I have more to say about my ideal world because of course I do. In the last post, I was talking about From games, cishet white dudes assuming they’re the norm, and a bunch of other things.
Side note (yes, this early): That’s the way my brain works. I have discovered this is a neurodiversity thing, which makes sense. People get very exasperated with me because I can’t keep from going off on a tangent. In my writing, I love a side note, a footnote, an aside, and just anything that takes me down a different road.
Everything is interconnected to me. I can’t compartmentalize, which is to my detriment. I find it funny that I was talking about interconnectedness about a decade before it came a thing. I did not understand looking at, say, race without including gender. Things have an impact on most or all aspects of my life in different ways, and it isn’t as if I could turn off, say, being Taiwanese for a day.
There are some things about me that you wouldn’t know right off the bat just by looking at me. And there are some that you would. In the latter category, the following are included: fat, Taiwanese (Asian) American, AFAB, and old (although I look younger than my actual age).Included in the former are: neurogivergent, agender, and bisexual.
Even though I listed them separately here, I feel them all at the same time to varying extents. Each is a piece of the puzzle that makes up me, and if any one of those pieces is missing–well, it’s just not me.
There are other pieces, of course, including me being a writer, Taiji (especially the weapons) and now Bagua, my passion for FromSoft games, and others.
In my ideal world, I would be able to talk about any of these with ease. I would not feel like I had to hide any aspect of my personality/being. Not to say that I would talk about any or all of them all the time because there’s a time and place for everything, but ideally, I would not feel I could not talk about any of them at all.
I did not begin to suspect I had a neurodivergency until I was in my thirties. Even then, it was just a whisper of a hint of an idea. I have mentioned that the fact that I was talking about ADHD on Twitter with a friend and I said that I didn’t think I could have it because I was able to focus on one thing –sometimes, for a very long time.
He told me that hyperfocus was actually an indication of ADHD, which was news to me. I didn’t pursue it at the time, but I filed it away for further reference. Then I didn’t pull it out again for at least a decade.
Why was I so reluctant to believe that I might be neurodivergent? There were many reasons. One, as I mentioned before, I didn’t have the typical symptoms–you know, the ones that boys display. Mostly beacuse I had it berated out of me. I loved to run around and climb trees when I was a kid. My mom heavily discouraged me from doing that. The women at my church nagged at me to be more ladylike. And, yes, it’s often the women in the community who uphold the patriarchy. The patriarchy can’t survive without the majority of women participating.
This is something I would have to acknowledge and address in my ideal world: that women, especially white women (in America) are often part of the problem. See, white women know that they need to appease the white men if they (white women) want to have any piece of the pie. In addition, the het ones have to date, marry, and have children with men. This makes for a very powerful incentive for the women to be on the side of the men in their life. And the men in charge.
Much of the sexism I’ve faced is from women. That’s not unusual, especially if a woman (or a female-shaped person) is a minority in other ways.
Someone always has to be one-down. That’s just the way it is in a society. If someone isn’t in a down position, then how can anyone be up/above? It’s the crabs in a bucket mentality. Rather than uplift everyone around you–it’s easier to step on those already below you to make the distinction even clearer.
When I was in my twenties, when I met/talked with women in their twenties, they would invariably ask me about children. Did I have them/did I want to have them? I would answer with one simple word–no. If pressed to explain myself, I would just say that I did not want children. That’s it. I didn’t say anything about children being the devil or awful or why the hell wolud I want to do that to myself? At that point, I thought it was a simple answer to a simple question. I naively thought since it did not affect anyone other than me (and my mother, if you would believe the wailing she did over the subject), it would be no big deal.
I was SO wrong. What I did not understand was that I had a civic duty as a person with lady bits to squeeze out a baby or ten. It was a debt I had to pay to society because–resons. No one could really explain why it was any of their business whether I had children or not. My mother actually told me it did not matter if I wanted them or not. It was my duty as a woman to have children. She actually said that to me!
I did not know it at the time, but that whole fiasco (her fifteen year war to get me pregnant plus all the women bugging me about not having children) was the first seed of doubt planted about maybe I didn’t want to identify as a woman.
Tangent: I don’t get gender. It makes me very confused. Just like I don’t really get sexuality. Choosing one, I mean. In both cases, queer people say that it’s not a choice. I get it. I know why they went that route, but it is for me. Or rather, it’s not a choice, per se, but it’s that in each case, the label is very loose for me.
Gender: I identify with the experiences women have had because I have had many of them myself. Plus, women in general have more layers and depth than do men. And are socialized to be empathetic. I can speak the language of women better than I can that of men when it comes to emotions and deep subjects.
On the other hand, when it’s more superficial, I relate better to men. I’m more versed in the small talk of men than that of women.
Really, I would prefer just not thinking about any of that–but it’s not possible in our world. I wish it were, but it probably won’t happen in my lifetime. I will be pleasantly surprised if I turn out to be wrong, but I’m not holding my breath.