Underneath my yellow skin

Tag Archives: societal norms

Last post about safer spaces, part eight

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Let’s talk more about safer spaces and society’s expectation for ‘normal’ behavior in general. In yesterday’s post, I wrote about masking, social norms, and how I felt forced to do so for so many reasons. One, growing up in tthe seventies, there wasn’t even lip service to diversity. It was fit in or die, and I constantly felt like I was dying. Or that I wanted to die. As many autistic people describe it, it’s like always having to dedicate one hefty portion of your brain to fitting in. That makes it much harder to focus on what you actually need to do.

When I was in school in the eighties, there was the murmurs of diversity. In this case, though, it was the melting pot theory–which, to put it bluntly-fucking sucked. The idea was that immigrants came to America and ‘melted’ into American society. In other words, they were supposed to shed what made them foreign as soon as possible. Asian people tend to be more conforming in general, anyway, so my parents were eager to fit in. Or rather, not stick out.

My brother and I were taught to be white, basically. My parents tried to speak Taiwanese to my brother (who is older than I am), but they decided it would be easier to teach him only English. When I came along, they didn’t even bothre trynig to teach me Taiwanese. We did not eat Taiwanese food outside the house, and we preferred American. (A
t least until we were adults.)

I was so anxious as a little kid. I had to make sure that I was acting like everyone else when I didn’t even know what that really meant. I kept my eyes on everyone around me, but I was convinced I was an alien. I always felt like I was failing, and I was miserable.

I want to emphasize this because even if I looked like I belonged (which I most certainly did not), I hated everything about my life. I didn’t feel like I could ever be me, which was not a fun place to be. I smoothed and sanded my rough edges until they were completely gone. I hid everything that made me me because I heard the overt and covert message loud and clear: I as me and myself was unacceptable.

That was the main message my parents and society gave to me while I was a child and a teenager. I was unacceptable as I was. I was not fit to be present in polite society, and I better hide everything and anything about myself that wasn’t ‘normal’.

Again, this was before neurodivergence was acknowledge as a thing. Or rather, right around the time that it was first being recognized at all. Except it was thought of as a completely abhorrent thing that had to be surpressed/reprogrammed at all costs. Society was cruel, and doctors aided and abetted that cruelty. Hell, they pushed it forward themselves.


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Two seeming opposites can both be true (at the same time), part two

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In yesterday’s post, I wrote about how two things that were almost the complete opposite of each other can both be true at the same time. My example was how it’s the social norm to greet each other with small talk. “Hello, how are you?” I’m good, and you?” Or, “Hey,” with a nod and a smile. The social custom varies depending on the region, but it’s all for the same reason. It’s a version of “I acknowledge you as a fellow human.” “I acknowledge you in return.”

I’ve made my peace with it. I know this is not going to change and that it’s fairly harmless. Now that I understand it’s not really about caring how the other person is, but is a way to just smoothly start an interaction, I’m fine with it. Would I rather not have to do it? Yeah. Anything that would take away an instant of me having to pretend to perform humanity is a good thing to me.

The thing is, no matter how many scripts I have memorized, one surprise question will always throw me into a loop. I’m like a computer in that way. I don’t do well without my scripts. I didn’t even realize this was a thing until very recently–that I had scripts, I mean.

It was when an friend of mine who has autism and I were talking about growing up as a weirdo. She is alos bi and other minorities, so she could relate to the way I felt as I child. I gave her an example to illustrate what I meant.

When someone would tell me a piece of news, I would have no internal reaction. Didn’t matter what the news was. Pregnancy, new job, death in the family, it was all the same to me. I would have to take several seconds to digest what the other person had told me. Them: (telling me their news). Me: (my brain) …. Me: (my brain) Oh, I need to say something. Scrambles for somethin to say. Fumbling with my words, I come up with something appropriate and then breathe a sigh of relief. Most of the time, the awkwardness is merely internal and not noticed by the other person.

Here’s the thing. I truly do feel whatever emotion I am trying to convey. deep down inside. However, my feels on the surface are very flat. Any time I try to feel them, it’s as if the feeling is wrapped under a thousand layers of bubble wrap. So it’s deadened and squishy.

When I explained this to my friend, she gently let me know that’s what autism is like.

Side note: K and I had a heated argument about mental health issues being less taboo these days. We both agree it’s a good thing that we’ve made progress on identifying issues and getting/having help for them. However, she was concerned that it might have gone too far in the opposite direction and younger people were identifying too much with their mental health issues. Or rather, not coming up with strategies to deal with them. She also questioned if everything had to be a disorder.


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Gender on my mind redux

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Still thinking about gender. I wish I could quit it, but I just can’t. In the last post, I ended by saying that I didn’t know what feeling like a woman meant. I wasn’t being snarky because I really don’t know. I probed my insides quite thoroughly and came up with nothing. Again, I am not railing against being a woman because I don’t feel my body is wrong–at least not for the so-called lady bits. Yes, I hated it for other reasnos, but nothing to do with the perceived gender of it.

Or rather, not for the reason of gender itself. What I mean is that I got flack for being a woman. A lot of it. Very different from men than from women, but it was definitely based on me being perceived as a woman.

In tandem with this, I struggle with the ‘cool girl’ syndrome and if it’s always as toxic as people say it is. If the woman who is  saying, “I’m not like other women.” and “I just don’t get along with any women.” is also saying, “Women are so full of drama!” and “Women are the worst”, then, yes, it’s ‘cool girl’ syndrome.

However. There are women or AFAB (like me) who aren’t very feminine at all. Bull dykes are a thing (even if they no longer go by that. That’s what they called themselves in my heyday), which is not what I am. I just read up on stone butches and stone femmes, and I don’t fit into those categories, either.

Here’s the thing. I n general, I don’t care about categories. I do have a type when it comes to physical looks that I find attractive (kd lang, Alan Rickman (first as Snape and then as himself), and my new favorite, Erika Ishii). Dark hair, androgynous, and wicked smart/into social justice. I have not dated many people with that look, though.

I know how this is going to sound, but I’m going to say it, anyway. I really don’t understand…hm. I don’t know exactly how to say this. Let me muse it out. As I mentioned, I do have a type, but it’s not hard and fast. I am attracted to someone for many different reasons, some of them more healthy than the others. Looks are but one, though, and probably low on the list of traits that I really care about.

That’s not the controversial thing. That comes when we’re talking about sex. I know we weren’t, but I’m going to, anyway. When I was looking up stone butch, I was shocked to read that the definition definitely meant that they did not receive sexual pleasure on their genitalia from their partners. Ever. And a stone femme (which I didn’t know even was a term) does not give sexual pleasure.


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More about gender just because I can

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I want to muse more about gender because I can. In the last post, I was all over the place as usual, but I mostly talked about how I view gender and how others view me (and my gender).

The reason I started questioning my gender was not because of all the ‘you’re not a real woman’ comments I got. I didn’t love those, of course, but I pretty much just shrugged them off. It’s because when nonbinary became more into the collective consciousness, I started thinking seriously about my gender. Before, I was default woman and, as I’ve said several times before, it’s like an ill-fitting raincoat. Yes, it keeps the rain out, more or less, but not completely. And it’s uncomfortable. I can’t wait to get home and take it off.

Just before my medical crisis, I decided that agender was the best term for me. Why? There are several reasons. One, I was reading several posts from women who were deep in their feels about being women. How important it was to them as people and a major part of their identities.Then, there were other AFAB people who said it wasn’t important to them at all. Of course, there were people everywhere in between as well.

Agender is hard to explain in part because it’s not any one meaning. It’s similar to nonbinary in that way. I think that’s another reason cis binary people are so threatened by it–it’s amorphous in a way that is disconcerting and perhaps even threatening.

Anything that fucks with the status quo is going to get pushback. I’ve known this since I was young and a weirdo in almost every way. I’ve learned to keep my opinions to myself for the most part because I…am just tired. And I’ve leaned to mask so well. That’s why when I inadvertently trip the ‘wtf’ wires, it’s doubly hard on me.

You see, I’m going into every interaction with my guard up. I know about a hundred things to keep to myself and how to do small talk. I’m so good at masking, I didn’t even know I was doing it until I was well into my forties. I just thought I was a weirdo and had to hide it.

Anyway, these women were talking about how core to their identities being a woman was. I reached deep down inside myself to visualize how I felt about being a woman and came up with–nothing. I felt nothing about being a woman.

I have feelings about my experience whilst being viewed as a woman, yes. I feel solidarity with women for the shared experiences. But, I also feel impatience and frustration at cis het white women who think their experiences as women are the official definition of womanhood. And for standing by their cis white het male counterparts with all their fucking white supremacy bullshit.

You know what? I’m going to immediately add something to this. I have already decided that I’m not going to date cis het white men when I start dating again, and I think I might add cis white women to that. I’m tired, y’all. The fact that this election is as close as it is has led me to a very dark place about my fellow Americans.


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In My Ideal World, I can just breathe

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Still talking about being a weirdo is a very straitlaced world. Here is the post from yesterday. Sometimes, I get jaded when I hear other people talk about things they consider ‘weird’ because it often falls into what I consider to be mildly diffreent. Or even if it’s more out there, it’s not super out there.

It’s hard to explain, really, but as someone who is on the fringe of everything, I don’t assume that anything about my life is normal. Not my hobbies; not my beliefs; not my traits/identities. One fairly tame example is when I worked at the county as an administrative assistant. I was on the floor with all the executives of the different departments. That meant that there were people from very disparate departments on one floor. There was a researcher who was roughly my age and also a woman (as I identified as at the time). We would casually chat about this and that, and it was fine. I only saw her once a week or so, so it was certainly not a steady thing.

Somehow, we found out that we were both bisexual. She was with a male partner in what she thought might be an abusive relationship. That was an interesting discussion to have, but it’s not the reason I brought her up. Once, we were talking about sex. Yes, wildly inappropriate for the workplace, but not surprising with that particular workplace. Somehow, the question of attraction came up. I said that I would walk down the street, see someone hot, and think about how they would be in bed.

My colleague looked at me as if  Itold her I was streaking on the streets on the regular. Or as if I had said that I was punching people in the face randomly and for no good reason. I asked her what was wrong and she said that women don’t think like that. My brain screeched to a halt because she was telling me, self-identified as a woman at the time, that something I had just said was something that ‘women’ didn’t do/think. She was completely serious and did not see how fucked up what she was saying was.

Side note: This is human nature, by the way. We think/believe things beyond all ratinal belief. If something threatens our sense of self and what we believe, we will go to ridiculous lengths to explain it away. That’s why it’s so hard to get someone out of acult, for example. Or why conspiracy theorists are impossible to reason with. They will simply dismiss anything that doesn’t fit into their preconceived notions/ideas/beliefs. Again, we all do this–it’s just to what extent any given person will do it.

I looked at her and told her I, a woman, was telling her to her face that this was something I did. She said that she had talked about this with all her female friends (ten! Ten women! All the women!) about this very thing, and all of them said they could not imagine doing that. Therefore! No! Women! Would! Ever! Do! That!


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In the in-between In My Ideal World

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In my last post, I intended to talk about the little things around the big things in my life, but ended up talking about writing–which is a big thing. It’s not one of my identity issues, though, except that I’m struggling with writing fiction now in a way I never have. Before my medical crisis, I had stories in my brain all the time. I had one writer’s block that I could remember, and it was for a month. That was very tense for me, but it went after that month or so with no problem. Now, however, while I still have ideas and fragments in my brain, I don’t have the stories I used to have.

I have been mulling over an idea for a trilogy for the last year. I’ve been refining it as I go, but I can’t make it gel in a coherent whole. Acutally, I have a few different ideas (for different trilogies), and I’m trying to find a way to bring it all together. I don’t want to talk too much about it before I start writing because I find that the more I talk about my writing, the less I actually write/the worse I actually write. That’s not unique to me, by the way. A lot of writers find that if the talk too much about their writing as they’re writing, it takes the verve out of said writing.

Here’s the thing. The big things such as sexual orientation, race, gender, etc., are important, yes, but so are the spaces in between. Or the things that don’t quite fit into any one character. And they’re all connected–at least in my mind. Which I’ve discoverered might be because I’m neurodivergent.

Side note: It’s refreshing to know that I can still learn things about myself at my old age. Refreshing, but also daunting. Daunting because there is so much about myself that I would like to fix. Refreshing because apparently, you can teach an old dog new tricks!

This is one of the reasons my writing has stalled. I think that since my medical crisis, my brain has become even more wedded to the idea that everything is related. If I want to write about one thing, say, my medical crisis, then I have to start with my family dysfunction. I have to add in my Taiji practice, not to mention just my life in general.

When I start thinking of all the things I need/want to add to the story, my brain mentally gives up.

Side note: After Elden Ring came out, Ian urged mo te pitch to his editor a story about FromSoft games and my medical crisis. See, before my medical crisis, I was so hyped for Elden Ring. It was announced….before the pandemic? Or at least rumored, and then it didn’t come out. And didn’t come out.


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I keep my mouth shut

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So I’m continuing on with my musings about family dysfunction, how difficult it is to be so different, and how I’ve learned to keep my mouth shut. And, yes, I’m going to tie them together somehow (or not). I’m not too fussed either way. In the last post, I talked about family dysfunction mostly. I will touch more on that, but I want to start by musing about masking. I didn’t even realize to what extent I did it until I talked about it with A. It’s such a part of me by now, it takes conscious effort to take it off.

I am on my guard almost any time I interact with someone, online or in the real world. I am constantly monitoring the temperature around me to know if what I am saynig in acceptable or not. In the Discord I’m in, there’s an in-group and an out-group. Or rather, there are a few (cishet white) guys who are pretty dominant and others fall in line behind them. It’s not deliberate and they don’t mean to be, but god grant me the confidence of a mediocre white man.

Not that they are mediocre, but they are cishet white dudes who have no problem just stating their opinions like they’re facts. It’s really irritating when it comes to pop culture because I don’t feel that there’s room for disagreement. For example. Sekiro. Many people consider it the best From game ever. People will blather about how once it clicks, it’s like a dance/rhythm game and soooooo easy. They don’t want to hear anything about it not being true for everyone. Or that for some of us, it never clicked. I had a hard time finishing it once–a really fucking hard time. When I tried to go back to it after my medical crisis, I could not beat Owl (Father) who was my nemesis, and who I needed to beat again, unfortunately, for the plat. I say unfortunately because I did him on my first playthrough, thinking I would not play again and wanting to do all the bosses on this path. The only reason I would go back is to do the plat, and that would mean doing him again.

No. Not going to do it. Also, cannot do Isshin again. Oh, and you have to do all the bosses (the ones you get a trophy for) on one save, so I would have to do Owl (Father) on NG?. And then do the Shura (bad) ending on NG++? Nope. I wasn’t going to do it, anyway, and now, I can’t do it.

That’s a word that Americans don’t like: can’t. We have been told since we were kids that we can do anything! We can be anything! It’s horseshit. Everyone has limitations, and that’s not even remotely controversial. Or it shouldn’t be.


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Differing vantage points

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I’ve been talking about family dysfunction and abuse in general. It’s difficult to talk about because in order to have a conversation about something, you need  a common starting point. You have to have agreed upon boundaries as to what the conversation will entail. In discussing families and abuse, the person listening has to have at least a rudimentary knowledge of such things happening.

It makes such a difference. If you are someone from a  happy and well-adjusted family who does not have any friends who have dysfunctional families, then that person, let’s call them Alex, may not be able to understand where I’m coming from. In the last post, I talked about how my mother has no boundaries, and what’s more, she feels that it’s her right as a mother to meddle with my brother and my relationship. I’ll get back to her later. For now, though, I want to talk about my father.

I have a story I tell about my father to indicate his narcissim. It’s the one about when I was a kid, I never got cold. We found out when I was a teenager that I had hyperthyroidism (Graves’ disease). That was why I never got cold. My father would say, “Put on a coat because I’m cold.” People either didn’t get what I was trying to emphasize (“Why are you mad at your parent for caring if you’re cold?”) or said I should do it to placate my father.

The first is vastly more common, and they don’t read/hear what I’m actually saying. My father doesn’t say, “Put on a coat because it’s cold.” He said, “Put on a a coat because I’m cold.” Meaning, beacuse he’s cold. Not beacuse I’m cold. It never occurred to him that I would feel differently than he would.

In addition, he came up with a different narartive of his own as to what happened. He said that he would tell me to put on a coat, and I would refuse because he didn’t ask nicely. That I wanted him to say ‘please’. That’s certainly possible that I threw that out there because knowing him, he probably ordered me to put on a coat rather than ask. However, that was never the main reason. The main reason was because I wasn’t fucking cold!


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Dyfunction dysfunction, what’s your function?

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One thing rarely talked about when discussing abuse is how coping mechanisms that have been developed to deal with the abuse are faulty in healthy situations. It’s something that comes up on Ask A Manager on a regular basis because she talks about how being in a toxic work environment can warp you to what is ok and what isn’t. The wildest example I can think of is the letter writer who bit a coworker and in the update, said it was considered ok by her colleagues because the guy is a jerk. The LW’s conclusion was that people with normal jobs found them boring and hated it, so, yeah, her work environment was toxic, but, hey, at least it was interesting. Many commenters pointed out that the LW was getting warped by the toxic environment.

I bring this up because abuse does the same. In the last post, I mentioned that I was resigned to managing my parents because they weren’t going to change. The way I deal with them, though, is not something that would work well with healthy people. Basically, I just placate them and get through a conversation as painlessly as possible. I keep it as surface-y as possible as well. The goal is to not say anything of importance unless I absolutely have to.

You can imagine how this would not work well with people I actually want to be close to. You can’t shine off a friend and expect them to be happy about it. A true friend, I mean. Not just an acquaintance. When the tragedy happened in February, I told my close friends about it. I was devastated and needed the comfort/support. I would not think about holding back with them, which is the normal and healthy way to deal with it.

The longer you’ve been in an abusive situation, the harder it is to recalibrate your thinking. I am low-contact with my parents, but it’s still enough contact to keep me off balance. I have a shield up around them that I can’t afford to let done. Explaining that to other people is futile.

I’ve said it before, but it’s a matter of context. For people who have loving parents, it’s nearly impossible to imagine parents who don’t love their children. Or rather, it might be imaginable, but it’s not something that can be understood if you haven’t been in the situation. Like anything else that is the outlier, really.


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Being weird should be the norm

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Here’s the thing about being weird. Yes, I’m doing a cold open. Here was the last post about me being weird if you want to catch up. I think this is four? Something like that.

I don’t want to be normal, whatever that means.

Side note: (Yes, this early!) I was complaining to K several decades ago about how I was such a weirdo and didn’t want the normal life. I was complaining in the context of how I wished I could be normal and not such a freak. She said, and I’m paraphrasing, “But Minna, you don’t want to be married and have kids. You don’t want to do any of those things. You would be miserable.”

She is right. I don’t want any of that. None of it sounds appealing to me, and I realized that what I wanted was a sense of belonging–not the actual markers of being ‘normal’. I want to be able to be me, more or less, and not have to explain my thought process all the goddamn time.

Side note II: I love the word heuristics. I love the idea of a heuristic. We can’t function without heuristics because it’s impossible to analyze everything every moment of the day. For example, when you reach a stoplight, it would be difficult if you didn’t know that red means stop, yellow means caution, and green means go. If you had to figure that out every time you reached a stoplight, you would not be able to drive.

That’s a silly example, but it’s an easy one for people to understand. Heuristics extend to societal norms. We greet each other warmly when we meet, and we are civil unless we’re given a reason not to be. Societal norms dictate our interactions. Again, I’m not saying we should get rid of them all. What I am saying is that they shouldn’t be so rigid that people who aren’t a part of them can’t fit in at all.

Unfortunately, it’s very common for a group to close ranks. I am a lifelong Democrat, but that doesn’t mean that I approve of everything they say and do. This is my issue with groups in general–it’s too easy for the rules to become calcified. And for them to quickly close ranks. This is my issue with the weird epithet being hurled at Trump and Vance by Harris and Walz. It’s drawing a line I’m not comfortable with. I get that it’s signalling who’s in and who’s out–but it doesn’t do anything to make me feel like I’m in.

The probem with talking about ‘normal average Americans’ is that I’m not one and have never been. I’m on the fringe of the fringe, and it’s not even close. I’m weird, and I feel alienated by people in my party who are denigrating the weirdos.


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