Gender Bender

My mother raised me to be a feminist; she couldn't have imagined doing it any other way. Because of her, I never needed to date perpetually masturbating bad boys, pile on gooey make up and tight clothes to sell myself, or be ashamed of my intellect. She taught me to think, and be real.

I'm not an incredibly brave person, but in some things my feminism is like breathing. I can't imagine confining my daughter to pink and dolls; I can't imagine being confined to the kitchen, or anywhere else to please a penis-centric view of reality. Ever so often, women with half a brain and a functioning clitoris — who choose to live a life of controlled indulgence — get straddled with the onerous burden of having to constantly prove their social chastity and non-whorishness. But the truth is, we make history or it makes us.

While it is true that feminists have created a vast myth about a wholesale female oppression that now dominates popular perception, it is undeniable that the anger and frustration which drives feminism's history is legitimate.

God no! I don’t hate men — far from it! I adore them, their effrontery, their emotional ineptitude, their sinewy bodies, the way their minds always function sans their heart, the way their sweat smells after a work out, the way they make love brutally, everything. But, I do despise the glory of masculinity built on a superstructure of a woman's comfortingly vulnerable feminity. It’s like bunjee jumping with a safety net. How much fun is taking a leap of faith from a comforting womb-like platform?

I say this truistically and without a hint of retribution — I will not be confined, restrained or repressed. Men I love will not manage me dictatorially, but I will continue to love them with a smug grin. I do not need to be tamed, or softened, or rebuked or calmed down. What I need is change. Change requires a moral vision of the world as it should be; a vision that is, by definition, exclusionary.

To state one's dreams is to implicitly criticise and negate the opposing vision of others. I will pen my own utopia.