I'm just jumping into this discussion to say that I hate this sociological
"gender-based" approach to poetry or life, if it is prosecuted (!! yes) with
the heavy knowing concerned militant gravity that so often emerges, ugh!
I don't, for example, read the emails on the list thinking "woman", "man",
and I would like to know how they would be read by gender-menders if they
were of anonymous or ambiguous origin (all Sandys, Evelyns, Chrises etc),
whether they would identify "herm" or "shim" & the appropriate agenders
unfailingly. I appreciate other people's characteristic potentialities & can
say "Yes, so womanly or manly" (or boyish /girlish), but to be prescriptive
& dismissive about it in a "men can't write like women or vice versa"
strikes me (! yes) as counter-productive in every way. We've all
"transferred" a lot from our fathers' & mothers' accounts (! yes), we all
"know" about the anima & the animus, let's celebrate herm, (not-animosity)
that shimmying flip-flop child of Cupid & Psyche that shimmers through
language like a will o' the wisp.
Martin
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