Can some one please explain something for me...

[Redalgo]

Notions of gender and the roles assigned with them are part of a socially constructed perception of reality. As one grows up in an environment where most folks reinforce those notions of reality it is easy to begin confusing them with objective understandings of what is real. The body one is born with does not imply a certain manner in which they are "supposed" to think or behave. I do cede that there are a handful of beliefs that are nearly universal among human beings but many of the fine details of culture are created in the minds of people by themselves - not painstakingly derived from some sort of higher understanding about what is true or false, and right or wrong.

These sorts of topics are magnets for well-intentioned misunderstandings, since some people do not feel the values, attitudes, sense of identity, or lifestyle society suggests they ought to embrace are compatible with those that, on a personal level, they believe are proper or just feel right. One ends up having to decide whether to conform at the cost of living a lie, be true to oneself at the risk of drawing unwanted negative attention from relatively "normal" people in society, or to strike a more moderate balance between the two. To others it is all too easy to confuse a person who is different with one who is inappropriate, diseased, impure, or some sort of cultural threat.

On a political level the question becomes to what extent we are willing to allow folks to use their rights and freedoms to do things we might not understand, approve of, or consider healthy. Or in other words, to what extent are we willing to tolerate expressions of and feelings about perceptions of reality different than our own? Proponents of modernist/humanist and traditionalist/normative points of view can and often do clash over this sort of stuff.

I have completely made my peace with cross dressers and people of various sexual orientations - though when it comes to gender I am still trying to overcome a temptation to refer to people using words that reference their physical sex instead of their gender identity - but I find it easy to sympathize with and accept people of nearly all kinds for who they are. Perhaps it is in part because I am well-accustomed to not fitting in with all the political, religious, and behavioral norms of my community, and in one respect have an extremely atypical sense of personal identity.