"Boxes"

This post started out as something entirely different. I just started typing one night, and it became more of a journal entry than anything else. The majority of it didn’t make its way to the blog, because it just got really messed up where someone else would probably have to be inside my brain to understand what the hell I was talking about. So these are the more coherent parts of that day. Please keep in mind that yes, I am aware of what an egocentric, selfish piece of writing this is.

I think I feel compelled to at least pretend I like one gender, one sex or any gender or any sex to feel socially acceptable. No one believes the asexual person exists. I think people would easier believe that I have some kind of supposedly “perverted” fetish rather than accept that there’s a strong possibility that I may just be asexual. Another perspective... I’m bisexual- repelled by all sexes, all genders. But by god, I better find a label, a box, an identity quick. (I feel like its playing musical chairs or something, and everyone sits down in their space while I’m standing there, wide-eyed and thinking “oh shit”. Everyone has their label but me; I’m just kind of floating here.)

Society is pretty damn insistent on putting us in multiple boxes, demanding that we check male or female; man or woman; single, divorced, married or common-law; straight, gay, (bisexual and/or queer if you’re really lucky to find that on paperwork). And it’s not just our families, friends and partners that want to know this stuff, it’s every single god damn form ever filled out. Banks, school, doctor’s offices, surveys, driver’s license, birth certificate, health cards, insurance information, tax forms, job applications, scholarship and awards committees, blood and organ donor information, flu shot forms, and passport officials, just to name a few, demand to know what our genitals look like. I’m going to assume that this is not vital information to any of these people. Possibly your doctor, but it’s really bizarre for other people to need to know what we look like naked, in order to obtain a license or get into school. Why even bother with the boxes and demands to know about other people’s bodies on something that is so clearly not even a little bit related to sex? I’d say “just ignore the box”, but most places won’t let you do that, you must label yourself or be labelled. And so often it’s just two measly choices. Male or female; you must pick one or the other. There is pressure there, but I think that it would be better if we recognized that gender and sex are different things entirely. People wouldn’t demand to know our sex on forms if we just eliminated that part of the form. But then we’re still left with gender. Is that anyone’s business? I’d say it’s more likely than sex to be relevant to everyday life -what gender you identify with (if any) brings social definition to your life and interaction with others. (That doesn’t mean people have the right or privilege to make it their business.) We’ve constructed gender as being a prominent identity in our society, and getting rid of it entirely won’t happen. Some people even like identifying with a gender, but I do wish we could casually opt out of the gendered society without repercussions from our peers and institutions we rely on. I wish we could disconnect the correlation society made between sex and gender. Instead of making more and more boxes to “accommodate” to those who don’t fit in the two given, we could disassemble the boxes entirely.