{"id":196,"date":"2020-04-08T10:00:23","date_gmt":"2020-04-08T17:00:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chasens.ca\/blog\/?p=196"},"modified":"2020-04-08T10:00:25","modified_gmt":"2020-04-08T17:00:25","slug":"gender","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chasens.ca\/blog\/2020\/04\/08\/gender\/","title":{"rendered":"?Gender"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Since my childhood, gender1<\/sup> bullshit has been transparently false to me. One piece they dropped on me, in a previous century when I was a little girl, was the idea that creative imagination (as opposed to ha\u2010ha\u2010being\u2010silly imagination) is a characteristic of men and boys, and that it scarcely belongs to women and girls. I was a storm of creative imagination and I couldn’t help noticing that I was. So, it was easy for me to dismiss it as being somebody else’s idea, and a poor one at that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I liked science, outer space, and climbing trees. They asked me, again and again they asked me, “Do you wish you were a boy?” NO, I said, NO and NO. Suppose I were to surrender to custom and to define parts of myself as male. Then, I would have distanced myself from my body, from my experience of my body, from my right to be the whole person I am. NO. (And, I hear many of my fellow people speaking otherwise. In our diversity, may we find common cause.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I do not necessarily prefer the position that has been defined as male. For instance, competition has never appealed to me, the lock horns or wave sticks, football, baseball, pissing contests\u2026 I love discussion, where we explore together. I have often been disappointed to realize that the other person is debating, which is a competition played to win. This does not mean that I have the slightest inclination to submit. My very disinclination to submit tells that, in compassion, I don’t want to make you submit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two little boxes, and neither is big enough, neither fits. Wear what I wear, do what I do, I am a woman doing it. My gender is my relation to my body, not an assigned role.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If I comfort a child, that honourable action does not limit me. If I were a man, I would not need to have a woman inside me to do it. If I were so fortunate as to be fierce and inventive and bold, I choose to be a fierce and inventive and bold woman, and to let my power sing through my whole self, body and spirit together. If I swing a hammer, the strength of my arm is a woman’s strength.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.Please note, I often use the words – gender, woman, girl, boy, man – to reference a couple of common mammalian body types, even though the use of these words to denote role is also valid, and trending.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Since my childhood, gender1 bullshit has been transparently false to me. One piece they dropped on me, in a previous century when I was a little girl, was the idea that creative imagination (as opposed to ha\u2010ha\u2010being\u2010silly imagination) is a characteristic of men and boys, and that it scarcely belongs to women and girls. I … Continue reading “?Gender”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":200,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chasens.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chasens.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chasens.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chasens.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chasens.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=196"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/chasens.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":208,"href":"http:\/\/chasens.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196\/revisions\/208"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chasens.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/200"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chasens.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chasens.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chasens.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}