Boys and girls, ladies and gentlemen, his and her’s, ... when I hear these words, I hear a list of expectations that I have never been able to quite live up to.
"Boys are made of snips and snails, and puppy dog tails, and girls are made of sugar and spice and all things nice."
Ladies and gentlemen behave as perfectly acceptable examples of their socially assigned roles, with ladies being quiet and demure, and gentlemen being strong and supportive, politely opening doors and generally offering assistance to the weaker sex. ... I never really liked the idea of being weaker.
And the 'his and her’s', well those are our assigned clothing and accessory choices: his are practical, durable and comfortable, and her’s are frilly, pink, patterned, tight and revealing. … Let me tell you, ‘real men’ are much better at wearing pink than I am.
I’ve always had difficulty fitting my whole self into the expectations of my birth assigned gender. … Snails and puppy dog tails seemed much more appealing to me than sugar and spice, … and quiet and demure, well, you can forget that one altogether.
My gender expression tends to be fluid, somewhere in the middle and leaning a bit more toward the masculine side, just as my personality contains both masculine and feminine characteristics.
… It’s not rocket science though; I should have figured it out a long time ago. I am
what many Indigenous people call two-spirited. I now identify as transgender, but it wasn’t until recent years that I discovered that I had a choice; not until all these brave young trans people started to speak out about who they are and about how gender should not be dictated by the binary opposites of male and female.
He and she were the only options our language gave me, and I believed I somehow had to make myself fit into those boxes, and I tried. I really did.
Now that I’ve tasted this new freedom, I can’t go back. I can no longer call myself a woman without somehow feeling that I am telling a lie, and I’m really big on telling the truth.
So what do I do now? What pronouns do I accept other’s using when they refer to me, ... what pronouns do 'I' use, when I’ve never really seen those that I have been using as being mine in the first place?
So right that the whole labelling business is overdone, and that may not be as true as it was when I was born in the early 1950's, but let's face it, when you go to buy children's clothing, even newborns, you are forced to go to either the boys or girls section of the store. It is a baby for heaven's sake!!! Grrr
ReplyDeleteAs for us, with a lovely mix of qualities, mine never leaned to the male side very much, and I have discovered that those that seemed to (my love of golfing for instance) even land on the female side when I get into the details. I tried to think of myself as a somewhat feminine man. It didn't help a bit in my case.
We are all so delightfully different. We just need to educate the rest of the world to accept it.
Sometimes labels can be helpful, when we use them ourselves to identify with or find common ground with another and to give us a sense of belonging, but I agree, they can be very harmful when they restrict someone from being themselves. I've spent my whole life trying to make the 'woman' label fit, and it just hasn't, not without a bunch of qualifiers. I found myself bouncing back and forth in reaction to what others saw me as, and that wasn't very good for me. Somewhere in the middle is where I belong, and I've finally learned how to embrace that. ... I guess I've always known it, but the idea that transgender meant that I wanted to be the opposite sex got in the way. I like the way I am, without having to choose one extreme or the other.
DeleteWe are so delightfully different; and we do need to educate the rest of the world so that they can accept that. ... I am glad to be in such company as you Halle. :)