Sex

It's amazing how learning works. Sometimes your a-ha moments come when you least expect them. In my post about Gender, I had talked about how when choosing my 2nd Life Avatare I immediately began to select those features that I identified with...making my Avatar a black female. It has never been a question for me about my Sex or how I subscribe or what my subscription means. My sex was biologically determined and as a result society assigned what gender role I should subscribe to and I complied because I felt that all of these were a good match for me. That being said, I do understand that everyones process isn't that simple.

I believe that it would be nearly impossible to talk about Sex without mentioning Gender. While former is biologically determined and the latter a social construct, they are often viewed as one in the same. It drives how we are socialized and what the expectations of us and our behavior will be. We have pre-determined assigned traits for what feminine and masculine sexuality and for that matter personalities will entail. The problem with this is far too many times there are situations where you can not necessarily apply the "label" and as a result are stifled when attempting to just deal with the person. I can't help but to think about the old Saturday Night Live skits with the androginous Pat character who would would be put in a variety of situations where she would be asked questions in attempts to identify her sex and s/he would cleverly provide ambiguous answers never allowing the other actors or the audience to know her Sex.

These series of Pat skits brings to light the problem or maybe even our obsession with sexual distinction. We are forced to ask ourselves do these static definitions of sex and gender truly hold up??? If not, why do we allow ourselves to be consumed by them?