The cave of misconception.

It was Freud who once said "When you meet a human being, the first distinction you make is 'male or female?' and you are accustomed to make the distinction with unhesitating certainty. Anatomical science shares your certainty at one point and not much further", and he was right. He alludes to the grandest misconception of our times: that of gender and sex. Taken too often as synonymous for one another it leads to incorrect assumptions about our capacity to transcend sexual and gendered boundaries. Freud says it himself, "anatomical science": what he means is that your sex is physical, but your gender is not. He goes on to say, "make yourself familiar with with the idea that the proportion in which masculine and feminine are mixed in an individual is subject to quite considerable fluctuations [...] you are bound to have doubts as to the decisive significance of those elements and must conclude that what constitutes masculinity or femininity is an unknown characteristic which anatomy cannot lay hold of." There is a clear demarcation betwixt the two, and it is that which lays hold to this 'unknown'. Admittedly, a lot of Freud's work has been discredit as wrongly inferred, erroneous, or pointless - but the truth of the matter here is that most contemporary academics agree that the two are separate, disparate entities entwined closely together within the human body. The two are separate. It is not until we start to study the mental side of things that we can start to see how wide the gulf is between the two; even if they are inextricably linked. For instance, Freud also mentions how we transfer - incorrectly, perhaps - the masculine/feminine hybrid model of sexuality unto the mental side of things. Herein we find not only a sexual preference, but a mental one too: atrophied beyond all recognition and overlooked for centuries.

Sex is simple: look down at your bits. What have you got down there? If you've got a dick, you can (safely) assume you're a man. If you've got a vagina, you can (safely) assume you're a woman. Naturally, there is genetic variance -- hermaphrodites and the like, but on the whole this is a fairly safe and reasoned deduction. Your sex biologically dictates your purpose. I mean, when all is said and done, on a biological level at least, our goal is to procreate. We have been given the means and tools by which to do so, and we have been given the knowledge to do so. Evidently, biological purpose is entirely separated from any real-world goals you may or may not have; it thus intertwines with reality whilst remaining wholly apart from it. Biology fails to dictate a purpose for you because of the variance you can impose upon it. In terms of dictating your life, your gender is much more significant. We can - quite badly - alter our sex. It is unnatural, supposedly, and only to be done after deep introspective investigation; but to all intents and purposes we can change our sex. Does this not, in fact, allude straight away to the unimportance of your genitals? Our gender, however, seems intractable and unmanageable.

Gender is a complex web of connections, forged at such an early age it becomes hard to disentangle them. People argue that gender is chosen, or chosen for us, or innate, or performed. I am in the last camp (ha, that's what we call humour right there...). Gender is chosen only insofar as sex could theoretically be chosen with the right genetic manipulation (though I am unaware whether the science has yet achieved this, even hypothetically) - and gender is related to sex, even if it is on a much smaller scale than is presupposed by most people. Gender is chosen for us, again, only insofar as society has a dictate on your life. Gender is innate is a misconception, as far as I am concerned. Gender could be innate, but that would suggest precluding variance and people who are 'born in the wrong body'. Then again, that forges an incorrect link between gender and sex. Gender is more likely to be predispostional in terms of its inherent presence. Like being a fag. So, as for me, I believe that gender is chosen for us - and is thus performed. As Judith Butler, I see gender as a series of acts ingrained into our societal schemas so early that we become unable to disengage from them. When we are born we are forced immediately into a gendered camp: if you're a boy you wear blue, and for a girl you get pink. Instantly you are expected to live up to fallacious societal norm. Does not the fact that this is required for identification of sex indicate that perhaps gender is more androgynous then we suspect? Societally there is an immediate pressure to perform in a certain way, and this performance is not chosen by you because you are incapable of such an act, at such infancy. As you age, slowly, you become enmeshed further into these societal expectations: you become a ballerina, a dancer; or a football player, and a guitarist. You start to slot into these niches because that's all you have. When you reach adolescence you can start to question yourself, and who you are, and why you are; but in attempting to change the system, you become part of it: touting cliché as your basis and justification. Gender is learnt at the breast of your parents, at the teat of humanity; suckling on an nipple devoid of choice or deviation.

That is what I see gender as. A collection of acts which do not form a cohesive identity. I believe we have the power to change that, but we are unable to because of how society has been constructed. That is the crux: it is a gender construct; not a whole, not part of a whole, not separate or disparate or standalone -- constructed, piece by piece, from the ashes of your childhood. It is constructed because it is necessary to construct: genderless persons would be outcasts, shunted to the side of the norm; which associations could you make with a genderless person? What kind of roles would you be able to affix to their skin? None. It would be difficult, and we don't like difficult.

Sorry, earlier I was having difficulty couching my points in anything but the most arcane language. The point I am trying to make is this: if you can find a point at which you can hang gender on, then I reckon it's probably a societal demand. Dancing denotes femininity because society dictates dancing to denote femininity. There is nothing inherently masculine or feminine in anything, just connotations bred from ill-thought, a lack of due process, and a failure to recognise differences between gender and sex. The point I raised earlier about baby clothes: why does pink necessarily mean a girl? Is there anything to indicate that girls - and I mean gendered girls - have a predilection for pink? I mean, what is to suggest that gender can seek anything but the most mysterious -- none of this ephemeral stuff we lump upon it. Why do we have these labels if all we do is spend hours a day adding stuff to them until they become unrecognisable; eponymous only with bigotry and vacuous hatred? Foucault said the oppressed should use the oppressor's language to make them realise their stupidity; he would want the gender neutral among us (the minority) to take this barrage of ignorance and twist it to our own advantage. He would want us to revel in the blithe stupidity of labelling and misconception.

"You taught me language and my profit on't is I know how to curse. The red plague rid you For learning me your language."

Gender is not who you are; it's what you are. Sex is not what you are; it's what you have.