The Queerness of Queerness

Even before coming to Bard I observed with growing concern what it means to be a “man” or a “woman” today at home or abroad. Whenever I went out I was struck by how masculine women conduct themselves and how feminine guys behave. While girls, deep in their hearts long for some good old romance; on the part of guys, gallantry, good manners and chivalry is passé. Out with the roses and prose, in with Facebook poke-ing and agrammatical text messages. (Who needs sophistication in a loud bar or jam-packed lounge when both parties are sufficiently intoxicated to resort to more primitive forms of communication, anyway?)
On our arrival to campus in August, the first thing we were told during one of our “intro to Bard life” sessions was that we should prepare for a substantial amount of “gender queer” students. That was the point where I gave up: I was used to manly girls, girly guys, Paris acculturated me to all forms of homosexuality, but “gender queerness” was quite a novel jargon on the list. In my conservative mind, Greek mythology apart, one is either a man or a woman. Not in Annandale-on-Queer.
The college’s support for “gender exploration” has got to a point where students started calling for “gender neutral” locker rooms, bathrooms and toilets. I could not stop wondering what the signs on the doors would look like. “Men’s”, “Ladies”, “To Be Defined”? As much as I learned to acknowledge the importance of the freedom of self-exploration and self-expression, this recent initiative made me wonder. Where exactly is the border between liberal education and institutionalized promotion of certain pseudo-categories that do not happen to exist in Real Life, i.e. outside of the Bard bubble? I hold the (by local standards) extremely unmodern view that gender is not a trial-error thing and that playing around with such categories confuses people. What would really happen to a gender queer Bardian out there in the “neutral”-locker-less world? Well, at some point, Reality would happen....seasoned with the inner stress of non-compliance to social norms that he or she will have to live by in the next ca. 50 years.
I am skeptical that excessive liberalism and tolerance makes people actually happier on the long run. From teenage outcasts they would only grow to be adult outcasts and I do not think it makes them happier.
Simone de Beauvoir, who argued that no woman is born woman, as independent and confident a feminist as she was, from time to time burst out in hysterical crying on Sartre, realizing that deep inside she longed for a normal, traditional relationship. The kind most women instinctively long for. One with roses and prose.