The other day I had what felt like a bit of an epiphany.

I've been thinking a lot lately about gender identity and what it means to need to express yourself in certain ways. In that context, I stumbled across a website dealing with androgyny, and found it quite intriguing. In my experience, androgyny has always been primarily a personal style, an external, perhaps even superficial expression of taste - albeit one I have always fancied; it had not occurred to me that it might also be a gender identity, one that encompasses aspects of both masculinity and femininity but has no particular affinity for either.

Well, I thought, perhaps that's me.

There is some evidence in support of this hypothesis - to wit: I have for some time now been dressing in what I can best describe as "pretty men's clothing", because it suits my body and my demeanour, and I feel comfortable that way. As a child, whenever I made up games with my brother or friends, my characters tended to be either male or 'tomboy' girls. I've always felt drawn to ambiguous-looking people, whether physically male or female; my own self-image doesn't seem to me to be particularly gendered, despite knowing that I am biologically female; indeed, there have been times when I've downright resented having girl bits (though what girl getting her first period doesn't, really?) and being admonished to behave in a 'ladylike' manner. Those who have encountered me only in online fora have tended to assume that I am male by virtue of my writing style. This doesn't bother me in the slightest. The first time I cross-dressed for a medieval event (one of the few places a woman can do this effectively, I might add), a friend remarked, "Wow, Sarah - you carry that off so well!" Even when I don a long, flowing gown to go to a feast, it still kind of feels like I'm dressing up as a woman.

So much for that. At this point I inevitably began the self-questioning that for me goes along with any such feeling of sudden enthusiasm - am I just trying to slot myself in to a pre-existing mould? Am I making a big deal out of something that isn't really that significant? I certainly don't want to be that person who's like, "Hey, so many of my friends are genderqueer - gosh darn it, I need to have a thing too!"

So that's kind of where I'm at right now. I'm still intrigued at the idea, still attracted to androgyny as a personal style, but I don't really want to leap in and claim it as an identity just for the sake of having one, of belonging to the growing numbers of people who are realising they don't fit neatly into the gender binary. I don't think I do, really - but why go to the trouble of putting a label on it and then conforming to the label? Isn't that just the same shit in a different bucket?

Part of it is that I don't really understand it when people talk about "feeling like" a woman, or like a man for that matter - but that may well be simply because I've never had to make the comparison - I certainly have no feelings akin to the sense of having the "wrong" body, as reported by some transgender folks. I've had no real issues accepting the fact of my body, even though it's treated me to my fair share of awkwardness and embarrassment - whose body hasn't done that? But do I "feel like" an androgyne? I honestly don't know.

Another, and perhaps more socially important aspect of my reluctance to define myself as a particular gender identity - no matter how attractive it might be - is the fact that I have, in general, never found that my biological sex has been any hindrance to my self-expression. Yes, there are some respects in which I openly reject femininity, but no-one seems to find that particularly troublesome. My experience would undoubtedly have been different had I not been born into a post-second-wave-feminism society, but as it is, if I want to walk down the street in a top hat and tails, or if I reject the nurturing role of mother and homemaker, no-one except religious fundamentalists and right-wing conservatives (often largely indistinguishable demographics) are really going to have a problem with my choices. It comes down to the fact that I have been luckier than a lot of people who, because of social constraints and deeply ingrained assumptions about gender roles, have to fight to achieve a level of self-expression that truly conveys who they feel themselves to be.

And that is why I feel like a pretender.

I talk to myself almost all of the time,
Perhaps too frequently out loud.
I keep telling myself I'm not crazy, no - I'm
Just living under a cloud

Of my own making, it has to be said,
And my inner voice says that a lot;
But it won't share the blame for it; instead
Just reminds me of everything I'm not -

I'm not strong enough, not sufficiently smart,
I don't love as well as I ought,
I don't have a great many talents, apart
From an overwhelming capacity for thought.

I'm sure you really wouldn't like the me
My inner voice tells me I am.
If you knew all its backstage whispers, you'd see
The fraud trying to pull off the scam.

So it's good that my inner voice stays in my head -
Except sometimes, when I'm all alone.
My life is a costume I don't want to shed
And I won't let my cover be blown.

AWAKENING

God loves each one of us 
As if there is only one of us to love

Or so St Augustine is said to have said.

Perhaps if such a god could love Augustine,
With all his bitter, uptight malice,
Surely it could love me too.

But I didn't really think such thoughts then;
Little girls don't, as a rule.

God, if he was there, would be something like my Dad -
only bigger and more powerful,
and inclined to be much more angry if I wasn't good.

So it was a comfort to know God loved me,
Because being good was hard.

But maybe being a better Catholic would suffice - 
you know, you only have to run faster than the dwarf.

But I didn't really think such thoughts then;
Little girls don't, as a rule.

They all looked so beautiful,
the saints in their pictures
And there was something about that expression of divine ecstacy
That almost made up for the virginity
That was the price of perfect sainthood.

But I didn't really think such thoughts then;
Little girls don't, as a rule.

So when the admonitions rang out -
"Don't do that - it's dirty, disordered."
I didn't really understand why,
But I knew it was wrong
Because they all said so,
the people I trusted to know such things - 
and anyway, it made Jesus cry.

So I tried not to think of such things;
Good Catholic young women don't, as a rule

When I finally made it out into the world
I still went to mass
For a while, anyway.
Missing it didn't seem so heinous
Once I'd got away with it sometimes.

As long as I kept myself reasonably pure
And only permitted certain liberties,
I wasn't really doing anything wrong, surely;
I could still take communion with a clear - if false - conscience
And sing in church;
Because that's what good Catholic young ladies do, as a rule.

And gradually I found that all those things I wasn't supposed to do,
Wasn't supposed to think,
Really weren't so strange and frightening
When real people did and thought them;
They were human, just like me -
Not devils
And not evil - how could they be?
They were my friends.

So I accepted them for who they were
And did my best not to judge them -
That's what good friends do, as a rule.

In time I learned that things weren't necessarily 
As I'd always assumed they were;
That all the old stories might mean something different
Than what I had been schooled to believe they meant.

So I read them again with new eyes,
New ways of seeing, new ways of thinking
And I opened my mind to a new understanding -
That's what real scholars do, as a rule.

And over the years, life began to make sense
As thought, belief and experience finally resolved their long estrangement
Until at last that glorious day dawned
When I threw off all the old, possessive gods
And embraced the world without the gaudy make-up,
Hardened myself to truth and harsh reality,
Began to face the changes life inevitably brings
Without the mythical safety net - 
That's what good atheists do, as a rule.

But still the yearning slept, unacknowledged,
The yearning for something more
Than molecules and forces,
An indifferent universe
Blind to our suffering
And death...
Death, the hardest change of all.

But eventually, like all philosophers do, as a rule,
I found I could accept the things I could not change,
Even the loss of those I had loved -
Just because I'd never see them again, that didn't mean they never were.

And slowly I came to understand
That the universe is not a hostile place - 
How could it be?
It doesn't care enough to hate us.

And maybe, in the end, I don't want the something more -
The something always promised by that god who loves us all,
But never enough to show itself;
Maybe it's enough that only a few other imperfect mortals love me;
Maybe what I have right now is all I'll ever need.
If there's no great beyond to which we might aspire,
No all-powerful deity to lay on the demands and expectations
And all the hoops we have to jump through
To show ourselves worthy of eternity;
Then it really doesn't matter -
Here, now, this moment is all
And everything;
And so I embrace it -
That's what enlightened people do, as a rule.

I have been doing a bit of experimenting with puddings lately, since finding my mum's recipe for steamed chocolate pudding - the one she used to make on weekends when I was a child, and was divine with thick cream. Experimenting with desserts is a new thing for me - savouries are easy, but sweets require things like measurement and good timing, which aren't really my strong points.

Anyway, I have since had a couple of goes at making a strawberry pudding - using pureed fresh strawberries - which has been pretty good, especially with chantilly cream and raspberry sauce :) Tonight's experiment was definitely worth sharing, though, and will definitely be repeated.

PEAR PUDDING

1 1/3 cups self-raising flour (or, as I used, 1 1/3 cups plain flour with two teaspoons baking powder)
1/2 cup vanilla sugar (raw caster sugar with a cut vanilla pod stored in it is what I used)
85g butter
1/4 cup milk
1 egg
1 pear, peeled, cored and chopped into small chunks

Grease a 1-litre pudding basin
Melt the butter and allow to cool slightly
Sift the flour into a mixing bowl and add the sugar and pear pieces
Add the milk, then the egg to the butter and whisk until just combined
Add the butter, milk and egg mix to the other ingredients in the bowl and mix - I find a large spatula is good for this; you'll end up with quite a thick mixture.
Place mixture in the pudding basin; cover with a lid (if the basin has one) or foil
Steam the pudding for 2 hours either over gently simmering water on the stove or on high in a preheated slow-cooker.

This makes a beautiful, not-too-sweet fruit pudding which is great with cream or custard. Next time I'll probably add a pinch of cinnamon or nutmeg to the mix :)

I was recently reading some articles in Capitalist Magazine. Odd, I know, for a libertarian socialist, but I like to explore alternative viewpoints every so often, if only to remind myself why I think I'm right!

Although I agree with some of the views they hold - notably those on religion and abortion, it twigged last night what my nagging unease has always been with capitalism as a sociopolitical philosophy. It's the fact that they emphasise rampant, selfish individualism at the expense of community, and cold, sterile reason at the expense of the essential human experience of emotion.

It's a well-known saying (though I forget whence it comes) that no man is an island, and the biggest problem I have with capitalism is that it tends to ignore this notion. We can't ignore our emotional faculties, even if we don't allow them to control us; and none of us - even the least gregarious, amongst which I count myself - exist independently of our community. While freedom - the capitalist's ultimate catch-cry - is a value to be always sought and if necessary, fought for, we are not free to deny the freedom of others. This is the delicate balancing act with which staunch capitalists fail to engage.

Today should have been a happy and productive day.

Instead, due to certain circumstances, it has been neither happy nor particularly productive - at least, not productive in the manner that was intended, and which would have met some rather more pressing needs than the things we actually did.

So now we are at home, having left the party which would have been nice to stay at, had we been in a party mood. Now some of the productive things that should have happened earlier in the day have some chance to happen...only the mood has changed. There is a profound sense of sadness and despondency in the air. This may have something to do with the careless cat we hit on the way home. However, when we stopped to look, we saw no sign of the cat that had gone under the car, so with any luck, it tumbled and kept running. That, as you may imagine, provided a rather bittersweet end to what has been altogether a disappointing day.

I am seeking refuge in beer. This is not a good thing, but at the moment it feels necessary. I am also working on a sewing project, and hopefully as the night wears on, positive feelings may be revived.

*sigh*

First of all, let me say what many of you already know - I'm not a parent, and am never likely to be one. Unless, of course, you count our furry adoptees, but I suspect that is a vastly different kettle of fish. For one thing, I know for a fact that I could never adore a human child the same way I do my beloved pooch. For another, non-human animals are innocent in a way that humans never can be.

Which brings me to the substance of my post. I have just been reading the following article in the Daily Mail - which some have dubbed the "Daily Fail" (and if this article is any indication, that's a fair moniker).

You can find the article at: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1149282/I-dont-blame-Janette-Mercer-lying-protect-murderer-son-Id-says-CAROL-SARLER.html

Now, I can understand the desire to defend and protect. I have it, when it comes to my darling husband and to our furry family, and also to the rest of my human family. However, I accept the fact that my parents and I will never agree on some things - religion springs to mind as a big dividing gulf. Nor will my brother and I agree in this regard. Those are the things we choose not to discuss amongst ourselves, because we know it will only end in bitterness and angry lashing out. But I understand where my parents and my brother are coming from, because I used to be a devout Catholic.

However, I also know that my parents and my brother are people of the highest honour and moral standing. They are also - religion aside - extremely caring and compassionate. The major reason I try to stand up for them is I know, regardless of anything else they may be, they are good people. They would never, knowingly nor through neglect, hurt another creature if it could possibly be avoided.

However, my desire to defend and protect only goes so far. I will not voluntarily associate with anyone who deliberately inflicts unjust harm upon another. I cannot see how the mother in the above article could possibly justify her actions. At what point could she have convinced herself that the 11-year-old deserved to die? She may have seen it as protecting her own, but at what cost? And if she really had any understanding of the situation, surely she could have understood that making her son pay for his crime was the best thing for him, too. What's almost worse is that the writer of the above-mentioned article seems to have such a backward view of women - that we exist for the sole purpose of bearing, raising and protecting offspring, even if said offspring are monsters.

If motherhood is something that would make me blind to the basic principles of natural justice, I have two words - fuck that.

As part of my present efforts to ward off the latest attack of the depression demons, I am seriously considering starting an 'Ethical Living' blog (although this is something I've thought about before). The idea would be to combine philosophical reflections with practical and local stuff about where to find organic produce, for example, or things like installing greywater systems, where the good small retailers are to be found around Perth, ideas for bartering opportunities, tips for making one's own stuff, and generally slipping beneath the capitalist radar. Anyone out there who'd be interested in reading such a blog?

My other piece of upcoming interestingness is that I will be holding Saturday Sewing Sessions at the Hidden House on the Hill (our place) from Saturday 23 May to Saturday 18 July. I have a couple of massive sewing projects to complete before my Midwinter Feast of Excess, and having an open-house stitch-and-bitch session every week sounds to me like good incentive to get stuff done. Anyone is welcome to come along and bring craft projects, so long as you don't mind being occasionally accosted by two dogs and two cats :) Sessions will be subject to notice from week to week, but I'm hoping to cram in as many as possible between Fighter Auction and Midwinter. They could also possibly be extended to include pizza and movies in the evenings...

I have jumped on the DreamWidth bandwagon, much as I did with LiveJournal and Facebook.

Thanks to Japester for the invite. :)

Hugh Laurie is a god :)

This one was yoinked from a sketch in the third series of A Bit of Fry & Laurie. The third and fourth seasons are definitely better than the first two, if only for the joy of watching Stephen Fry mixing cocktails at the end of every episode :)

Soupy twist!