[Kobi]

It was interesting to reread this thread. It was interesting to discover I even posted in it way back when.

It has always felt odd to me to have to quantify and qualify the person and woman I am. I never aspired to be anything other than a female and a woman.

It was very clear to me at an early age that their were distinct differences between how males and females were seen and treated in our society. Yet, there didnt seem to be words for this until I was in my early teens. When I found the womens movement, back in its infancy, it was an aha! moment for me. Finally there was something that spoke to the person and woman I was.

It bothers me, to this day, when I am referred to both within and outside of our community as a masculine woman. I dont see myself as a masculine anything. I see myself as a woman who has always aspired to things that have traditionally been seen as the perogative of the masculine members of our human species.

I never sought to be masculine or to emulate masculine. I sought to redefine and expand female and woman. I am pro-female not anti-male.

It bothers me when I am not seen as a female in my own community or when I have to qualify it. It bothers me when I address something that is uniquely female i.e. pms or hot flashes and my words are judged to be sexist. And, that the words are seen as sexist based on how my identity is perceived.

Yet, I often have to do a rethink and reassess when I see something that strikes me as sexist or perhaps disrespectful to women because of how I perceive the id of the person posting it.

And, I always have to be mindful that what I might see as disrespectful to women may not be what another woman sees as disrespectful.

Complicated stuff. To me, the patriarchy is so ingrained in us through our socialization, the messages are so insidious and so pervasive that it is very difficult to not internalize this stuff to some degree. Thus, a single event, thought, word, action can be experienced in a multitude of ways depending on who is interpreting it using what filters in what context.

I dont know if I can explain this very well but I also see patriarchy steeped in binary concepts which extend throughout much of what we experience. We can talk about breaking out of the binary but can we? Is it realistic?

We talk about a spectrum but the spectrum is based on variations within the binary i.e. male-female, masculine-feminine, butch-femme, ying-yang, femaleid-maleid. The binary is the frame of reference we work from. We can modify it but can we break free from it?