Happy International Women's Day :)

I'm proud to be a woman.
I'm proud to be a feminist.

But I'm proud to be a human.

I'd like to be a person first, before a woman.

I believe the concept of gender to be socially constructed.
I don't behave, say or think certain things, or do certain things because I have a vagina and breasts, and the whole shebang.
I behave the way I behave, say or think certain things, and do certain things because I am a person with my own characteristics, idiosyncracies, needs, desires, ambitions, history and experiences. Because I am a person in my own right.
I would like to be a person first, before a woman.

My vaginal-ownershipness doesn't, I believe, affect me as a person personally, internally. BUT it affects what the media tell others to believe about me, and even about themselves. It affects how some people behave towards me, even what they think about me, how they judge me.

Traditional social conventions - such as opening doors for women - are examples of how my vaginal-ownershipness affects the behaviour of other people towards me. Penis owner sees me approaching a door, social conventions tell him to open it for me. There's nothing inherently wrong with this course of action, on face value, and I can't be arsed right now to go into the nitty gritty of it, but the point is, that my gender here affects other people's behavioural responses, and of course it isn't personal to just me.

My gender affects what people think about me, and how they judge me, because they compare my actions and words to stereotypes. (Of course, I'm sure not everyone will, especially not if they know me well.) These thought processes are learnt through several different agencies: our dear old friend the media, and (neo) traditional views. Sometimes it comes in the forms of "jokes". This is similar to the Labelling process in education - according to interpretivist theory - whereby teachers make a quick assessment and labels a pupil, according to the teacher's own middle class views, and thus every action and word the pupil will do or say will be judged according to the label given. For example, a pupil who has been labelled as hard-working forgets their homework, teacher says "O well, make sure you give it in next lesson please", while a pupil who has been labelled as a delinquent forgets their homework, basically gets a bollocking because it's seen as laziness and a shit excuse.

And so, despite being proud of being a woman and a feminist, it would be nice to be a person first.





P.S. On a totally unrelated subject. I got my Mussolini paper results back. I got two marks off of a B, and to be quite frank I'm bloody amazed, considering I had quite the freak out! However, although it is a (flattering) reflection of my performance of the day, I feel I am a candidate of higher calibre, and so will be re-sitting. :) Wasn't half as bad as I thought it'd be!!!