I tend to overthink things. By a lot. I’m not talking about spending five more minutes on something than I should, but obsessing over something that I should just let go.
For example, gender. I have talked about it ad nauseam, and I know that it’s not good for my mental health to do so. I also know that for whatever reason, I can’t ever come close to understanding gender. Sometimes, I feel like I’m about to grasp it, but then it slithers out of my hand.
Then, I say to myself, “I’ve made my peace with it.” I may even believe it for a minute or two. However, the dissatisfaction slithers in, and I’m in despair once agian. What is gender? Why can’t I feel it or understand it? Why am I such a freak–yet again? Just once, can’t I be normal?
The answer to that is a most emphatic no. There is nothing about me that is normal. Not my hobbies to my lifestyle to my pop culture tastes to everything else. I have mostly gotten used to it, but it niggles at the back of my mind now and again.
Especially in a time when my federal government is actively hurting me and mine. I have said that I’m relieved at the last time I had to declare my gender on my driver’s license that I chose F. Even though it’s the first time they included NB, and I would have chosen that if I was thirty years younger. This time, though, it was right before the elections. There was much muttering from certain people* about the queers something or the other blah blah blah I always close my ears at this point.
I will say it’s always amazed me that people can get so wound up at a tiny minority of people who have no impact on them at all. Not directly. And, no, “they’re ruining women’s sports” or “they’re a menance in the women’s bathroom” are such bullshit.
By the way. Those arguments are never made in good faith. Do you know how I know this? Because the same people are not concerned about domestic violence abuse victims, the vast number of sexual assualts in America, or any other array of issues that face women, nonbinary people, genderqueer people, agender people, and, yes, indeed, even men in this country. The only time the conservatives roll out ‘but the wimminz’ bullshit is when it comes to their transphobic bullshit.
Pardon me if I don’t believe them when they bleat about caring for women when the do everything they can to make life harder for women in so many ways*. Pardon me again for giving such heavy side-eye at the faux concern.
Here’s the thing. There always has to be a bogeywoman the pols can point at so the slavering masses. For me, it started wiht Reagan and the ‘welfare queen’. Thus began the stereotype of the black woman trying to game the welfare system while driving a Cadillac to said welfare appointments. Reagan also systematically further disenfranchised gay men during the first AIDs crisis, but I’m not going to talk about that, either.
Of course it’s always a minority who has no power, and of course it’s always aimed at either working white class people or middle class white people. “Those people” are coming to take your jobs–whether those people are immigrants, black people, or other people of color. Anyone but them, basically. Oh, non-Christians as well.
I’m trying hard not to go down that road, but it actually fits what I’m talking about.
Side tangent that isn’t really a side tangent.
Here’s another thing that I don’t understand. People talk about how if they ever met a celebrity, they would get so flustered, they wouldn’t know what to say. I’ve seen big celebrities get flustered when they meet their idols. I’ve never felt it in my soul. There are people I really look up to, but I can’t think of a single one whwo would make me freak out. I talked about it with my brother, and he agreed (he’s also neurodivergent). We both said that we’d be animated talking to someone like President Obama, but not overwhelmed.
This is connected to how I feel about gender in that I just don’t group people in that way. By gender, by status, by anything other than who they are as people. I mean, of course I do in general and when it’s needed for counting purposes, but whwen I’m interacting with people themselves, I don’t…notice isn’t the right word because of course I notice. It’s part of who the person is, and I try to be thoughtful to see people as they see themselves.
This is why I’ve been able to adapt fairly easily to people changing their pronouns, by the way. Because for me personally, it’s the least-interesting thing about myself, and I don’t feel any gender, anyway. I know how I feel about gender and how much thought I’ve put into it. I trust that other people have done the same and that they know themselves the best.
Also, gender is a journey as with any other piece of someone’s identity. It’s not static and unmoveable. That’s why I don’t have a problem with someone’s labels changing over the years. We all change, evolve, or just realize different things about ourselves at different times. I don’t see any problem wiht someone thinking they’re straight when they’re in their teens; realizing they’re bi in their twenties; gay in their thirties, then back to bi in their forties. This all makes sense to me, and I don’t think it means they are lying at any point in their lives.
It’s the same with religion, gender identity, and any other identity, really. We are not static cut-out figures who cannot change. Also, we expand and grow (or not) as we get older, the way we see ourselves, hopefully changes.
For me, I realized I was Asian and a woman when I was in college. I grew up in a very white suburb in the seventies/eighties, so I tried to blend in as best as possible without really thinking about it. It wasn’t until I went to college that I started realizing things. Like I said, first that I was Asian and a woman. A few years later that I didn’t want children and that I was bi. Later that decade that I really liked sex and it didn’t have to be with love.
When I hit my thirties, it was the fact that I didn’t want to get married. Nor did I want to live with someone–in any way, really, but especially as a romantic partnership.
That’s all for now. I’ll get back to it tomorrow.
*Look. I’m not even talking about abortions and such, even though I am firmly pro-choice. I don’t want to derail myself by going down that road because I can and have ranted about abortion and the hypocrisy of certain Christians/rightwingers on said subject. When I was blogging about politics for several years, I was on the abortion beat, and it was so dispiriting, disheartening, enraging, and draining.
*fucking rightwingers.