"Dividing the world into males and female is such a big part of the culture that it can seem impossible, and perhaps even aggravating, to try to think outside those categories."

"This is not only a problem for squares stuck in a binary way of thinking � many of the terms associated with genderqueerness end up referring back to masculinity or femininity in some way, which is a bit tricky if the ideal is to move beyond the gender binary entirely."

If the ideal is... I find that sentence so amusing because it violates its own standards. Isn't there something square about having an ideal? Squares � we're told � are people who are stuck. But the writer of that sentence � Vanessa Vitiello Urquhart at Slate � is stuck on a way of thinking, which is that the squares are those icky people and we'd better not be squares! We'd better not be stuck! We need to move beyond the place where they are stuck, because we are the un-stuck, the non-squares, and we have an ideal, which is not being stuck where those others people are stuck.

It's tricky, you say. Yes, it is. It's tricky to get so wound up in something that most people don't bother with, especially with your fixated idea that those other people are stuck on "a binary way of thinking" � which is, ironically, a binary way of thinking. Who are those other people you're railing against? I think an awful lot of people, perhaps most people, are not in the 2 categories Vitiello Urquhart posits in her binary construct. They follow the obvious and benevolent practice of regarding individuals as individuals. That can work for the square and the hip and for the grand set of persons of mixed square/hipness.

Maybe, regarding individuals as individuals is just too simple, and Vitiello Urquhart wants something tricky to do. Whoever attempts that trick can be judged as an individual... an individual who is interested in doing that particular trick. Is it entertaining, is it enlightening, is it loving, is it beautiful, is it helpful, is it generous, is it done for the purpose of tweaking others and distancing yourself from those whom you regard as icky... ?