I’ve been thinking more about gender. In part because I am writing a novel for NaNoWriMo that has an agender protag and a nonbinary love interest. Partly because I’ve been talking about it with different people. It’s just fascinating to me that of the four women/female-adjacent people I’ve talked to (five if you include me) all have similar feelings about being a woman (it doesn’t have to have a rigid definition), but the resultls have been very different.
All of us agree that society has put too much emphasis on A WOMAN MUST BE X, Y, Z, and is harsh on anyone who does not fit that very narrow build. It’s depressing to me that in 2023, we still haven’t made as much progress as I had hoped. When I was in my mid-to-late twenties (a quarter of a certury ago), I got hounded about not wanting children. I was taken off-guard because I had mistakenly thought that it was just a personal decision that had no effect on anyone else.
I was naive. Oh, I was so naive. It should have been that way, mind. It shouldhave been as unremarkable as me saynig that my hair is black or that I like Taiji weapons. A lot. Ok, that latter one has caused some distress as well, weirdly, also related to gender. When I talked about Taiji weapons while I was still on Twitter, the responses I received were divided sharply along gender lines.
The men wanted to fuck me. It was clear that they found it really sexy. I mean , at least one if not more sent me pics of sexy women with weapons in movie clips. I’ve read female cops say that they had the same issue with men. There were those who were immediately turned off, yes, but there were other men who were extremely turned on by them being cops.
On the other hand, women were shocked and appalled that I was ‘so violent’. One went so far as to say she never would have thought it of me. There was nothing I could do to convince her that I wasn’t violent, that loving the weapon forms wasn’t inherently violent, and that my love of the weapon forms was not unseemly.
I get it. My teacher and I have talked about how she (and her teacher before her) would have to talk men down in terms of, “You don’t have to go a hundo all the time, and ease up on the muscles.” Men are taught to always be on edge, to have to one up, to overpower their opponents (and problems). Women, on the other hand*, are slammed hard if they step out of their lane. “Be nice” is so prevalent, and the cost for breaking that edict is swift and harsh.
I have seen women tie themselves into knots over maybe accidentally hurting a man’s feelings. With good reason. Men have been taught that their feelings (and their dicks) are the center of everything. Anyone who does not treat them as so is cast out of society.
Because of this, women are hypersensitive to controlling their anger. I know. I was like that for so many years. I denied I had any. I claimed to be a pacifist who would give up my life rather than fight someone. that’s objectively fucked up, by the way. I believed that everyone else’s life was more important than mine, and that was in large part because of the sexism in both of my cultures.
So. Me deciding to ditch the label ‘woman’ is in part because of the overwhelming sexism that comes with embracing it. I’m old. I’m tired. I went through a medical crisis that nearly cost me my life (permanently). Quite frankly, I don’t have the patience to do the gender thing. And more to the point, I don’t feel it at all.
When I hear people say that they feel their gender deep in their soul, I am just befuddled by it. When I think about gender, mine in particular, I just get so fucking confused. Here’s why. In a genuinely non-snarky way. (I hope.) Many people say that gender is what you make of it. A woman doesn’t have to be inte makeup, fashion, and cooking. At the same time, these same women criticize women who don’t wear bras, who care more about themselves than, say, having a family, or who don’t wear makeup. I’m saying this from the viewpoint of reading the Ask A Manager comments, where the overwhelming majority of the people are women. And are progressive. And yet, still freak out over silly (yeah, I said it) things such as a woman not wearing a bra to work.
That blows my mind! Oh, and any time a woman or nonbinary person writes in about not wanting to wear makeup and how they can get away with it, the overwhelming amount of responses are about how maybe they should just wear some eyeliner and lipstick? And foundation? And, oh, maybe blush?
A recent post was from a single parent (probably a mom) who did not want to participate in the snack rota. They asked how to get out of it in a diplomatic way (saying their coworkers probably would make a fuss about it). So. Many. Women. ignored the actual question and gave advice that boiled down to, “But maybe you should think about participating?” And issuing a dire warning that they could never, ever, EVER eat one morsel of food from the snack rota.
It was disheartening and depressing, honestly. How qucikly these women fell into the pack mentality. Oh, and the belief tha anything a woman does is feminist–as long as that action is something the person commenting would also do–is depressing as well.
When I drill down deep, I just don’t see how gender matters to 99% of my life. I have the traditionally female bits, yeah, but I don’t use them for anything in my day-to-day life. Believe me, I would like to, but other than literal sex, I don’t see how it matters what I have between my legs.
I have said that I would be fine with being called a woman if I didn’t feel like it was so restrictive. I don’t have anything against the label itself. I honestly don’t. And if there was more flex there, I might conceivably embrace it. A friend asked how I felt about nonbinary ‘they/them’. That doesn’t really resonate with me, either, because it’s still a gender. I just don’t give a shit. Except that I’m not a dude. She/her is fine for others to use for me, but it’s not something I now choose for myself.
I just want to be called my name, but I know that’s a big ask.
*Yes, I’m talking about the binary here because that’s still the overwhelming predominance of who is being considered when we talk about gender in the langer sense–in the collective sense. In society, there are cishet men and cishet women. Period. Nonbinary folx get a bone here and there, but that’s it.