I have more thoughts about society and how my brain works. Strap in because this is going to go places. I don’t know which places, exactly, but we’re going to go to them. Maybe. You know how I do. I may end up somewhere completely different; we shall see. In yesterday’s post, I was all over the place. I eventually talked about not getting gender on a cellular level. No, that’s not how I put it, but it’s what I meant.
I’ve been tinking about it a lot lately for several reasons. One, because of *waves at world around me*. Two, because of my dip into Kpop as I mentioned in yesterday’s post. Gender roles are very prescriptive and proscriptive (as they are in many countries), but in a somewhat different way than it is in America. Granted, this is a very niche area in the first place (Kpop). I don’t know for sure, but I would wager than men in Korea who aren’t in the arts probably don’t–well, I just looked it up, and I was wrong. Men in Korea do shave their body hair. It’s the standard over there. It’s considered dirty unkempt to have body hair, apparently. Which is funny because many Asian people have very little body hair. I don’t, and I haven’t shaved anything since I was in my early twenties.
As for makeup, that’s much less common, though a chunky minority(roughly 16%) wear it for special occasions. About 4% wear it daily. Interesting. I say it’s interesting because in general, at least from the Kpop I’ve seen (mostly Stray Kids, but I have watched other groups), there is less of the overt muscular masculinity, even though there is some of that, and more of a cute vibe. In fact, theat’s part of the culture–adults acting cute as social lubrication.
It’s been a really interesting look into how another culture does gender–and it’s another culture in which I would not feel welcome. I’m saying this as a person of Taiwanese descent. It’s not the same as Korea, obviously, but there are some similarities. The honorifics based on gender. The veneration of age. The rigid gender stereotypes. I will note that I have not been to Taiwan in a decade and a half, so I can’t speak to how it is now. But when I was there, I got a lot of shit for not fitting their idea of what a girl/woman should be.
The first time I went was when I was ten or so. Taiwan did not have a taboo about talking about weight. I had more than one cousin I had just met for the first time tell me how fat I was. You can porbably guess that this made me feel really good about myself. My mother put me on my first diet when I was seven. And she nagged me about my weight until I put my foot down when I was in my late thirties. I told her explicitly that she could not mention my weight. Or health, for that matter, because she would use health as a cover for weight.
I know I’m going to dip out of Kpop at some point because the environment is not healthy for me. Also, I know that it’s a world that I most definitely do not fit in. I mean, that’s all worlds so far, but this is the one I’m currently interested in.
This is my life, by the way. I stay in a space for as long as it’s tolerable for me, and then I move on. I know there is no place that would feel 100% comfortable (because that’s life), but I would settle for 50%. Maybe even 40%. I also would like to know if others feel the same way.
Here’s the thing. Any time I’m in a crowd, I’m keenly aware of just how different I am, and it’s been that way my whole life. It’s because I’m several deviations away from the norm, and it’shard to find a middle ground. Let’s list them out. I’m queer (bi), Taiwanese American, areligious, agender, able to think about things on several different levels, and that’s just the start of it. I don’t wantto be in a long-term relationship, and I’m ethically nonmonogamous. I am looking to date again, but just for sex. I would love a fuck buddy who I could call two or three times a week–have a laugh and a few tumbles in the hay, and then send them home again.
I don’t believe in marriage. I mean, I know it exists–I’m not saying it doesn’t. But it’s just not for me. As for kids…the less said about that topic, the better. I’ve talked about it enough–you know what? No. I am going to get into it.
When I was in my early twenties, I realized I did not have to have children. I grew up assuming I was going to have them because that’s what you did as a woman. You were for breeding and spawning and anything else was extraneous. That’s what my mother and her very sexist evangelical Taiwanese Christian church had me believing, and American society did not do anything to dissuade me of that belief.
So when I realized that I could actually choose not to have children, it was the best decision of my life. I was so excited about it, I shared it with anyone who wanted to know. And, boy, did a lot of women want to know. So many woman. So much questioning. Ugh. If I could go back, the one change I would make is that I would have kept my decision to myself. I naively thought that it was a small thing that should not matter to anyone. In reality, I got a lot of shit for deciding not to have children.
See, this is yet another way in which my brain is broken. I thought, “This is a decision that doesn’t affect anyone but me. No one is going to care.” I was so, so, so wrong. for some reason I still don’t completely understand, many women* were heavily invested (and, sadly, still are) in propping up the ‘a woman’s purpose is to have children’ bullshit and took it REALLY personal when someone like me came along. More tomorrow.
*Yes, only women in this case. Men at the time wnated to avoid getting me preggo because they wanted to get in my pants. A gross generalization, but not far from off.