I thought I knew about jenndre

I recently had an enlightening conversation with a person who is studying queer theory, literature, philosophy etc. and is earning her PhD. After talking with her, I felt freer, and more myself - partly because of the ease and honesty of out rapport, and partly because of the ideas she exposed me to. Through her life, experiences and studies, she came to know gender as a very different thing than I had.  In our conversation, the best word to convey her gender as I understood it is 'gender ambiguous' (like homo erectus but different).

This is not to say that she does not know her gender - her identity was well established, interesting and beautiful - but rather it seemed to me that her gender is found in the in-between places of conventional gender roles. She used the word "trans" to describe herself which is distinct from but related to transgender and transsexual.

(conventional display of homosexual/gay couples)

These last few days have been filled with the feeling 'I thought I knew about gender.' The question that has been burning in me since puberty "what does it mean to be gay" is still unanswered but new sister questions arise:

if there is a population unanchored by a single social-sexual identity, how big is the population (who experiences these feelings how often and in what situations); how are the gender lines blurred within the more binary genders (gay and straight, male and female) and how similar and different are the experience of the binary genders and the non-binary gender; how have I experienced the ambiguous gender experience (is it related to the distinction between top-bottom and the indistinct versatile social-sexual roles)

 (Lafayette, a character from True Blood, is a gay man dressing in womans clothing who is not a drag queen - could be transish - and isn't it interesting that a character who might be trans is posessed by both male and female ghosts)

These last few questions are the most relevant to me and to the people I study and love.

The conversation was full of subtlety and opinions but was not angry (like the stereotypical angry feminism) and was entirely accepting. This person represented gender studies not as an argument between intelligent egos and their holdfast interpretations, but a discussion between people that just care about how people experience different types of connections. She made me less afraid of studying what I love and the other people who study it.

I definitely want to explore what it might feel like to think of being gay as a mainstream gender; that it is made mainstream by the fact that is and isn't something, it is exclusive and has specific roles, protocols, and beliefs that are somewhat correlated with straight culture (or I guess non-gay culture, I don't know how to talk about that yet).

Overall, the dialog she and I had made me so freakin excited about gender interpretations and art. I just spent way too much money on gay and queer books. And I'm pretty sure I made an awesome friend.