Categorizing and Educating People
Sunday, November 7, 2010
By Natalie
http://genderqueerchicago.blogspot.com/2010/11/categorizing-and-educating-people.htmlWhen it comes to categorizing groups of people things get tricky. Often, people don't agree with the category they were put into and sometimes they don't think the person doing the grouping has a right to do so at all. Categorizing people often makes certain groups feel marginalized, misunderstood, and subjected. Transfolk in particular often feel that we are being put into the wrong groups. The classification of our gender choices as a mental disorder is of the utmost of our problems. We also have to deal with being called lesbians when we are really men, being called gay men when we are actually women, and being labeled as transvestites and cross-dressers. After we get labeled as "transgendered" then there are more problems: are we still transgendered after the transition is complete, are we now labeled as MtF or FtM when we are women and men like everyone else? And of course, there is the problem of "having" to be one gender or the other: what if you are neither, or both, or something different altogether?
