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I keep finding out that things I didn’t know were gendered actually are.
A long time ago I went out to buy a wristwatch. I just needed a cheap digital wristwatch for a project I was involved in, so I got one of those little grey Casio numbers you all remember. It looked completely like any other digital watch, as far as I could see. Anyway, when I got it home, I discovered to my surprise that it was supposedly a “women’s watch.” How? There was nothing overtly feminine or masculine about it in any way. It was simply a digital watch. I suppose what this meant was that the band was a fraction of an inch thinner than its counterpart, but I am convinced literally nobody would have been able to tell that I was wearing a “woman’s” watch unless they looked at the packaging.
Another variant of this was a product from my childhood: Dreambuilders, “the building set just for girls.” As far as I could tell, the major difference between them and Lego was that they were pink. Nobody could ever explain what was wrong with Lego; as far as I was concerned, as long as you stayed away from the overtly martial stuff (and even there it was hard to take a laser death ray galactic warship staffed by little guys with perfectly circular lemon yellow heads and snap-on pants very seriously) , it was the most androgynous toy in existence short of a cardboard box, because you could build whatever you wanted with it. But apparently they decided it was imperative that we gender a one-inch Danish plastic block, and Dreambuilders was born.
Anyway, along the same lines, we now have Butch Bakery: Cupcakes for Men. I thought if there was one thing the genders could agree on, it was cake, but no. *sigh*
fabulousness of the week: A Toronto flamer dances through Eaton Centre on a grey spring day, to Robyn’s “Fembot.” Enjoy!
By the way, if you’re in Canada, check this out. NDP MP Bill Siksay has a bill coming up in Parliament to add gender identity and expression to the Canadian Human Rights Act and the Criminal Code provisions on hate crimes. The website has lots of suggestions about how you can get involved and help the bill get passed.
This post will be kind of scattered and unpolished, because I’ve been neglecting my blog for like two weeks, disappointing my immense legions of followers who hang from every word that drops from my perfectly outlined, naturally full lips. (okay, I’ll just stop.) So I’m going to just post it, and if I want to add more later, I’ll do a different post.
I don’t like carrying too much stuff in my pockets (it ruins the line of skinny jeans), so throughout my undergraduate career I used one of those black, heavy-duty cotton messenger bags, which I covered with buttons with all kinds of subversive and inappropriate slogans. (Sadly, the bag bit the dust some time ago, but I still have all the buttons.) I also had a similar but smaller bag with a shoulder strap that I used for going out, and a couple of other messenger bags.
From time to time I offhandedly referred to whatever bag I had at that time as my purse. I mean, it had my wallet, my keys, my cell phone, and whatever other crap I was routinely hauling around. And frequently I would get someone (men and women alike) who would reflexively correct me. “Your bag.“
“Girls can wear jeans and cut their hair short and wear shirts and boots because it’s okay to be a boy; for girls it’s like promotion. But for a boy to look like a girl is degrading, according to you, because secretly you believe that BEING A GIRL IS DEGRADING.“
- Ian McEwan, The Cement Garden (since quoted in a slightly more high-profile context)
