I am a woman. Or am I? I’m not a man. That’s for sure. Am I nonbinary? Maybe, but that doesn’t really feel like me, either. As always, I just want to sigh and walk away when I think of gender. Introspection is great, but there is a limit to it. Or at least there is when you do it all the time as I do. Introspection is my default and I need to remind myself that I don’t have to do it all the time.
It’s funny to me to read articles about how to get in touch with your feelings and such because it’s automatic for me. I’m a little fuzzy on my positive feelings sometimes, but everything else? I’m on top of it. There’s a thing in Jungian psychology that you need to examine your shadow side in order to be whole. For most people, that means looking at the not-so-nice side of yourself. Your flaws, your shortcomings, etc. As for me, I’ve always been comfortable with my negatives because I was smacked down if I ever showed anything approaching confidence. I actually thought I was good at something? How dare I! I was a piece of shit, and I should never forget it. It wasn’t explicitly stated when I was a kid, but the undercurrent was clear. Only my father was allowed to shine.
Oh, but at that time, I also wasn’t allowed to show any anger, depression, or anything negative, either, because, again, only my father was allowed to feel bad. See the theme? Only my father was allowed to feel anything. As a child with big feelings, it was hard to always have to stuff them down. I was a weirdo from the start and I never had any friends at school. For some of the reasons I was shunned, I can’t blame them. I knew nothing about pop culture and I was Asian. I ate ‘weird’ foods and my mother dressed me in handmade clothing that definitely didn’t reflect the fashion of the time.
I realized that I was going to die when I was seven. Other horrible things happened at that time and I fell into a deep depression. By the time I turned eleven, two things happened–my mother had designated me her confidante and poured all her marital woes into my ear (which she still does) and I became suicidal. These two things were not directly related, but the former certainly did not help the latter.
All my life, I’ve been acutely aware that I’m different than other people and that I don’t look at things in the same way. I’ve thought about them in depth and sometimes, like with my gender identity, I just reach the point of thinking, “Nope. Gonna push it to the back of my brain for now.” That’s what I did before going into the hospital–or rather, it’s what I eventually ended up doing.
I was really pondering gender identity a few months before going into the hospital. I had it narrowed down to me definitely not being male, but unsure about everything. I didn’t feel like a woman, but that was because I have spent a lifetime hearing people tell me that I’m not a woman. It’s strange to hear ‘she’ or ‘her’ in reference to me, but it’s not offensive. It’s just not me. And I have no affinity for they/them. This was where I was at before the hospital.
After leaving the hospital, it simply wasn’t big on my mind any longer. Which I think is fair! I had just gone through something huge and I didn’t have the bandwidth to think about it while recovering from my medical trauma. A few months after, I thought about it deliberately to see where I was at with it. it surprised me that I had relaxed on it. Still wasn’t a man and didn’t care for nonbinary. But being called she was less of an irritation. Was it still irritating? Yeah, but less so.
It’s because I had a vast array of people helping me when I needed to go to the bathroom (and to change my poop tube before that) and all but one treated me compassionately and with dignity. The one remaining was efficient and brisk, but never dehumanizing or demeaning. He just made it clear that it wasn’t his favorite part of the job–for which I could not blame him. I would not want to wipe someone else’s ass, either. But he never made a face or was impatient with me. He just did his job efficiently and quickly. All the other nurses were warm and made me feel cared for. I was in a vulnerable state and they never took advantage of that or made me feel bad for needing help.
It didn’t matter the gender of the person helping me (though I will say it was vastly women/female-presenting people) and that’s what got me thinking that maybe gender doesn’t matter so much to me. I mean, I already didn’t care about the gender of someone else in my attraction to that person (though, of course, I have my own baggage about gender), so why should I care so much about my own gender?
I hasten to add that I’m not saying no one should care about their gender–just that it’s not something I care that much about. Or rather, I don’t care about pinpointing it exactly. It’s the same with my sexual identity. I have called myself bi for decades, but it never sat quite right on my shoulders. I didn’t like pansexual or omnisexual or any of the other terms often used instead. I did like queer, but I realized that not everyone was comfortable with the word (in the community, I mean. I don’t give a fuck about those outside the community) so I stayed away from it for a while.
It’s always been my favorite word, though, to describe me because it fits in so many ways. I’m a weirdo in just about everything and I’m fine with that. So I’m taking back queer to describe my sexuality and perhaps genderqueer for my gender identity.
Part of the problem is that I always feel like I don’t have the right to claim whatever label is in question. I hesitated with bi for a long time when I hadn’t slept with a woman yet. I have the tendency to be too literal-minded sometimes. Labels are heuristic and not meant to be complete descriptors.
More to the point, why the fuck should I give up woman when it’s other people who have issues with using it for me and not me having issues with it myself? I’m not sure it’s wroth reclaiming at this point. Plus, a part of me likes the symmetry in being queer and genderqueer.
At the end of the day, I’m just tired of thinking about it. I’m leaving it at genderfluid for now with not taking any offense at being called woman or she/her (slight irritation, nothing more). That’s good enough for now.