Don't Perceive Me

As I was attending an event aptly named “Pretty in Punk,” I had a moment of realization. Picture this: I was eating a frozen Snickers bar that I had just won from a raffle (it was the best thing I ate the entire night), my earplugs in, and listening to a slightly muffled punk band scream a song titled “Don’t Perceive Me,” while simultaneously writing this blog post. :)

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What has always bothered me about our unit we are studying in class, is that it is
titled gender, but it never goes in depth about what gender is. Many people interchangeably use the words gender and sex, when there is a distinct difference between them. Sex refers to what you were born as. There are three of them: female, male, and intersex (both female and male body parts at the same time). Whereas gender refers to the mentality of a person, of which there are many more than just three.

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For our textbook to label an entire section “gender,” while only inserting literary pieces that are about men, women, misogyny, and all. The only pieces we are analyzing are about cis-gendered people (someone who identifies as what sex they were born with). Personally, I think most of the topics are outdated and argued about so often that they become fatiguing, or arduous conversations to have. 

The video that we had watched was a good step in trying to show how gender is performative, but my only take-away was that this person was perceived as lesbian. To have a video about gender, but talk about someone’s sexual orientation, did not sit well with me. Sexual orientation and gender are not related to each other. At the punk rock show I met some new people from a Grand Rapids private school and many of them had gone by they/them pronouns. I would have never known that had I not talked to them. We sat in a circle in-between bands and stated our names and pronouns before we started talking and that was
the first experience that I have ever done that. Now, I am sure, when I was wearing jeans and T-shirt with sparkly makeup, many people perceived me as someone who was dragged along to this concert, in which they would be correct. In contrast to the leather jackets, streaming of eyeliner, and crust pants, I stood out like a sore thumb. Oddly enough, I never felt as if I was left out, or judged because many people did not assume or perceive others, as that song had adamantly spoken out against. I took solace in the fact that I could be myself in a room with complete strangers.

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Although it is important to read about pieces from the twentieth century and women’s rights to get us ready for the AP exam, I think it is important to also read pieces from or about people that are not cis-gendered straight people.