So much for high ambitions and a burning interest in a subject. Since I first had the idea of beginning a second blog focusing exclusively on everything hermaphrodita (spell checker informs me there's no such word but who cares?) I've been a bit stumpt. There's so much. There's so much I've read and thought and imagined I simply do not know where and how to start.
The real tricky thing is how to tackle this without anyone being hurt. I can play, as I do in Second Life at being a herm, but when I log out my problems end where far too many people experience the opposite... their pain begin. Maybe I should make it clear for myself and everyone else that anything like a 'perfect' hermaphrodite doesn't exist. There's plenty of fuzzy gender identities and mind/body 'discrepancies' which together with the question of sex, as in having a nice time with someone *winks*, becomes a pretty potent brew of human despair.
I'm finding that the more I read and look about, the subject I want to touch is not just 'my' kind of hermaphroditism'. The subject flows out from one pixel doll to encompass every aspect of genders, from biology to the relationship between them.
Where I thought this would be a gradual 'unfolding' off a journey, this will be a scrap book of bits and pieces as I find them and they grab my mind.
Below is the last sketch I made of my pixel doll from a few days ago, btw, just because...
To give today a little bit more of a body, I'll post on some stuff I did in support of equal marriage rights for homosexual peeps. There's a awareness charity project gathering momentum in Second Life, Stand4Love, doing just that. The impressive, if not overwhelming support it has gathered this far, suggests there's a large grass root support for this. Yay for man kind! Go and check it out, it'll warm your cockles.
The original post by the avatar Frolic Mills I replied to can be found at Associated SL Press. The article and comments makes a hearty read.
As being what I am and having had the experiences I have had, I can't but put myself completely behind Stand4Love. Personally, I believe that the discrimination against homosexuals is nothing but misogyny and actually about women. Anyway, this was my comment that flesh it out a little:
"Interesting article Frolic and an interesting argument that health concerns would be behind this discrimination. I don’t know anything about that one so I can’t comment on that specifically. I would, however, like to add another concept – POWER. The greeks didn’t create their sexual liberties, it would have been something they inherited from the more peaceful and fertility focused bronze age of the european Great Goddess before them. The greeks stands as the turning point, like some kind of birthplace for the western patriarchy and the beginning of the subjugation of the feminine, not only of women but also of men’s ‘inner woman’, making the western world ruled by the male ego.
As far as I have understood it, it’s the terror of a man turning into a woman by being used by another man more than anything else that’s behind the current homophobia. It would sort of be the same as a white woman being with a black man in the US up to recently, it would degrade a superior being, i.e. white person, to something less… and, more horrifying, empower an inferior. The same stigma does was of course not attached to a relationship the other way… a white man could have a black woman… since the power relationship was kept intact. I’m not american so I can’t say if it should be a ‘is’ rather than a ‘was’ above.
I find further support for the ‘power theory’ in the cruel but apparently valid ‘fact’ that it’s straight men that rape other men, never gay ones, and it’s always an act of punishment and ESPECIALLY as an act of DEGRADATION.
This deep misogyny doesn’t stop there, it’s rampant today and some really frightening things is happening even in the fashion world, both in FL and in SL, not to speak of our wider society. I agree with the cynics that claim that the sort of ‘gender equality’ that exists today is nothing but the means to claim taxes from women, too. *Deletes a long paragraph on the subject*
The gender issue extends to the homosexual community as well. Why, if all are equal, is it necessary to have special terms that separate female homosexuality from male if not to make them different somehow? Lesbians have suffered less than gays. Lesbians after all only need a real man to sort them out, no? A good humping will cure them. Homosexual women’s do not threaten the male ego so they’ve been tolerated, with the emphasis on ‘tolerated’. Their right to marry is fully dependent on homosexual men’s right to marry, however, because there’s where the crux is.
It’s a lie and illusion to think of the western mind as being the fruit of a long upward evolution and that we only have a little bit further to go before we can liberate the rest of the world from the primitive darkness. Go and visit a village in Papa New Guinea and western ‘man’ is shown as the weaker individual, both mentally and physically. We’re the product of a long degrading process that started with the greeks but, hopefully, will find it’s end today with the shattering of the suppressive dogmas of christianity and corporatism that’s in full swing."
As last thing today, below is my contribution among the many, many contributing:
