Saturday, March 8, 2014

Identity part 3 (Happy Women's Day - everything will be all right)

Identity - noun

2. the condition of being oneself or itself, and not another:
3. condition or character as to who a person or what a thing is
4. the state or fact of being the same one as described.
5. the sense of self, providing sameness and continuity in personality over time          


This is the third of 3 posts called Identity.

Part 1 talks about the effects finding out you're gay has on your marriage and your perceived future.
Part 2 will talk about suddenly realising you're gay, and how that feels.
Part 3 (this one) will talk about where I'll go from here, and also explain why I'm going to be all right.

Happy International Women's day!

Today is the first day in  a very long time where I've seen the sun, and it feels like a perfect day to write this final identity post. The only one to really touch on my identity. Because here is the thing - no matter how hard and weird and rough this half year has been, I've always known one fundamental truth deep down below everything else:

I have not changed. 


Now, this might seem like a trivial fact, but I assure you it's not. You see, I wondered for a while how all of this would affect my life and prospects. I remember thinking that my chances of doing the things I want to do, and to achieve the goals I want to achieve had seriously diminished. I read statistics on LGBT-authors, about publishing of LGBT material, about discrimination of LGBT people in the work place.

Yes, for a while there, I did the same thing I've been talking against for years - making everything to do with an LGBT person into LGBT-stuff. This anxiety did perhaps have a role to play, but it didn't last long before it was completely burned through by the argument from deep inside my gut   -  I haven't changed. My voice is still the same, and my passions are still the same. My opinions haven't changed, nor my skills. I am the same, I just know myself better.

This does somehow highlight what I find are the main misunderstanding around both LGBT and feminist issues, and I'll spend a minute on it here because it is, after all, March 8th.

The goal of both LGBT and Feminist groups should always be (and mostly is) to eliminate themselves. There shouldn't have to be anyone advocating for LGBT rights, because we should all assume LGBT people "people" and rules for "people" should therefore apply. The same way there should be something blatantly obvious about women having the same rights, and being treated the same way as men.

However, this somehow seems to get a bit lost in translation, often due to non-feminist feminists and aggressive LGBT-fighters. I'll leave the LGBT issues here for now, I'll bring them up later. Feminism is for me the fight for gender equality, and I do think most feminist would agree. This does, however, mean I am as in favour of rights for men as I am for rights for women - or people as I like to call them.

This means I find it equally wrong that girls are raised around how pretty they are, as that boys are raised by the phrase "be a man" as a reaction to crying, complaining or worry. I find it as wrong that women get less pay for equal work, as I find it that men get harsher sentences for equal crime.
I want to get rid of the arbitrary differences in treatment between the sexes, not make women put in a stronger position than men.


The problems for women today isn't the same as they were 100 years ago - at least not in the west. One of the major problems is how women treat each other. How we seem to act as if there are only so many positions available for women and that we have to fight each other to be the one left on top. This is, in my opinion, accepting a "women's quota" in the wrong way. All measures to up the number of women in the work force and higher education etc, should be seen as temporary measures. They are necessary at the moment, but we are all aiming for a day where they are not necessary.


In the mean time, we should also lend a hand to our sisters in parts of the world who haven't got the same basic rights as we do. Because we do, after all, have an increasingly good deal here in the west. If you have the strength to stand against a never ending parade of stupid, you can get pretty much anywhere you want, and have an awesome life.

And that is why everything will be all right, because my life is quite cool. I have my writing, my illustrations, my travels, my photography and my passion for language. I have my friends, my family and my always true saying: most people are nice people.

And finally, I have this blog. And I miss this blog. I miss using it for big and small things, and I'm ready to start doing that again. I'm applying for an MA, I'm starting my new company, I'm taking pictures with my new cameras, I'm working to achieve some of my long term goals. This will be a fun ride. Are you still with me?

Everything will be all right.