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cantaloupe's picture

Gender Workbook

I didn't particularly like My Gender Workbook.  In the beginning I was doing the little exercises and reading all she had to say, but it got to the point where I didn't feel like doing the exercises anymore.  It didn't make sense to me.  I identify as a woman quite happily.  I am proud of my female body, which I feel like many view as a bad thing.  We are so into gender neatral pronouns and representations that it makes me feel like being proud of my gender is a bad thing.  Regardless, I am proud to be a woman, but I don't actively think about how I am proud of that.  I just kind of live how I feel like living.  Some days I feel more feminine than others, so maybe I'll wear tighter jeans on that day.  Some days I just want to be comfortable, so I throw on my jeans from the men's section, some boxer style underwear and a t-shirt.  I don't think "alright, today I am going to have a womanly apperance" or "today I am going to bend the gender spectrum a little and look more masculine."  I just live.  And Kate Bornstein clearly enjoys living without a gender, and that's cool.  But the whole gender workbook made too much of a deal that she was living outside of gender and we could too.  Isn't the whole point of gender is that we just do what we feel?  Why do we have to talk about it so dam much?  I understand it is hard, and maybe that's why she wrote the book - to help us.  But to me it seems unneccessary - I take into consideration that that might be because I don't want to live without a gender, so I compared it to something that I am.  If there was a workbook that helped me be gay, I would have thought it was really pointless.  There can't be exercises to help me live as a gay woman.  I would have thought it was patronizing for someone to sit there and give me exercises to help me.  I like that I had to figure it all out by myself without knowing one dam gay person to help me.  It sucked - it was hard and I was confused, but I did it.  And I feel like the gender spectrum should be the same way.  I didn't read Kate Bornstein's book on suicide, but I had parts of it read to me and flipped through it.  I feel like if I was a teenager who wanted to kill myself, I would have hated that book.  So many of us were depressed teenagers, so if I read something that listed different things I could do instead of killing myself complete with little symbols of how hard it was going to be - I would have been pissed.  I would have said that she didn't understand.  The only way to get over depression is to do it yourself.  The only way to be comfortable being gay is to do it yourself.  So my thought is that the only way you can be comfotable in your gender is to do it yourself - workbook not needed.

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