Gender Benders
David Bowie. Boy George. Eddie Izzard. Quentin Crisp. Nicky Wire. Antony Hegarty. Most of these men are household names in the United Kingdom. And they all have one thing in common: they’re ‘gender benders’. Whether it’s by style, mannerism or personality, they as androgynous symbols challenge the gendered norms assigned to society.
On the Defense
I recently had a discussion with some fellow students about Diversity at Laurier. I write that buzzword with a capital “D” because I truly believe that at Laurier, we strive to respect and honour the diversity of our student body – the many paths each of us took to get here, our backgrounds, our unique experiences.
Saint Clitoris
The clitoris is the only sex organ who’s only known function is the experiencing of pleasure. Clitoris derives from the Greek word kleitoris, which means ‘hill’ or ‘slope’. It receives its name from the manner in which it slopes upward in the shaft and forms a mound of spongy tissue at the glans.
Seeing Red
My religion professor asked us to write 1500 words on the role of suffering in our lives. The paper is due next week. I’ve got more words than that just for the suffering I’ve endured this week. To start off with, I’ve got cramps that could take down the state of Texas.
Let me explain something to you: I am a transgendered male going without hormones, and there is no pleasant, red-lipsticked lady following me around throwing supplies at me to help me with my monthly gift.
I Refuse
“I am a man”…the quintessential definition that seeks to describe the essence of my sexual orientation and definition, and yet what does that actually mean? What does it mean to be a “man” or “male”? This is not some concrete, value-free, precise definition or a rigid binary of which a polar opposite is to the other side. Nor is this a definition that may be easily passed off, and have no consequences whatsoever.
Witch Rave
I walk just behind her into the forest. Her tangled black hair looked like a Value Village wig – long and straggly in the back, short and choppy in the front. There are places on her skin where you could see actual dirt. There is a ring of grey residue around her neck. She has some missing teeth, and those left were yellow as a harvest moon. Her eyes are glittering. I can tell she’s really psyched to be inducting me tonight.
A Subway Exchange
A dark night, probably around 1 o’clock. You’re sitting in a subway car that’s mostly empty. You and about seven other people commuting home from whatever, wherever. It doesn’t matter, as long as you get home soon, exhaustion is setting in. Walking for dozens of kilometres does that to you and the fast food “nutrition” you ate earlier didn’t help, just ebbs away the pangs of hunger eating at you.
The Sexual Paradox: An Outsider’s Perspective
Two things I am not are a scientist (in the literal sense – I hold science itself in the highest regard) and a feminist (too much baggage). Fortunately, one need not be either to see the flaws in Susan Pinker’s 2008 book, The Sexual Paradox: Extreme Men, Gifted Women and the Real Gender Gap, in which Ms. Pinker explains away today’s gender gap as an artifact of human evolutionary biology, using her experience in psychology as a starting point. Raise your hand if you detected the problem with that last statement.
Evening on the Ground
A man and his son are working in the woods when a woman of divine beauty appears before them. “I can grant you long and happy lives if you promise to never tell anyone of this encounter,” she says. The man decides this sounds like a good deal, agrees, and the woman disappears.
Dedication
We’d like to dedicate this one,
this one here,
to you.
To you, the daughter whose childhood is an entire spectrum of pain, and who endures both tortuous abuse and harrowing neglect because they are indeed the same evil.
Skin
In the undoing sliver of a glance
or by the wholeness of your hands
against my kindling skin,
you ignite me.
GENDER & SEXUALITY for the understanding of
Through laughter we attempt the disarmament of another person, bringing a casual air to the conversation, and breaking down the threat of something new and unfamiliar. But laughter can also be the destruction of a new idea. They laughed. At anyone who suggested a world outside (or inside) our perception of the existing, that which we have convinced ourselves is truth and knowledge, fact and reality, and therefore unquestionable. They laughed. When the unquestionable was questioned. They laughed.
Dress Codes
What is gender? What is sexuality? There are no real answers to these questions, except for the ones we find in existing cultural conceptions. Indeed, gender and sex are situational and periodical social constructions. The definitions of what makes a ‘woman’ and a ‘man’ are changing, they are not true but based on a collective agreement from the majority and/or the influential parties of a society and are maintained by those same parties.
Eroticism
Most of us have heard that we are sexual creatures from birth. But too often we hold ourselves back from fully expressing ourselves sexually. Why is it that we do this? Sex and eroticism is something that comes by us naturally. Is it because we are shy about our bodies, or that we are ashamed? Or is it because ever since we were little, eroticism and sex were seen as evil and taboo concepts?
Whatever You Feel
While I was in Montreal this summer, I was at a music festival at a beer tent when I was asked what my sexual orientation is. Try to imagine this from my point of view: I had known this person for all of two weeks when she asked this. She has kissed my face prior to this conversation, which struck me as odd. It would seem that kissing my face and me kissing back would be a clear indication that I wasn’t gay. The response to this is where I’d like to start your understanding of what this piece of writing is supposed to be about.
Knocked Up
I never thought it would happen to me. It took my girlfriends, at the time, to convince me to take a test because I was in denial. My instincts were right, and now I’m sitting on a toilet seat staring at the positive sign.
What did I get myself into?
Purity
The silk, smooth to the touch.
The softest I’ve ever felt.
Pure beauty radiating outward.
My fingers drinking in every sensation.
More, I long for more.
Children Of Piraeus: Never On A Sunday
From my balcony I send,
One, two, three and four kisses to the world,
Over the docks of Piraeus fly,
One, two, three and four seagulls, I am told…
Allow Me To Be Blunt
“The girls are crying and the boys are masturbating”…
No one says it better than Amanda Palmer. I am, however, hesitant to truly want to see the reality in that line, but I can’t deny how well this summarizes our narrow perception of gender, relationships and sexuality.
Lesbian
I heard them muttering my name before I even entered the gloomy cafeteria, a place where I once found refuge among friends when times were tough and school seemed to be too much. Now, it was the one place at this high school I despised. If I could, I’d avoid eating just to escape the entrapping grey brick walls that the cafeteria provided. It seems like anything is better than facing the truth. But this is everyone else’s problem now, not mine.
A Night of Sex, Drugs and Spray Tans
After a bottle of pre-drink Jaeger, a couple cups of sugar-free Red Bull, and the first couple drinks at the bar, I’m asked if I’m a gay boy. Honestly? I’m drunkety-drunk, I’ve had a long week of Laurier bullshit, assignments, classes with excessive and annoying student participation, and a lot of rainy weather. And I’m at Phil’s, where fucked-up goes to pass out. When I finally get out to Phil’s at the end of the week, don’t bug me about my sexual preferences.
I Wanna…
I wanna kiss you, I wanna suck you, I wanna fuck you.
I don’t wanna miss you anymore.
I wanna see you burst into our room,
I wanna push you down onto the bed,
I wanna jump on top of your head.
I wanna kiss your entire body,
I wanna put myself inside of you,
I wanna rub myself on you, all over you.
