ManPants: the project that ate my life

So I finished my project about spending a day dressed as a man. Holy Cheese it took me over 10 hours to finish editing the video and I did a pretty shoddy job of it and then wrote one of the worst papers I've ever written. It was one of those wow-this-doesn't-make-a-lot-of-sense-but-I-don't-have-time papers. Awesome.

Here's hoping that 20% of my grade didn't just vanish into nothing.

To be honest the project became half for my soc class and half for this class looking at gender and how it's constructed and how it relates to me. It was incredibly important to me to take it seriously and give it everything I could.

Interestingly my parents and my sister literally laughed at me and my efforts and refused to recognize that this was personally emotionally significant for me. As a result I'm still mad at them and they're confused and annoyed. This should be fun.

In case you're wondering I'm very aware that I didn't manage to pass and I look really bizarre in the photo.

I decided to prepare it in the form of a video diary because I can get my thoughts out much faster that way. I was annoyed that youtube made me split it into two parts because of the length. It essentially comes out to 17 minutes of gender based navel gazing but whatever.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you "ManPants: A Day as a Dude"!!

Anonymous Bosch: blogging, gender, and my mom.

*a side note: my post on the readings won't be up until at least mid-morning due to my life exploding like a marshmallow in a microwave*

It was an ordinary weekend until I found this video on feministing. It's a documentary about three biological females who identify as genderqueer and their struggles in life. It may seem like no big deal but I remembered seeing part of this documentary with my mom when it first came on LOGO a few years ago.

My mom is great. She's loving and supportive and loves the gay community. When we were watching this documentary together she kept asking me if I was going to end up getting a sex change and that she didn't know if she could handle that. I said I wasn't and I wouldn't. Then I left the room and didn't finish watching the documentary.

This weekend I finished it and now I'm freaking out.

My mom said she read my blog post about my hair and was worried I was going to get a sex change. I told her not to read my blog because it's very personal. If I talk about something personal on my blog chances are I don't want to talk about it in person. Example: my gender identity. Because this is so personal if she's reading it and asking me about it in person I feel angry and betrayed. This is like my journal.

Odds are you haven't met me. You don't have any established ideas about who I am and what I should be. You have no real choice but to accept me as I am or move on. If you make me uncomfortable I can delete your comment or go to a different page or turn off my computer. You aren't going to grill me during a family dinner about the odds of me having male chest reconstruction surgery.


I'm not ready to say anything verbally. I'm just not. It's a coping mechanism: if I don't say it out loud it isn't real. I'm not ready for it to be real. I want to be left alone to sort this one out. This is personal. This is not a family matter.

Seeing that documentary just reminded me about all the stuff with my gender and my mom and the ideas of privacy in a world as public as the internet.

One of the biggest reasons the internet is great for spreading ideas and activism is that it's safe. There is no risk of someone throwing rocks at you or recognizing you from work and threatening to tell someone that you have beliefs others may not agree with. The anonymity of the net allows people to safely be who they really want to be.

Right now I need that.

So Mom, if you're reading this, please stop. Everything I write here is mine. My life, not yours. If it's important enough I will tell you when I'm ready. Right now I'm not ready.




Why is my gender suddenly an epic issue?
I'm gearing up for a major project in my Contemporary Sexualities class. I'm spending a day dressed as a guy.

Holy.Frak.

I'm both psyched and utterly terrified mostly because tomorrow I will not only be observing how the world treats me I will also be observing how I feel about myself presenting a masculine gender. The scary part? I might like it. I might hate it and never want to do it again but I don't know yet. The whole ordeal makes me feel as though I don't know myself. My little box I've lived in for my whole life could potentially be blown to bits. In the words of Stewie Griffin of Family Guy, "I don't like change!!" (I know Family Guy is horrible on a million levels but it makes me laugh and I don't feel like analyzing it right now.)






I'll let you know how it goes.

Wish me luck. I could use some moral support right about now.

Genderfork: a blog response

One of the things I enjoy most in the world is peoplewatching. I like imagining myself as an outside observer in the world like Jane Goodall among the chimps or Birute Galdikas among the orangutans, perched with a notebook and pencil. I tend to peoplewatch with an unnerving intensity because I often do not understand how I am "supposed to act" and I never have. I often watch to see how other people interact. I'll try to discern patterns of behavior and understand them. I suppose it's quirks like this that cause my love of more abstract blogs like Genderfork.

Genderfork is mostly photos including images of androgyny and profiles of people who defy gender norms in some way but it also includes quotes from commenters and contributors. These quotes are my favorite parts because they are often thoughtful, thought provoking, insightful and in some ways beautiful. When I found the following quote I nearly cried because I felt suddenly less alone in my somewhat scary and liberating realizations about gender. I think people often underestimate the comfort provided by gender roles.

The small question at the bottom of the quote pushes people to start interacting and asking questions. If you hadn't guessed by now, I firmly believe that opening up a dialogue is one of the best ways we can improve our world in all ways.

Blog response 2(?): why tautological observations are pointless.

*I seem incapable of writing a short blog. I suggest you settle in.*

I'll admit I had strong hesitations about working in a department or even a class full of feminists because I consider much of the approach to academia to be pointless. I'm not saying this is isolated to feminism and women's rights. This trend is present in all cases of inequality that are studied formally. But while I was looking around Finally, a Feminism 101 blog I came across a post explaining why the feminism is the way it is: more argument than movement and realized that it's okay for me to define feminism differently than other people and that open honest debate is not necessarily a bad thing.

I do not consider myself truly a "feminist" or a "queerist" or even "leftist" so much as I consider myself to be an ACTIVIST (who happens to be on training wheels at the moment). I believe in action. This action should be well informed, yes, but there should still be action.

I am deeply frustrated by people who point and say "That's wrong because it is." Such tautology is not only non-sensical, it's literally pointless. I personally feel that much academic observation is of this kind. In reading articles about women in various situations of opression or hate crimes that have been committed I have noticed that very few people stop to answer the question of "Why?"

Why do these things happen?
Why have these problems not been fixed?
What could be done about it?
How can we enact these ideas?
What would be the effect?

I feel that people who don't bother answering these questions shouldn't be throwing around accusatory statements.

One example I remember witnessing was a friend who was a self-proclaimed "feminazi" stated rather bluntly "I have a right to bitch because as a woman I'm oppressed by men."
This was something of a pinnacle WTF? moment. "How are you oppressed?" someone asked.
"I'm oppressed by men, that's how." she snapped back.
"okay... You're not answering the question and if you're so oppressed what are you doing to change it?" I asked.
"I did answer the question and I'm not doing anything. I have other things to do." she sighed and the subject was changed.

This exchange stuck with me because I remember feeling that despite her oppression she was free to express discontent and was also free to try to change things. Yet she didn't. So many people aren't willing to make that move from the anthropomorphic world of written word wars to the real world where people slam doors in your face and your car gets keyed and sometimes you really reach someone and change their mind and improve the world just a little bit.

I feel that if more people associated with civil rights causes spent less time writing papers about the way things are now and started thinking about the way things could be and how we can change them then we really can change the world for the better.

In the words of John Lennon, "You may say I'm a dreamer but I'm not the only one."