Again with Gender

In my Women's Studies class last term we talked a lot about gender identity, and here we go again!
Only this time it's not as depressing.....this time it's just very fascinating. I love being enlightened :).

On the discussion board for this class a lot has been said about many perspectives of gender and sexuality. That, combined with the reading my wheels are really turning.

My "issue", if I should even call it that....
I'm accepting and opened to homosexuality but as I admitted on the board - people who indiscriminately experiment with their sexuality make me a bit uneasy. By that I mean, people who are not actually gay, who decide to "be gay" and then go back to the way they were....like that actress....I can't think of her name but she is that blond actress who lived with Melissa Etheridge for a while then next thing ya know she's dating some guy. What's up with that? Maybe I'm not getting it? In the grand scheme of things does it matter that I don't get it - I am on the verge of being old (something funny: a fellow student mentioned that people who were born after 1980 are more opened about their sexuality and it was like a slug in the gut realizing that people born after 1980 are actually sexually active! God I feel old....). But back to what I was saying...I am not sure I can handle all of the experimenting out there - maybe I'm just too old to get it.

But what the first chapter taught me: sex is biological, gender is not. I think I understood that on an intellectual level but wasn't able to express it. I also learned that there is a strong movement for intersexed people (people born sexually ambiguous or with both sex genes) to accept themselves as such and for the public to accept them so that they don't feel compelled to go under the knife if they don't chose. Knowing a man who was born outwardly a woman, and now finally being freed to live as he felt inside - I feel good about this movement in society. It's not an easy challenge to be born with and we all need to understand it more fully.