The social practice of Gendering is the method by which women are oppressed. The man-made construction of how women should look, how women should behave, how women should speak, how women should walk, how women should dress, how women should be treated, how women should be used, how women should be abused: only man is huMAN. Woman is less than.
Gender is not some cosmic yin/yang; it’s a fist, and the flesh that bruises. Gender is who gets to be human, and who gets hurt.
Women live inside the barricade of sexual terrorism. Men live outside the barricade of sexual terrorism. In fact, men built that barricade. Fist by fist, and fuck by fuck. It is exactly those violent violating practices that construct a class of people called “women.” That is what men do to break us, and to keep us broken. And that is what gender is: the breaking, and the broken.
Lierre Keith