There's a thread going around Twitter at the moment about a woman insisting that she was a tomboy, and she grew up just fine to be a feminine woman and today she'd be labelled as trans and that's wrong and leave kids alone.
And a lot of people are saying, "Yes, just leave kids alone to be whatever physical expressions they want. Maybe some will be trans, some won't, that's all OK." Which, yes.
I can't remember how old my mother tells me I was, but it was under a year for sure. She'd bought some dress she absolutely loved for me, and every time it was brought out of the closet, I would scream. Not even had it tried on me yet, screaming. Wearing it involved screaming, and I probably wore it about twice because that's as much as she could put up with, and about six years later sent it to her sister for my cousin, mentioning that she never thought she'd be fighting with her child about clothes before I was in my teens.
I continued to be stubborn about clothes. My Kindergarten teacher requested that I not be sent to school in dresses because I refused to sit on the floor or move or do anything for fear of getting dirty or someone seeing my underwear. I remember clothes shopping in first grade, standing in the dressing room at Richmond Gordmans insisting that I wanted to wear PLAIN clothes. (This is still a thing- girls clothes with ruffles, lace and sequined decoration still make me uncomfortable.) My dad brought back some things from the boy's section, which I was immediately OK with and my mother was horrified.
I always had long hair, but so did my dad, the only adult I knew with long hair, so I often wonder if I don't actually think of that as a feminine trait in spite of the fact that every time I get my hair cut short, I get mistaken for a dude. I don't mind. I didn't play sports, I played with dolls because I needed actors.
By the time I was 10, I was convinced I would rather be a boy. This conviction stuck around in various forms, until the present day, honestly. I'm taking continuous birth control so I don't get periods or cramps, but I still have awful emotional PMS, and if I could stop that with anything short of surgery, I would. I hate to buy bras. I still don't wear make-up. I have no interest in a lot of traditionally feminine activities. I know a lot of guys who are much more feminine than I will ever be.
At the same time, I was a Girl Scout. And I enjoyed it. I remember this coming up in my need to reconcile being a girl- I was a Girl Scout, and I liked that, therefore, I must actually BE a girl. I eventually decided that I was me, and that was clearly fine, and I got to define what that meant. To this day I don't really know what I do that's all that feminine- most of my least female friends eventually picked up feminine habits like fancy underwear or being mothers or wearing make-up or jewellry, and I never did.
A gender fluid friend once posited on Facebook whether we would change gender for $10,000, and I was like, "Absolutely." Not only would I get $10,000, I'd start to be paid more, I'd be ignored when I went to the grocery store, and I suspect I'd be taken more seriously than currently. A lot of other women added that they would have the added bonus of not being harassed by men in public. My ex has been harassed by men in public more than I ever have. Which is another way I know I'm not a woman anybody pays any attention to. The only time I ever attract unwanted attention is when I wear a specific red coat I own, then I notice that I get stopped by people asking for money a lot more than when I don't wear the coat. I'm not sure if it's because it's bright red or it's suddenly obvious I'm a girl when I wear it.
So, really, while I'd probably happily change gender, I also don't really think I'm trans. I think I'm me, and while there are a few biological processes that I'd happily magic away, I don't think that's the same thing. But when I see all these women saying, "I was a tomboy and I turned into a perfectly normal woman!" I pretty much have to admit that I... did not. I'm not entirely sure if that's a problem or not. I'm me, I guess, whatever that means.
And while all of this is happening, Betelgeuse is dimming, meaning that over 600 years ago, the star was doing its red supergiant thing, and we're only just finding out about it now. In another hundred thousand years, it might go supernova. None of us will be here to see it. Our records of this moment might not even survive (this one certainly won't). There might not be anybody on this planet to witness Betelgeuse going supernova. So, that's perspective for you.
No comments:
Post a Comment