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crankyoldmanI have kind of an interesting relationship with androgyny.
The first time that I realized that "girls and boys" wasn't something that made people play in different places on the playground was in fifth grade, when they pulled the girls in my class aside to explain what periods were, in a room by ourselves. Having known the basic biological functions of sex since age seven and a small library already on the subject, I spent the time making a necklace out of the tampons that they had brought in to show us. I knew that I was destined to be a late bloomer and that it was too late for about half the girls in the room, especially the poor girl that already had a C cup and spent most of her time on the playground being harassed.
Even if politically speaking my parents and I have drifted to different sides of a spectrum, they did a wonderful job letting me figure out a lot of things on my own, with minimal pushing of their own perceptions on some things. They took me to church not because they were afraid of God, they took me to church so I could experience what it was like, and when I decided I wasn't liking it anymore, they let me stop going without any argument. When in high school I asked my dad if I could borrow his tie for the first day of school senior year and then every week after that, he merely asked which one I wanted to borrow and later bought me my first one. When my relatives were buying my sister and me matching outfits (but mine were pink and hers were purple), my parents were buying me the telescope that I had jabbered about for three months solid.
I wonder sometimes if it would have been different if I had any brothers instead of just my sister and me, if the gender dynamics would have been more reinforced in the house with greater urgency if I had a brother that was supposed to carry on the family name. But I don't have any brothers, so the point is moot.
I set this up, because it was never really my family that turned me into a misogynist, and it wasn't them that got me out of it. They probably did their best to discourage that, especially my mother.
When you are the kid that doesn't conform readily to gender, what is your default? Being a cis female, for me it was the whole "tomboy" thing. I thought that was a pretty good term for what I was, because, god, I did not want to be a girl. Girls just did flips on the bars and sat around an jabbered about nothing. If you hung out with the boys you got to go digging for dinosaurs and climb on the highest parts of the playground and spit on things. So until I realized that it was in fact a social construct as well as a biological difference, I pretty much thought I was a boy. Even in a dress. In fact, I wondered why some of my boy friends didn't wear dresses, especially in the summer--they were the coolest things to wear in hot weather. And I did talk one of my friends into a skirt once. I thought he looked rather fetching in lavender.
We were all just kids, and "boy and girl" was just where you were playing. And it was actually kind of awesome being the tomboy, because I didn't have to play any of the stupid games where you pretended you were a unicorn and instead got to be a gang leader (my school was a semi-rural one, so gangs were pretty harmless especially in elementary school).
But while a tomboy is tolerated and encouraged when you're a kid, once you're hitting puberty you have to get into your assigned gender. And this is why my puberty in particular sucked.
It wasn't all lame. In fifth grade I had my first real friend that was a girl. Sure, she moved to another school the next year, but having a friend that was a girl was kind of neat. And in junior high I started to hang out with girls more, partly because all my old elementary school friends weren't in the same classes anymore (I was in all the "smart" classes and they weren't), but thankfully there were a couple weirdo types to hang with (and one that needed everyone to like her, but that was complicated).
Even despite these friendships, I still felt that it was overwhelmingly lame to be a girl. And so many mixed signals. No boy wanted to date me and I was often called ugly, but yet when I started to wear my hair in my eyes (partly to hide, partly to grow out the bangs I had always worn previously), some boys started to imitate that. Some girls would tell me I'd look better if I just wore a little makeup, but then would tell me they wish they could dress like me.
Mixed signals. But ultimately, I decided that being like a boy--aggressive, know-it-all, competitive--had to be the way to be because of how they were treated in class. Especially in science, which was something that I was really interested in. There was no room for makeup or feelings in science.
I'd like to blame it all on hormones, but really, I think the fault lies in how older people treat kids going through puberty, and the types of activities they are then encouraged to participate in. Suddenly all the activities are gendered. Does anyone else notice this? Boys and girls suddenly only interact because of "dating" and those terribly nerve-wracking things that they call dances but I always called "times in which one or more of my girl friends will be hyperventilating in a bathroom at some point". If you're a girl and like boy things and hanging out with them doing boy things, suddenly you are just "the girl".
I wanted to be in boy space, but suddenly I was locked out, and I hadn't even grown breasts yet.
And I bet you're wondering, why if I felt like an androgynous being for the most part, did I more align with boyishness? My reply to that was always why wouldn't I want to be in boy space? They had the cooler toys, and best of all, no one told them to shut up (save for my sixth grade art teacher, who turned out to be a lesbian). Boys got to be on student council not just because they were popular (as happened when you were a girl, you had to be the type everyone liked) but because there was this magical thing that made people listen to you.
Eventually I started to focus on the andro and only focus on the gyn so that people wouldn't think that I was a freak. There was no way I'd ever pass as a guy completely. My features are just feminine enough to give me away. And I'd already learned that there was nothing quite as bad as being an effeminate guy.
Who would ever choose to be a girl?
I think that many of you "nerdy" sorts of girls have dealt with this, even if you're not as much of a raging androgyne as I feel most days. You want to be in boy space, but you don't want to (or can't) BE a boy. Frustrating, isn't it?
After a while, you sort of buy into it, start putting down other women so you can at least be accepted at "not a girl". Or at very least you try to be the token girl, the one that is allowed or ok because you're not THAT much of a girl. You don't bring your girly problems. I think my worst times of misogyny happened while I was married, because I was being forced into a role that I didn't want, and didn't feel like I had the power to stop it. People in hell don't often think about the other sinners in there with them. The worst hell is in your own mind.
I thank fandom and the internet for introducing me to real androgyny, before I became a complete asshole. I thank my transgendered friends for being brave and deciding who they really feel they are in their souls for helping me feel more comfortable in my own skin. I have it so much easier than they do. And had I been born a man but still felt like an androgyne? Things would have been so much different.
But it was also through fandom, aside from seeing positive examples of girls enjoying boy space types of activities while still being girls, that I got to actually try on being a boy. Roleplay was fantastic, because I didn't have to be a girl.
Unsurprisingly, even playing a boy, I ended up a little girly. Or at the very least, I kept putting my boy characters through the sorts of things that girl characters would. There was almost a sadistic glee in it sometimes, making them face up to things that wouldn't have to if I were a boy myself. My male alter egos were sometimes single parents, sometimes forgotten lovers, and most times having difficulty balancing complicated personal lives with complicated professional lives.
And suddenly one day I realized that I didn't want to be a man anymore.
My ex-husband had tried constantly to get me to wear dresses and skirts, to look "sexy" by covering myself up in "modest" feminine clothing. But I had found femininity in conscious quiet power as much as the loud and out there power I had always tried to find. I found that softness went just as well with the hard lines and angles that I had always been drawn to. I wore boots and broad shouldered jackets with delicate floral dresses. I was ridiculously short skirts and tight pants and fedoras.
I'd finally found the strength in my feminine side; not because someone liked me that way, not because it would make someone else happy. But because it had been the strength in me all along. And I had so much freedom--how many people can readily try on boy and girl looks as easily as I can? Not many. And I really like that I have that ability.
Androgyny was never about girls trying to be boys or vice versa. It was always about a balance in between, fitting in a space that dualistic society has problems with. Maybe some day we'll get rid of the notion of "either/or" entirely and embrace the spectrum that people live in is so much more than one or the other.
Maybe some day we'll accept that a person is the sum of experiences more than the sum of parts.
The first time that I realized that "girls and boys" wasn't something that made people play in different places on the playground was in fifth grade, when they pulled the girls in my class aside to explain what periods were, in a room by ourselves. Having known the basic biological functions of sex since age seven and a small library already on the subject, I spent the time making a necklace out of the tampons that they had brought in to show us. I knew that I was destined to be a late bloomer and that it was too late for about half the girls in the room, especially the poor girl that already had a C cup and spent most of her time on the playground being harassed.
Even if politically speaking my parents and I have drifted to different sides of a spectrum, they did a wonderful job letting me figure out a lot of things on my own, with minimal pushing of their own perceptions on some things. They took me to church not because they were afraid of God, they took me to church so I could experience what it was like, and when I decided I wasn't liking it anymore, they let me stop going without any argument. When in high school I asked my dad if I could borrow his tie for the first day of school senior year and then every week after that, he merely asked which one I wanted to borrow and later bought me my first one. When my relatives were buying my sister and me matching outfits (but mine were pink and hers were purple), my parents were buying me the telescope that I had jabbered about for three months solid.
I wonder sometimes if it would have been different if I had any brothers instead of just my sister and me, if the gender dynamics would have been more reinforced in the house with greater urgency if I had a brother that was supposed to carry on the family name. But I don't have any brothers, so the point is moot.
I set this up, because it was never really my family that turned me into a misogynist, and it wasn't them that got me out of it. They probably did their best to discourage that, especially my mother.
When you are the kid that doesn't conform readily to gender, what is your default? Being a cis female, for me it was the whole "tomboy" thing. I thought that was a pretty good term for what I was, because, god, I did not want to be a girl. Girls just did flips on the bars and sat around an jabbered about nothing. If you hung out with the boys you got to go digging for dinosaurs and climb on the highest parts of the playground and spit on things. So until I realized that it was in fact a social construct as well as a biological difference, I pretty much thought I was a boy. Even in a dress. In fact, I wondered why some of my boy friends didn't wear dresses, especially in the summer--they were the coolest things to wear in hot weather. And I did talk one of my friends into a skirt once. I thought he looked rather fetching in lavender.
We were all just kids, and "boy and girl" was just where you were playing. And it was actually kind of awesome being the tomboy, because I didn't have to play any of the stupid games where you pretended you were a unicorn and instead got to be a gang leader (my school was a semi-rural one, so gangs were pretty harmless especially in elementary school).
But while a tomboy is tolerated and encouraged when you're a kid, once you're hitting puberty you have to get into your assigned gender. And this is why my puberty in particular sucked.
It wasn't all lame. In fifth grade I had my first real friend that was a girl. Sure, she moved to another school the next year, but having a friend that was a girl was kind of neat. And in junior high I started to hang out with girls more, partly because all my old elementary school friends weren't in the same classes anymore (I was in all the "smart" classes and they weren't), but thankfully there were a couple weirdo types to hang with (and one that needed everyone to like her, but that was complicated).
Even despite these friendships, I still felt that it was overwhelmingly lame to be a girl. And so many mixed signals. No boy wanted to date me and I was often called ugly, but yet when I started to wear my hair in my eyes (partly to hide, partly to grow out the bangs I had always worn previously), some boys started to imitate that. Some girls would tell me I'd look better if I just wore a little makeup, but then would tell me they wish they could dress like me.
Mixed signals. But ultimately, I decided that being like a boy--aggressive, know-it-all, competitive--had to be the way to be because of how they were treated in class. Especially in science, which was something that I was really interested in. There was no room for makeup or feelings in science.
I'd like to blame it all on hormones, but really, I think the fault lies in how older people treat kids going through puberty, and the types of activities they are then encouraged to participate in. Suddenly all the activities are gendered. Does anyone else notice this? Boys and girls suddenly only interact because of "dating" and those terribly nerve-wracking things that they call dances but I always called "times in which one or more of my girl friends will be hyperventilating in a bathroom at some point". If you're a girl and like boy things and hanging out with them doing boy things, suddenly you are just "the girl".
I wanted to be in boy space, but suddenly I was locked out, and I hadn't even grown breasts yet.
And I bet you're wondering, why if I felt like an androgynous being for the most part, did I more align with boyishness? My reply to that was always why wouldn't I want to be in boy space? They had the cooler toys, and best of all, no one told them to shut up (save for my sixth grade art teacher, who turned out to be a lesbian). Boys got to be on student council not just because they were popular (as happened when you were a girl, you had to be the type everyone liked) but because there was this magical thing that made people listen to you.
Eventually I started to focus on the andro and only focus on the gyn so that people wouldn't think that I was a freak. There was no way I'd ever pass as a guy completely. My features are just feminine enough to give me away. And I'd already learned that there was nothing quite as bad as being an effeminate guy.
Who would ever choose to be a girl?
I think that many of you "nerdy" sorts of girls have dealt with this, even if you're not as much of a raging androgyne as I feel most days. You want to be in boy space, but you don't want to (or can't) BE a boy. Frustrating, isn't it?
After a while, you sort of buy into it, start putting down other women so you can at least be accepted at "not a girl". Or at very least you try to be the token girl, the one that is allowed or ok because you're not THAT much of a girl. You don't bring your girly problems. I think my worst times of misogyny happened while I was married, because I was being forced into a role that I didn't want, and didn't feel like I had the power to stop it. People in hell don't often think about the other sinners in there with them. The worst hell is in your own mind.
I thank fandom and the internet for introducing me to real androgyny, before I became a complete asshole. I thank my transgendered friends for being brave and deciding who they really feel they are in their souls for helping me feel more comfortable in my own skin. I have it so much easier than they do. And had I been born a man but still felt like an androgyne? Things would have been so much different.
But it was also through fandom, aside from seeing positive examples of girls enjoying boy space types of activities while still being girls, that I got to actually try on being a boy. Roleplay was fantastic, because I didn't have to be a girl.
Unsurprisingly, even playing a boy, I ended up a little girly. Or at the very least, I kept putting my boy characters through the sorts of things that girl characters would. There was almost a sadistic glee in it sometimes, making them face up to things that wouldn't have to if I were a boy myself. My male alter egos were sometimes single parents, sometimes forgotten lovers, and most times having difficulty balancing complicated personal lives with complicated professional lives.
And suddenly one day I realized that I didn't want to be a man anymore.
My ex-husband had tried constantly to get me to wear dresses and skirts, to look "sexy" by covering myself up in "modest" feminine clothing. But I had found femininity in conscious quiet power as much as the loud and out there power I had always tried to find. I found that softness went just as well with the hard lines and angles that I had always been drawn to. I wore boots and broad shouldered jackets with delicate floral dresses. I was ridiculously short skirts and tight pants and fedoras.
I'd finally found the strength in my feminine side; not because someone liked me that way, not because it would make someone else happy. But because it had been the strength in me all along. And I had so much freedom--how many people can readily try on boy and girl looks as easily as I can? Not many. And I really like that I have that ability.
Androgyny was never about girls trying to be boys or vice versa. It was always about a balance in between, fitting in a space that dualistic society has problems with. Maybe some day we'll get rid of the notion of "either/or" entirely and embrace the spectrum that people live in is so much more than one or the other.
Maybe some day we'll accept that a person is the sum of experiences more than the sum of parts.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-04-24 09:15 pm (UTC)But there was always that undercurrent of "ZOH EM GEE YOU'LL CORRUPT THE LADS WITH YOUR VAJEENER!" and the homophobia and the vice principal who hyperventilated if she saw two girls hug and on and on and on and ON. You can pretty much guess whose asses got blamed when morons parked by the school to check out the girls in kilts. Apparently, wearing one's kilt short means one is specifically INVITING slack jawed nads to gawk like idiots.
(As an aside, the idea that attire affects shit OH SO MUCH is just laughable. The one time I got openly propositioned by some randomass stranger who asked if I'd sleep with him if he paid me, I was slouching around back and forth from the YMCA job connect joint in baggy shorts and an old t-shirt and had a blue tongue from the Gatorade I was chugging. Yeah that just like, SCREAMS hooker, rite? I find it hard to be offended just because he was such a dumbass and whined when I said no. Like, honestly, what is that.)
Me with my shortassed hair = me the target. I cannot wear my hair long; my hair is dense and heavy and when it's long I start to look like a very pasty Canuck ONRYO. As well, i look younger.
A lot younger.
I only stopped getting carded THIS YEAR, I AM NOT GOING BACK. I LIKE BEING ABLE TO BUY WINE WITHOUT DIGGING OUT ID.
And I like my short hair. I like being able to take military showers if I need to and I like that I spend not a lot on shampoo so I can buy the Lush stuff I like. I live in t-shirts and hoodies for the most part. I LIKE PINSTRIPEY VICTORIAN PANTS SUITS AND FRILLY (though not itchy oh god) BLOUSESES. (As another aside why are pants suits scary to some people man i don't even.)
My relationship with gender's not as complicated as it is for some of my friends. El and J. are dudes; jDub's friend Mara is a chica, but physically they didn't start out thus and my occasional weird hitchy disconnects with my body are nothing compared to those of someone whose physical sex and mental/spiritual gender don't mesh.
Urgh. it's not BINARY. The only thing that is binary really is the frigging binary language/notation itself. orientation isn't either-or, neither is gender.
I learned this in my damn hippie art university. One of the coolest people I met there was a guy named Jay who on occasion wore skirts because he could and he had better legs than me. XD If someone asked if he idented femme he'd say 'when I feel like it'. He was like, 'pigeonhole, schmidgeonhole.' People could assume he was whatever they liked but it wasn't his fault of their brains wrecked when he stopped being what they thought. We went out on one date but it didn't go anywhere besides really good friendship because at that time he was interested in being with dudes or dommetastic women. i was NOT offended and I'm still not. Why should I be? He was lookin' other places and I wasn't really lookin' so it worked out.
I have so much admiration for him still and he actually gave me a lot of spine. it's because of him that I started being able to tell the people who got abusive because I stopped living according to their roles and rules to FUCK RIGHT OFF. XD it's because of him that I cheerfully admitted for the first time I ain't vanilla exactly. I have no dang idea where he is no either, I should try to bother him on facebook.
AND I DIGRESS. And I have no idea where I was going with this.
Being online has been epic for me because it's made me aware that I'm one of a lot of people in any given category. Is my ass unique, yes it is, but I have no interest in being Princess Sparklehorsey Wankenschaft Snowflake O'Hara of Ulm. I want to meet people who are interested in similar stuff and have similar experiences; I want to know I AM NOT ALONE. Being the only whatever-the-fuck isn't fun or awesome, it doesn't make you special, it makes you LONELY. it makes you an outsider. It makes you the one left behind all the time. Trust me. :B
What I'm trying to say is - yeah. XD "This" for the post part.
What masculine and feminine ARE is so arbitrary. There's nothing innately womanly about nurturing and compassion; the most nurturing person i know is a six-foot-four Métis guy in New Brunswick who works as a Ford mechanic and who loves rabbits above everything else. Seriously. This is a guy who is so calm and so easygoing that his pet mice lived for an unheard-of three and a half years. He didn't make them nervous; they didn't get stressed out, they got to be old farts. His rabbits were the same.
There is nothing innately manly about courage or being competitive either. if I'm allowed to wave my own flag - if I didn't have courage I wouldn't be where I am at all. XD And hell, my maternal grandmother is way cooler than my ass, she has beaten the shit out of cancer twice.
When i really think on it there's not much that's exclusively male or female about qualities said to be masculine or feminine. Are there differences between all the genders, hells yes, but it's sure as hell not binary, as you said ^^
Durf hurf this comment is disjointed.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-04-25 02:01 am (UTC)My younger brother (we look like twins) told me last we talked that he and my dad had been talking,
and my dad said, well, [Kai's] always been one of the guys anyway. Guess this just makes it official.
My mother has officially stated that she doesn't know if she will ever be comfortable with my trans-ness, but she hasn't disowned me.
I think our families have much more to do with our gender expression than we realize. At 5, I fought with my parents to not have to wear shorts under my dress. By 7, I had a rat-tail, like every other boy in my class.
I think it was the fact that while my mother would push once in while for the girl, for the most part, my parents let me choose how to express myself.
So, yeah. Word to all of this.