Still thinking about gender. I wish I could quit it, but I just can’t. In the last post, I ended by saying that I didn’t know what feeling like a woman meant. I wasn’t being snarky because I really don’t know. I probed my insides quite thoroughly and came up with nothing. Again, I am not railing against being a woman because I don’t feel my body is wrong–at least not for the so-called lady bits. Yes, I hated it for other reasnos, but nothing to do with the perceived gender of it.
Or rather, not for the reason of gender itself. What I mean is that I got flack for being a woman. A lot of it. Very different from men than from women, but it was definitely based on me being perceived as a woman.
In tandem with this, I struggle with the ‘cool girl’ syndrome and if it’s always as toxic as people say it is. If the woman who isĀ saying, “I’m not like other women.” and “I just don’t get along with any women.” is also saying, “Women are so full of drama!” and “Women are the worst”, then, yes, it’s ‘cool girl’ syndrome.
However. There are women or AFAB (like me) who aren’t very feminine at all. Bull dykes are a thing (even if they no longer go by that. That’s what they called themselves in my heyday), which is not what I am. I just read up on stone butches and stone femmes, and I don’t fit into those categories, either.
Here’s the thing. I n general, I don’t care about categories. I do have a type when it comes to physical looks that I find attractive (kd lang, Alan Rickman (first as Snape and then as himself), and my new favorite, Erika Ishii). Dark hair, androgynous, and wicked smart/into social justice. I have not dated many people with that look, though.
I know how this is going to sound, but I’m going to say it, anyway. I really don’t understand…hm. I don’t know exactly how to say this. Let me muse it out. As I mentioned, I do have a type, but it’s not hard and fast. I am attracted to someone for many different reasons, some of them more healthy than the others. Looks are but one, though, and probably low on the list of traits that I really care about.
That’s not the controversial thing. That comes when we’re talking about sex. I know we weren’t, but I’m going to, anyway. When I was looking up stone butch, I was shocked to read that the definition definitely meant that they did not receive sexual pleasure on their genitalia from their partners. Ever. And a stone femme (which I didn’t know even was a term) does not give sexual pleasure.
That is so foreign to me. I mean, I can understand being more of a giver or more of a taker, but not being a complete giver or taker. It’s the same as I cannot understand ultra-feminine or ultra-masculine people. Which is why I get so cnofused when the discussion around gender happens.
I don’t know what feeling like a woman means. I don’t know what being a woman means. A defacde or two ago, we were saying that a woman doesn’t have to be stereotypically feminine to be a woman–which I was find with! But society still overwhelmingly defines woman as being feminine. Even progressive women. They don’t use the actual word ‘feminine’, but are still quite rigid in what it means to be a woman.
For example, in the workplace, the overwhelming ‘normal’ view is that women should wear makeup, shave their body hair, and wear a bra. On Ask A Manager where the commenters are overwhelmingly women and mostly self-proclaimed progressive women, the amount of negativity about women who do not perform femininity in the stereotypical way surprised the fuck out of me.
Plus, the reason I stopped commenting there for the most part was because of an absolutely unhinged response to a post about a trans woman in which I mentioned something about being agender and commiserating with the trans womna for being misgendered. A woman who has been posting there for ages (way before I came along) lambasted me for saying misgendering (woman called a trans woman ‘sir’ on the phone and got really upset when the trans woman, a customer service rep, corrected her), acting as if I had punched a puppy in the face. She said (paraphrasing) that using the word misgendering was like an assault or something or the other. I could not even understand what she was trying to say.
It’s like when people freak the fuck out at getting called out for racist behavior. So much so that there’s a meme about how being called a racist is worse than actually being a racist. Someone else resonded to that particular comment, but I was too gobsmacked to say anything. As someone said later in the day, that post made me look at certain long-term commenters in a very different (negative) way.
There was another commenter who posted an equally unhinged comment about how being a woman was so important to her, she would be offended if she was called ‘they’. But also, she went by looks so if someone looked feminine, she would call that person her. But also, she herself did not look very feminine, but no one better call her ‘they’!!! Oh, and rshe could not understand agender people at all, but agender people BEST RECOGNIZE that gender was important to her.
I was the only person who commented regularly as being agender so even though that response was not to anything I said, I knew the agender bit was directed at me. Oh, and she threw in the classic, “If this makes me transphobic, then so be it.” I wanted to tell her that agender people know very well that most people feel wedded to their gender–we can’t escape it in our society. She’s in Finland, but I mean society in general in this case. Most Western societies have genders and roles for them.
As with any minority, we are well aware of the culture of the majority. We have to be in order to survive in a world that is not kind to weirdos.
Alison, the proprietor of the blog, is very progressive. She made a conscious decision to use ‘she’ instead of ‘he’ as the default on her blog, which was very forward-thinking when she started (2007, I think). Now, however, I think she’sfaltering a bit with nonbinary. She still defaults to ‘she’ and has made several mistakes using ‘she’ instead of ‘they’ for people who call themselves nonbinary or say ‘they’ for other people in the letter.
She’s ahead of the game in even talking about nonbinary people at all so I want to give her credit for that. It’s just that everyone has their weaknesses when it comes to issues they can’t see, and this is hers.
More later. I’m done for now.