Gender

Can I just say that gender is kind of confusing. Like, yeah it's cultural, but it must be more than that, cuz of trans people and stuff. I mean, people actually change their bodies to match their gender. And Savage Love last week had a letter from a guy who was born intersexed, but the operated on to be feamle, but felt like he was really male. I mean, that's complicated.

When I was a youth, I was thinking about gender a lot. I remeber being in 7th grade and Louis demanding whether or not I wanted to be a boy and whether or not I would get sex resassignment surgery if I could and me not answering cuz I didn't know. I hated girl drag. I hated having to wear a skirt every day to school. I felt like it limited my motion and my freedom, but obviously I felt more than that, cuz I won't wear women's clothes now unless I have to. I try to avoid activities where I have to wear costumes that are gendered female. Joan of Arc got burned at the stake rather than wear a dress everyday. I can kind of see where she's coming from.

So when I was an undergrad and some folks started coming out as trans, it was something I wanted to think about, but Christi was having none of it. she did not want to date aboy and if I became one, she would leave me. So I liked her and I wasn't sure and anyway, I was at a women's college and I liked beign surrounded by women and feeling like I was among my people, so I didn't go there. If I had gone there, maybe I'd be a boy now? Who knows. My first girlfriend is a boy now and a bunch of women that I admired or was attracted to or both have switched.

Lois, in Dykes to Watch Out For questions her gender for a while and then lies about being trans becauase she's annoyed at one fo her friend's transphobia. Then she comes out as untrans and explains that she enjoys being a girl "in a perverse sort of way." which is kind of how I feel. I'm finally comfortable with my body, at least for the last few years and I really wasn't for a long time. So when I write about Joan of Arc being on both sides of some sort of gender binary/hiearchy, that's kind of me projecting myself onto my research, which everybody does and in this pomo period we can all be somehwat honest about it. so before I didn't know whether I was a girl or a boy and now I say that I'm defintely a girl, but maybe I'd rather be a heretic than wear a dress. Does this make me genderqueer? I dunno. I'm about to go put on a tux for queer prom. Seriously, wearing dresses makes me as uncofmortable as hell. It's not right. It's not me. It's like hammering a peg into the wrong shaped hole or something. I used to feel happy when people called me "sir," but then other times I would be annoyed by it. It's annoying now.

I wanted male privledge, but obviously something more was going on...

This is me sharing too much. goodnight.