Gender Identity

There are days I'm happy to be a woman...and then there are other days, when I wish I'd been born with some different equipment. Then there are in-between days when I can cast an objective eye over the whole gender issue and think, "It doesn't matter what sex I am. It matters who I am." Today is one of those days. Now, I hate sweeping generalizations, probably because I'm always the one bucking the trend. Notice how long it took me to get MSN, when a new survey has found that something like five-hundred million people have been using it forever. Just got it like seventy-two hours ago, after much persuasion, and the selling point for me was that my friends were forthrightly ignoring my emails. All these things people love so much - The Da Vinci Code, Harry Potter, reality TV - can't stand them. Can't stand them because they intrinsically suck (no offense intended to anyone who likes the above-mentioned items), but partly, I admit, because everyone else likes them. I just hate following the crowd. That's not to say I'm an outright rebel - just that if something is overly popular, it loses some of its appeal to me. That said, I enjoy many things that are totally mainstream - my music tastes, I've been informed by my mosh-pit inhabiting underground emo-rock drummer younger brother, is appallingly commercial. "Mandy Moore? You're joking, right?" he asks me, walking past my computer and hearing I Wanna Be With You blasting from the speakers. I'm a mass of contradictions. All right, that long interlude was just to say: modern gender roles are such that what it means to be "male" or "female" is completely up in the air. Having said that, however, there still seem to be some stereotypes regarding the sexes that refuse to die. It's these stubborn convictions that make me want to say "I am woman, hear me roar" on some days, and wish there was a "man in the mirror" on others.

I enjoy being a girl...
1) ...coz I don't ever have to "be a man" and all that implies.
2) ...coz society allows me to cry.
3) ...coz if I get bored of pants, I can wear skirts.
4) ...coz if I get bored of skirts, I can wear pants.
5) ...coz with the proper technique, a woman's pleasure can last for hours.
6) ...coz I can get away with acting helpless.
7) ...coz statistically, I'm gonna live longer.
8) ...coz I can talk openly about my feelings.
9) ...coz I can be openly affectionate.
10) ...coz even though I'm not pretty, I'm still able to talk my way out of lots of situations by acting naive.

...but sometimes I wish I were one of the boys...
1) ...coz I wouldn't have to "be a lady" and all that implies.
2) ...coz I could make the first move.
3) ...coz people wouldn't assume I was helpless.
4) ...coz even if I swore like a truck driver, no one would say, "That's unladylike."
5) ...coz people always assume women's anger is a product of PMS, thus, devaluing our rage.
6) ...coz I wouldn't have to invest my emotions in a relationship if I didn't want to.
7) ...coz I wouldn't have to talk everything to death.
8) ...coz I wouldn't do heartbreak.
9) ...coz statistically speaking, I'd be less likely to be robbed or killed in dark alleys.
10) ...coz I wouldn't have a period!

Final thought: We're more alike than we are different, opposite banks of the same river of life.