I’ve been thinking about gender more because I watched Next in Fashion and had some really big issues with the way gender was portrayed. Or rather, how rigid gender was defined. It also darkly amused me that they were talknig about how gender didn’t matter, and yet, everything for women had to be form-fitting. And showing off nonexistent boobs.
When I was eight, I hated being a girl. Not because I felt like I was a boy–I didn’t. But because I was told by so many women in the Taiwanese church that I wsa not acting like a girl should act. Over and over again, I was admonished for liking to run outside, climb trees, and for laughing too loudly. I hated wearing dresses/skirts, and if I did stay inside, I just wanted to read. I did not want to play with dolls or makeup or clothes.
I never felt like a boy; I just did not want to be made to act like a girl. Yes, even as young as eight, I was aware that the gender I was born into was not the one that felt comfortable for me. My solution at that time was to pray to a God I didn’t really believe in to make me the other (binary at the time) gender, a boy. God was all-powerful–or at least, that was what i was told when I was a kid. It should have been very simple for him to make me a boy. Yes, I now know that God doesn’t work that way, but, honestly, why couldn’t He? I still don’t understand how the God who was presented to me when I was a kid as all-knowing and all-powerful couldn’t make me a boy if He so chose. He could have, the explanation went, but He chose not to because He works in mysterious ways.
Look. I get it. God is not a vending machine. You can put a quarter in Him and get a candy bar out of Him. He’s also not a McDonald’s in which you can have your burger made to order. At the same time, Christianity tried so hard to sell Him as the God who can do anything, you would not be remiss to wonder what you needed to do to get Him to pay attention to you.
Let me be clear. I have never felt like a boy. I never thought I was a boy. I just hated being a girl because it felt so limiting. Think about that. At eight years old, I had been fed so many poisonous beliefs about girls that I wanted to be anything but one. I used to wake up disappointed because I was still a girl. That was not a good feeling, I’ll tell you that much for free.
Then, when I was in college, I hung out with mostly dudes. I did not like so-called girly stuff like clothes and makeup. I did not want to giggle and gab because that was just not my style. I was a down-to-earth person. At the time, i liked sports. I did not like outdoor activities, which made me an anomaly in Minnesota, but I definitely leaned more towards the male side of things, and I didn’t see any reason to hide it.
I never ascribed to the belief that men and women should be treated differently. This is not me being snarky or smug. This is me, real talk. I had a female friend in colllege who had a huge crush on one of the popular boys (football captain–which wasn’t saying much at our school). She memorized his class schedule and arranged so she just happened to be outside every class when he was done. He was pleasant to her, but was clearly not interested.
One day, she said to me petulantly that it wasn’t fair! All the guys liked me. I retorted that it was because I treated them like normal human beings and not as if they were from another planet. To be clear, this wasn’t the first time she had griped to me about this. I would not have gone off on her if that was the case. I got to hear it on a regular basis (not just from her), so I was tired of it.
I have never understood the need to delineate between boy stuff and girl stuff. If you (general you) want to be hyper-feminine or hyper-masculine, go on and do your thing! But for those of us who don’t, how about let us live our best lives, too? I am most comfortable with the in-between, and I acknowledge that’s my bias. I’m attracted to people who incoporate attributes normally associated with different genders. My perfect person would look like Missy Elliott/Rachel Maddow/Alan Rickman (and, yes, they are a similar type in my mind), and the gender just does not matter to me.
I wish there was a way to talk about that without seeming as if I’m disparaging people who are deeply wedded to their gender. I don’t want to disrespect trans people, for example. I know gender is integral to most people (cis and trans), and I do not want to diminish that in any way. It’s the same reason I feel bad for not putting my pronouns in my socials.
Howveer.
And this is the main point.
Gender is not imporatnt to me. I indentify more with women because of shared experiences, but I also feel deeply alienated from women because I don’t tick any of the main boxes. I’m not married to a dude, and I don’t have children. I don’t care about clothing and/or makeup, and I don’t do any stereotypical female activities. I don’t cook, sew, do anything crafty, or bake. I used to bake, but I don’t any longer.
What I do like to do is considered masculine. Taiji weapons and video games, mainly. I do write, which I consider gender-neutral. I have tats, which now is gender-neutral. I have hair down to my mid-thighs and big tits. That scans as female. But I’m swole from Taiji weapons. That’s more masculine. Taiji is a very gentle internal martial art, but it’s got weapons–which is on the more masculine energy side.
I’m starting to study Bagua Jian, which is the yang to Taiji’s yin. It’s more muscular and aggressive, and it’s a nice complement to Taiji. I’m starting with walking the circle, but I already know how to walk the cirrcle, doing the 8 palms with DeerHorn Knives. Why, yes, there are weapons in Bagua, why do you ask? My teacher told me today (in my private lesson) that the DeerHorn Knives can be used to decapitate someone. Which made me laugh. We bond over gruesome ways to kill someone! But only theoretically. I’ve told her taht I never want to have to use my martial arts to defend myself, but I want to be able to use them if necessary.
I don’t want to be a musclehead, but I also don’t want to be unable to pick up one-pound weights. I like having bulging biceeps and I’m pleased as punch to finally have a booty. It’s not much of a booty, but since I’ve never had one, I’ll take it.
When I first came out as bi, there was this lesbian I knew who acted like I was just stopping halfway to my real destination–lesbiandom. She was so fucking condescending, saying she called herself bi when she first came out. She was implying that I was too scared to call myself gay. I told her if she was going to froce me to choose a side, I would choose straight because I liked guys better than women. But I did not want to choose, andI still don’t.
Gender is a part of who someone is, but it’s not the only part. For me personally, it’s not in my top five of important things about myself. If you said to list the five most noticeable traits about me, I would say: my cat, Shadow; Taiji weapons; FromSoft games; author; and, empathetic. I don’t think gender would be in the top five. Hell, I may not mention it unless forced to do so.
I just don’t get the focus on gender. It took me until–right before I ended up in the hospital to realize that most people feel some kind of way about their gender and gender in general. I don’t and never have. It’s been a weird realization.