Everyday Gender

[apple]

Originally Posted by RW

Apple: Thank you. Those are very kind words, and I'm very glad that you feel I wrote appropriately.

Thanks for the nod. It is so very refreshing to hear from someone who actually gets it, and it is especially refreshing to see "that sort of thing" here for a change. I know it is very politically incorrect to say this. I swear to you though RW, some people magically become intersexed because they think it explains why they have problems, and it excuses their neurotic self pity while even entitling them to inexhaustible pity from everyone else in the entire world. One more thing. I hope I never again hear of how absolutely "girly" anyone "is now and always has been" and how much they like being so absolutely "girly", and if I never again read here, or anywhere else ever, about how rough they got it because they don't get laid enough these days, then I will be fine with that too.

There I said it. Man that feels good. It's worth getting "banned for all eternity" over it too. This place has really gone to hell anyway.

[Sunshine1]

Originally Posted by RW

Sunshine, I keep meaning to write something about 'normals' ... several other people have used the word recently too.... but I'm not sure I can get the words right - so would it be possible for me to try and for you (and everyone else) to let me know if I get it right or wrong... I'll put these thoughts down here for them to be shot at or supported as you feel is right:

The thing is, the idea of 'the normals' is incredibly powerful, and I'm sure captures the daily experience of many people pretty well. But I'm not sure it's helpful... I kind of feel that there's a risk that everyone forgets that there is no such thing as 'a normal'.

I think I hear people shouting already, but please hold off until I say a bit more (then feel free!).

I've known many people/groups who are hurt because they see themselves as different (or feel they are perceived as different). And the thing is these people are in the majority! The differences that people experience - the reasons for their exclusion or feelings of exclusion vary dramatically, but many many people experience them. Person 1 has a different colour skin from most of those around them, person 2 spends 24hours a day caring for his son who has dementia, person 3 has no arms and legs, person 4 spends day in day out thinking about what food to eat "so I don't get fat", person 5 spends 4 months a year in psychiatric care, person 6 hears voices in her head but lives an ordinary life, person 7 doesn't fit into any identifiable 'ethnic group', person 8 will have a heart attack and die at 30, person 9 already has breast cancer, person 10 is regularly beaten up by his wife, person 11 lost her children to a mystery illness, person 12 is described by his parents as "retarded" and his doctor as "a Down's syndrome", and so on.

Of course, if we pick any one 'label' then most people don't fit that category. Most people aren't 'victims of domestic violence'. Most people don't die of cancer before the age of 30. Most people have a full set of limbs. Most people easily fit into one gender box. But there are more than enough labels to go around. In other words very few people get to escape all the available categories. Very few people are 'normal' or have a 'normal' life.

What I think I see is that some people are consumed by thinking 'why me' in regard to their particular experience, wanting to be 'normal', and believing that they are one of the unlucky ones (assuming that everyone else has an ordinary life) - whereas other people somehow learn to be thankful just for being alive.

Of course none of this takes away the pain of being treated badly, the lack of equality, or the physical pain that some people experience. I understand that 'the normals' captures something of the experience of being treated as different, something of the attitude of people who haven't yet noticed that they are living a charmed life, not yet old, not yet mentally ill, not yet disabled, not yet having tragedy in their life....

But I do think its important to remind everyone over and over that these people are in the minority (even if they have lots of power and have the world set up mainly for them).

When we remind everyone of this it makes 'minority rights' (substitute whatever phrase seems appropriate here) suddenly seem much more achievable. We realise that what we are asking for is important to most people in the world, not actually a minority.

OK so tell me - am I saying something helpful, or unhelpful here?

Oh, and by the way, I found your post seriously thought provoking. Thank you. It reminded me of an interesting article by someone describing the daily reminders that they didn't belong because of the colour of their skin - finding that everywhere they went the background images, messages, music, stories, language etc etc told them that they weren't part of 'we' and 'us' but rather part of 'you' and 'they'. An experience perhaps with similarities to the image you present of bouncing off the portion in the middle of two bathrooms.

I read where you are from http://www.isja.org.uk/ and everything you wrote has nothing to do with what I meant as someone with CAH. My post was about society runs on gender and it's hard when one doesn't fit by condition, other things and life is hard when you don't try and fit but you lose your soul if you make this effort- not feeling like you fit in from the inside or feeling like hell because society has shoved you to fit in ...Fixed you and viewed you with your pants pulled down that they did a good job. I will not post anymore as what I write my feeling about CAH... isn't welcomed.I WROTE What IT FEELS TO HAVE THIS MEDICAL CONDITION for me and I also have/had other medical conditions like cancer. I feel you assumed and added things have nothing to do with my post.

[apple]

Originally Posted by Sunshine1

I read where you are from http://www.isja.org.uk/ and everything you wrote has nothing to do with what I meant as someone with CAH. My post was about society runs on gender and it's hard when one doesn't fit by condition, other things and life is hard when you don't try and fit but you lose your soul if you make this effort- not feeling like you fit in from the inside or feeling like hell because society has shoved you to fit in ...Fixed you and viewed you with your pants pulled down that they did a good job. I will not post anymore as what I write my feeling about CAH... isn't welcomed.I WROTE What IT FEELS TO HAVE THIS MEDICAL CONDITION for me and I also have/had other medical conditions like cancer. I feel you assumed and added things have nothing to do with my post.

I think RW made some very good points, and whether RW is intersexed or not, they remain good points. I find the old, "you couldn't possibly understand" thing, to be both tedious and suspect.

I see "normal" women every day who even totally fit the silly "trannie alert!" stereotype, guarded so religiously by insecure types [very often TG/TS/etc] who have their own sexual identity problems, and yet they manage to shrug off the occasional rude comment made by such morons. They don't fixate on it, agonize over it, and then die of heartbreak because some guy thinks they are pretty even when they are "trying to be ungendered". That makes NO F'ng sense! So now I wonder. Is that really just you affirming, how you just can't hide, your incredibly gorgeous girly girlishness or what?

Originally Posted by Sunshine1

What if I'm not into gender so much but to live in this society .....just to use a public restroom or to be addressed by a service workers, strangers etc one plays this game as to explain ....noo nooo not into gender to everyone .....really no time when you are delivering products or on the phone.

I started thinking about this stuff way back in a job when I had really short hair (not washed)and was wearing a baseball type cap, a gray t-shirt (dirty w/ grease- not washed ) ripped jeans (dirty with grease/dirt-not washed in a week) and muddy combat boots. This guy that I was delivering products to signed the invoice.

I came back in to buy something to drink and the guy goes you're pretty with this biggest smile. i was defeated becuase I was feeling so non gendered and what a relief but that guy brought back reality of society.

The human race is sexually dimorphic for the greater part, and though some of us were not born perfectly within that norm, yet this remains a fact of f'ing life. So get over it already! Those who really are intersexed, who cannot or will not accept this refusing to learn to live with it, have a psychological glitch which can be dealt with in psychotherapy and gotten over. Reading here of late, I get the distinct impression that some people, for whatever reason, are convinced that intersexed people are obsessed about gender in a "special way", and we have nothing better to do than to beat our head against a FRICKIN wall over it!

One more FREAKING TIME it is NOT about gender!

Please hit the link in my signature.

[RW]

Sunshine1

Sorry. Really, Sorry.

You are right. My comment wasn't directly in reply to what you'd said - I'd meant to say something in reply to an earlier post where 'normals' were mentioned, and I couldn't get the words right. So I thought I'd have another go. But I wasn't really writing about what you'd said, just about one word you'd used - which I can see wasn't helpful - and then I went and wrote another long reply without thinking much more. So I took over from what you'd originally said. And what you were saying was important and profound. (It was because your original post had so interested me that I'd been prompted to reply).

Please. Write more about this. If I want to say some more about the idea of 'normals' I should start a new thread not hijack yours.

Sorry again.

[RW]

In an effort to undo the damage...

life is hard when you don't try and fit but you lose your soul if you make this effort

I think this should be written up in big flashing letters. It captures the experience of so many people.

[apple]

Originally Posted by RW

In an effort to undo the damage...

Quote:

"life is hard when you don't try and fit but you lose your soul if you make this effort"

I think this should be written up in big flashing letters. It captures the experience of so many people.

I think it's a load of bull, and pandering to self pitying gender obsessives is not kindness.

[RW]

Hmmm... Apple... You are saying things in a very hard way aren't you? I think what Sunshine1 was talking about in the original post was that it is possible to be going along, feeling happily human and ordinary, only to have people unintentionally do something to knock you sideways. That's a good point to be making. (Sunshine, please do come back and say what you were saying again in your own words...)
I know many people who have that experience - for instance, someone who had started, with love and care, to overcome an obsession about her body shape, traveling through an ordinary day, but knocked back into total misery by a child saying "you're a big fat pig!" (just because he'd noticed that it got reactions from people, not as a considered opinion). The thing is if someone feels exclusion/excluded it isn't possible to make this go away by telling them to get over it. And Sunshine1 wasn't criticising people either I don't think...

I'll catch myself doing the same thing and call people "Sir" or "here you go Guy"

...just commenting on how society works. Surely that's an important point to be making. It certainly seems to apply to lots of different people (well beyond any issues around gender).
The thing is I don't think its inevitable that society does work that way. Yes, there will always be unusualness in the world - but we can teach the world to know that unusualness is actually normal. Not necessarily to understand or anticipate any particular unusualness, but certainly to expect to have to encounter 'difference' in their lives.
Here's an interesting question. All the forms that we fill in that demand to know our ethnic origin (forgive me if UK language doesn't fit with USA language by the way)... Do they help with monitoring equality? Or do they force people to see themselves as belonging to one box or another? Is the message that they give that there are definite differences, when the truth is that the categories are arbitrary? And that loads of people actually come from the space between the boxes?

[apple]

Originally Posted by RW

Hmmm... Apple... You are saying things in a very hard way aren't you? I think what Sunshine1 was talking about in the original post was that it is possible to be going along, feeling happily human and ordinary, only to have people unintentionally do something to knock you sideways. That's a good point to be making.

Yes I am "saying things in a very hard way", and that is because this place has been transformed from a forum for intersex people into a gender and sex role obsessives pity party.

Originally Posted by RW

I know many people who have that experience - for instance, someone who had started, with love and care, to overcome an obsession about her body shape, traveling through an ordinary day, but knocked back into total misery by a child saying "you're a big fat pig!" (just because he'd noticed that it got reactions from people, not as a considered opinion). The thing is if someone feels exclusion/excluded it isn't possible to make this go away by telling them to get over it.

An adult being "knocked sideways" by a rude comment from a child. Well that is pretty damned sad isn't it? One would hope that an adult, would actually be an adult, and as an adult one could not so easily be "knocked sideways".

There will always be things about our bodies, intersexed or not, i.e. our weight or complexion, whatever, that we may wish to be "better" or different, and therefor we as anything more, than say an exceedingly "helpless" child, let alone an adult, will then know that is upon we ourselves to either change what we can or accept what we cannot. It is simply pathological to endlessly bemoan unavoidable facts of life, and for you RW, or anyone else, to reinforce such pathology with false kindness and inappropriate pity is simply wrong.

Originally Posted by RW

...just commenting on how society works. Surely that's an important point to be making. It certainly seems to apply to lots of different people (well beyond any issues around gender).

The sex role and gender obsessives pity party is not that however. Such people have been stuck in the same psychological rut for endless years upon years. I suspect that this is to the delight of the business men and women, "therapists" and such, who rather than helping them to grow up and get over it, instead feed upon this vicious cycle by fueling it with false compassion and misplaced pity, and so this cycle being perpetuated continues to fuel their business.

The sex and reproductive, medical and psychotherapeutic racket, is clearly about making money first and foremost. If that means that the fear and anxiety of new parents of intersex children can be exploited, to garner surgical and psych consultation fees, then obviously such then will be so exploited to the hurt of all, most especially the intersexed infant or child so unfortunately involved. It is patently obvious, that the "guardians of the public's health", of all kinds, have some sort of perverse agenda which includes the infantilisation and pacification of the people they claim to want to help. This has been going on for a very long time, and the net result is that we now have a nation of adult children, unable to so much as even think for, let alone stand up for, themselves as responsible adults.

[mohnblume]

... not much more to say. My heart beats fully on your side, Apple! We must get out of this destructiv self-pityness and start to fight for our rights. And if not for us, then for all the children, which are in danger of the surgeons knive. See also this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gp_Uy...elated&search=

... and by the way, this video shows that IS and TS can work together!