I’ve always had men as friends. I get along well with men for reasons that are different than why I like women. This was in the days before we were aware that there were more than two genders, and I’m still sorting out gender for myself.
It’s weird to me that there are still people who believe men and women can’t be friends. It was strange to me because I’ve always had male friends. I get them in a way I sometimes don’t get women because they’re, in general, less complex than women. (Insert sexism and societal expectations of genders here. No, I’m not going to go in depth about it because I’ve written about it so much in the past.)
Let me rephrase that. I love women. I love the camaraderie and shared experiences. When there is not some Alpha Female bullshit going on. We’ve all heard of Alpha Male behavior, but there is also Alpha Female behavior. It’s different, but just as annoying. It’s when a woman is constantly judging you for what you’re wearing, your weight, your makeup, your clothing, whom you’re dating, etc. It can be hilarious when I simply ignore the behavior because it enrages the other person.
It was discouraging in college, though, that some women got upset with me for having male friends. One woman exclaimed that all the guys liked me. I retorted it was because I treated them like normal human beings. I never got the ‘I’m going to treat you differently based on your gender’ (in terms of common decency, I mean) mentality, and guys liked me for it.
Side Note: My boyfriend at the time told me that every guy who was a friend wanted to get into my pants. I dismissed him at the time, and I still don’t think it’s true. Yes, some of them might have wanted to fuck me, but it’s reductive to say that men and women can’t be friends simply because of their differing genitalia (again, going by what we assumed at the time, which was thirty years ago).
Here’s the thing. I am genderqueer and queer in general. I am attracted to people of all different genders, so I would not be able to have any friends if the rule was you can’t be friends with people of the genders you’re attracted to.
More to the point, you can be friends with people you’re specifically attracted to. We are not pure animals who have to give in to our every instinct. I can want to fuck someone and, you know, not do it. Revolutionary, I know, but it’s true. And it’s not that I have a low sex drive–I do not. Back in my heyday, I could have it every day and still want to masturbate. That was an issue with many of my ex-boyfriends, by the way. They said it made them feel inadequate as if I were never satisfied. They couldn’t understand how I could be sexually fulfilled and still be willing to have/want more sex. To them, it was a binary situation. If you were satisfied, you didn’t want more. If you wanted more, then you were not satisfied. I wasted so much time placating so many male egos. If they felt inadequate, that was their problem, not mine. I was always honest about my sexuality when I started a relationship, but, unfortunately, many guys (and it was only guys) never took me at face value. I realized later it’s because they were used to wanting sex a lot meaning two or three times a week, not every day. One of my exes in particular never wanted it more than twice a week. Which, I’m sorry, is not ‘a lot’ in anyone’s book, especially when I made it exceedingly clear that I liked to have it every day.
That’s part of the patriarchy, though. Women weren’t supposed to want sex, and they certainly didn’t want it every day. They didn’t like anal, and they only gave blowjobs because it was expected. Again, this was two to three decades ago, so I’m hoping things are better now. I’m not sure they are, though, because I’ve read that women in their twenties are still expected to want kids.
Sigh.
I don’t get gender. I mean, I get it philosophically and conceptually, but I don’t understand why it has to be limiting or reductive. “I am a woman so I should want to have children.” That makes absolutely no sense to me. Someone wanting children for one reason or another, that I understand. But the mere presence of a uterus, ovaries, and a vagina meaning you MUST want children? Or MUST have them? That’s what I don’t get.
I never played baby with my dolls when I was a kid. In fact, I cut their hair off and made them have sex with each other. That was the extent to which I played with dolls. I preferred stuffed animals, thank you very much. I had no desire to be a mommy. At all. Not one iota. I assumed I’d be a mother at some point because that’s what you were supposed to do as a female-shaped person.
I’ve written about this a million times, but it bears repeating. When I realized I didn’t HAVE to have children, I was 22. It was such a goddamn realization and it gave me a new lease on life. Wait a minute. I don’t have to have kids? Really? I’m allowed to not have them? Yippee! Still the best decision I made in my life. I don’t regret it one bit. In fact, I’m positively gleeful about not having kids. I want to do a little dance because it’s so great.
I would never say that, obviously, because people are bound to take it the wrong way. One thing I learned during that time is how personally people take these kinds of decisions. I had so many women who accused me of thinking they were stupid/bad for having/wanting children when I said I didn’t want them. I feel the need to clarify this every time I talk about this subject, but I never brought up the subject myself. It was only when women asked me about me having/wanting children. Then I would simply state I didn’t want them, and inevitably, there would be pushback.
I got educated pretty quickly about what other people thought was their business. I also had a crash course on societal norms and why they are so damaging. I became defensive because I kept getting pushed on the subject–only by women, I want to point out. Women are often the worst at upholding sexist beliefs and pushing the agenda of a misogynistic society.
So, yeah. I have a chip on my shoulder now. A small one, but a chip, nonetheless. It comes from a lifetime as being viewed as lesser because I never wanted children. I got called selfish and immature, and I was accused of harming my nonexistent children. My answer for that was it was better to hurt my pretend children than to have them and hurt the actual flesh and blood ones. That never went over well.
When you get down to it, there’s no good reason to have kids when you don’t want them. Wanting children should be the first step to having them. I can’t believe I have to say that, but so many women tried to blow past that step. They said it would be different when it was my own (like there aren’t millions of parents who don’t like/abuse their children), that I would change my mind (still haven’t, thirty years later), and other nonsense. When I said I knew I would abuse any child I had, that didn’t go over well, either.
Bottom line: I did not want children. That should have been the end of the conversation, but it never was. It taught me an important lesson, though. There is no good enough reason for some people, and it’s not my job to convince anyone that I have the right to make an unpopular decision. I should not have tried to justify it at the time because there was no reason to do so. But I was young and naive, and I thought if I just explained it well enough, I could get them to see my point of view.
Ha. That’s not how any of this works. It’s better just to keep my mouth shut and find the individuals I can have a real conversation with rather than futilely defend myself. It was never going to work, and in the end, it just made everyone frustrated. Including me. now, I’m much happier because I live my life without explanation. People who love me already understand me. I don’t much care about the rest.