9.29.2005

Labels

Ah labels, you truly are the bane of all of our existences.

It seems that as a whole, we are all constantly trying to find the right lables to fit into while denouncing them completely. So much of what we do is based on our identites. Because I often identify as "gay" and more recently as a "lesbian" (even though I will continue to hate labeling myself as so, I will also slowly get used to it), I am and was involved in many activities that revolved around that identity. I was the president of my school's Gay-Straight Aliance, I did outreach work with NOVAM geared towards gay youth, now I am a memeber of Queer Action at my school.

Even male and female are labels that are created for us to fit into. I played on a girl's soccer team (and enjoyed it very much, thank you; once again, something I'll go into later). I was in the girl scouts. I live in a dorm with other girls. I'm not allowed to interrupt on my guy friends' "guy time." When I played sports in PE, the guys didn't want to pass to me. My mother expects me to want to wear dresses, women's clothes and shoes, and feel like I belong in them. When I perform in my upcoming concerts, I won't be expected to wear a coat and tie.

Transgender and Gender Queer are just more lables. More of us using one or two word phrases to explain to the world what we are. They don't do anyone justice, no one fits exactly into them. Yet we continue to use them.

I mentioned in my last post that I respond "no" when people ask if I'm transgender. It's not that I don't think I am, because it's certainly something I could choose to identify as. Transgender is a huge umbrella term that includes very many things. Gender Queer is an even larger umbrella term. I like it more because, I think, it is a term that is used less often. The common world associates transgendered people with the only ones (they think) they know which are the ones on Oprah or the Discovery Channel and the phrase "Man/Womand trapped in a woman's/man's body" is what comes to mind. There's a lot I like about my body, I am by no means trapped in the wrong one. I would feel just as awkward in life, I think, in a male body.

And that is what is hard to explain. To a world that sees everything in black and white, being a shade of grey is incomprehensible.

"I'm becoming this, All I want to do,
Is be more like me, and less like you"

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I would say that if the world sees in black and white, then there's much color that's being filtered out.

How vivid is your signal?

Anonymous said...

binary is the problem with society.