I have jury duty today, which means you get whatever I could toss together quickly last night. Since for me it’s “last night” right now as I write this, I’m having a little trouble with tenses.

Jen at Blag Hag is having her annual blog census this week. I took it, and was fascinated by the “Gender” question. It said “Check all that apply” and offered these options:

• Male
• Female
• Genderqueer
• Transgender
• Transsexual
• Agendered / Neutrois

To be honest, it makes me feel a little boring.

It also points out some of my ignorance. I didn’t know there was any meaningful difference between “transgender” and “transsexual”, I thought they were synonyms for any practical purposes. Hell, I’m not even 100% sure what genderqueer means! Totally looking that up when I’m done here.

Seeing that list made me realize how fortunate I am that when I, say, check “Other” for my Google profile gender as a small protest against the concept of gender roles, that’s just a minor thing for me. It’s not a vital part of my identity that I had to struggle with to accept and find a way to square with the rest of the world.

I make a point to live with little regard to gender stereotypes or social perception of how people “should” be, but it’s easy for me. I’m really not unusual enough to have much trouble, and most of the trouble I do have comes from opening my mouth and making myself a target. If I don’t feel like dealing with anyone’s shit I can usually just keep my mouth shut.

It’s not a problem for me to be ignorant of these things because I don’t have to live them. It costs me nothing to say, “Hey, whatever makes you happy” and simply accept people as they present themselves to me. There are probably people participating in that census who are thinking “finally I can answer this honestly for once!”. There’s probably at least one who still finds it inadequate.

Funny thing about privilege, you can’t see it until it’s pointed out to you.

EDIT: As though she anticipated my ignorance and curiosity, the remarkable Natalie Reed has a post up this morning which includes discussion of some of the very things I didn’t know that I didn’t know. Serendipity! Here’s a handy diagram illustrating a complex subject in a simple way.