Cal Q&A 

I didn't really feel like trying to rasp across the room for you all to hear, but I did want to clarify and talk about that one question that fell totally flat on its face.

Text communications, in general, have the wonderful ability to be devoid of embodiment. All we are can be condensed into a few characters on a screen. In this world, there is no absolute gender, only the genders we place onto the people on the other side of the screen based on stereotypes, judgments and "your best guess." More than once, I've had a gender forced onto me so others could feel safe, and so they could remember, "this is how we should act around X." In light of insecurities, it seems that people tend to grasp onto anything stable - they have no view of humanity outside of certain categories. Is it possible to find the love of your life in a disembodied medium?

The idea of "preference" applies not only to gender, but to race. How can one choose what race one prefers, while being unable to choose their gender? Is there fundamentally something different about the two? They say love is carnal, and that it is shaped by our experiences, which shape our needs. It is, perhaps, impossible to disentangle the idea of physical intimacy from companionship.