all on sex, but so little of gender is based on whose genitals we want to rub up aganst our own. that's certainly not the reason we dress baby girls in pink and baby boys in blue. why do men wait until i leave the elevator first? that doesn't have anything to do with me getting in their pants, or even me being strong enough to hold the elevator doors open. what makes things gendered, anyway? sure, it makes sense that girls play with dolls, but who chose blue as the boy color? why is hair masculine and no hair feminine? why does it stress people out so much when they can't tell if s is a boy or a girl? why do they give her such dirty looks- what does that matter from someone fixing your phone line? why is sex the most hallowed distinctition in american culture? why aren't bathrooms designated by age, or what you're going to do in there, instead of sex? and again, why are there only two options? do you know how many intersex babies are born in the us every year? ( don't remember the exact number, we learned in my gender and culture class) it's only our culture that creates two separate ideals, boxes we shove people in. actually, everyone's genitals fall someplace on the continuum. as the woman in transamerica said, "i didn't cut it off- i just made it an innie instead of an outie."
No comments:
Post a Comment