My partner doesn't want his body. But I do.

We all participate in the propagation of gendered ideas in one way or another. Even ignoring your assigned gender and being an eclectic mix of traits that you don’t see as gendered can serve as a point of reference to people around you. Every aspect of a person can serve as a source of inspiration for others that helps unlock a part of themselves they weren’t aware of before, or it can serve as an example of what they are not. Every instance of identification is also an instance of a meme reproducing.

Transgender is an umbrella word that is used to describe a very large and diverse group of people. "Transgender" can refer to transsexual people; to genderqueer and gender-variant people; to crossdressers; even to feminine men who still call themselves men, and masculine women who still call themselves women. If someone says "I am a woman," or "I am a man," or "I am ____," please take that person seriously. Our cultural framework tends to tell us that their bodies may contradict their statements — that there's no way you could be a guy with XX chromosomes, or a genderless person with an obvious beard. But the trans person is the one who's right, and the simplistic framework is the model that's wrong. Gender is not dependent on physical appearances, or on the word of doctors, friends, family. The individuals are the ones who get to assert their own identity.

Women want sex, and in particular, they want sex with people who really want them. But socially, many straight men still find it a turnoff when women are sexual aggressors. Which means that, for women, aggressively pursuing the thing they want actually leads to them not getting it. I suspect this is the source of much sexual dissatisfaction of the modern single lady, who's so horny she's running across the street to Walgreens to buy more batteries twice a week, but is unable to pick up men despite social conventions that men are "easy" to bed and women have to be coaxed into casual sex. The thing women are told they can access any time is, maddeningly, often just out of reach.

…men also tend to be unaware of their own privileges as men. … I thought I’d compile a list … focusing on the invisible privileges benefiting men.

On Bill Callahan and Grimes. Letting the hero die might mean opening yourself to new experiences. Finding more to identify with. Noticing the commonalities that point to the one, along with the differences point to the many, and identifying with songs from the inside and outside at the same time.

On one hand, it’s great that she’s this new hot blog thing, because she is a woman who creates her own beats in a space that historically is not that friendly to non-males. On the other hand, her elevation been a case study in the values people consign to the music they love — in this case, thin representations of ideas, that people have praised her for her “naive” and “elf-like” qualities, as though by filtering her voice into wispiness to the point that she’s almost a specter (as she does), she becomes more admirable, a negation of herself.

‘In terms of its America-sized grandeur and its fixation with the emptiness of dreams, Born to Die attempts to serve as Del Rey's own beautiful, dark, twisted fantasy, but there's no spark and nothing at stake.’

‘1. Go through your piece and flip the gender of your descriptive phrases' subjects. Are there any that sound ludicrous as a result? 2. Are you essentially making shit up about the artist in order to sexualize her? 3. Are you comparing the artist you're writing about to other female artists only? If so, why? 4. Are you writing about a moment where your subject flirts with you and you respond in kind?’

‘Exploring “what a woman should be” is boring and cliche in the 21st century, and perhaps that is why Lana Del Rey seems to many to be so bored and sad on stage. So let’s take Lana Del Rey for what she is—a pop star playing a role, a woman whose real life we know nothing about—and learn from what she’s taught us about our own insufferable addiction to a vapid version of femininity. In the future, I’m hoping we’ll accept more female artists who are interested in mining the depths of who they really are.’

In Afghanistan there is a history of parents dressing their daughters up as boys (until they reach their teens) in order to avoid embarrassment and scrutiny of a culture that values sons and treats women like shit. Fascinating, unfortunate, and like one of the article's interviewees says, just a small part of a huge web of human rights issues plaguing the nation.