Living in mainstream culture

For those who live in mainstream culture, those who make decisions in line with the majority or cultural expectation, you may feel that tolerance, acceptance, and rights are something for those on the fringes of society to fight for. I feel this way at different times. It takes a lot of energy to embrace new concepts and open one’s thinking. It is hard to believe or agree with statements such as Leslie Feinberg who writes:

Your own choices as a man or a woman are sharply curtailed [when transgendered people are oppressed.] Your individual journey to express yourself is shunted into one of two deeply carved ruts, and the social baggage your are handed is already packed.

It makes sense on the surface but it is easy to take a “so what?” attitude. The ideal may be acceptance for all people but it may not feel like it is worth the energy, time, and effort fighting for others would require. The more comfortable one is in society the less they have to deal with failing to meet other people’s or cultures expectations. Expectations seem to be at the heart of issues of gender and tolerance. As a society we have silently agreed to accept that the sky is a color we call blue, that boys wear the color blue, that boys play with trucks and wear pants, and that boys grow to be men. Feinberg is pointing out that we fail to blur the lines of the norms we have created. We fail to embrace the intersectionality of the components and parts of identity that create each unique person. The ramification that is being asserted is that this desire to live with norms in societies hurts all. Even those that choose to live within gender roles held as ideal.
What is created with norms is the standard and expectation that each person will live up to an image that is asserted and associated with the roles they choose. Looking at it this way it is clearer why expectations, norms, and intolerance hurt us all. These things create boxes that each person is pigeon holed into. Even the woman who chooses to have children, wear dresses, stay at home, suffers under the expectations that go along with those choices. Extending this further these choices are not given the respect and admiration that they deserve. All choices should be seen as courageous. Even these women who are fitting the norm are diminished when we feel that of course they would make them, or that they are doing what they should. What we miss is AUTHENTICITY! When people make choices in lone with who they are and there mosaic of characteristics that make up their identity they are to be revered. It is no different for the “masculine female” a term Feinburg utilizes. The fact is that normative choices are seen as expected and non-normative choices are seen as threatening. To be on either end of the spectrum is to not embrace the person for who they are. Creating a society where all choices and expressions of gender or intersex are accepted creates a space where all people are valued. And that is where we should all want to strive and fight to live! I like Susan Stryker’s comment when asked to normalize the word Queer. She states:

…I don’t think any two people are the same about much of anything. The deeper and more intimately you know another person, the stranger they become. Which I find beautiful.

Let’s create a world where this beauty can flourish and unfold!