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I understand what everyone is saying when I say "do what you feel!"  People respond with "but how do you know that it is what you feel and not what society is making you feel?"  My response is that society is what you makes you feel everything!  You grew up in such a world that constantly influenced your mind.  It isn't possible to look at "what you really want" without society because you are a product of your experiences.  My giant question is why is this bad?  Yeah it sucks if your whole life you have felt like a man, but in a woman's body and everyone you have ever known is telling you that you must act like a woman.  But that's when you go out and find a support group or other people like you and you realize it's okay, you get strength and then you follow through with how you felt.  Society isn't just bad.  Society isn't just telling us to be perfect WASPs who are straight and marry perfect men.  Bryn Mawr, for instance, is part of society.  And we accept all kinds of genders and sexualities and religions and races.  It is a society and it is positive.  

I feel like living is comprised of meeting a lot of different people, reading lots of different things, and going lots of different places and picking up parts of other people along the way.  You aren't you by virtue of just you, you are you because of all the people you've met and places you've gone.  So you take all that, and you pick up things you like in people or whatnot, and that becomes you.  That's just the way it is.  It isn't bad.  I came to college a lot different than I am now.  I wore skinny jeans a lot and tight "fashion shirts."  I had my hair in an actual style.  My thought before entering college was that I would try to "look nice."  I did for a while, but then my friends became people who like to wear jeans and t-shirts.  I started dating a girl who likes loose jeans and tie-dye.  So I started adapting what I liked in what other people wore, and now it's what I wear.  But it's like like "shit, what I'm wearing isn't what I really feel like wearing, it's what society is influencing me to wear."  No, I like it a lot.  I know this example was very superficial, but thats how I think about all things in life.

You don't have to deconstruct social constructs to be happy and to be you.  You just have to be a part of the society that you like.  If you don't want to live by stereotypical female roles, then don't participate in a rich suburban lifestyle with cookie cutter houses.  Enter into some weird radical cult like movement who has spiked hair and doesn't believe in driving cars.  There are so many niches in society that we can fit perfectly into.

That's why those exercises didn't seem that helpful to me, especially the meditation one.  I know I was supposed to be fascinated by a world where if I wanted to change anything at all, it could happen.  I could represent myself physicaly anyway I wanted and anything could appear or disappear by my whim.  Coming back down to the real world was supposed to be disappointing, but really, it wasn't.  I don't feel constricted.  I don't feel repressed or unhappy or bounded by society.  So I guess this is my real question, do you guys?  I'm not trying to sound like an asshole in all my postings or in class, I guess I just don't get it.  It's not that I'm not self-reflective, I think about the world and myself all the time.  But when it comes to my physical form, my gender expression, or anything along those lines, I feel free.  When I came out and my mom told me that the world is always going to push me down and it will be "so much harder."  I laughed and said "let them try!"  In my mind we are all free.  Especailly here at Bryn Mawr, we can be whoever we friggin want to be.  And if we can't express that, I don't think it's social constructs that are holding us down.