Open thread, Jul. 04 - Jul. 10, 2016

MrMind

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If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.

Notes for future OT posters:

1. Please add the 'open_thread' tag.

2. Check if there is an active Open Thread before posting a new one. (Immediately before; refresh the list-of-threads page before posting.)

3. Open Threads should be posted in Discussion, and not Main.

4. Open Threads should start on Monday, and end on Sunday.

What I find interesting are people who "break out" of their gender-roles only to fall into conforming strictly to whatever the new one is: boys wearing skinny-jeans and deep v-necks and girls wearing their grandfather's shoes (or ones they bought at a thrift store) and carrying a briefcase. In a sense, a man wearing women's clothing isn't that much different than him dressing like a goth or a punk. Gender is just the last of the great wearable ideologies to have been opened up to being monkeyed with. But we've now reached the point where we seem to have already entered a post-gendered and weirdly more ideologically driven world of cultural symbolism in which it is important to be seen to be breaking gender conventions (transsexualism, metro-sexuality, men's make-up and skincare, and the skinniest skinny-jeans you have ever seeny-seen). So, in a way, the more radical act has become to rationally accept the chains by which you are fettered and break out of your comfort zone by staying exactly where you are.

Or, you know, find other gender-related things to not accept. When I was looking for a copper rod (to cut into some pieces for electron microscopy), the sellers looked at me like I was weird or something. Later, the guy who cut it for me didn't want my money on account of me being female (but I threw it at him and escaped). And before that, the lady in the pawnshop where I tried to pawn it to get some urgently needed money to commute to work, was completely thrown (I guess they didn't want copper much). All of these occasions were rather outside my comfort zone, but I do not see why I should not have done it.