Gender&Identity.

In our culture there is a lot of confusion on gender and identity. In reference to the difference of a writer and writing, I belive that is something that can be mixed up often, even though I am now currently writing it does not make me a writer. Even though, I am a journalism major and would consider myself a writer, many people who are not pursuing writing careers would not be considered writers. Now the quote that Winterson said, "I am a writer who happens to love women. I am not a lesbian who happens to write." I loved this quote. I love anything to do with women, I love the study of women throughout history and the impacts they have made on society. I love the long way women have traveled from where we used to be, but i'm interested in women non-sexually, and people like me who love the study of women in general can be confused for lesbians or bi-sexual/curious, which is defiently not the case.

Women writers, like Winterson i'm sure would be confused as lesbians as well. It's human nature to read books like Written on the body and have you're own thoughts on what gender the narrator is. Me personally, I believe the narrator is a woman. I'm not trying to stereotype males at all, but from personal experience and being an outsider looking in on some situations, if a male has many sexual partners, he is not going to fall in love and have heartbreak like the narrator did. The narrator was not a believer in love, the first few pages could tell you that. He/she fell in
"love" with almost every female he/she had sex with (before Louise) and was heartbroken due to the fact that they always left the narrator for their husband. Females are more of seen as the "clingy" type, who fall for men who are just looking for a one night stand, just like the narrator. Yet I also thought, how many married women are really looking for affairs with other women? Does this go back to the whole lesbian or just loving women discussion? Say if the narrator really was female and the sexual partners she had were married to males, the women always returned to their husband. It could be that the wives were not lesbians, they just appreciated women and had an affair, but always returned back to their sex of choice, males.

If the narrator was a male, it would be different. I believe that if a married woman was to have an affair with another man, it would be because they see something in this man that they don't in their own husband, and they are more prone to leave their husband to their new lover. Yet for a married woman to have an affair with another woman, it would be more towards to experience something different, but in the end, they would go back to their regular lifestlye. It's something to think about when reading books like Winterson's. I do belive though that appreciating women and actually being a lesbian and/or gay are two completely different things, and maybe that's what Winterson what trying to prove in her novel without really knowing it...