Yesterday was International Women's Day and I thought it strange that there were all these commercials going on about celebrating women. Reason being: shouldnt women be celebrated every day? Sure sure, I get the reason for the day, lets bring to the forefront the fact that women have been opressed and still are opressed. We dont get equal wages, we are often considered the weaker/lesser sex, and primarily seen as eye candy or filler for the hetero male fantasy.
I guess gender has been on my mind more with this book I am reading and the responses Im getting being here in London. I get more positive attention and kind interaction if I am wearing makeup and dressed feminine then days like today where I am wearing no makeup and dressed up in a v-kneck sweater, button up and tie. I think I look rather dapper, but I have gotten many a look of seemingly strange disapproval, as if I had a third appendage. Literally! ;p Ha. Maybe people are just checking to see that Im really a girl. Oh dear!
I think it strange, especially because last night Nichi gave me an article about this "boy girl", in the local paper that everyone reads on the tube because its free and handed out. Apparently and framed by The Sun: Gemma Barker posed as a boy under falsified name and lurred young girls to love her, causing them to become suicidal.
The snippet featured in the Sun was not nearly as long as this article here online, but it is still very much maddening to read. It just seems like the girls who came forward were being melodramatic about the whole bit. Im sure it is an awful feeling to be lied to, and to have been fooled or manipulated into thinking something, but the attention that this is getting is a really negative thing for transfolk, genderqueer or gender variant, or people like myself who are just gender indifferent, and want to dress boyish and not be assumed as being a boy or a girl. Anyone who wants to be awknowledged for variations of gender, gender as a spectrum and not a fixed check in the box of male or female.
Not that Im blaming the so called "victims", but how could you not know that your friend was this boy you were seeing. And at 15 thinking you are going to spend the rest of your life with this person! Im sure, being that you were clearly as perceptive to not notice that you had seen this person before?! I mean Gemma does not look much different than Aaron, or whomever! This totally makes me think of that ridiculous movie with Miley Cirus that I got sucked into watching, called Shes the Man! I swear this Gemma person must have taken notes or something. Which makes me feel pretty annoyed with the situation of trickery, because there is no discussion of Gemma's motives or perspectives for that matter. What kind of message does this send young people who are confussed or exploring their gender and sexuality?
Regardless thirty months of imprissonment is a bit much, for who I believe is probably just a slightly deviant and sexually curious young person. And maybe Gemma is mentally ill, who knows, but at least feature his/her side of the story, somewhere!!!
More of the same:
Thats my gender rant for today I guess. I will sit at the pub and take in my looks, I really need to find a more open community within London that doesnt expect such rigid gender roles and treat people differntly because of them. Oh San Francisco I miss you for this reason.
No comments:
Post a Comment