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beetigerSeveral of my friends did entries recently discussing what situations or activities made them feel differently about their gender, so I thought I'd talk about my own gender identity and expression a bit.
I'm female. I've always been female. I can't really think of a moment when I haven't been consciously female. For large parts of my early life, I felt like I might not be a very good or competent example of a girl/woman -I've felt brash, rough, socially unsubtle, unable to negotiate cliques, bad at putting on makeup, lacking in fashion sense, right-brained, geeky, bad at reading subtle signs, bad at housekeeping, uninterested in gossip, fat, and unpretty. I've felt like the deal society hands women has been unrealistic and unfair and crappy. But at none of those times did I not feel distictly female.
I love women-only spaces, especially ritual spaces, the energetic feel of them. I'm almost embarassed to say that, because the intellectual part of me wants to believe that people are the gender they say they are, and who the hell am I to say that someone does or doesn't "feel" female to me. But it's a very strong perception of mine that womenspace has a distinct flavor to it. (I've never had the experience of a transwoman messing up womenspace. I *have* had the experience of someone not-female coming into womenspace because they wanted to see what it was like, and even though they were good natured about it, it changed the feel a lot.) I don't like a lot of what can happen in women-only spaces, which is male-bashing and cattiness.
On the other hand, I love playing with people's notion of gender and with my own gender expression. I love wearing corsets and big poofy taffeta minskirts; I love wearing a full tuxedo and a strap-on. I love wearing a corset and heels and a strap-on, even. I love extreme expressions -- both male and female drag, if you will. I like to RP male characters. I also am personally attracted to androgynous people very much -- soft pretty boys and butchy women, people with nonstandard body types, and definitely the people for whom I'm not quite sure at first glance. I'm definitely attracted to people who have thought about gender roles and expression, whatever decisions they've made around it.
Earlier in my life, I considered myself bisexual. I loved women because they were soft and cushy and had breasts and could understand my body better, and men because they were strong and smelled good and had cocks and could be in charge. Now I consider myself pansexual, and psychophysical gender's not a major driver for me. I'm attracted to people, and I figure we can work out the details of what's in the toolbox when we get there.
The past few years have been especially female for me, what with being pregnant and nursing and having chosen a quasi-traditional stay-at-home mom role for the moment. Nevertheless, I miss my monthly cycles. Not the mess and the hassle of them, but the rhythm of them. I found it grounding. Sometimes without that marker, the landscape of my life seems somehow endless.
I believe gender is fluid, and my gender is fluid too. But for me, it's on the butch-femme axis, not on the male-female axis. I just can't get my head around what it would be like to be male. To be one of those women who cut their hair short and hid on a pirate ship and passed as male, to save their truelove or just to have an adventure, yes. I've had the obvious thoughts sometimes that it might be fun to have a penis for a while sometime, just to play with and see how that felt, but I always imagine doing it as an enhanced female person, not as a male person.
For a long time, I was confused by trans people. I thought they were doing women and men a disservice by feeling like they needed to switch genders and then serving the traditional roles in our culture rather than helping broaden cultural roles so that women and men could be whatever they wanted to be. I had my epiphany on this when I realized that it might not be the cultural roles that trans folk were uncomfortable with, or the clothing, or even the bodies, that it might not even be about activism or politics; they might just feel their gender as strongly as I did, and it might not match their bodies.
So, yeah, I'm female, in all my spikiness and male-answer-syndromeness and pattern baldness and messiness. Just the way it is. And y'know, I kind of like it.
I'm female. I've always been female. I can't really think of a moment when I haven't been consciously female. For large parts of my early life, I felt like I might not be a very good or competent example of a girl/woman -I've felt brash, rough, socially unsubtle, unable to negotiate cliques, bad at putting on makeup, lacking in fashion sense, right-brained, geeky, bad at reading subtle signs, bad at housekeeping, uninterested in gossip, fat, and unpretty. I've felt like the deal society hands women has been unrealistic and unfair and crappy. But at none of those times did I not feel distictly female.
I love women-only spaces, especially ritual spaces, the energetic feel of them. I'm almost embarassed to say that, because the intellectual part of me wants to believe that people are the gender they say they are, and who the hell am I to say that someone does or doesn't "feel" female to me. But it's a very strong perception of mine that womenspace has a distinct flavor to it. (I've never had the experience of a transwoman messing up womenspace. I *have* had the experience of someone not-female coming into womenspace because they wanted to see what it was like, and even though they were good natured about it, it changed the feel a lot.) I don't like a lot of what can happen in women-only spaces, which is male-bashing and cattiness.
On the other hand, I love playing with people's notion of gender and with my own gender expression. I love wearing corsets and big poofy taffeta minskirts; I love wearing a full tuxedo and a strap-on. I love wearing a corset and heels and a strap-on, even. I love extreme expressions -- both male and female drag, if you will. I like to RP male characters. I also am personally attracted to androgynous people very much -- soft pretty boys and butchy women, people with nonstandard body types, and definitely the people for whom I'm not quite sure at first glance. I'm definitely attracted to people who have thought about gender roles and expression, whatever decisions they've made around it.
Earlier in my life, I considered myself bisexual. I loved women because they were soft and cushy and had breasts and could understand my body better, and men because they were strong and smelled good and had cocks and could be in charge. Now I consider myself pansexual, and psychophysical gender's not a major driver for me. I'm attracted to people, and I figure we can work out the details of what's in the toolbox when we get there.
The past few years have been especially female for me, what with being pregnant and nursing and having chosen a quasi-traditional stay-at-home mom role for the moment. Nevertheless, I miss my monthly cycles. Not the mess and the hassle of them, but the rhythm of them. I found it grounding. Sometimes without that marker, the landscape of my life seems somehow endless.
I believe gender is fluid, and my gender is fluid too. But for me, it's on the butch-femme axis, not on the male-female axis. I just can't get my head around what it would be like to be male. To be one of those women who cut their hair short and hid on a pirate ship and passed as male, to save their truelove or just to have an adventure, yes. I've had the obvious thoughts sometimes that it might be fun to have a penis for a while sometime, just to play with and see how that felt, but I always imagine doing it as an enhanced female person, not as a male person.
For a long time, I was confused by trans people. I thought they were doing women and men a disservice by feeling like they needed to switch genders and then serving the traditional roles in our culture rather than helping broaden cultural roles so that women and men could be whatever they wanted to be. I had my epiphany on this when I realized that it might not be the cultural roles that trans folk were uncomfortable with, or the clothing, or even the bodies, that it might not even be about activism or politics; they might just feel their gender as strongly as I did, and it might not match their bodies.
So, yeah, I'm female, in all my spikiness and male-answer-syndromeness and pattern baldness and messiness. Just the way it is. And y'know, I kind of like it.
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no subject
Date: 2004-12-17 05:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-12-17 05:15 pm (UTC)This is what I was going for, actually, in my post; but you've articulated the dynamic/feeling so much better than I did. :-D
Butch-femme is a better dichotomy for me also, I think. But when I feel it, I tend to explain it as 'boy' or 'boyish' rather than butch. But I think it's basically the same thing.
no subject
Date: 2004-12-17 05:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-12-17 05:59 pm (UTC)In the past I've really enjoyed playing female characters in tabletop RPGs because I felt like it gave me some sort of better handle to actually roleplaying. Like, maybe it jammed home the idea that I was portraying a different person, or gave me some sort of idea of how people might react to the character (again, not colored by how people react to me).
Do you get the same sort of thing?
no subject
Date: 2004-12-17 09:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-12-17 06:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-12-17 08:32 pm (UTC)