Tag: Gender
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I hold the world but as the world
I suppose very few things resist change; we filter most things through the eyes of our culture after all. But I, an admitted closet-pareidoliac[i], am still amazed at the variety of pattern-reading throughout the ages. What is it that changes the look of a painting, say -its feeling? How is it that the same person…
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There is flattery in friendship
I have always admired liminality; for me, boundaries are also thresholds. And yet there are areas where, until recently, only angels dared to tread. But I am content to watch from afar; I have neither the need, nor the desire to trespass; I am content with who I am, but curious about who I am…
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The ceremony of innocence is drowned
Every so often, things are not as they seem. Perhaps that should come as no surprise to an ever-curious septuagenarian, but sometimes I realize I have been misled, lulled into a sense of complacency by the reigning Weltanschauung; or, to be clear, the previous one -the one in which I received my formal education. But…
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The raven himself is hoarse
There was a time when I thought I finally had a handle on gender: it’s a spectrum, right? It’s not defined by biology or chromosomes -it’s how you think, how you feel, who you are. It should not merely be assigned, it should be assumed. And just when I thought I was escaping from the…
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Come, you spirits that tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here.
‘Will no one rid me of this troublesome priest?’ was what Henry II of England reputedly said of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Becket back in the 12th century. It could be said with equal conviction in the 21st, but this time referring to a different problem, an unusual priest: gender. Okay, perhaps I’m stretching…
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A Sympathy in Choice
‘As you are old and reverend, you should be wise.’ –so Shakespeare’s Goneril, King Lear’s evil daughter, advised her father. Her advice was deceptive -hostile, even- but there are times I feel that my judgement, too, has being unjustly impugned. Positions that I feel have been reasonably based and cogently argued, are attacked and maligned…
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Oh, What Men Dare Do!
There seemed to be an inordinate amount of talk about polygamy last year –perhaps because of the long-awaited trial of two offenders from the town of Bountiful in British Columbia. In Canada, polygamy is a criminal offence under section 293 of the Criminal Code, but prosecutions have been rare. Polygamy must be differentiated from Bigamy,…
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