December meme, day 1

[esmenet]

So I've been kind of ... not here for a while, which (for those of you new to this blog/me) is generally a Bad Sign that i'm isolating myself and not doing well. However! I have returned.


Today, from littlebutfierce: gender thingies! I'm going to talk about my own gender here, because it's a starting point, and also one of the things I'm really least clear on.

For the longest time I felt like arguments about gender and presentation and all that had nothing to do with me whatsoever -- except insofar as that I was a girly-girl and sticking with that -- and then I noticed that I really sort of hated being called a 'woman'. I can deal with 'girl', but 'woman' = no. When people say I'm a smart young woman or something like that, I want to punch something. (Weirdly, this doesn't extend to other languages so much.)

Eventually I figured out that this is not really a cisgender thing. And neither is getting all giddy when people use gender-neutral pronouns for you, really.

There's this thing I heard from aintgotnoladytronblues, that having a particular affection towards a certain gender/sexuality group probably means you are in that group. Which has proved true for me every single time!

(13 year old me: gosh lesbians are great, being a lesbian would be so cool

current me: *lesbian*

14 year old me: man it must be totally neat to be asexual and not have to worry about all that stuff

current me: *asexual and only worrying about school things*

also 14 year old me: omg those girls in shoujo manga who are so tall and cool and get mistaken for guys are AMAZING

current me: *would never be read as a guy but is definitely tall and cool*)

Of course since I have giant boobs and like to wear feminine clothes and makeup, there is basically zero chance of me being read as anything other than 'girl', and I've mostly made my peace with that. Not being read as a girl means probably being read as a guy, which i am down with in theory but probably not in practice. I want people to call me 'sir' and 'mister' but I want that to happen while I'm wearing lipstick and heels, you feel? (Or, you know, just while existing in my current form. with the boobs.)

'All gender is drag', etc etc., but I'd like people to notice that I'm doing it.

Since my own gender is a very odd thing to me, best described with wavy indeterminate hand motions and best described as 'selections from Homer in the original Greek', I really feel like I don't know what I'm doing when it comes to gender as a whole.

Basically: as time goes on I am getting closer and closer to embodying various genderofthenight posts. It's going pretty okay.


Most of my December posting meme is still open! Give me things to talk about!

Comments

[escritoireazul]

This is really interesting. I was particularly struck by this part: There's this thing I heard from aintgotnoladytronblues, that having a particular affection towards a certain gender/sexuality group probably means you are in that group. Which has proved true for me every single time!

[esmenet]

It's definitely something I'd have found handy to know much earlier than I did! (It took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out that straight girls didn't spend a lot of time thinking about how cool it must be to be a lesbian.)

[littlebutfierce]

<33333 Thank you for this!

& yeah, I wish there was room for gender to be less binary when... wearing clothes socialized to fit one's (apparent, binary) gender. :/

[meicdon13]

Gender thingies are always fascinating *__* I just wish that more people would be cool with people who don't fall neatly into the gender binary. (There's nothing wrong with not conforming to society's expectations of gender uuugh people)

[dhampyresa]

having a particular affection towards a certain gender/sexuality group probably means you are in that group.

Yep. (Younger me was a moron.)

Did you also have the fascination with girls crossdressing as boys?

[esmenet]

oh, YOU BET. Especially in shoujo manga, because you would get them going on dates with girls (it looks heterosexual so it's socially acceptable) sometimes while also crushing on guys (it's not really gay so it's socially acceptable). I would always get so upset when the f/f couples would break up or even when the f/m couples resolved with her dressing feminine again, though I didn't have the vocabulary at the time to say why.

(this is lies, i absolutely did have the vocabulary but i felt bad just saying 'queer is better'. these days i have no such compunctions.)

[alias_sqbr]

having a particular affection towards a certain gender/sexuality group probably means you are in that group. Which has proved true for me every single time!

*blinks slowly* HMMM