07 April, 2004 - 12:19

"it seems to me that being gay/lesbian/bisexual or queer is becoming more of a highschool or rotary club than anything else. there are all these terms to know, all these appropriate ways to act, all these sensitivities to mind"

Who is forcing it on you? Some people need to categorise in order to heal from the structures that have been forced on them. We grew up with pretty well educated parents, small-L liberal ideas and open communities. There still exists a necessity for some people to identify with something. The whole idea that gender doesn't exist as we've known it for a thousand years is hard to erase from our collective consciousness. It's totally up to us to be critical and sensitive to these new gender attachments in order encourage a sort of cultral revolution within from and without of those categories. Without "gay male" culture we wouldn't have the vibrant leather community and without "lesbian" culture we wouldn't have the proliferation of gender-bending burlesque.

It's all a process to introduce change, as well as a means to escape the iron cage of gender that the vast majority of people still experience. For those of us who have experienced some form of auto-emancipation, great. But, refuting the historical necessity of those categories is just another form of heteronormative backlash from which we are all seeking emancipation.