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 After smoking my pipe fully through the ideas we developed in class today, I'm most interested by the difference between the idea that people choose their gender and that society pigeon holes us all into the gender that matches our sex. Also related to our class discussion, and of particular interest to me, as someone between insecure teenager and an insecure woman, is the idea of the objectification that we do to ourselves on a daily basis, in relation to society's influence on how we objectify ourselves.

I think that conception of gender as an adult is quite different from that of a chid's because a person must take an active role in identifying as a person of a particular gender or of no gender. This conscious decision is the very foundation of the change that I would like to see in our society. I know that the "boxes" we have now are utterly inadequate but I also can't imagine a way in which they could be effectively removed. I think that instead of taking old boxes away we can make smaller boxes inside them or aside them until the idea of an archaic gender binary has dissolved like all other old ideas that no longer apply to our society. This relates to my opinion of what I think a women's college does. I think that somehow, by being so forward about the idea of gender, it raises questions just through its existence. What qualifies as a woman? Can it be someone who was sexed as a male, but doesn't feel represented by the gender associated with "his" sex and feels more comfortable being gendered as a woman? Can it be an intersex person who chooses to identify with female pronouns? I think that making this division so frankly, the space is made, if only in our little microcosm, for smaller and more fitting categories to emerge, making our understanding of each human more precise. I see it like addresses for example...I know this sounds odd, but just follow me. Right now, I am 1)On Earth, 2) On the continent of North America 3) In the United States 4) In Pennsylvania 5) In Montgomery County 6) In Lower Merion Township 7) In the Village of Bryn Mawr...and so on... I feel like this multiplicity of levels of categorization could work to express individual gender and sexuality in a more precise way than what is happening now. So please put that in your pipe and take a puff.