International Day Against Homophobia & Transphobia

Apparently, today is that day. As a friend said, for some people, assuming they even know about it, it's an excuse to go through the movements before going back to life as usual, without too much of a thought about these issues during the remainder of the year.

Rest assured, I won't.

As of this writing, I'm twenty one, and I fully acknowledge that I probably don't know myself all that well yet. Things may change me in the future, or I may change out of myself. In ten, twenty, thirty years I may be a different person altogether. When I look back on the past five years I can see I've changed quite a bit even in that short (if tumultuous) amount of time.

One thing I don't see changing much is my identification on both gender and sexuality spectra. It might become more clear to me, because I'm only just getting through the worst confusion, but I won't do a 180 turn and I'm as confident about that as I possibly can be.

You see, I'm not straight. I'm not gay either. Bi? No, that label never fit me well. I prefer queer or pansexual. Why do I insist on such a specialised term? Don't worry, in daily life I'm not too strict about it. In theoretical terms, however, it's very important to me, as well in a personal sense of identification. It signals how I see gender.

My views on gender are not things I tend to argue about a lot, because I know there are plenty of people who disagree. I don't mind that. Let them disagree, I say, as long as they (in a nutshell) don't hate me for thinking differently. Different opinions are fine, hate and fear and everything that follows doesn't do any of us any good.

My views are, more of less, something like this: Imagine the universe. I know the universe isn't an easy thing to imagine, but bear with me. The universe is huge. For all intents and purposes, it has no beginning or end. You could go in any direction and you could keep on going forever. The universe is filled with big gaps of nothing, but also with planets, stars, clouds of dust, meteors and meteorites, tiny particles and huge chunks of complicated matter. Not imagine one planet in this universe. This planet is a person. This person is female and identifies as a woman, within the current social parameters for 'woman'. It's probably a planet in a decently-sized solar system, because I imagine there are a good number of people who feel more or less this way. A bit of a distance away, there is another cluster (western, modern) society has named 'man'. But these are not the only possibilities. There are dozens, millions, as many other planets and stars and meteors and meteorites in this universe as there are people, and then some.

In other words, each person's individual gender identity is unique. There aren't two genders, just two forms of expression that are agreed to be the two points we use to measure everyone by. There are innumerable genders.

Does that mean people's physical bodies don't matter? Of course they matter. Bodies are actually very important. But to pretend that everyone with breasts or a vagina thinks, looks, acts, wants exactly the same and that everyone with a penis is the opposite of that is, in my mind, at best a cruelly simple view of people. Because people, you see, are complicated. While there may well be differences in the human species dictated by the set of chromosomes someone has, those differences are far outweighed by the differences between each individual person, or the similarities we share as a species.

I myself am only on the fringes of that vast planetary group we call woman, and my tiny little planet is careening wildly through space. My gender is fluid, the exact way I identify or want to express myself changes, depending on a whole host of variables. Usually I'm content with people assuming I'm a woman, maybe a slightly strange one, but definitely a woman. Sometimes I desperately want to look like that other cluster, man. Sometimes I even enjoy digging into femininity. Almost all the time I'm not quite the one, but not really the other. I would like to perfect a look of androgynity, but in the meantime, I'm more or less content here, on my little floating rock, skidding from one end of the universe to the other.

You can probably see how a theory of gender like this one would make labeling sexuality more complicated as well. Most labels for sexuality are based on a binary of genders. Homosexuality, attracted to the same, heterosexuality, attracted to the other, bisexuality, attracted to both. What if there are more than two genders? What if the number of genders is equal to the number of people? These terms would become, not meaningless, per se, but insufficient. What about all those other genders, all those other people, who don't quite fall inside the binary, or are miles outside that?

And that is why I prefer a term for my sexuality that doesn't presume two genders, like queer or pansexual. Because I'm not straight, and I'm not gay, and I'm not bi.

I am pansexual, and I am queergender.

http://www.dayagainsthomophobia.org/

NOTE: This is my own, personal blog, and if anyone feels the need to tell me how wrong/filthy/unnatural/disgusting/strange/queer I am, well... have fun! I appreciate your opinion, but you're probably not going to change mine. I also reserve the right to delete comments that I think cross a line. ...that is, if anyone's even bothered enough to leave a comment in the first place. Hah!