Gender is a coffin
Gender is a prison we throw children into for our own amusement, ostensibly to teach them how they should act
Gender is the prince and the bride, the ideal man and the ideal woman, opposite, deeply unequal, but needing the other to be whole, because what is a gender when it is not observed and received?
Gender is patriarchy, passed down from nowhere, from man to lesser man to lesser man, making them inadequate and poisoning their thoughts with conquest and claims and physical violence, making them nothing but their wants and their means
Gender is insidious, whispers in the ears that turn friends against each other, because while they are friends, they are men and women first, and when men need something from women, they take it. Or some other man will.
Gender is the lies that connect us to each other, the lies we tell ourselves and our loved ones about what it is we love. It makes us want what hurts us, because we are supposed to want – because there’s a chance that, miraculously, this time it won’t hurt.
Gender is the roles we play so much and so often that everything we are becomes tied up in them, that we cannot think of ourselves without being that role, with playing our part the theater, even when our co-stars have moved on
Gender is what makes people see love as a competition, as something to be won, with the heartbreaks made along the way keeping score. It’s what corrupts the truth of love’s transience into callousness, love as a strung together series of victories, when all they really want is something true with someone special, no matter how fleeting
Gender is devotion and delusion, the shape we press ourselves into without thinking, the shapes we press our loved ones into – because maybe if we play by the rules, we won’t be burned at the stake like all the rest. Maybe we won’t lose what we love. Maybe you won’t get hurt again.
Gender is like the fake stars on a beautiful night, the illusion that keeps us from seeing our world and its people for what it really is, who they really are, because seeing what’s real is too painful, and we’re comfortable enough where we are, right?
Gender is what makes us wear so many faces; the princess, the witch, the house servant, the muse, the liar, the threat, the undesirable. So many that they erode the heart away, leaving nothing but a husk, desperately seeking connection, but unable to put aside the act for long enough to make it.
Gender is the prince-turned-predator, desperately trying to reclaim a the purity that never truly existed, owning his world and leveraging gender for his own ends while still ultimately being beholden to it. An adult in a playground, a power amongst the powerless.
Gender is the million swords of human hatred stabbing you endlessly if you so much as think of transgressing it, of actually genuinely caring about someone for who they are, for even a second. You cannot run, deflect, or counter. No amount of swordsmanship will help you. Not even being the perfect prince, the perfect bride will help you.
Gender is the lie that you can forge your own path, that you can be a prince and a girl, vulnerable and independent, that your integrity and honesty matter, that you can win your own small victory by playing their game as long as you play by enough of their rules.
Gender is the lie of eternity, the lie that we can stay the same forever, that we never have to be changed by our world as long as we cling to those things we’re told we are.
Gender is the school you never leave.