Musings of a BitterBear

Did a fun skull on @bitchimdrowsy as a lil 7 year Valentine tribute to his honey. Thanks Roman. #killerbob #killerbobgraphics #trudystattooparlour #trudystattooparloursf #skull #skulltattoo #bowie

Gender is a social construct because it is a series of expectations, traits, roles, socializations, and cultural characteristics we apply to each sex.

Your sex is innate. I was born, and will always be, female. It is coded into my DNA.

We are born these blank slates. Thousands of years of evolution means that our neocortex, the part of the brain responsible for improvisation or “free will”, takes up the largest part of our grey matter. It means that we are born listening, watching, learning…. instead of walking or other self-sustaining measures. We are born ready to be molded, taught, and set loose into a world like wet clay to fit into our surroundings.

Gender is what we are taught.

We look at a newborn little girl, fresh slate, blank for everything. We wrap her in pink, give her dolls (to give the early expectation of eventual motherhood), we give her plastic kitchens (to give the early role of caretaker), we tell her to be nice and kind and gentle and accommodating(female socialization), she cooks and cleans with her mother while her brothers play outside, she sees examples of females at home, as teachers, as nurses, as other caretaker roles, she is given media in which images of her are heterosexual, subservient, and eager to get a man, she is asked from infancy onwards if she likes any boys, she is taught marriage is the goal, her culture tells her special expectations about sex and her abilities and her intelligence and aptitudes, the social settings and clubs available to her are often less rowdy or adventurous than those available to her male peers, she is dressed in restrictive and bright clothing to discourage play and mess, she is likely sexualized by grown men from age 12 onwards, she is taught that “sluts” are dirty and “virgins” are prude and that she will either be loose or inexperienced for her eventual man and both are a personal failure on her part and that she must do anything he asks to strive to keep his attention, she will go to a school in which the curriculum contains all the great men of history and the nameless wives they beat or raped or ignored, she will face an education system full of men who will poke and prod at her for sexual or demeaning reasons because they too have been taught she exists as entertainment to them, her job interviews will consist of being judged on her makeup, her promotions will be tied to it too, and if she maybe gets married and has kids she will be expected to serve her husband and children from home. Because that is the logical conclusion of all of the socialization, and roles, and expectations, and cultural characteristics.

She is born of the female sex, blank slate, capable of everything.

Then gender is applied to her.

Credit: Kirby Jenner / IG

During one visit, Ruth noticed the nurses would draw straws, afraid to go into one room, its door sealed by a big red bag. She asked why and the nurses told her the patient had AIDS.

On a repeat visit, and seeing the big red bag on the door, Ruth decided to disregard the warnings and sneaked into the room.

In the bed was a skeletal young man, who told Ruth he wanted to see his mother before he died. She left the room and told the nurses, who said, "Honey, his mother’s not coming. He’s been here six weeks. Nobody’s coming!”

Ruth called his mother anyway, who refused to come visit her son, who she described as a "sinner" and already dead to her, and that she wouldn't even claim his body when he died.

“I went back in his room and when I walked in, he said, "Oh, momma. I knew you’d come", and then he lifted his hand. And what was I going to do? So I took his hand. I said, "I’m here, honey. I’m here”, Ruth later recounted.

Ruth pulled a chair to his bedside, talked to him

and held his hand until he died 13 hours later.

After finally finding a funeral home that would his body, and paying for the cremation out of her own savings, Ruth buried his ashes on her family's large plot.

After this first encounter, Ruth cared for other patients. She would take them to appointments, obtain medications, apply for assistance, and even kept supplies of AIDS medications on hand, as some pharmacies would not carry them.

Ruth’s work soon became well known in the city and she received financial assistance from gay bars, "They would twirl up a drag show on Saturday night and here'd come the money. That's how we'd buy medicine, that's how we'd pay rent. If it hadn't been for the drag queens, I don't know what we would have done", Ruth said.

Over the next 30 years, Ruth cared for over 1,000 people and buried more than 40 on her family's plot most of whom were gay men whose families would not claim their ashes.

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"Pan’s spokesomwan, Shannan Velayas, told the Times that the senator is routinely targeted by anti-vaccine activists.

“This is moving from a peculiar fringe curiosity to a violent extremist movement,” Velayas told the paper. "

“When you’re a public worker and politicians come around talking about lower taxes, that means they want to lay you off.”

And it’s true. I’m a librarian, so my wages come from tax dollars. Lower taxes means the library has to cut costs, and that means either lowering wages or laying people off. It’s a pretty direct cause and effect.

My dad was a mechanic for public school buses. The first time he took me to vote it was for a local election and he told me even if I did nothing else to vote to pass the budget so they could replace two school busses that were beyond repair so kids were safe.