Yeah, I’m a guy. And a gal. Why can’t I be both at once?

I have tried for quite some time now to try to conceptualize my gender identity. I have rejected many paradigms, but have yet to settle on one that feels right.

In some sense, I am both male and female. But, that makes me two people, and I’m not really, am I?

To the extent that I feel that doing things as a woman that I don’t allow myself to do or feel or be as a man – things like feeling sensual or emotional, being attracted to men, dancing alone at a club – the obvious fact is the I am doing them as me, whatever that is.

Perhaps I am neither. But that just doesn’t feel right. It is hard to fathom having neither gender when it seems so much further removed from my reality than being both genders.

Perhaps then, I am beyond gender? It takes a bit of hubris to believe that gender rules simply don’t apply to me, especially when I wouldn’t go so far as to suggest that society should abandon the concept of gender.

But, perhaps I should…

What purpose is served by splitting people up into male and female?

The thing of it is that it is relatively rare to find a person who doesn’t naturally conceive of themselves as one gender or the other. The rules come later. Is that nature or nurture? Obviously I don’t know.

But, for those of us who do deign to consider the possibility of dumping the concept of gender altogether, where does that get us?

Perhaps it just gets us to a place where people are what they are, and if they like pink and baking cakes and want to rule the world and be in charge in their personal interactions, it is all good.