Gender is a light board not a switch

reading response to "The Gendercator"

When I walk into a dark room the first thing I look for is a light switch. On means light. Off means it's dark. There is no nuance to the lighting. In theatre we can have up to hundreds of lights with different colors and intensities. They can have moving designs. They can move where they are pointing on the stage. All of this information is stored on a massive board that looks like something you would see in a recording studio or Star Trek.

As a lighting tech I appreciate how a lighting design in and of itself is art. The changes in brightness and color and the speed with which the lights shift, the addition of movement, subtle shifts, all of these add up to a symphony of light. It sounds lame but it's so beautiful. Lighting is so amazing and beautiful and makes so many things what they are and no two lighting designers will design a show or a cue the exact same way. In theatre the lights vary for each person. Gender is the same way. There are more than two options in gender and people so often miss that fact. We are not all Barbies and GI Joes.

In reading about how the blogosphere responded to "The Gendercator" I noticed a split into two camps. One group was furious that the LGBT community would turn on its own members and the other group agreed with the concepts and felt that trans individuals were bringing unwanted masculinity or male-ness into strictly female spaces and that lesbians were succumbing to what males wanted when they chose to bend their genders.

This is what I was ranting about in the beginning: the accusation that people of alternative genders are sometimes not welcomed in "feminist" spaces because they are neither feminine nor masculine. There is almost always an accusation of bringing male-ness into female space when feminists argue against acceptance of transgender individuals. This pisses me off because feminists are arguing for the equal rights and protection of women but arguing that transgender indivudals do not deserve the same rights. WTF?
I think that's against the rules of logic.

I am constantly stunned by the amount of bias in a community of "outsiders" who want "equal rights". There is both a hatred of Trans people and of Bisexuals in the LGBT community. Which, I suppose, would make it the LG community. It's outright prejudice and discrimination and stuns me everytime I see it. I'm infuriated that my own "community," that "my family" would turn against me like this. I would like to not be pigeonholed plzthx.

I think the blogosphere has the ability and the obligation to expose this ugly discrimination in the LGBT community and help push for more acceptance and tolerance the way people did in reaction to "The Gendercator".



If a tool can be used for good then it should be used for good.