where do you draw the line?

Men…where do you draw the line?

Literally.

That has become a real question these days, not just a figure of speech. I know people have been doing dissertations on "gender" for decades, and if I hear the phrase "gender is fluid" one more time, I might get sick.

But it is fluid. It is a continuum. But where do you draw the line? And why do we have to?

People of my generation, the baby boomers, are constantly put down by the younger set for being so square, so old-school because we believe in the binary code of gender. But do we really?

Many of us came out during the second wave of feminism. "The Man" was the oppressor, the enemy, the one who had more power, the one who made more money than us. Actually, that part is still true.

Just yesterday I heard on KPFA that over a life-time of work, a woman will earn between $500,000 and $2,000,000 less than a man with an equivalent education. The higher the educational level, the higher the disparity. Interesting, somehow I thought it would be the other way around.

These days, so many women are becoming men, many of them very young. Is becoming a man through surgery and hormones actually buying into the binary code of gender more than just moving though the world as a big ol' butch?

Many organizations, including the dyke march committee of which I am member, have struggled over definitions regarding gender. No men. Women only. Where do you draw the line?