About gender
I have never really understood the concept of gender, and I've come to realise this when I became older. I think that my lack of understanding gender stems in part from my parents. I've always had all kinds of hobbies, and I used to sign up for any kind of activity at school: basketball, dancing, pottery, drawing, tennis, roller skating... While practising these, I heard different types of comments like "Oh, why do you play basketball? That's for boys", "Dancing makes you much more feminine!", etc. At that time, I did not understand any of the things people said or what they even meant by saying that. The same happened with the clothing. I used to hate wearing dresses and skirts, and I always used to buy clothes in the boy's section without understanding why there were two separate clothing sections when everyone wore t-shirts and pants. I hated pink. At some point, I think that I became against everything that was associated with femininity and what being a girl was, but without realising it or really understanding it.
As the years went by, I started entering and discovering feminist circles and wearing dresses and skirts, "making peace" with feminine stuff. Realising that it didn't matter what I wore, I will always be me. Clothes did not define me. Well, actually they did, but they did not define how I felt, gender-wise speaking. Wearing a skirt did not make me less feminist; wearing pants or oversized clothes did not make me less of a woman. I wore (and wear) what I wanted and what I liked without thinking of what people might perceive me as.
I hate the gender binarism that society always tries to implement us. Girls and boys. Pink and blue. Girl's clothes and boy's clothes. Music for girls and music for boys. Movies for girls and movies for boys. Like, seriously, what the hell are you talking about? I'm 30 years old, and I swear I still don't understand it. And I thought this binarism ended at some point during those huge feminist waves, but a few years ago all of those ideas came back. And I hate to say this, but I kind of think it was because of the Barbie movie. Like, yes, even though I did not much like it by giving a very bold and mid-feminist view, people spoke about it. Although some type of """feminist""" era started: girl's era or whatever you want to call it. Women started using things like "girl's girl", "girl math", "I'm just a girl" and all those shitty trends that, at the end of the day, almost all of them stated that women are stupid and dumb. Or for some reason, that have a huge connection with capitalism. It really startled me how women using these phrases did not understand how stupid and misogynistic these sounded. And I'm speaking in the past, but some people keep using them these days, which I can't really understand why. We've come back 30 years back, it looks like all these years of fighting for feminism haven't helped at all, and we've fallen behind.
I do not understand what "movies for girlies" or "movies for boys" are. I'm sorry, but I find that stating that movies where women are the main characters "are for girls" and movies where men are the main protagonists "are for men" is kind of dumb. And, once again, binary. I love but also hate some of those called "movies for girls", and the same happens with the "movies for boys". Something really interesting happens in this case: some people use the two types to differentiate between a "cult", "intelligent", "dense", "gun" movie and a "fun", "colourful", "stupid" movie. Clearly you all know which one refers to which. And, once again, this category makes women the dumb and not intelligent gender. Bimbofication is a disease, like, of course it's okay to watch dumb and stupid movies, I sometimes LOVE watching those type of movies, but it looks like some people love bragging about of being lobotomized and love this new wave of anti-intelectualism. Damn, I hate it. I HATE IT.
P.S.: I want to thank my parents for always letting me take part in the activities I wanted to and for letting me wear the clothes I liked best.