Section 9

The concept of labeling is a really tricky one, and from what I am reading in the blog, enters our lives really early on-- preoccupying us, making us worry, distracting us from schoolwork, and so on. We feel that it's just 'how our minds work'. Does that suggest we are hard-wired, a code in our DNA? Our brain really is a set of compartments? My brain is tired already, from a 20 years worth of compartmentalizing and separating, dividing and figuring out opposites.
It's been a long time assuming everything is in direct opposition to something else, and must be aligned in correspondence as such and maintained that way for a long time, and on a daily basis. I do so in hopes that figuring out everything's proper place,will allow me finally to safely navigate the world.
I think many people feel this way, and spend many years adhering to rules for themselves. Societies spend centuries putting unimaginable time and effort into separating complexions, ages, genders, and even the most trivial of things. But year after year, it becomes more obvious that almost every single claim one makes in favor of seperatism, any hasty generalization about a group, is flimsy and falls apart.
But the anger that erupts! People think that the key to feeling loved and respected, happy and healthy, is as simple as fitting into a compartment. When the expectations fall short, as they often do, and you know you did everything you can, and still you are hungry or lonely or guilty or diseased, it is hard to resist blaming the shortcomings of other groups. If a woman cannot make a man feel loved and respected, because he is ground to dirt at his job, he might beat her. If a man is black and encountering prejudice at work, the chance that she will be able to fulfill her role and muster up enough strength to provide enough tender care and emotional healing necessary to counteract his hateful experiences at work, and the frustration of knowing he cannot escape due to his race and class. These tasks are too monumental, especially if she is herself working and tired and in need of some healing. The repercussions go on and on, the couple cannot provide enough love for their children and elderly, and lose familial relationships. The existence of gender roles is a clue (or, indeed, a symptom), I think, of hardship in our society.
People struggle with these compartments and labels because they often do not serve us in the ways that we want them to. Like Andrea said. Nowhere is it clearer than when we examine our own sexualities. The Queer community "is unified only by a shared dissent from the dominant organization of sex and gender" ( L. Duggan, textbook, 213). What is so funny about this, you ask? why am I laughing? No wonder Queer Nation prefers this term to a long list of
 LGBTQRETPOCX.... etc. The list basically includes everyone except those people that are of the belief married, man-woman penis-vagina missionary position sex is the only PROPER way to express your sexuality.
And that is just strange to me, that 'the norm' is the vast minority of individuals.