azurelunatic | Epiphany: how I wasn't constantly abused by the gender binary growing up

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Epiphany: how I wasn't constantly abused by the gender binary growing up

The following is a long, rambling narrative of personal discovery on the topic of gender. Relevant to the topic: how my parents very carefully shielded me from everything they could of the sexism inherent in the world, and restrictive gender roles. They tried for gender-neutral options when they could (I think there is *one* photoset of me as a baby in pink and frills, which ends with me assertively untying the bow and drooling on it), and did not attempt to discourage us from any interest based on presumed gender-appropriateness.

The more I look at the world of the strongly-gender-binaried, the more I realize how ever-loving miserable I would be in that world. I can put on various sorts of drag for the workplace and all, but if I had to live there, I'd go mad. Not having to live there, I can be OK with my body, as it does not actually doom me to take on the Western Feminine Role full-time. I was not raised in it; I do not have to knuckle under to it in my heart.

I start to suspect that if I had to pick one, I'd be more "guy" or "dude" (I rather like "dude", actually) than "gal" or "chick". (It used to be chick/cat, did it not?)

I am not/cannot be/never have been/never will be a "lady". I could, however, possibly be a "gentleman"; the phrase "as befits a[n] X and a gentleman" resonates with me the same way the Vorish fealty of hands-between-hands resonates.

... oh dear. So that was BJ's major malfunction, the one that made us thoroughly and completely and epically unsuited for each other, in addition to his other little fun emotionally and mentally abusive traits. He was forcing the gender binary. He had no frame of reference for someone who just did not subscribe to it. No fucking wonder

theladiesloos triggered me so badly. To me, anything that smacks of enforcing a gender binary has a chance of touching on that history of emotional and mental abuse.

This appears to be the gender-binary version of this concept:
"Any girl can use a good string of pearls."

This is how the general concept translates to me:
"Anyone who is interested in putting on Western girl-drag can use a good string of pearls."

I believe that the gender binary being accepted without question and without exception is incredibly toxic, because if I had been raised in more of that environment, I would be incredibly less sane and functional than I am. (People who know me well can laugh here.) For the people who fit it well, I could see how it can be nourishing to them, but never forget the people who don't fit it.

I would rather be a man than a woman in the Western gender-binary world. I would hate being a man in the Western gender-binary world, but I would hate being a woman more. I resent the gender binary, and I loathe it the most fiercely when it tries to encroach into spaces that I consider mine, safe, or at least not actively hostile.

Other than the places where it malfunctions on me, I don't mind my body. I do not mind breasts, I do not mind a clitoris or vagina, I do not mind my speaking voice or facial features. (I do mind my stupid polycystic ovaries and the various malfunctions that come along with those, and have considered leaving my uterus in a convenient ditch somewhere as a result.) Absence of a penis is not a major trauma. I've been elbowed painfully in the nipple; I can do well without the testicles if it hurts like *that*. Even if I were living as a man, I could do without the body modification, because this country and this world don't have Betan-quality reassignment surgery, and like I said above, I don't mind the sex-linked features of the body I have.

Hi, don't mind me, I'm having an epiphany here. I can wear black because I like it and it suits my coloring, not because I'm necessarily a goth (mod was before my time, emo after) because only goth girls wear black. Various forms of pink because ditto, not because they are forced on me but because I like them. I can like blue. I wanted to operate heavy machinery as a toddler. I still think it would be pretty cool. I like computers, not because they are inherently masculine or feminine and I am inherently either, but because they are cool and they are fun and I was raised with them. I like writing. I like observing things and distilling the principles from which they operate through observation and occasional experimentation to see if I'm right. The conclusion that I came to sometime during the epic conversations with

boojum about these things was that this thing that I am doing is feminine because I, a female, am doing it.

We talked about butch and femme. I don't mind "on average this is typical; in the individual this varies very widely". I do mind, and vigorously mind, a society that sees personal preferences as either allowable or scandalous deviations from a pre-programmed list of possibilities based on one's bits and whatever social form one is presenting oneself as.

But. There but for the wisdom of my parents go I. I'm not allergic to being called 'she', and prefer female pronouns when I'm not plural, but I might well have been if I'd been subjected to the worst of it at a tender age.

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*points up* That kind of sums up my thoughts on the matter, yes. :)

Hooray for awesome, awesome parents!

Firmly and happily cisgendered here, but I am really really really really really REALLY that you got this out of your head and into the wild. Proud of you, darlingest braintwin. <3

Me, I'm glad I got it into my head so it could come out!

It probably says something about me that my first thought when I saw "Any girl can use a good string of pearls." was "sex toy"(*), not "decoration/fashion accessory/status item/visible wealth".

(*) To the extent that pearls would work for that purpose, which probably depends on both conformation/temperament and the pearls themselves.

*snerk*

I have bookmarked this in my "in case I ever become a parent" bookmark folder. :-)

Thank you.

I've a comment on the LJ mirror where I go into the topic of toys that I think are perfectly gender-neutral and furthermore, useful.

Thank you! Now I've bookmarked it there too.

I enjoy undermining the concept of the gender binary whenever possible.

I have started getting weird looks when going into women's bathrooms when not wearing work clothes, though. It puzzled me until I looked in a mirror after it happened the last time, and I can see it now.

It made me squeeful for a lot of reasons. Not the alarming people part, of course, but I thought I looked good for whatever people saw me as every time that has happened.

Last week Mom asked me if I were transgendered. Holy can of worms, Batman.

On the bright side, your mother is apparently therefore aware that transgendered people exist, and somewhat open to the possibility that you might be.

You make me wish so much that I could find a world where a gender binary was not forced onto me. Almost so much that it hurts, though that's certainly not your fault. My parents, and my mother especially, are incredibly traditional as far as any of that goes; I was forced into dresses and pink and don't do that because it's not something that good Jewish girls™ do.

Maybe I'll get somewhere that I can go tell the Western gender binary that it can fuck itself. Because I really, really want to.

It'll be much easier away from your parents, although I know there are significant obstacles in the way of that happening.

Much easier when I'm not anywhere that there are preconceived notions of me being female … but even if I can move out …

I'm so tied to the communities and the people and the events that I have here. And they're sadly in love and in bed with their beloved little narrow worldview (as I even learned today).

Exactly.

I'm one of 2 male staff out of over 30 at the school I work in (infants, 4-7 yrs). My previous management job was one where every other company in the business had a female in it, and there were training courses that simply assumed I was female and there was an error in the application, one competing school even tried to poach my families on the grounds I was male and how could I do it properly.

miss_s_b can pick me up and carry me around the room, is downstairs watching the rugby currently (sports? what is the appeal again), works full time to my part time and is actually able to understand how a combustion engine works.

But, we're finding it very hard to not have

amazing_holly fit into gendered social norms. Recently at school there was a fancy dress day for World Book Day. She went in as a witch, but would've preferred being the Gruffalo or Mona the Vampire, the boys were a large variety of action types, comic book characters, Ben 10, pirates, etc. About half the girls were princesses, mostly of the Disney variety.

Really gets to me at times. Worst is when people just assume 'all' when basing approaches on the average, utterly stupid, even when you point out this sort of thing people still don't get it.

At work recently, there was a "men can't multi task" discussion in which all my colleagues were complaining about how you can never get thei partners attention while they're watching TV. I piped up to say that I can never just watch TV, and have to have something else to do as well.

They declared me an honorary woman and went back to bitching about all men. Progress?

I think progress; they didn't try to deny that you could multitask.

Reminds me vaguely of Grandma's memorial. The gents had brought books and had stayed at the park reading and devouring hummus on slices of baguette. The ladies had not brought books, and had gone off for more ice. I had brought a book and was staying with the hummus, so I declared myself, for the purposes of easy sorting, a gent for the time being.

You are awesome and right. I just hope I can bring up my kid the way your parents brought you up. The toxic girls-must-have-pink-things mentality you see round here in particular reduces me to a frothing rage.

A person should be happy with the way they are - not feel forced to be part of some massive fancy dress parade.

I recommend little to no TV, Construx, blocks, flexible-purpose dolls (the ones that you can use in imaginative play rather than the ones that have a specific range of things you can do with them), anatomically correct dolls (we had a set of peeing baby dolls, one male and one female; leads to far fewer obnoxious questions later), books books books books books, pieces of fabric that can be used as capes or tents or parachutes-if-jumping-off-very-low-things, trampolines and jump ropes and hula hoops, roller skates, toy kitchens, sewing machines, swords and shields, doctor kits, musical instruments and clearly defined Quiet Hours, a lovely great chest of dress-up clothes, a bed with curtains that can be converted into a stage, the sort of karaoke-oriented music player that can be used for actual karaoke, for plain music, or as a small public address system...

I loved to dress up in velvet and ruffles and such for a few hours at a time, and I had very lovely dresses my mother made that I wore to school. None of them, however, except the one, were white, because inevitably... Pretty dress with lace on the collar and a ruffle at the bottom, blue, with matching white socks with blue stripes ("boy socks", the ones that didn't creep down nastily), sneakers, skinned knee, frog in hand, up to waist with muddy pond water.

I'm glad you're thinking about it beforehand and determined to do the right thing.

Also huge amounts of paper, markers and crayons and such, and cardboard boxes.

I love this list so, so much.

It's amazing how much the "make-your-own-fun" toys are non-gender-specific. Electronics and chemistry kits. Baking soda and vinegar. Clay: modeling, potter's, bake-in-the-oven plastic clay...

My parents used to get so annoyed at my grandmother because everything she gave me was pink. It's only now, as I come to learn about such things that I am beginning to recognise and appreciate what they were doing and worrying about when they made sure my brother and I both had a full range of colours (there was definitely a time, which he will now totally deny, when pink was his favourite colour) and toy cars and construction toys were given to us both, and that they even sat me down and had a serious conversation with me about body image when I asked for a Barbie doll... The more I realise the way I was brought up was actually carefully thought out and I was so lucky, the more I really hope I can do at least as well with my kids one day.

My parents were good at this too. I know my Mum used to put me in blue as a baby because she liked blue more than pink and thought it looked better on me. Got annoyed at, but learned to put up with, all of the comments about what a cute baby boy. I don't think it damaged me in any way! :)

I also had a good selection of toy cars, block and Lego while growing up. Never did like playing with dolls. And loved playing outdoors, climbing trees, building forts, etc. Never enjoyed or good at sports, so that wasn't an issue.

Scholastically, I loved math and science, and did really well at them. Did consider engineering as a career, but ended up in Chemistry. Didn't bother me at all that the majority of my classmates were male. I remember going to some lecture with an electrical engineering friend (male) and being the only female in the room. Again, no problem. And full support for my choice of program from my parents.

I hadn't thought of this in any way in the context of gender binary. Always thought of myself as female. Enjoy dressing feminine sometimes, otherwise, wear jeans and relatively unisex outfits. And that was my mode when in high school too. One day I might show up in a dress and heals, the next in jeans and a tshirt.

Interesting.

I always got amused at relatives and people who gave me pink things and make-up etc. There was definitely a time when I liked pink, but I grew out of it and was a real tom-boy for ages. I remember, the first thing I did with my first ever make-up was to give myself a fake black eye ^_^

But yeah. A lot of my time when I was younger was at my child-minder's house, and because she looked after both boys and girls (and had two sons of her own, one about two years older than me, one two years younger), there were lots of "male" and "female" toys around, and we all played with both. Her youngest son, for example, liked the doll's house, and I remember the two of us playing with Barbies and Action Men (and, erm, making them kiss and stuff, but we were young and not-so-innocent!) ^_^ And I would make dens out of furniture and play in the mud in the garden with pet snails and slugs and woodlice, and it was awesome ^_^

My sister and I also studied the art of fake bruises with the Great Kit of Amazing Makeup that she begged and pleaded for. It was *awesome*.

I wanted to operate heavy machinery as a toddler. I still think it would be pretty cool.

I think there must be a market in this country for something like < a href="http://www.wired.com/culture/culturereviews/multimedia/2008/12/st_man_park">this place in Germany, but I imagine fear of lawyers is a greater concern here.

That sounds like amazing fun. (Sadly, I read the comments. I should know better by now.)

The bits that resonate best with me:

I would hate being a man in the Western gender-binary world, but I would hate being a woman more.

Yep. I've been lucky enough to not feel like I have to choose, and to somehow feel like part of my definition of "female" is doing high-level math and riding motorcycles and shooting and screw those people who think those activities are or should be confined to being "male." Because if I had to be female without those things, I would refuse to be one at all.

I don't mind "on average this is typical; in the individual this varies very widely". I do mind, and vigorously mind, a society that sees personal preferences as either allowable or scandalous deviations from a pre-programmed list of possibilities based on one's bits and whatever social form one is presenting oneself as.

Yep. Exactly this.

The conclusion that I came to sometime during the epic conversations with [info]boojum about these things was that this thing that I am doing is feminine because I, a female, am doing it.

That's how I always felt. (I pretty much grew up oblivious.) I'm happy to be female so long as no one tries to define it for me. *g*

Absence of a penis is not a major trauma. I've been elbowed painfully in the nipple; I can do well without the testicles if it hurts like *that*.

Hahah, yeah. XD;; I once got kicked in the crotch, and let me put it this way: if it hurt like a mother-fucking somnabitch for a biological female, I'm not sure I want to know how much worse it is for a biological male. ^^;;;;;;

But yeah... I'd rather be sexless than have someone assume what I'm like based on what gender they perceive me to be. I just don't fit very well into either "male" or "female." I've been conditioned over the years to regard myself as the latter and to use female pronouns, etc., but I really wish it weren't that way. =/ It'd be nice if there were a good, gender-neutral pronoun set that didn't sound as ludicrous (to me, anyway) or awkward as, say, "sie" or "hir."

The time when Alice walked BANG into the pole in the middle of the sidewalk (one of those helpful let-us-keep-the-cars-from-driving-here poles) there was Notable Agony.

pyrogenic helpfully pointed out that, well, there *were* a lot of nerve endings there, just not as much, er, low-hanging fruit, as somebody with a male body.

My only issue with being female (and I was raised in a strongly gender-binary mode, but have mostly abandoned its precepts, one by one) is that I think I would have made a pretty good father, and would have liked having children if I could have been the father. But I'd have made a lousy mother, and back when I was young enough to have a parental option, the only option presented to me as possible for parenthood was to be a mother.

That one I resent.

Ow.

And I also think I'd be a better father than mother, after my experience with the Virtual Nephew.

I think it was the strong gender binary aspects I was raised with that cause me to sometimes forget that I am female. I hated the gender binary that my mother ascribed to. But I fit better with the male version (especially because it was a geek, male version in my household - boys played with electronics and fire and chemistry sets and transformers which they never got me even a single one of and I only got to play with rarely when I visited my cousins. Girls played with dolls and well, more dolls, which was incredibly dull. Fortunately stuffed animals, building blocks, books, and computers were deemed okay for both sexes.) It really left me feeling very not female, even though I have a bunch of traits we associate with femininity in our culture, such as a desire to care for children.

All those "boy toys" sound like awesome fun to me!

I was the girliest kid you can imagine, but for convoluted reasons that I don't think were a purposeful intent to flaunt the Western gender binary, my parents strove to make sure I knew everything was an option for me. My dad bought me a lot of fire trucks, I had lots of Barbies, but also Legos and Lincoln logs and any kind of toy you could build with. And my extended family reinforced these options.

I don't think my brother felt the same freedom. Like I said, not deliberate. Probably the result of, on both sides, a heritage of strong women running and sustaining large families. I KNEW I could be anything, do anything, because, duh, look at all the women I was related to!

There wasn't any gender neutrality so much as parity, if that makes sense.

That makes sense.

I think mine was also less neutrality and more parity, but it was enough to keep me from going entirely spare.

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Epiphany: how I wasn't constantly abused by the gender binary growing up

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