we shall see your murder on the stars
Oct. 12th, 2011 03:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hawkwing_lbNow that I've finished the Greek I need to have translated for Friday (and twenty lines a week isn't a lot, is it? Even if we do more in class) and stared at my thesis a bit more, I'm going to say something about yesterday. National Coming Out Day, and all that jazz. Didn't want to say it yesterday, because, well. Tired. Busy writing thesis and getting beaten up by pretty boys. Etc.
But. Gender. It confuses me.
Most of the time I don't bother thinking about it. I'm celibate (a state of affairs that, while it doesn't thrill me, is easy enough to be content with) so how I think about my own gender doesn't really have much bearing on how I interact with other people. I'm uncomfortably aware that all my ideas of gender and sexual identity are culturally constructed and that there's no real way to get away from it, and even if my ideas of human sexuality are no longer completely constrained by the norms of the society I grew up in - even if that society's norms are slightly less rigid today than they were ten years ago - I can't get away from the fact that the aforesaid society still constructs gender and sexuality in fairly rigid ways.
Ways which are at odds with the way I see myself.
I have a woman's body. In a shirt, with my hair an inch shorter than it is today, I get taken for a boy sufficiently often that, while it remains irritating, it has ceased to be remarkable. I don't set out to be "masculine," or "boyish," or even "butch." I have a powerful body - I acknowledge it: I have muscles, broad shoulders, height and a solid frame - and I dress in clothes I find comfortable.
If I'd come to gender theory earlier, or if I were less comfortable in my body, I'm not sure I'd identify as a woman. Which is an awkward thing to acknowledge, and to be honest about, because I don't want to make light in any way of people born in female bodies who do identify as male.
But I have a female body. It's mine. And most of the time I like it. (Although the breasts get in the way. Smaller breasts would be better. Also, uterus? That shit hurts.)
Therefore I am not male.
Yet, apart from the physical markers, I do not fit just about any of the cultural markers of woman-ness. I don't - have neither inclination, nor the learned skills - to put on the performance of femininity. I have no desire for offspring, though other people's are fine. I don't want marriage. (Contra my grandmother's constant assertion that one day I will really love some man and want to have his babies.) I'm large and awkward, not infrequently crude, and I enjoy hitting people in safe and well-monitored competitive environments.
And that's not even mentioning the fact that I'm not exactly a zero on the Kinsey Scale.
I'm not male, but I don't feel female. But interacting with the world at large, there is no real acceptable way to say: I'm just me. Or: Stop fucking with my head, culture. There's no neutral position, no unmarked state of simple personhood in which what biological tab theoretically goes into what slot is unremarkable, and unremarked upon.
So, yeah. As far as the world is concerned, I'm a real girl. Albeit one who is really fucking terrible at girliness. As far as I'm concerned, the jury's still pretty much out on anything further than sum, ergo sum, and likely to remain that way.
Most of the time I'm fine with that. Sometimes I feel like a freak.
I'm still relatively young. Still mostly bloody clueless. Still working my way out of a milieu in which sexuality was something shameful and Not Nice - Catholic assumptions have a lot to answer for. So maybe in another decade or three, I'll have moved on to cogito ergo sum.
One can always hope.
But. Gender. It confuses me.
Most of the time I don't bother thinking about it. I'm celibate (a state of affairs that, while it doesn't thrill me, is easy enough to be content with) so how I think about my own gender doesn't really have much bearing on how I interact with other people. I'm uncomfortably aware that all my ideas of gender and sexual identity are culturally constructed and that there's no real way to get away from it, and even if my ideas of human sexuality are no longer completely constrained by the norms of the society I grew up in - even if that society's norms are slightly less rigid today than they were ten years ago - I can't get away from the fact that the aforesaid society still constructs gender and sexuality in fairly rigid ways.
Ways which are at odds with the way I see myself.
I have a woman's body. In a shirt, with my hair an inch shorter than it is today, I get taken for a boy sufficiently often that, while it remains irritating, it has ceased to be remarkable. I don't set out to be "masculine," or "boyish," or even "butch." I have a powerful body - I acknowledge it: I have muscles, broad shoulders, height and a solid frame - and I dress in clothes I find comfortable.
If I'd come to gender theory earlier, or if I were less comfortable in my body, I'm not sure I'd identify as a woman. Which is an awkward thing to acknowledge, and to be honest about, because I don't want to make light in any way of people born in female bodies who do identify as male.
But I have a female body. It's mine. And most of the time I like it. (Although the breasts get in the way. Smaller breasts would be better. Also, uterus? That shit hurts.)
Therefore I am not male.
Yet, apart from the physical markers, I do not fit just about any of the cultural markers of woman-ness. I don't - have neither inclination, nor the learned skills - to put on the performance of femininity. I have no desire for offspring, though other people's are fine. I don't want marriage. (Contra my grandmother's constant assertion that one day I will really love some man and want to have his babies.) I'm large and awkward, not infrequently crude, and I enjoy hitting people in safe and well-monitored competitive environments.
And that's not even mentioning the fact that I'm not exactly a zero on the Kinsey Scale.
I'm not male, but I don't feel female. But interacting with the world at large, there is no real acceptable way to say: I'm just me. Or: Stop fucking with my head, culture. There's no neutral position, no unmarked state of simple personhood in which what biological tab theoretically goes into what slot is unremarkable, and unremarked upon.
So, yeah. As far as the world is concerned, I'm a real girl. Albeit one who is really fucking terrible at girliness. As far as I'm concerned, the jury's still pretty much out on anything further than sum, ergo sum, and likely to remain that way.
Most of the time I'm fine with that. Sometimes I feel like a freak.
I'm still relatively young. Still mostly bloody clueless. Still working my way out of a milieu in which sexuality was something shameful and Not Nice - Catholic assumptions have a lot to answer for. So maybe in another decade or three, I'll have moved on to cogito ergo sum.
One can always hope.
no subject
Date: 2011-10-12 11:13 pm (UTC)