At each party, I observed different ways to inhabit a gender role or sexuality. Since these norms are defined socially, any group of weirdos can call bullshit, call it something made up - constructed - opt out, and perform it all quite differently. Even if a collective agreement to honor ideas such as “women like art” and “men like sports” made them felt, real by experience, that didn’t make them essentially true, and certainly not fixed. The strict sex categories presented to me as a kid had apparently been fluctuating throughout time and across cultures. The class gave me a vocabulary for something that had been becoming more and more intuitive to me: Gender was a bit of a performance. You’re welcome to join if you’d like.”Īt the beginning of the semester, I had signed up for a Queer Theory course (pass/fail) with a few friends. I curled my body to rest my head on his shoulder and whispered, “I’m going to the bathroom. Our friends’ bodies littered the room, crumpled up in different corners, either asleep or in a bloated daze. Our arms and legs were strewn across a ratty futon. of the first day of Spring Fest of my final semester at college, and Tom and I were wasted. To read all the entries in the series, click here. We're re-running this story as part of a countdown of the year's best personal essays.
