[AnnieBL]

More thought provoking posts by Abi Drew. I’m not trying to embarrass you with compliments, but your perception and clarity of statement have helped me enormously in sorting out and understanding my own situation, not only in respect of gender, but also in matters of religious belief. I’m not going to comment on much of what you say because I feel that it is somewhat impertinent to comment on issues outside my actual experience. I wholly agree that one should value people as persons and very much in common with my wife I deplore the gender warfare that is all too common between men and women and even within the transgender community, and which demeans all involved.

Nonetheless, while I believe in the soul I have yet to be wholly convinced that gender is an essential part of it, because it seems to me, and I am very willing to be convinced otherwise, that such a belief inevitably divides the human race into two camps, male and female, and is likely to to lead to distrust, by those who see themselves firmly in one camp or the other, of those they perceive as having crossed between camps. This I think is the problem expressed by Emily in a post which she seems to have tried quite hard to make non-combative. Mistress George quite rightly deplores the objectification of women, and the dangers it brings, but does not take account the fact that men are also subjected to extensive, but less physically endangering, objectification, and that the main culprits are men and women themselves as they try both to comply with societal norms and control the tyranny of their own hormones and genetic programming. I always used to try desperately to conform, and usually failed miserably. Now I find it better to be at peace with myself.

I wrote the above before I saw Mistress George's latest post, with which I am much more in sympathy.