”
"Have you ever guessed somebody’s gender wrong? There’s no recovering from that. You’ve just gotta move on because you ain’t wrigglin’ out of nothin’. “Hey, excuse me, sir.”“MA’AM!”
“OK. Bye, Human. Bye, Person. Nice to meet you, Individual.” - Brian Regan
In class the other day, I really wanted to reference this joke but restrained myself. However, I think it fits pretty well with what we have been talking about. How you characterize yourself, or how society fits you into a gender ideology greatly affects how you live your life. Our society works on the basis of the dominate idea of a dichotomy. We have been socialized to understand that men are the norm. So, She gets annoyed because not only did Regan identified her with the wrong gender, but maybe also because her attributions as a women (minority) were not being noticed. What did she do/look like that made Regan say "sir?" I hope to figure out what exactly these gender differences are, and come to my own conclusions about societies popular framework and what happens when its upset. I have to wonder- what would we call someone when we associate their sex with one gender, and they claim another? What wouldn't be offensive? In the beginnings of starting to work this out.. I have come to the conclusion that: if you associate yourself with a gender it is of infinite importance to your identity, if you do not society still does and this is of infinite importance, gender can never be of no importance.
Server: "Enjoy your meal sir."
ReplyDeleteRegan: "You too... you know, in case you get a break or somethin'... I'm a moron."
I love Brian Regan, well done! If you work in "The big yellow one is the sun!" I will so implore Merinda to give you bonus points.
Anyway, I'm kind of torn on this subject to be honest. Having a unisex name like Ryan I have had my fair share of work emails and the like that start off as "Dear Mrs. Kennedy" and yes I do correct them but not because I'm offended, but because I know I'd be embarrassed if I met someone that I'd been emailing for months and had been erroneously calling them the wrong title. But I don't care if someone calls me a girl, so what? It's happened before and knowing my friends it will happen again.
I get that I'm probably oversimplifying it but still, I simply feel too old to listen to people get upset because someone called them a name, sticks and stones my friends, sticks and stones.