gender

When I was little, I told my father that I was going to grow up to be a boy. My father told me that it didn’t work that way; girls were born girls and stayed girls their whole life. This seemed oddly unfair- boys got all the coolest toys, and didn’t get in trouble for mucking up their dresses and never had to wear pantyhose that would catch on your toenails and run.

I remember the little plastic lawnmower my parents got me so I could mow the lawn with dad on saturdays. It was green with a white pushbar, blew bubbles and made a weird noise.

I remember saturday morning cartoons, bouncing on the bed in my GI Joe camo pyjamas and practicing my “moves”.

The clothes I would always play dressup in were my dad’s, and I remember wondering when my feet would be big enough to wear his shoes, and a vest, and his shiny silver pocket watch.

My parents never tried to force me into one gender role or another, outwardly at least. They were the ones bankrolling my GI Joes and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the Lincoln Logs and the endless cowboy and indian playmobil characters I collected. I suppose that they thought I was simply well-rounded: I also happily did Cotillion, (a southern tradition where young girls and boys dress formally and learn manners and how to dance), watched My Little Pony and played with barbie dolls. And as far as clothes, they generally let me wear whatever I felt happy in (except at church) and this was just as frequently a turtleneck and jumper as it was a tshirt and shorts.

I should also mention that I grew up (for the first 10 years, anyway) in North Dallas. Dallas is a town that has very particular traditions, and the circles in which my parents moved participated heavily. There was almost a uniform to the PTA moms at my school. My sister (one grade lower) and I were often sent to preschool and elementary school in matching outfits.

As I got older, I started gaining weight. My mother swaddled me in as much cumbersome clothing as she could find, covering me up. I started to rebel early, and the truce seemed to come around junior high, when I adopted the jeans and shirt uniform I still usually sport.

I moved from suburban Dallas to Little Rock, Arkansas. I traded in my suburban elementary school for an inner city junior high. One day, despite my well-developed seventh grade breasts, a substitute teacher identified me as a boy. I did happen to be wearing my softball jersey, but I had C cup breasts! Confusing. The gender misidentification continued. My boyfriend had longer hair than I, and looked more feminine. His adolescent face had the soft curves my pudgy pubescence lacked, and with zits, short hair, messed up blue jeans and browner than white sneakers led people to think I was just a fat boy.

It also didn’t help that the company I kept was largely male, and I idolized some of my male friends for their “coolness”. Alex was a silly nerdboy with a strange head. Adam was a cool nerd, played the drums and wore tshirts from gadzooks. We wore airwalks and vans and chucks, our bluejeans (so uncool at the time, popular kids wore khakis) scraped the ground and were ratty at the back.

The girls I knew were skater and punk and awesome, with pink and green spiked short hair and chains on their bags and pen and ink tattoos. We were rough and crazy and played hard. Experimenting sexually and with substances, we joked about running from the cops, how dumb our parents were, and listened to nirvana.

It was about this time that I realized I was bisexual. I didn’t really struggle with this- I knew other bisexual girls and they were accepting of me. My mother thought I was kidding. I never really told my dad. My friend, Marcy, told me that “all girls like to see other girls get off” and tried to explain to me that I wasn’t bi, but never managed to succeed.

The way I think about gender in my own sexual orientation is that I don’t look for one gender or another. I look for personalities, smiles, nice hands and voices. I used to joke that the mechanics are different but the feelings the same. This isn’t exactly true, however the sentiment is right.

But what do my gender presentation and my sexual orientation actually say about me and my sense of gender?

I think everyone (at least, everyone I’ve asked) has the inclination to want to try out the “other” set of genitals. I’d really like to know what a fully functioning set of balls and cock felt like against my skin, what putting it into another person felt like. But that said, I’m pretty happy with what I’ve got, truth be told. Boobs are great to hold and squeeze and fondle. My clitoris is a pretty amazing source of pleasure. Having a vagina is really kind of awesome, and since part of my kink is about vulnerability, openings are great!

So, physically, no complaints. I’ve never really had an inner sense that my outside self didn’t match my inside self, which is a struggle many trans people seem to have to navigate. I’ve always thought of myself as a tomboy, and that in and of itself has defined me as much as anything.

What’s interesting to me now is the more I think about gender, and the more people whose gender is outside the binary I meet, the more I begin to see my particular view of myself as a person, not so much gendered, as more radical than I imagined. There are people, trans people, who are passionately against the idea that they themselves and others can inhabit a space between genders. They are strong proponents of the belief that there are two genders, and only two, and you are one or the other exactly.

Others, like Kate Bornstein, describe a fluid relationship between genders and the self and society, wherein the beauty of the self is the morphology of gender and gender practice. Clearly, this group is categorically opposed to beliefs held by the first group. (These beliefs are expressed often in passionate language).

I’d personally tend to hold with the second group, because as I get older and more experienced, I realize how small my commitment to my gender is. I suppose my presentation is more or less male, (despite the now almost waist-length hair) I still wear the untidy jeans of my youth, and I’ve swapped the airwalks for birkenstocks. I don’t particularly want to draw attention to my gender moreso than my personality and my mind.