Underneath my yellow skin

Category Archives: Gender Issues

Gender is a social construct, part three

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Here’s the thing about gender. In an ideal world, I would not have to think about it at all because I don’t care about it (to an extent). Just as I don’t think about religion or children unless someone else brings it up. In that ideal world, I would just be a woman and people would accept that without question. I would not have people telling me that I was womanning incorrectly or pointing out all the ways in which I was not really a woman. I ended the last post by talking about the sexism of my father. His attitude is one big reason I’m a feminist now. He definitely believed that I was a fuckup as a woman, but he wasn’t the only one.

Here are many ways I have been dismissed as a woman:

1. Not having children (always at the top).
2. Not getting married.
3. Not caring about fashion and/or makeup.
4. Not liking dolls (as a girl).
5. Not caring about cooking, cleaning, or sewing.
6. Liking sex.
7. Imaging having sex with strangers.
8. Liking sex a lot. As in every day a lot.
9. I don’t shave anything (I’m also Asian).
10. I don’t do anything to improve my appearance.
11. I treat men, women, nonbinary, genderqueer, agender people as equally as I possibly can.

Just a note on that last one. I’m not saying that women are worse about this, but that women can be as bad about it. Because of how patriarchy works, women oftentimes do the major lifting of keeping other women in check. Patriarchy wouldn’t work if there weren’t women who were willing and/or eager to hold up the status quo. This is just an unspoken truth about sexism. Women are just as capable (if not more) of being sexist against other women.

Side note to the side note: This is part of the insidiousness of sexism. Women learn early on that in order to move up in America, you have to appease the men at the top. One way of doing this was to be more ruthless than men, claw your way up the ladder, and then kick it down below you so no other women can climb up it.

Side note to the side note to the side note: This is why I’m deeply suspicious when people say that the world would be a better place if women were in charge. I say it depends more on the system than the gender of the people in charge. If the system is sick, then it doesn’t matter the genders of the people in charge.

Back to my list.


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Gender is a social construct, part two

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I don’t like thinking about gender because I genuinely get fucked up when I think about it too hard. My mother has been an unrpentant sexist all her life. But in a very weird way. Why weird? Because she did everything she did to cater to my father, and one of his firm ideas was that she had to work outside the house. Not because he was a feminist, but because he was obsessed with money. Or rather, obsessed with the fear of not having enough. Here was my last post about it.

Quick background: My father was from a poor farm family. His father (and I’m hearing this third hand from a heavily biased point of view) got mad because my father’s mother wouldn’t do something or the other, can’t quite remember what, and refused to work on the farm for a decade or so. According to my father, my grandmother had to take over the day-to-day running of the farm.

My father was my grandmother’s favorite (out of five children). He was the youngest boy. He was excused from helping out, apparently, and he was the only one sent to America to get his graduate degree. He was a Fulbright Scholar, full, I think, which is probably the only way he was able to come to the States to study.

The reason I mention that is because it shows how my father’s narcissism was indulged throughout his life. His mother worshiped the ground he walked on and made it quite clear that he was the golden child. Then he married my mother who treated him the same way. When he was the president at the company where he worked, he had a secretary who also did everything for him, including printing out his emails and putting them on his desk for him to read. He would read them, answer in writing, and then give to her to type up and send out for him.

I’m saying all this to point out how reliant my father was on the women in his life. Or rather, how much they catered to him.

In tandem with this, my father has spouted noxious (and toxic) sexist beliefs all his life. When I was fifteen or so and didn’t have a boyfriend yet, he told me unprompted that in order to get a boyfriend, I needed to raise my voice a few octaves (I have a very low voice), ask a boy to teach me something, and let him beat me in a game (pool, ping-pong, whatever). I looked at him and said, “If that’s what it takes to get a boyfriend, I’d rather be single for the rest of my life. I still stand by that.

He’s also said things like this: After seeing a castle in Banff that did weddings, “I would pay for your wedding to be in a castle.” After one of my cousin’s weddings: “I don’t know if I could give you away.” While talking about doing chores at home: “I know Minna will not like this, but I worked full-time.” (As an excuse for not doing chores at home.) “Women like gifts.” (Holding out a wrapped gift he was given to me, in response to me asking what that was for.)


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Gender is a social construct

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If I were 20 years old, I have a hunch that I would be thinking a lot about gender. K and I talked about how if we were thirty years younger, we probably would both be nonbinary. I have mentioned before that of all my female friends/family member who are qeustioning/have questioned their gender, we all have had similar journeys–but have come to different conclusions. One of my friends (who is also my Taiji teacher) has reclaimed ‘woman’ as her own. She is defiant in declaring that this is what a woman looks like. What a woman acts like. What a woman feels like. She has been told since she was a weird kid in podunk S. Dakota that she was not a real girl/woman. This was her response.

My bestie, K, is comfortable being a mix of what is considered stereotypically feminine and traits that are considered more male. Once back in our twenties, she said to me, “Sometimes, Minna, glitter can just be fun!” when I was going on a screed about how anti-feminist glitter was. And you know what? She’s right. Glitter can be fun to wear sometimes (though hell to completely remove). She wore some makeup when we were younger as well as dresses when we went out. I did, too, come to think of it. Just lipstick, though. And skirts more than dresses.

As for my family member, they are nonbinary. They use all and any pronouns. They look stereotypically feminine, but don’t feel that way–necessarily. They have some interests considered more masculine and some that would lean more feminine.

Then there’s me. I grew up hating my gender. Not because I thought I was a boy, but because my mother (and my church) kept telling me all the things I could not do as a girl. I could not climb trees. I could not laugh loudly. I could not sit with my legs apart. Things I had to do as a girl. I had to wear dresses. I had to be quiet. I had to emotionally support everyone around me (read, my mother. But also boys). I was never supposed to show my unhappiness, anger, depression, or sadness. I could only be hapy, but I also wasn’t supposed to talk much.

I was also put on a diet by my mother whten I was seven. She had a lifelong dysfunctional relationship with food and her body (not surprisingly for a woman from Taiwan who moved to America). I was a stocky child because there was peasant stock on my father’s side. But also, my grandmother on my mother’s side was pretty stocky as well. As was my mother despite her attempts to whittle away her form on the daily. She agonized so much over the same five pounds. She made me feel that I was worthless because I was so grotesquely fat.


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Gender and me

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I don’t get gender. I fully acknowledge this is a me-thing as most people seem very wedded to their gender, but let me break this down. And I mean this is the most real, non-sarcastic way. I know how it sounds and that it may seem like I’m throwing jabs. I truly am not.

Here’s the thing. As I understand it, gender is currently not predicated on genitalia, but on how you (general you) identify, gender-wise. For trans people, this seems to be that you don’t identify with the gender into which you were born, but the other (binary). But some people also think that being nonbinary is also being trans.

At any rate, one of the tenets of feminism is that you can be anything you want as a woman. You don’t have to be stereotypically feminine, but you also don’t have to reject things that are stereotypically feminine. I actually have a quibble with this because it has gotten to the point that anything done by a woman is a feminist act, and I am not down with  that. You can decide not to fight the sexism in an individual situation, but that doesn’t mean some things aren’t objectively sexist.

That’s not the point of this post, though, so I am going to move on with difficulty.

Well, no I’m not. Because it’s part of the point. I don’t understand why we have to use genders at all. K and I have talked about this at length. She thhinks that within our lifetime, we will resort to using they/them for everyone. And within her kids’ (the ones she teaches) lifetime, gender will be done away with completely. Her kids think that in her lifetime they/them wil be used for everyone, but not the latter.

I think they/them might become the default, but probably not in my lifetime. Then again, marriage equality took much less time than I thought it would. I remember roughly five years before it happened, I was saying to K that it would happen in my lifetime, but probably not for another twenty years. Then, after intense debate, it suddenly happened in a very short amount of time. Frankly, my head was spinning at how quickly it happened beacuse I was hunkered down for a knock down, dragged out, kick-you-around fig9ht.

I’m reminded of those early days with gender identity and how fast it’s been evolving. I was reading a post on Ask A Manager* from 2019 that had to do with  gender and sexism. Basically, an older woman was tired of being called ‘young lady’. She politely told a service worker why she did not want to be called that (sexism as part of the reason), and the comments were wild. I don’t want to get into them too deeply because the wildness is not why I’m musing on this post.


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All about gender–sort of

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I wrote yesterday about a heated post at Ask A Manager about gender, civility, and how even so-called progressive people can be waaaay behind in DEI issues. It wasn’t surprising that progs can be like that–I’ve been a Dem all my life and have seen it time and time again. What surprised and discouraged me this time, though, was how vehement and negative they were. How willing they were to take the third-handed acocunt at face value that protrayed a potentially trans woman in the worst possible light without even blinking. For a group that usually chews every issue to death, so many commenters took at face value that the customer service rep was rude/snotty/uncivil/out of line, etc.

There were paragraphs written, often in florid detail, about how bad, bad, bad the CS rep was for *checks notes* politely asking someone to refer to her as her gender. Again, this is the line:

“I identify as female, please address me as such,”

That’s it. That was the whole line as it was reported. This was after the SIL had said, “Yes, sir” in response to the CS rep saying she had to put the customer on hold.

This one line was called rude, nasty, snotty, and more. As more than one trans person pointed out, that kind of language isn’t something taht most trans people use any longer. The ‘I identify as’ part, I mean. That is so a decade ago. Nowadays, they are much more likely to say, “I’m a woman.” Nevertheless, people in the comments spent so much time dissecting this one sentence, that, once again, was related third-hand by someone who didn’t even hear the conversation.

Let me repeat that. The letter writer wasn’t there for the conversation. They went to visit their sister-in-law (SIL) and the SIL related the interaction. It wasn’t even something that had happened that day, probably. But it bothered her enough to write a nasty email (LW’s words) to the CS rep’s manager about how

the behavior was rude and the rep made my SIL feel as if she had committed a cardinal sin, but my SIL had no way of knowing their gender other than by their voice because they were on the phone.


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Respect does not go both ways

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In reading Ask A Manager today, there was a letter that really got me down. It was from someone who wanted to talk about a situation their sister-in-law went throughh with a customer service rep. I’ll post it here and summarize it thusly. The SIL was talking to the CS rep and the CS rep said she had to put the SIL on hold. The SIL heard a deep voice, is from the south, and said, “That’s fine, sir.” The CS rep said (according to the SIL) that ‘she identified as a woman and to please address her as such’. The SIL sent a nasty email to the company and said she felt as if she had committed a cardinal sin. The letter writer wanted Alison’s opinion on this.

There were so many people in the comments who said that while the SIL was more wrong overall in sending the email, that the CS rep was rude, brusque, and other unflattering words.

Look. I’m the reigning monarch of two passive-aggressive cultures (Minnesota and Taiwanese). I know how to read between the lines with a fine-tooth comb (yes, I’m mangling and mixing my metaphors). I can give lessons in nuance even though I’m not great at reading it myself. No correction. I’m great at it, but I have to really concentrate in order to do so.

The amount of ‘the CS rep should have said it in a nicer way’ in the comments was enraging, discouraging, and, frankly, boring as fuck. I’m old. I have heard the tone argument for so many issues, I just glaze right over them. Back in naughties feminism: Women are so angry! They need to calm down, those man-hating wimmins!!!!!

Side note: I think it’s amusing that feminists are called man-haters because we like men better than fehinist-haters do. We don’t think they are just dogs who only think with their dicks.

I digress.


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Free to be me?

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I’ve been talking about gender a lot lately. Why? Because I don’t get it. I say this with zero snark. Every time I hear people talk about gender, I feel like I’m listening to a foreign language. Follow the way my brain works. I’m going to be as honest as I can be here. Which means that it might be uncomfortable to read.

Other people say that they feel their gender deep in their soul. That being a man or woman (in this case, the binary) is a core part of their identity. People who are nonbinary also feel this deep in their souls. I have heard so many people talk about their gender and how important it is to them.

Whenever I think about my gender, I try to concentrate on what it is, and I get–nothing. I know I’m NOT a man, but as for woman or nonbinary, I mostly just shrug and say, eh, maybe? I’ve used this analogy several times. Being called a woman is like wearing an ill-fitting raincoat. It’s going to keep the rain out, mostly, and it fits, mostly. But it’s uncomfortable, and I’m going to take it off as soon as I can with a sigh of relief.

I don’t mind if other people call me a woman or want to connect on that level (we women, we’re sisters, etc.), but it’s becasue I’ve had similar expenciees. I am coded as a woman and I look very much like a woman is expected to look. I have hair down to my hips and I’m very curvy. VERY booby. And I love my body (now). I’ve never hated my curves, even when I hated my body in general.

I’m very comfortable in my body now. In a large part because it saved me from dying. Twice. Literally. But even at my most “I loathe my body” time of my life, I never hated the boobs, pussy, hips, or ass. Well, mourned the lack of ass, but that’s different than hating my body in general. Also, I can thank Taiji for giving me an ass! Ian has confirmed (very diffidently) that I do have one now.

Other people calling me she doesn’t bother me. Being called sir on the phone (which ALWAYS happens because I have a double alto voice. About as low as possible for someone who is AFAB) does not bother me. I used to be called sir when viewed from behind because I wore a black trench coat and had very short hair (this was on campus for college), and that did not bother me, either.

To be clear, I am not a guy. But I don’t care if someone calls me sir. It doesn’t bother me, even though I don’t identify with it. I am fine (sort of) being called she/her, but I would rather not be. And I will not call myself that. Though I have by mistake.

If I had my druthers, I would just ignore gender. It doesn’t matter at all to me except as to how others treat me. That’s the biggest thing about gender for me–it causes people to view me through a certain lens. Because I’m AFAB and LOOK like a woman, that’s how I get treated.


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Inertia is not my friend

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I have said several times that one of the reasons I chose Taiji is because it’s the lazy martial art. My teacher told me this in the first few classes I took. It’s about exerting as little energy/effort as possible for the maximum output. It spoke to me because I’m lazy. Or rather, it’s really difficult for me to make myself do things–even things I want to do.

When K used to live here, We would go out roughly once a month–usually dancing. We would set a time and I would drag myself to her place right on time. But it would take me a half hour to talk myself into getting up and getting dressed. Then, I would sit and watch her for half an hour as she dithered over what to wear. Usually, her husband would finally tell her what to wear, and she would reluctantly put it on. He has great fashion taste, by the way.

Finally, about forty-five minutes after the time we were supposed to get going, we’d leave. she would drive us to where we had to be, and I would get the drinks from the bartender–even if I didn’t want one (I had one a night). This is one reason we’re such good friends–we complement each other. I hate driving; she loves it. She hates getting drinks from the bar; I don’t mind at all. When we went to dinner, we’d split the tab equally and she would pay the tip because she had drinks and I did not.

I have said to her repeatedly that we will be at the same old person’s homeand heckling the other inmates. She laughed, but she knows it’s true. Or maybe not because we’re the opposites when it comes to environment. She grew up in Miami. I am Minnesota born and bred. She’s happiest when it’s over 80. My sweet spot is freezing and below. Though, to be honest, since perimenopause, she has preferred lower temps. And for me, perimenopause has made me actually have chills.

Anyway! We have talked about how difficult it is to get going, even when it’s something we want to do. I think that’s another reason we work well together–because we both understand that overcoming inertia takes a lot of energy. We both like just sitting on the back porch and chilling (used to smoke. Don’t any longer). We don’t even need to talk. That’s the thing I like best about being with her and Ian. With both of them (separately), I can just be me. I don’t have to perform. At all.


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Unmasking and taking off the bra

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I don’t wear a bra. Ever.

I think I might have autism.

Bear with me because I think these two things are related. Tenuously, maybe, but related, nonetheless.

I also think I have OCD traits. This, too, is related.

Let’s start with the bra thing. I hate clothing in general. It all feels so restrictive and I am allergic to manydifferent kinds of fabrics. Hell, I’m allergic to so many things in general. Let’s go over them, shall we?

Almost every fucking flower/weed under the sun. So many of the manmade scents–almost all of them, too. The last time I had the allergy test where they infect you, I mean inject you with all the different allergens in your thigh, like thirty diffreent allergens, my entire thigh blew the fuck up. It became one giant boil, basically.

I also didn’t know when I used to get allergy shots as a kid that they were injecting me with poison. It was so utterly miserable. My arm would swell up every time, and I would be hot and miserable. And, again, I had no idea what was happening. If someone had actually told me why they were poisoning me, I would have been able to deal with it better.

And did it work? No. I still have allergies. I used to envy my brother for not getting the shots. I found out a few years ago it was because his allergies were too far gone for the shots to be considered effective. Ironically, his allergies are pretty much gone now while mine are just worse.

I’m allergic to mosquito bites. To gluten. To lactose. So many allergies (none life-threatening) to so many things.

Let’s get back to bras. I hate them. I have always hated them. I had a traumatic fitting incidence that left me in tears. It also made me hate my body even more than I did. I found that fitters telling women* to wear really fucking tight bras that crushed your ribs was common, which was what I went through. I wore 38 D. They told me I should wear 34 DD. It hurt like fuck. When I said I ended up in tears, I meant it literally. And I will never, ever, EVER allow a bra fitter near me again. Even if I were to go back towearing a bra. Which I won’t.

Ranodm fact: There was a study that showed people who did not wear bras had perkier boobs than those who did, but that was not conclusive. On the other side, there is no conclusive evidence that wearing a bra keeps the boobs perkier, too. And because there is so much push for women to wear them, I always feel compelled to stand up for the other side.

Even if boobs sag, so the fuck what? If there is no medical problem with it, then who the uck cares? Also, if there is no pain. Look. If someone wants to wear a bra, I am most emphatically not going to stop them or lecture them about how they should free the boobs. I would just appreciate the same courtesy in return. But the fear that they project as they frantically defend the bra is amazing. And tiring. Just chill the fuck out, ok?


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Menowhat? Menopause!

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Roughly three years ago, I started having what I thought were menopausal symptoms. Before I get into that, let’s talk about periods. People understand them very little in general, and what is seen is that women get them every month for a few days. The symptoms include cramps. That’s about it. This was what I was taught in sex ed forty years ago, and I dearly hope it’s changed since.

What has been my actual experience with my period? It started when I was nine. I was wearing white jeans and, yes, the result was horrible. I could not wear tampons comfortably, no matter how ‘ultra-slim’ they god. It hurt. It was uncomfortable. I was always aware i was wearing one. So I quit. I started using pads and what a relief. I never went back. Yes, at first it felt like I was wearing some kind of weird diaper beacuse they were so thick and bulky. But over time, they got thinner and thinner, and now, they are barely noticeable.

In addition, I have never had a problem with my period. I almost feel bad about admitting this because so many people with periods have such a rough time with PMS. But, here’s my reality. I got my period every third or four months for three days. It was light on the first day, medium to heavy-ish (never truly heavy) on the second day, and almost nonexistent on the third. I had to carry pads with me almost all the time because I never knew when I was going to get my period. My only sign was a coppery taste in my mouth and my boobs were tender.

That’s it. If my period had been on a regular timetable, I would have no issues with it at all. Oh, and when I was having sex, it was much more regular, but still never once a month. It was more like once everythirty-five to forty days.

When I was getting my period three times a year for three days at a time, I asked my doctor if I should be concerned about it. I mean, I had had it hammered into my mind that I was supposed to get it once a month. I was supposed to get cramps, terrible mood swings, and want to eat my weight in ice cream. None of that was true. I barely even noticed I had it.

Then, a few years before I ended up in the hospital, I started getting it every month but extremely light for like two days. Then it went away completely and just when I thought it might actually be menopause, my period would show up again. I figured I was in peri-menopause and shrugged my shoulders.

Then, about six months ago, I started to get my period every few months. Very light for the most part, but one day, it was heavy (for me). And just when I thought it would never come back, it did.


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