Nappy Headed Black Child

As i think about my own gender assignment of "male" and how my conciousness has interacted with that assignment as well as viewing other people interact with gender. I'm beginning to see gender as i would any other status signifier such as rich, poor, nationality, or race. And like these status identifiers i agree with judith butler that gender is a performance directed by the various contexts by which an individual occurs.

Think about it.

What is hardwired into my dna (as far as i know) is whether or not i have a penis or a vagina. Everything else is a matter or social construction(gender roles for example).

I personally have never experienced any dissonace in relationship to my assigned gender but i do notice a certain amount of posturing that i do as a result of that assignment.

This turns discussions of hypermasculinity on its ear. Hypermasculinity in and of itself confirms gender as a performance and in the black community of which i am most experienced the inability of black men (in the cis sense) to fufill the standards of what this society defines as "masculine". Such as financial status, the ability to provide for the needs of those they care for, ability and power to make decisions and exercise control. This often translates in to destructive behaviors in the few areas we can influence to compensate. Often times this discussion revolves around changing the paradigm of whats considered masculine behaviors without ever approaching the idea that perhaps the concept masculinity in general hyper or otherwise and the gender binary itself is a problem.

Im not attempting to assault what has been defined as masculine and what has been defined as feminine but these things are choices among various options, and I'm not particularly fond of erasure or the perpetuation of a system of internal oppression among my community members to go along with the external oppression.

Also consider this as a further example of how binary can be destructive. How many men are ostracized or called gay b/c they aren't masculine or enough or vise versa with women (not that i am insinuating that there is anything wrong with those pairings but it is an attempt to dehumanize). I wonder how many people in terms of gender are acting in some way other than they norm to fit standards.

This is a dense topic that im still trying to find all the vocabulary for but its something to think about. At this point I am focusing on less on trying establish what a man should be as opposed to what a human being should be.