Kinky Boots

Hello Readers!

Tonight I saw Kinky Boots. It was so amazing. Without a doubt, it was one of the most colorful, magical performances I have ever seen. It got me thinking a lot about gender and the restrictive binary in which we exist. 

"Ladies and gentleman and those who have yet to decide" was repeated several times throughout the musical. I was a little hesitant to be excited about this because while it is acknowledging that gender isn't just a thing you are born in and stay with for your whole life, I would have preferred if they had said, "Ladies and gentleman and everyone in between."  Just because someone is not at one polarized end of the spectrum of gender doesn't mean they have yet to decide. It's perfectly plausible that they have chosen neither. Sexuality and gender sort of sit in the same muscle, and if people think that bisexuality is a person in the middle of the spectrum, why can't people accept that someone could be in the middle of the gender spectrum? I've heard plenty of people talk about how using "they" instead of he or she when referring to someone can trip them up and can be a little hard at first. Sure, you will have to THINK. Okay. Well, hang in there. It's a lot harder for people who have gone their whole lives feeling uncomfortable and struggling with their gender identity. Really, it takes you two seconds to remind yourself of people's proper pronouns, so why can't you just do it? If a woman got married and told you to call her Mrs. instead of Ms. you would do it. Why wouldn't you do it if someone explained that they wanted you to call them they? 

What it means to be a man was another big theme throughout the show. In the end, what it meant to be a man was sort of to accept people for who they are? It wasn't super clear, but that is what I gathered. That's not a bad thing for a man to be, but I felt a little frustrated that they made it about what a man is rather than just what a good person is. 

Gender and sexuality are really interesting to me and I haven't read nearly as much literature on the topics as I ought to. Sometimes I wonder if the world would be easier if there were no gender, but it isn't, and it won't be most likely. Some people find real comfort in their gender identity and it means a lot to them, so I wouldn't want to take that away from them. Also, I can't. Also, Nobody is asking me to make an executive vote. 

In Kinky Boots, there were a few characters who gave Lola a hard time about her gender and how she needed to "be a real man." Why is gender so strict to some people that they get angry when people don't feel comfortable with the gender they were assigned at birth? Why does it matter so much to some people what a man or a woman is that it is so vital that they stick strictly to the things associated with their gender and only that? What do you think will happen if they don't? 

Well, I'll tell ya. People will express themselves as they see fit and they will feel like the most authentic versions of themselves. There should be no reason that this would make someone angry. Even if someone doesn't understand it, why wouldn't they be excited to learn about someone different than them instead of being hostile toward them? Just like I said in my last post, patience and kindness can really make any disagreement more doable and more fixable.

Overall though, the musical was fantastic. It was a little problematic, but proper representation is so hard, every piece of art is always going to have some way it could have been better, and LGBTQIA+ representation is so yikes today so ya take what ya can get.