Much has been made on the subject of marriage. What is the definition of a marriage has dominated the American psyche for the last three presidential election cycles. Whether you think marriage for one man and one woman does not really matter to me. What I am doing is rejecting the tradition of marriage outright. It is a relic of the Dark Ages that establishes property be it real estate, spouses, or children. The time has come for society to evolve into a more perfect union of love without the histrionics of entitlement and ownership.
What is a man? What is a woman? These questions are irrelevent in new millenium. Gender and Sex are not bifucations. These are over-simplified terms meant to set up very harmful dichotomies under which you are either a man, a woman, or none of the above. The majority of what we think of as male and female are societal constructs. It is a new millenium and it is time we started waking up to that fact.
In her groundbreaking work, Anne Fausto-Sterling originally proffered five sexes. There are genetic males and genetic females, but there are also hermaphrodites. Haven't you ever stared at someone and wondered if they were male or female? Saturday Night Live had Pat, the gender-challenged character for several seasons. Androgeny is more common than you might think. Fausto-Sterling suggests that there is a large group in the country that are actually Intersexed. They carry both genetic and physical characteristics of both of the traditional sexes; thus creating at least another category.
In the past, doctors have tried to surgically alter the Intersexed to look more like one or the other traditional genders. I am sure you have heard of someone saying they always felt like they were in the wrong body. Well, they quite possibly were and our limited acceptance of what gender is forced doctors to choose one gender over the other when assigning a baby a new gender. The wingnuts will not like it, but that means their god makes "mistakes" leaving the entire question of what is gender and sexuality up for debate.
Fausto-Sterling originally proposed that there were five sexes. There are the true males, the true females, the true hermaphrodites or herms, and two others designated merms and ferms. Merms and ferms suggest that there are two sexes that possess physical and genetic characteristics of both traditional sexes; however, they have a majority of one or the other making the mostly males, merms, and the mostly females, ferms.
So, you find yourself wondering what this has to do with progressive politics and electing Democrats. Well, this is one of the issues that should be on the forefront of our society right now. How best to fight the argument that marriage should be between one man and one woman? Get society to realize that that is only forty percent of the options available and that it excludes more than it includes. Of course, we don't have any true statespeople anymore. We have cowering politicians that vascillate with the polls. We have to wonder when our Dorothy will stand up to the Wizards of the pulpits and expose them for what they truly are. Until that time, we need to educate as many people as possible that they are ignoring an entire group of human beings by simply putting on the blinders of gender and sexuality.
http://www.neiu.edu/...
http://frank.mtsu.edu/...
Key Terms and Concepts:
Sex vs. Gender—
Sex: A biologically based designation generally linked to either phenotype (how something looks) as manifest in the external manifestation of genitals or to genotype (what the genetic code says) as manifest in XX (female) or XY (male) chromosomes. This classification can become problematic when phenotype and genotype disagree, or when the phenotype is ambiguous.
Gender: A social identification with maleness/femaleness and/or some position along a gender continuum. Gender is often socially attributed to and expected of persons exhibiting particular phenotypes. How one comes to identify as a gendered individual, however, is not always directly correlated to either phenotype or genotype. Individuals whose gender identification differs from that which is socially proscribed by their phenotype may feel the effects of social sanctions and pressure to conform.
Transgender: A term used to describe individuals who identify with a gender other than that socially proscribed by their phenotype. Transvestites and transsexuals and intersex individuals may or may not identify as transgender.
Ferms, Merms, and Herms: Terms coined by Anne Fausto-Sterling in an attempt to capture the experience of individuals born with an ambiguous phenotype. Herms are genuine hermaphrodites, and possess one testis and one ovary. Merms and Ferms posess the gonads indicated by their M/F designation and some aspect of the other sex’s genitalia, but not their reproductive structures. Fausto-Sterling now posits that even these designations are inadequate to capture the true range of individual experience.
Doing Gender: The ways in which we enact gender roles in ways that reinforce and reproduce them as normal and natural and promote an understanding of gender as "naturally" equated to phenotype and genotype.
Ideology of Patriarchy: structural dominance of men that is built into the institutions of society." Patriarchal systems value "masculine" attributes such as competition and control more than "feminine" attributes such as collaboration and cooperation.
Hegemonic Masculinity: An ideal notion of men and masculinity as embodying particular characteristics such as strong, independent, rational, and heterosexual. This ideology of masculinity gains hegemonic force when men adopt a belief that to be a "real man" involves embodying these characteristics and not others. This, in turn, reinforces the dominance of some men over others, makes some feelings and behaviors acceptable for men and other unacceptable, and reinforces an understanding of "maleness" rooted in its opposition to "femaleness."
From: http://www.colorado.edu/...