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Gender and me

Posted on April 30, 2024 by Minna Hong • 0 Comments

I don’t get gender. I fully acknowledge this is a me-thing as most people seem very wedded to their gender, but let me break this down. And I mean this is the most real, non-sarcastic way. I know how it sounds and that it may seem like I’m throwing jabs. I truly am not.

Here’s the thing. As I understand it, gender is currently not predicated on genitalia, but on how you (general you) identify, gender-wise. For trans people, this seems to be that you don’t identify with the gender into which you were born, but the other (binary). But some people also think that being nonbinary is also being trans.

At any rate, one of the tenets of feminism is that you can be anything you want as a woman. You don’t have to be stereotypically feminine, but you also don’t have to reject things that are stereotypically feminine. I actually have a quibble with this because it has gotten to the point that anything done by a woman is a feminist act, and I am not down with that. You can decide not to fight the sexism in an individual situation, but that doesn’t mean some things aren’t objectively sexist.

That’s not the point of this post, though, so I am going to move on with difficulty.

Well, no I’m not. Because it’s part of the point. I don’t understand why we have to use genders at all. K and I have talked about this at length. She thhinks that within our lifetime, we will resort to using they/them for everyone. And within her kids’ (the ones she teaches) lifetime, gender will be done away with completely. Her kids think that in her lifetime they/them wil be used for everyone, but not the latter.

I think they/them might become the default, but probably not in my lifetime. Then again, marriage equality took much less time than I thought it would. I remember roughly five years before it happened, I was saying to K that it would happen in my lifetime, but probably not for another twenty years. Then, after intense debate, it suddenly happened in a very short amount of time. Frankly, my head was spinning at how quickly it happened beacuse I was hunkered down for a knock down, dragged out, kick-you-around fig9ht.

I’m reminded of those early days with gender identity and how fast it’s been evolving. I was reading a post on Ask A Manager* from 2019 that had to do with gender and sexism. Basically, an older woman was tired of being called ‘young lady’. She politely told a service worker why she did not want to be called that (sexism as part of the reason), and the comments were wild. I don’t want to get into them too deeply because the wildness is not why I’m musing on this post.

Mary, Mary, most contrary

Posted on September 19, 2022 by Minna Hong • 0 Comments

I am not a contrarian. Not deliberately so, anyway. I know that my mother believes I do it on purpose, but I really don’t. It’s not like I wake up and choose violence. I don’t think, “Hm, what is the most contrary position I can take?” and then voice that.

My mother once said to me in exasperation, “Something isn’t bad just because it’s tradition.” To which I replied, “That doesn’t make it automatically good, either.” She did not like that. At all.

It’s true, though. Just because something is tradition, it doesn’t mean we should keep doing it. I don’t see anything wrong with questioning something in order to time-test it. If it’s good, then continue to do it. If not, then let it go. I don’t think that’s controversial, but I know it is.

The biggest examples in my life are having children and getting married. Let’s add to that being in a long-term hetero relationship. Let’s lump all that together under the umbrella of family shit. I knew since I was young that I was going to get married to a man and have children. My mother made it very clear that it was my duty as a woman to have children and to take care of my husband. In the other order, actually.

When I was 22, I was madly in love with my boyfriend at the time. We were talking about having children and I realized that I did not want them. At all. I cannot tell you how great that felt. My heart lifted and I was free! I didn’t have to have children. It’s still the best decision I’ve made in my life, by the way.

Along with the biggies, though, there are the more medium choices that I’ve made that are weird. Like my hobbies. Taiji isn’t weird in and of itself, though it’s less popular in the States than is yoga. I had to Google that because while it feels true, I didn’t know for sure. Roughly 2.5 million people practice Taiji in America versus 37 million people and yoga. So, yeah, I was right. Taiji is way less popular, which is of no surprise to me. Hm. Another resource says 3.7 million practice Taiji in America. At any rate, it’s roughly 1/10th the amount that practices yoga or less.

I can only guess that those who study Taiji weapons is even less. This makes it a very niche hobby, which isn’t surprising to me. I did not choose it because it’s the lesser-practiced meditative practice, but it’s not surprising that I’m drawn to it in part for that reason.