Meem

Many demand and demonstrate for political reasons, social and civil rights, the right for a free choice, the right to be protected against discrimination… However, how many would go as far as to demand for the right to choose your sexual orientation? Very few. How many would go as far as to demand the right to decide of ones physical gender? Even less. Why?

The answer is, as always, very complex, but it could be resumed to the concept of security. Stereotypes are a source of social security. If you are willing to sacrifice something for your group then you will be rewarded with a status inside that society. But what seems to me to be a paradox is the hierarchy of our values.

When you are a child they tell you to preserve yourself from harm (eat your vegetables, stay away from electric wires, knives…), to be active and successful (do your homework, get good grades, be pretty…) and to be socially successful (be nice, take care of your younger brother, go to the grocery shop…).This seems to be all what matters to the point where it becomes legitimate to believe that this is ALL that matters. So let’s call these three rules that represent ALL that matters, let’s call them: the trilogy that matters.

Unfortunately there seems to be other unspoken rules that no one bothers to mention and that we all seem to be capable of guessing. Such as for example girls don’t marry girls, or maybe, girls don’t play with trucks and girls can’t be directly strong they need to canalize their strength through other means, such as getting a male protector, or getting what she wants/needs by crying… Of course she should cry when she can’t get what she wants, that’s what girls do, right?

Wrong! For some girls it doesn’t work that way, for some girls crying to get what she wants is an insult. Of course her parents and family friends will congratulate her for being a tough girl but would they still be congratulating if she refuses to wear pink because it’s too girlish? Probably not. They MIGHT find it funny… for a while but eventually, every woman must go into order and resume her role in this great society to which she owes so much. Because she was born with a vagina she cannot find anything too girlish, because she has a vagina then she is at the feminine pole of gender and anything girlish is perfect. Now of course, I expect some people to suspect generalization in my statements, and of course I do realize that there are parents that are supportive and that wouldn’t oppress their daughters that way. But how many are there? And most of all, if the girl’s family belongs to this category, what about the social pressure she is under? Of course one should only care about what they believe is right, but it’s a sort of snobbery to believe that we can easily detach ourselves from social pressure.

So… Hypothetically speaking, what if this girl takes it a step further, what if she says that people are wrong? What if she decides that being a girl doesn’t mean she can’t love, date and marry a girl?

If she does that, then she has broken a HUGE rule! Ok she did not break any of the trilogy that matters, she could be a healthy girl that doesn’t smoke, never does unsafe sex or ingests dangerous substances; she could be very active and successful making more money in a very difficult field; she could be very socially successful accumulating hordes of friends that would die just to hang out with her… But all that ceases to matter. She could marvelously respect the trilogy that matters but the lowest lives in this society will be better than her fore she has broken the unspoken rules that state that she has a vagina, she must be what other vagina-equipped individuals are.

Though no one can tell her why she must be like them, everyone knows that her sins and unforgivable. You see, people are shocked from girls like her. She seems to refuse the general truth. Since it comes so naturally for 90% of vagina-equipped individuals to fit those unspoken rules, no one can understand why a small fraction refuses to do the same. They don’t understand it because they speak the logic of numbers, if 90% says this then this is the truth.

Of course we can understand that they can’t relate to our image of the world, after all we don’t want them to be like us. No, not because we fear competition, but simply because in our “choice” of sexual orientation there is no “choice” and in their “choice” of sexuality there is also little choice. W don’t choose these things, a lesbian that doesn’t sleep with girls is a lesbian none the less. Our tendencies and desires are simply our nature and our nature is the expression of life’s diversity. Yes, you could call it biodiversity. And if you ask any naturalist biologist s/he’d tell you how crucial biodiversity is for nature. We are crucial to humanity, because we are different, so to all conformists I say:

The only rule in nature is that there is none. You are abnormal for trying to impose any.

Pazuzu