Day 9 - Gender
Four years ago rageprufrock began the first 14 Valentines and she spoke of how women are praised in song, worshiped in poetry, and derided in culture. She spoke beautifully and elegantly of women, comparing our bodies to luminous flowers. She spoke of the state of women, and the need to remember what we go through, what women throughout the world suffer through.
We are daughters, sisters, mothers, and lovers. If we choose, we can bring life into world with our blood and nourish it with our bodies, but the world that we helped create, that women have bled for and fought for and cried for, doesn't recognize us. Our history is one of abuse. We are not safe.
Women suffer from domestic violence and rape. We are devalued. We are taught that we are lesser. There is still so much work to do, so much for us to accomplish.
Women are being killed the world over, suffering from infanticide, dying from lack of medical care, killing themselves in the fight to be what society tells them they must. One in three women will still experience sexual assault in her lifetime. So much has changed and so much has stayed the same.
Forty years ago we declared that Sisterhood is Powerful, and it still is. We must remember that, must continue moving forward.
It's 2010 and we've come so far, but there is still more work to be done. We deserve better, and we can do more. We're strong. The next fourteen days is meant to remind us of that. It's our time to take back our bodies.
V can stand for vagina, like Eve Ensler's groundbreaking monologues. V can stand for violence, under whose auspices all women continue to make a home.
V can also stand for victory.
Gender
I don't really have an essay for today, to be totally honest. This, more than any other subject on our list, is the one that I feel the least qualified to write about - the only thing I can feel comfortable sharing here is my personal experiences.
Two years ago, I was firmly in the camp of ignorance concerning trans and genderqueer issues. I honestly thought that if you hadn't been born in a woman's body, you couldn't understand what it meant to be a woman.
Today, I realize what an absolutely ignorant ass I was in making that judgment. I am so far from the arbitrator of what being a woman means and is that it's almost funny - in fact, none of us are the arbitrator or dictator of "being a woman". Gender isn't that simple, it's not an if-then equation: there is no if you have a vagina, if you have the correct chromosomes, if you grew up as or with XYZ, then you are a woman. It simply doesn't work like that.
One of my goals is to learn more about the variations and shading of being a woman, and what that looks like. It's my goal to keep an open mind and to learn from those who know more than I do, either from studying or from life experiences. I think it's especially appropriate on this particular subject, and I would humbly suggest that we can all always learn more.
The International Foundation for Gender Education is an invaluable resource for those of us who are still learning about the spectrum of gender expressions. "IFGE promotes acceptance for transgender people. They advocate for freedom of gender expression and promote the understanding and acceptance of All People."