A few months before my medical trauma, I was pondering my gender. I haven’t felt like a woman in ages, but I’m pretty sure I am not nonbinary, either. I am definitely not a man–that’s the only thing I can say with confidence. I’ve been told I’m not a woman all my life, so at some point, I decided to embrace it. It’s funny because I’ve had this conversation with my Taiji teacher who was told similar things as she grew up.
Her response was very different to mine. She was defiant in embracing the term woman. She wasn’t behaving like a woman in the eyes of many? Well, fuck it. She was going to show them exactly why she was a woman and there was nothing they could say or do about it. I get it and honestly, that’s my second choice. It’s valid and we need to push back on existing strictures that are no longer applicable.
However, I don’t want to be in a group that does not want me and has shunned me at every turn. after a quarter century of women telling me why I’m not a woman, well, fine. Then I’ll go be something else. What that something is, I’m not sure but it’s not being a woman.
I would like to note that it’s mostly been women who have gate-kept me being a woman. It started when I was a child and the women in my very conservative evangelical Taiwanese church who tut-tutted at me. I was too loud, too brash, too not girly for them. I wasn’t supposed to run around or climb trees, and I was supposed to keep my voice down. I should sit with my legs crossed and I should be the perfect little girl. I wore dresses my mom made me, and I hated it because they restricted my movement.
When I was seven, I started praying to a god I didn’t really believe in that he would make me a boy. I did this every night before I went to sleep. I reasoned that if he was all-powerful as I had been taught, this would be no problem for him. I prayed in earnest before I went to sleep, then woke up disappointed that I was still a girl.
I didn’t think I was a boy, mind. I knew I wasn’t. I just didn’t want to be a girl because everything I liked to do/was was prohibited to me based on my perceived gender. Think about that. At seven, I hated my gender enough to pray that it would be changed.
When I was in college, I had mostly male friends. I hung out with guys because I was more comfortable with them than I was with women. I liked sports, disliked fashion and makeup, and I was just more masculine in many ways. I was the cool chick, laughing with t he guys about those silly women who only cared about their looks. I didn’t realize that I was in the group on sufferance–if I showed any indication that I was like those other women in any way, I would be kicked out.
It’s hard because I truly did groove more with dudes at the time. I still do get along well with guys. My boyfriend at the time said it was because every one of my male friends wanted to sleep with me, but I don’t think that’s true. Maybe many of them did, but I truly just did get along with them. One of my female friends complained that all the guys liked me, but it was because I treated them like human beings. I didn’t act as if they were foreign or a different species.
I will say that I know it’s partly my charisma. I have that thing that draws people to me, plus I’m really good at reading people. And I can remember details about people (though it’s a little harder since my medical trauma) that others would forget. I’m extremely observant about human nature, which coupled with my charisma and big tits, well, let’s just say that I can draw people to me. And, yes, I think the big tits are relevant in some circumstances.
Here’s the thing. I don’t like people in general. They exhaust me, and I can only take them in small doses. However, I’m fascinated by individual people and what makes them tick. That makes them feel as if I’m interested in them as a person, which I’m not. It’s a fine distinction, but it’s there. There are very few people I care deeply on a personal level. Then, there’s a larger group of people I care about on a personal level, but not as in-depth. Then comes the “I’m fascinated by you on a sociological/psychological perspective level” which is most people.
I do wonder about my own narcissistic tendencies because I get really impatient with people in general. Outwardly, I can be compassionate and show empathy, but inwardly, I’m so over it. Not always. Not even most of the time, but often. It’s something that fucked me up a lot in my twenties. Was I being authentic if I showed empathy, but was secretly judging people? I don’t know. It’s hard to say because I spent a lot of my twenties and early thirties mimicking other people’s behavior. I truly could not feel anything, so I would rely on the cues around me to tell me if something was bad or good.
For example. A friend would tell me some big news like they were moving. I would feel nothing. I would wait to see if they would add anything to it like it was for a job or to be with a partner. That would be good! But maybe it was to be closer to a parent who was dying. That would be bad. Once I got the cues I needed, then I would perform the correct emotion. It was a lonely time and a depressing time.
That was a lifetime of me repressing who I really was. I was told over and over again that I was wrong, that I was not a woman, that I simply did not fit into society. When I was in my twenties and early thirties, the pressure to have children was intense.
I have written about this before, but I have to mention again that I never brought up children. Mostly because it wasn’t a subject that interested me. But inevitably, someone would bring it up and ask me if I had/wanted children. I would say no, and they would ask incredulously why not. I said because I didn’t want them, but that was never enough. Now, knowing what I know, I would have just stopped that train right there. But, I was young and naive. I thought I needed to explain myself. So I’d give reasons I didn’t want kids and get pushback on each one.
Even ‘I don’t want them’ got me pushed back. I was told I would change my mind when I got older. Me saying I didn’t like kids was met with, ‘It’s different when it’s your own.’ Which is obvious bullshit. There are plenty of people who abuse their children and/or hate them. Millions of people! The idea that I will automatically love my own children was bullshit. In addition, I knew I would be a bad mother because you can’t scream at your kids, ‘Get the fuck away from me! I can’t stand having you around’, and not expect to pay for therapy decades later.
Knowing what I know now, the best thing to do would have been to say no and then just changed the subject. Trying to explain myself just got me further into the discussion, which is not what I wanted. I truly didn’t understand at the time that my decision was political and not just personal. I didn’t get why so many women took it personally (though I do now), and it made me question whether I wanted to be a woman or not.
The casual questions petered out after a few years, but my mom kept it up for fifteen years. It started when I was 26 (when she had my brother. She mentioned that as the first comment in countless comments about my childlessness) and didn’t stop until I turned 40. She actually told me that it didn’t matter if I wanted kids or not, that it was my duty as a woman. That made me realize how unreasonable she was and it made me indelibly sad.
Running long as usual. More later.