Are sexuality and identity a matter of categories?

"You can paint me any colour

I can be a Russian doll

But you ain't got my number

No, you can't make me small."

"Can't Pin Me Down" - Marina And The Diamonds

I don't really like the word "transgender." It's me myself who says I'm one, but every time I say it, hear it or think about it, whether it's about me or about any other trans person, it pounds a strange alarm inside my head. What are we? we're boys or girls, depending on our """""choice,""""" but, why does it seem as if we were the only ones who had to """""choose?""""" Do cisgender people go through gender identity crisis or do they just assume what they want to do and who they want to be through stereotypes related to their genitalia?

At some point, thinking and talking openly about these things becomes spiky, because it comes up obvious that everyone feels radically different things, want radically different things and have radically different life aspirations... Bearing that in mind, do all those tags really make us have something in common? Do I feel the same way other trans women do? Might I just have any idea of
how a trans man could feel? What makes us a common community? Just a tag?

Don't get me wrong: I know being united is important. The sense of the existence of these community is rather a matter of visibilization, I'd say. It's about people asking each other "what's the T in LGBT?" and getting to know we exist. That's why it's worth it to make it LGBTIQDA and whatever gets discovered outside what is strictly cisgender-hetero rather than making it shorter. But that's not the topic I want to deal about now. The thing is, what makes us L, T, B, Ψ or whatever we are?

In order to classify human beings, society appears to take into consideration three factors:

• Biological sex. Basically, our genitalia, and nothing further than that. Inside the binary system, we use male and female as classificatory words.

• Gender. What we are, what we "identify as." This should be thousands of times more important than biological sex when it comes to treating a person in a certain way, but, sadly, it appears as it isn't. Inside the binary system, the words for gender are boy and girl, or man and woman.

• Sexual orientation. What we want to... "sleep" with, whether it's men, women, children, dogs, cars, food, whatever. As of 2015, it's far more visible as a possibility of difference than gender, which is normally assumed to coincide with biological sex. The problem with classifying sexual orientation is that, as humans, it's very unlikely that our sexual likes are fully related to the sex and gender of our viable sexual mates, meaning that while it's normal that we have some preferences, it's most likely that we'd like a little percentage of the "other thing."

And even if we ignore the last sentence, it's easy to realise there's a huge black hole within this as a rigid classification: actually, we cannot say all humans are "men" or "women" without especifying we're limitating to the binary system; if we look at intersexuals, "male" and "female" suffer from the same lack of ability as classificating words. This comes to mean that while biological sex is unavoidable, the connotations we give it aren't, meaning that there isn't really a necessity for a male person to behave in a certain way, and the same would apply to females and intersexuals.

Does this mean that every cisgender straight person in the world is in a mistake? Well, the thing is, no but yes. People should live any way they want to, even if that means being a macho or a femme fatale or whatever, but that shouldn't mean they stick their heads into stereotypes and stop living other kinds of life that could help them grow as human beings and make them know a little bit more about themselves. This would also imply the existence of female machos and male femme fatales, among other things.

Don't get me wrong, though: I'd love to make my nails, dye my hair, shave and wear nice clothes, and, actually, transition. Yeah, I feel it's something I need because I'd feel much prettier for sure. The thing is that society would probably never considerate me a "true woman," since I wouldn't be able to, for example, have children, and I wouldn't even have periods. Bearing that in mind, why would I ever need the word "woman" in my life? What does it really mean? Is it any better than "man?" Of course it isn't, it's just different. Then, what makes it needed in my case? I mean, it's a matter of identity, of course, and I'd probably be offended if I was taken as a man by everyone systematically, but, what makes me want the word so bad?

... Society?

Parted oranges rot before finding the other half

"Love is cruel

When you realise that you give your life

To someone who has given up on you."

"Blindfold Me" - Marina And The Diamonds

(Some statements respond to a mindset I don't share anymore. I, a year later, am truly disappointed at the version of me who wrote the second half of this post.)

I don't know about others, but I can't help to wonder if what I feel as love is the same another person would call "love". Do we all feel the same or do we just call them the same because we're taught to? Are we taught to demonstrate love in certain ways? I can't help to feel that the relationship model we're constantly being shown is all but assertive or healthy: are we meant to be emotionally dependent on our significant other? Is it normal or should we do something about it? Are we meant to expect them to feel the same kind of dependence on us? What does this lead to?

Many people within Queer Culture theorize about the artificialness of monogamy and romantic relationships, some reasoning about natural instincts on both biological sexes involving looking for different sexual mates when necessary without it affecting an emotional bond between two human
beings. While most people agree they've felt an emotional bond of the kind throughout their lives, some have reticences when it comes to its evolution and duration.

The most assertive theory seems to be that while love has not got a caducity date, it does change and evolve within time. It seems to appear as sexual, animal and irrational but evolve in time towards a more pragmatical state based in respect and mutual support and understanding. However, this transition seems to be a catastrophic disaster for some couples, making them insecure, unhealthy and unstructured due to a failure on making this change.

Okay, end of the mostly-objective part. I know my opinion is certainly unpopular, everyone has theirs and it's okay, but I have to say it. This is what I was thinking of during the reading of the reader of this year. The book, in case you don't know what I mean, features a character who cheats on their spouse and forsakes their family. This, for itself, is bad, but I couldn't help justifying them: even though they didn't appear through most of the story, they were simply the perfect example of victim-blaming for me; we, as readers, lack information about this character: there were probably conversations prior to the happenings between them and their spouse regarding relationship problems and lackings, but we don't question that, we just assume and blame this character for pretty much everything that happens later, because we see it all through the [ignorant and naïve] main character's scope. The most funny point of our beloved sorry-but-I-was-born-last-week (a.k.a. SBIWBLW from this point on) main character is that they refuse this character to "buy" them but SBIWBLW (and SBIWBLW's mother) openly accept total maintenance... but it's okay, because none of them is an adult man, who are clearly pure evil, so it's not hypocrisy.

Okay, I might have been a little mean to our common pet-SBIWBLW, but... seriously. At least he evolved somehow, and he had some good points. But this just made me really angry. If someone does something really bad to me but then shows real regret and will to retake a relationship with me I don't connect with the shortest responses possible like I was a f[...]ing autist. However, the very end of the book seems like a little bit of a forgival so we'll forgive SBIWBLW a little bit as well. But just a little bit.

To read more from me about this topic, check my last year entry "Why do men cheat on women?"