Tag: genderfluid | A Banana Peeled

Tag Archives: genderfluid

Gender fatigue

Posted on July 29, 2023 by Minna Hong • 0 Comments

If I were to be completely honest, I wish I never had to think or talk about gender again. I don’t care about my gender. At all. I don’t think about it other than in context of politics. What I mean is that, sadly, gender is not simply personal. It would be nice if it were, of course.

Yesterday, I wrote about how to separate the personal from the political–and how difficult it is to do that. Like, each individual woman saying she chose to shave because she did not like the feel of hair on her legs/armpits and because she did not like the reaction she got isn’t a big thing in and of itself. But when the majority of women respond in that way, then it becomes societal expectation.

When my Taiji teacher said that she wore lipstick and mascara or whatever because it made her feel younger, like she was taking care of herself, and more confident. But, men don’t do that and aren’t expected to do that, so it’s inherently sexist.

The thing is, though, that we all do things that are part of the patriarchy one way or the other. You can’t escape it being a part of this society. Just like we can’t help being racist, queerphobic, and any other ism that any society has. In my case, I have hair hdown to my mid-thighs. That’s very feminine, and I’ve had more than one person comment on it positively. I’ve had short hair before, and I did not get compliments when I did.

In addition, I used my boobs to get drinks in the past and had no qualms about it. I don’t think showing off my ass…ets to my advantage is a bad thing. I don’t know where I draw that line.

I’m naive in that I keep hoping that people will just take each other as they are. I know that people won’t stop judging (I can be very judgey myself), but in the end, if something about a person doesn’t affect you, then why care?

I really don’t get why someone’s gender and/or sexual identity affects anyone other than themselves or whomever they may choose to be with. Me being bi (ugh. I really should find a better word for it) matters why? If you’re not someone to whom I am attracted, than why do you care? Unless you’re just mad because I’m not attracted to you, but that’s not my fault.

I do not get why my gender and sexual identity matter to anyone. Or my lack of procreation. Or me not being married. Or me not being religious. I mean, I get it on a surface level because people are very much about themselves and in-groups. But on a personal level, I don’t get it because who the fuck cares? What I do or don’t do does not affect anyone but me. I mean specifically in the case of whether my gender is female or not, it doesn’t matter to my daily life.

Gender-blendering

Posted on March 24, 2023 by Minna Hong • 0 Comments

I’ve been thinking about gender more because I watched Next in Fashion and had some really big issues with the way gender was portrayed. Or rather, how rigid gender was defined. It also darkly amused me that they were talknig about how gender didn’t matter, and yet, everything for women had to be form-fitting. And showing off nonexistent boobs.

When I was eight, I hated being a girl. Not because I felt like I was a boy–I didn’t. But because I was told by so many women in the Taiwanese church that I wsa not acting like a girl should act. Over and over again, I was admonished for liking to run outside, climb trees, and for laughing too loudly. I hated wearing dresses/skirts, and if I did stay inside, I just wanted to read. I did not want to play with dolls or makeup or clothes.

I never felt like a boy; I just did not want to be made to act like a girl. Yes, even as young as eight, I was aware that the gender I was born into was not the one that felt comfortable for me. My solution at that time was to pray to a God I didn’t really believe in to make me the other (binary at the time) gender, a boy. God was all-powerful–or at least, that was what i was told when I was a kid. It should have been very simple for him to make me a boy. Yes, I now know that God doesn’t work that way, but, honestly, why couldn’t He? I still don’t understand how the God who was presented to me when I was a kid as all-knowing and all-powerful couldn’t make me a boy if He so chose. He could have, the explanation went, but He chose not to because He works in mysterious ways.

Look. I get it. God is not a vending machine. You can put a quarter in Him and get a candy bar out of Him. He’s also not a McDonald’s in which you can have your burger made to order. At the same time, Christianity tried so hard to sell Him as the God who can do anything, you would not be remiss to wonder what you needed to do to get Him to pay attention to you.

Let me be clear. I have never felt like a boy. I never thought I was a boy. I just hated being a girl because it felt so limiting. Think about that. At eight years old, I had been fed so many poisonous beliefs about girls that I wanted to be anything but one. I used to wake up disappointed because I was still a girl. That was not a good feeling, I’ll tell you that much for free.

Then, when I was in college, I hung out with mostly dudes. I did not like so-called girly stuff like clothes and makeup. I did not want to giggle and gab because that was just not my style. I was a down-to-earth person. At the time, i liked sports. I did not like outdoor activities, which made me an anomaly in Minnesota, but I definitely leaned more towards the male side of things, and I didn’t see any reason to hide it.