Tag: gender issues | A Banana Peeled

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Let’s talk about gender, part two

Posted on August 25, 2025 by Minna Hong • 0 Comments

If I could live in the ideal world when it comes to gender, I would not mind being a woman. I would be ok with being called ‘she/her’, and I would accept it as an incidental part of me. I would shrug and say, “Yeah, I’m a woman,” without it being fraught with so many hidden (and overt) messages. It would be an interesting tidbit without it having any deep meaning because that’s how I view my gender.

Even when I considered myself a woman, it wasn’t that big a deal to me. Not in a ‘I wish I weren’t one’ way, but in a ‘I don’t really think about it’ way. Of course, that’s not possible on a daily basis with how deeply sexist/gender-hyperaware this society is, but if I was left to my own devices, I would shove it in the smallest corner of my mind and go on with my life.

In yesterday’s post, I ruminated about how identity is not stagnant, and I have no isuse with mine changing over time. It’s hard in this society, though, because people are wedded to the static idea of who a person is. You see it in the celebrity world all the time. If someone declares something about themsleves, say that they are gay–then that is what they are forever and ever. And forget about being bi.

Cynthia Nixon got in some hot water a decade-and-a-half ago when she said that she chose to be in a gay relationship. She later clarified by saying she was bisexual by birth, but she had chosen to be with (and eventually marry when she could) another woman.

That’s how I feel about being bisexual, too. Yes, I was born into that, but it would be my choice who to date. The difference is that I’m aromantic and don’t really feel the need to be in a romantic relationship. Nor limit myself to just one. Which I don’t talk about, either, because it’s not really relevant to my life right now.

I felt empathy for Cynthia Nixon when she got shit for what she was saying, but I rejoiced when she elaborated by saying that she had chosen to be in a gay relationship, and why shouldn’t that be celebrated? I’m paraphrasing, obviously, but it’s how I feel as well. I get that back then, we did not want straight people to have any weapon to use against us, but I think it’s a folly to be so concerned about being acceptable that you cede too much territory.

Two seeming opposites can both be true (at the same time), part three

Posted on August 23, 2025 by Minna Hong • 0 Comments

I have one more post in me about opposites being true at the same time. Here was my second post about it yesterday, in which I wrote mostly about what it was like to grow up with an undiagnosed (likely) neurodivergency. Specifically, autism. It wasn’t even an acknowledged thing when I was a kid. In fact, I don’t think I heard about it until I was in my twenties. I know I knew it existed in my early thirties because I saw it in my nephew when he was young, and I noted to myself that his behavior was very similar to my brother’s, who I had pegged as autistic several years before.

Hm. which seems to mean that I knew about it in my late twenties. It was a very rudimentary knowledge, though. “Something that boys have. It means they can’t look people in the eye; can’t feel emotions; don’t want to be touch; and are very set in their ways.” Even though I was most of those things, the factt that it was only seen as a boy thing made it impossible for me to have. I also thought it meant that you were out of control with temper tantrums, really loved mechanical/technical things, and that you could not relate to people at all. These I could not relate to at all because I had all that drummed out of me at an early age.

What I mean is by the time I was ten, I knew better than to talk back, state my opnion, or do anything that was deemed unladylike. It didn’t always stop you, mind, but I was painfully aware of how short my leash was. I was not supposed to talk too loudly, shout, climb trees, run around, sit with my legs uncrossed, or showing any personality in any way.

Both American and Taiwanese cultures had definite ideas of how a girl should be, and while they weren’t completely the same, they were both pretty restrictive. This was my first remembered time when two opposite things were both true–though I did not recognize it at the time.

I prayed to a god I didn’t believe in to make me a boy, but I never wanted to be one or thought I was actutally one. I just didn’t want to be a girl because it seemed so unappealing to me. So I guess it’s not a question of two opposites being true, exactly, but that I learned at an early age that I didn’t want anything to do with gender.

I will do a post on that soon (more than one, probably), but this is not that post. This is just to say that I learned at an early age that while I did not feel like a boy or wanted to be one in particular, it seemed preferable to being a girl.