My Long Winded Response to Gender, Relationships and Love..

So I had a conversation today about gender roles, and relationships.

Here's my response:

In regards to gender roles:
The construction of what it means to be a man or a woman is interwoven with a multitude of factors (both physiological and social)… but should not be mistaken as a fixed state of being…. If only because of the different expressions of everything else in-between… and believe me… there is an in-between.

Maybe that in-between is a personification of the dualities expressed within current forms of what gender means… sometimes it's a cluster fuck of god knows what. Nevertheless, gender is expressed in a multitude of ways.

Women convey themselves in ways that are considered masculine... Men behave in ways that are very feminine… And yes, there is such a thing as androgyny... Regardless of orientation…. these things exist.

How can I make such an overt statement as if it were fact? Because, whether or not you are aware, it is ubiquitous. All you have to do is look. With the expansion and acceptance of expression there is no real need to live up to or dismantle gender. We are acculturated to become whatever society wants us to be, while simultaneously finding ways to break those paradigms down.

As far as my opinion on relationships:
Being on all different ends, both good and bad. All I can say is this…. from any starting point it's easy to judge others, until we are placed within a predicament that engenders dissonance within us.

We can sit outside of ourselves and see the dualities of a situation, but there are so many variables that make people behave in ways contrary to what we expect. And we must remember, regardless of our expectations… not everyone can live up to our ideals…. Shit, we can barely do it ourselves… how can we expect or devalue those who can't either.

We are human. We make mistakes. We behave in ways contrary to values or beliefs that feel inherent within us…

Why..? I don't know. Maybe because we're selfish. But maybe we're not. Maybe when we have to take other people's feelings into consideration we put our needs last. Sometimes social, cultural, and internal factors don't add up to the same solution… and at the end of the day we still have to pick one….

Does this make us wrong, or selfless, or inherently hypocritical?

Maybe, but our actions do not define us or encapsulate who we are. We are much more than an event, or moment in time. So it isn't fair to assume the intentions of others, when we can barely understand those of ourselves.

I guess no one ever really knows what they will do until they are there. Until then, we as people should consider reevaluating the way we judge others.

And finally my stance on Love:
Love… and what each individual wants within the context of a relationship varies…. And is essentially innumerable. One can make generalizations, but when it comes to love, it's too abstract to place such categories into concrete terms. All you can hope for is that you find someone to accept you, understand you, and maybe even one day love you unconditionally. Love is work, no matter how strong the foundation is.

Because at the end of the day, if you never give all of yourself what's it really worth?