For those not in the know last week I got a day of work and ended up teaching sex ed.
Yes, yes, when you’ve finished laughing hysterically…
A sample of the questions Year Sevens (kids aged eleven/twelve) ask in sex ed lessons;
‘How do two men have sex?’
‘How do two women have sex?’
‘How does it feel to go out with a man and a woman at the same time?’
I’m so out of touch. Or maybe I just think I am.
Last NS stayed the weekend, I wasn’t the perfect host by any means but she isn’t holding that against me so far… Sometimes things just make me so happy. Last night’s moon and the way we saw it for one thing. This whole weekend really.
I’m moaning a lot about jobs recently, I will shut up about it. I’m moaning a lot about money too and I apologise for that. I’m focusining on the things I can’t do a lot and it bugs me, I suspect it is bugging a whole load of people as well but you’re all just too polite to mention it.
The best things in the world this weekend are:
Watching a red moon in a cold back garden with two friends
Seeing a beautiful woman smile
Unexpected hugs
Some days I also wonder what life would be like if I was a boy. I’m not sure I’d pull it off as well as being a girl, it strikes me as being much more difficult.
*boggles*
I doubt it!
More difficult? Hmm. Maybe sometimes. Other times, less so. Hey, it’d be cool to try out though. When I work out how to switch genders at will, I’ll let you in on the secret.
What, you mean you can’t already do that?
I think Weasel switches genders already. Switching sex is rather more difficult, and generally irreversible.
One day, the Culture will come for us. I live in hope. 😉
My Gentleman Friend thinks that gender is just a grammatical construct so changing it is irrelevant.
You, Lexie, on the other hand are sounding an awful lot like the Jellicle Cat.
Aye, as a linguist friend of mine was explaining in recent months, ‘sex’ is a word used in relation to physical qualities, whereas ‘gender’ is a grammatical term. Despite attempts by many people to use the latter in various other ways, these only seem to obfuscate and confuse issues, rather then clarify.
How you choose to act, of course, is up to you and your wyrd…just like how people choose to interpret your actions is up to them and their wyrd… ;o)
I dunno if gender is *solely* linguistic Jez. When I was running around doing my various courses, it seemed very much a conceptually based thing.
The phrase of ‘gender bending’ seems indicative of this – altering the boundaries of the conceptual notion of a particular gender.
Now, that said, an awful lot of our conceptualizations *are* based on language.
Personally it’s why I prefer the term ‘transexual’ to ‘transgender’ when referring to those who elect to undergo the physical shift through surgery and other methods. Of course, YMMV 😛
Good lord, I don’t think kids in Virginia would dare ask questions like that aloud in school. My sensibilities were just shocked (although it is refreshing to know those kids know so much already and aren’t afraid to ask questions). I remember getting in trouble for putting pecs on a shirtless guy in a picture. Apparently that level of art was beyond what they thought a 7 year old should draw.
I can totally see you teaching sex ed, that’s awesome.
How-do Cornish Chap,
I believe that ‘gender’ was a solely grammatical term for a long time, but that people have experimented with new uses for it since the middle of the 20th century. I have been genuinely interested in those uses, and debated different approaches with Mish and other people, here and elsewhere, as well as thinking about the matter myself.
Currently I am coming to the view that these more recent uses of the word are simply not very clear or helpful in any rational sense. It is possible that they can nevertheless be fun…if, for instance, people are prepared to take them in the same spirit as the classification system of zodiac sun signs written about in the daily papers.
Pulling it off is far easier as a boy than as a girl; boys get more practice.