Time for word association club diamond in the rough housing project school yard football pigskin
This "post" is actually here so that I can retrieve it at school and print it out.
Our assignment is a top-10 word association with Sex and Gender, each rated from -10 to +10.
GENDER
Washroom/Space (-3): The first thing in my head was a washroom door, then two, with the man/woman sign. Dividing gender by space conjures up feelings of exclusion, and images of conservative religious custom.
Politics (-3): Politics, especially social justice politics, make me both interested and nervous. I grew up in the United Church, and found its emphasis on social justice, when combined with my anxieties about religion, god and death, to be a source of insecurity.
Roles (+3): I was surprised by my positive reaction, but I suppose that I like studying and questioning gender roles so that they're more a target of my curiousity than discomfort. I often transmute or mask my discomfort in this way: a common habit, especially among people like myself who are gifted and/or have been raised in the professional class.
Studies (+4): My interest in gender probably stems from the contradiction that lies between raised under the doctrine of 'gender is an obstacle and illusion,' while living in a world that takes it as a pillar of society. "Studies" as a plural feels professional, but "study" feels like forced work and drudgery.
Categories (+5): While I feel that gender categories may be ill-advised, this is outweighed by the satisfaction I find in sorting things. "Categories" reminds me of the word-game "Scattergories."
Trans (+6): This label makes me feel bold but wary when I apply it to myself in private, and trepidatious when I apply it to myself in public. I feel bold because I'm pleased, and even proud, to be dealing with a serious issue. Otherwise, I'm interested in the implications of transgenderism, but scared of the social consequences.
Rigid/Confining (-8): My mother taught me that gender roles were unnecessary limits imposed from without and within. My personal experience has cemented this.
Bullshit! (+2): Sorting through my own gender issues, I realized that my experience of gender roles being unwelcome intrusions, might be due not to a my 'enlightened' mind, but to my experience of feeling miscategorzied. Still, vehement opposition to gender roles is a handy ticket in academic circles.
Society/Anthropology (+2): I'm interested in the idea of gender as a function of social order. At the same time, I'm intimidated by, and skeptical of, it.
Reconcilliation/Reassignment (-3): Sorting out my own gender issues is trying and scary: the option of self-redefinition is a mental strench and a ray of hope, but its potential social and economic consequences are scary.
SEX
Touch (+10): I like touching and being touched: shaking hands; hugging; cuddling; even sitting on a packed bus. As a child, I was encouraged to cuddle. My cuddling habits draw positive comments from friends and lovers.
Kinky (+8): My ex felt that I had kinky instincts, and my kink experience has been almost entirely positive. I feel some residual phobia though, and worry about others' misconceptions, especially among the progressive circles I esteem.
Consensual (+4): The consensual is our safe default. I live in a world that prizes written contracts, and romanticizes handshake deals. I also acquired the academic set of ethics through school, with its emphasis on informed consent.
Non-Consensual (-8): Only two yars ago did I see how the threat of sexual assoult shapes our society: in how woman strangers want more distance at night, or alone in a closed room; or in how the threat of prison rape keeps me from breaking some laws. Kink(y sex) often plays at non-consensuality. I feel it's wise that people have this safe, codified avenue; but I worry about condemnation, even from within the kink community. One can be sexed non-consensually: read, embodied or even surgically altered as one or the other or neither gender against one's wishes.
Together/Unity (+8): The idea came first, then the word. My spiritual (and perhaps political) beliefs centre on dissolving ego boundaries and I have extended this to sex, likely through my culture's notions of 'making love.'
Toys (+5): Postive peer feedback makes it easy for me to feel that toys are a fun and healthy part of sex, but I have trouble shaking their seedy image.
Dating/Orientation (+6): The idea that came to mind was roughly the rituals that make sense of the social aspects of sexual behaviour. We romanticize the dating ritual. I'm not sue why "orientation" came up in conjunction.
Biology (+5): I've heard that "the story of biology is the story of sex." Thus, biology is a source of intellectual inquiry into sex cushioned by the safe and certain trappings of material studies. Our culture's fixation on objective facts equivocates the scientific with the certain, and the material with the static. Organisms can be categorized as sexual, or non-sexual; people are sexed according to biological signs: chromosomes; primary and/or secondary sexual characteristics. We are fed biology as destiny: its only change lying in the befoe-time of of evolution; the creation myth behind the status quo.
Hormones (-4): I learned the word "hormones" in association with teenage ("mis")behaviour associated with puberty: excess sexual expression, mood swings, pretention at adulthood etc.... Hormones have since become biochemical intruders; agents whose presence or absence trigger bodily and psychological changes without one's consent. That said, they can also stand as medical control over one's own body.
Embodiment (+6): Sex is a part of the body. Having (good?) sex is being in one's body. Being in one's body is right, even spiritual. The concept of actively being in my body is a new to me. The term "embodied" also smacks of spirit affixed to, bound in, flesh: the body is both a source of staibility for and a dead weight to the incorporeal. This comes to me from my interest in parapsychology, which in part grew out of my dissatisfaction with the metaphysics I felt to be lacking.
Our assignment is a top-10 word association with Sex and Gender, each rated from -10 to +10.
GENDER
Washroom/Space (-3): The first thing in my head was a washroom door, then two, with the man/woman sign. Dividing gender by space conjures up feelings of exclusion, and images of conservative religious custom.
Politics (-3): Politics, especially social justice politics, make me both interested and nervous. I grew up in the United Church, and found its emphasis on social justice, when combined with my anxieties about religion, god and death, to be a source of insecurity.
Roles (+3): I was surprised by my positive reaction, but I suppose that I like studying and questioning gender roles so that they're more a target of my curiousity than discomfort. I often transmute or mask my discomfort in this way: a common habit, especially among people like myself who are gifted and/or have been raised in the professional class.
Studies (+4): My interest in gender probably stems from the contradiction that lies between raised under the doctrine of 'gender is an obstacle and illusion,' while living in a world that takes it as a pillar of society. "Studies" as a plural feels professional, but "study" feels like forced work and drudgery.
Categories (+5): While I feel that gender categories may be ill-advised, this is outweighed by the satisfaction I find in sorting things. "Categories" reminds me of the word-game "Scattergories."
Trans (+6): This label makes me feel bold but wary when I apply it to myself in private, and trepidatious when I apply it to myself in public. I feel bold because I'm pleased, and even proud, to be dealing with a serious issue. Otherwise, I'm interested in the implications of transgenderism, but scared of the social consequences.
Rigid/Confining (-8): My mother taught me that gender roles were unnecessary limits imposed from without and within. My personal experience has cemented this.
Bullshit! (+2): Sorting through my own gender issues, I realized that my experience of gender roles being unwelcome intrusions, might be due not to a my 'enlightened' mind, but to my experience of feeling miscategorzied. Still, vehement opposition to gender roles is a handy ticket in academic circles.
Society/Anthropology (+2): I'm interested in the idea of gender as a function of social order. At the same time, I'm intimidated by, and skeptical of, it.
Reconcilliation/Reassignment (-3): Sorting out my own gender issues is trying and scary: the option of self-redefinition is a mental strench and a ray of hope, but its potential social and economic consequences are scary.
SEX
Touch (+10): I like touching and being touched: shaking hands; hugging; cuddling; even sitting on a packed bus. As a child, I was encouraged to cuddle. My cuddling habits draw positive comments from friends and lovers.
Kinky (+8): My ex felt that I had kinky instincts, and my kink experience has been almost entirely positive. I feel some residual phobia though, and worry about others' misconceptions, especially among the progressive circles I esteem.
Consensual (+4): The consensual is our safe default. I live in a world that prizes written contracts, and romanticizes handshake deals. I also acquired the academic set of ethics through school, with its emphasis on informed consent.
Non-Consensual (-8): Only two yars ago did I see how the threat of sexual assoult shapes our society: in how woman strangers want more distance at night, or alone in a closed room; or in how the threat of prison rape keeps me from breaking some laws. Kink(y sex) often plays at non-consensuality. I feel it's wise that people have this safe, codified avenue; but I worry about condemnation, even from within the kink community. One can be sexed non-consensually: read, embodied or even surgically altered as one or the other or neither gender against one's wishes.
Together/Unity (+8): The idea came first, then the word. My spiritual (and perhaps political) beliefs centre on dissolving ego boundaries and I have extended this to sex, likely through my culture's notions of 'making love.'
Toys (+5): Postive peer feedback makes it easy for me to feel that toys are a fun and healthy part of sex, but I have trouble shaking their seedy image.
Dating/Orientation (+6): The idea that came to mind was roughly the rituals that make sense of the social aspects of sexual behaviour. We romanticize the dating ritual. I'm not sue why "orientation" came up in conjunction.
Biology (+5): I've heard that "the story of biology is the story of sex." Thus, biology is a source of intellectual inquiry into sex cushioned by the safe and certain trappings of material studies. Our culture's fixation on objective facts equivocates the scientific with the certain, and the material with the static. Organisms can be categorized as sexual, or non-sexual; people are sexed according to biological signs: chromosomes; primary and/or secondary sexual characteristics. We are fed biology as destiny: its only change lying in the befoe-time of of evolution; the creation myth behind the status quo.
Hormones (-4): I learned the word "hormones" in association with teenage ("mis")behaviour associated with puberty: excess sexual expression, mood swings, pretention at adulthood etc.... Hormones have since become biochemical intruders; agents whose presence or absence trigger bodily and psychological changes without one's consent. That said, they can also stand as medical control over one's own body.
Embodiment (+6): Sex is a part of the body. Having (good?) sex is being in one's body. Being in one's body is right, even spiritual. The concept of actively being in my body is a new to me. The term "embodied" also smacks of spirit affixed to, bound in, flesh: the body is both a source of staibility for and a dead weight to the incorporeal. This comes to me from my interest in parapsychology, which in part grew out of my dissatisfaction with the metaphysics I felt to be lacking.