Take Me For What I Am

A few summers ago, I spent a couple weeks with a bunch of people from out of state doing theatre in the rural Midwest, a foreign country to them.

We went to a museum where I noticed a person in a skirt that I assume was there with his boyfriend.  I put it down as cross dressing and didn't think much about it.  Doesn't really matter either way, and, more fairly, both of them were more or less ambiguously gendered, but I read both of them as biologically male.

In a discussion later, about how friendly people were and relatively tolerant of a bunch of theatre weirdos, the burly Californian said that he didn't think a man could walk down the street in a dress here and feel comfortable.

"Didn't you see the two guys at the museum?" I asked.
"What two guys?"
"The only other people there apart from us."
"That was a guy and a girl."
"I don't think so."
"....No.  You think?  She was a girl."
"Maybe that person is transitioning, or presenting female, but I think they were both biologically male.  It doesn't matter, but you didn't notice.  The difference is not wearing a dress, it’s the difference in the person wearing it.  You, big, burly Californian with a beard, are going to create a different situation in a dress than, say, short, fair haired cherub faced Utahan, would.  I don't think it matters what state you're in."

One of my refrains when I was a kid was that I wished I'd been born a boy.  I don't remember why until puberty when I really, really wished I was a boy and could avoid all these feminine mysteries.

I've never been feminine.  I think I've always been a girl, though.  Or I've gotten used to it.  At 12, I might have gladly switched.  Now, I don't care much for the flesh suit I live in, but it would feel strange to trade it for a different one.

It's why I hate the, "all women are beautiful," stuff.  No.  I think it's perfectly healthy to have a grip on my limitations, as well as to recognise I have no obligation to be beautiful.  I have an obligation to be who I am comfortable being.  I don't feel limited by my lack of desire to wear a bikini any more than being glad I don't have children.  That’s not what I want to do.

I guess those, "to have a bikini body, put a bikini on your body," things are intended for people who would wear one, but, and to say, "no, the but is in your mind, do what you want."  And what I want is to not wear one, or heels, or dresses, but I resent a little bit that femininity and being female are supposed to be the same thing,  as though I'm supposed to want any of those things inherently.

I think I've spent too much time in the last decade trying to pay attention to expectations that, now that I notice them, I think they'really supposed to apply to me, rather than to someone who has been absorbing exterior information about who they're supposed to be for years.