In order to get into this week's post, we'll need to take a trip back to Women's Studies 101. What is gender, dear boys, girl and others? It's not sex, which can be defined pretty easily by taking a look at what's inside your underpants (although let's not forget that 1 in 2000 babies is intersex, or hermaphroditic). Gender is the meaning that society attaches to biological sex, assumptions and attitudes about how we should act and feel based on that special place between our legs.

With that in mind, let's read on. First up is this viral short that's evoking chortles this holiday season. It's pretty evident early on that it's advertising, but the high production values and clever script make it entertaining nonetheless. I can't give hearty lols, though, because of the gender assumptions that drive the tale. Men are thoughtless; women are pouty. Men give; women get. Yes, I'm a feminist from way back so half of you are already groaning about my lack of a sense of humour. I'll tell you though: when pondering why men and women don't "get" each other, my money isn't on natural biological differences. I'm blaming the constant bombardment of messages that we're so impossibly different, it's not even worth trying to understand each other.

Besides which, straight men and their relationships with straight women are like, so boring, dude. Along with humourless feminists like me, lesbians and gays and all sorts of imaginative queers keep pushing the gender envelope in fascinating ways. Here's a gorgeous photo essay on the muxe, transgendered women in the Oaxaca province of Mexico. Like other indigenous people around the world, the Zapotec have long had a third gender category for people born as men who decide to live as women. They are, more or less, accepted by family and strangers, which is pretty heartwarming in a world filled with ugly prejudice.

If you're dead stuck on maintaining essential gender differences, then maybe it's time to become an environmental activist. As I've reported before, scary chemicals are infecting your boys. Found in everything from cleaning products to food packages (!), chems like bisphenol A and phthalates are simulating estrogen in male animals, causing everything from undescended testes to full on egg sacks in frogs, alligators, birds, deer, polar bears and whales. Yes, polar bears and whales—you know, top of the food chain animals, like humans. It looks like you have a choice, readers. Hug a tree, hug a tranny or better yet, both.