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.

Is it wrong that I think "rationale" is a boring word?

I don't for a moment blame people who use it; I understand that there aren't really any other options as far as nouns encompassing an explanation of controlling principles of opinion, belief, practice, or phenomena but I always feel slightly cheated when I see it, like someone needed a word for this and just said "I know! I'll just take 'rational' and put an 'e' on it! Brilliant! No one will ever know." We have a big language can't someone come up with a better word?

I will put my qualms with the word "rationale" aside to now explain, well, the rationale of my blog.

I suppose I can't claim that this blog will be strictly topical as I know myself and my inability to focus on anything that is not directly in front of me or shiny. I will say that my blog won't be limited to women's rights because I find it to be cissexist to argue for the equal rights of one particular gender without including those people who are alternative, trans, or non gendered. Equality should apply across the board.

As a "woman" who feels more gender queer than femme my blog will most likely focus on what it's like to be in a female body unsure of what it means to be a woman or a man and where I fall in respect to the dominant gender dichotomy. There is also the question of how the feminist movement feels about transgender individuals at the movement.

There are big questions I want to ask like:
Do women's rights include individuals who are MTF?
What about FTM?
What about individuals identifying as Gender Queer?
Is it feminist for a woman to actively seek to be submissve to a male a-la "Secretary"?

As a woman with multiple health problems I would also like to look at the way women's health is handled including the way treatment of PCOS is handled in relation to gender and feminism, the way mental health issues are handled, Doctor/Patient relationship dynamics, and other aspects of healthcare in relation to gender and feminism.

I also desperately want to look at women in politics (or lack thereof) and how some of them, like Senator Claire McCaskill of Missourri are using technology to reach their constituencies more readily.

Fun fact: Out of the 99 people serving in the US Senate (Minnesota is still being indecisive) only 17 are women. Think about that for a second 17 of 99 and the 100th will be male.

Fun fact part II: In the more than 200 years The United States of America, and subsequently the Senate has existed we have had a total of 38 women serve as Senators. One of them served for only 24hours.

Those two facts are stunning in the jaw-dropping-WTF?! sense.

Anything you think I might want to consider adding?
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