Something got brought to the surface this week for me that reminded me of a lot of feelings and ideas that I started to have when I was beyond that carefree kid stage and starting to understand more about male and female in society.
I remember early on picking up the nuances of how women were treated vs. men ... what was expected of women vs. men. I remember one time I think we were at a family function and I was sitting in a chair, like I normally sit in a chair - comfortable, legs not together, a little bit of a slouch - and my mom came up to me and said, "young ladies do not sit like that" and pushed my knees together. Mind you, my mother is one of the few people in my life that knows (although never acknowledges) that I'm not a normal "female" in the body department. Yet after a certain age she persisted in trying really hard to turn me into a lady. There was lots of talk of make up and attempts at trying to buy me push-up bras and fix my hair. All the while, I started to just seethe with anger under the surface. For one, I've never been a female, not even on day 1 on this earth and I was being pushed and pushed and pushed to be something I wasn't. The second reason, is I completely started to resent how our society (in the U.S.) expects women to be. Even if I wasn't born how I was and was just a normal female I think I still might have rebelled because I would just look around all the time at all the females and wonder why they all just fell into line and accepted the uncomfortable clothes, the make up, the lower paid jobs, the fact that society just expected you to find a man and become a baby machine.
This isn't a topic about feminism or anything like that. I realize that females have come a long way and I don't necessarily think that a society of complete equals is what should happen either. The reality is, women can do some things men can't and men can do some things women can't and that's probably not going to change any time soon. But I'm talking about just my own experience and perspective formed early on from observation and how people started treating me.
Many years of my life people who did not know me, treated me as male, because I looked male. However, when they found out my name or someone would address me as "she" or "her" then everything would change. I would get treated even worse then! Society just can not deal with a women who looks male (for this reason I do sympathize with butch females, but that's another whole topic). It was ridiculous, yet morbidly fascinating at the same time to see how everyone seemed to just have these notions of what male and female were. I got made fun of a lot in middle school and high school because I was the "girl" who looked like a dude. Back in the 90's there wasn't the huge trans and LGB movements amongst young people. There were goths though - they were great because they were actually gender-bending and no one really messed with them because they were afraid of them! So that's who I hung out with and they accepted me no matter what I looked like. That was also amazing to me. How some people could look so "freaky" to the rest of society and be so open minded - while the rest of society just ridiculed them.
But because of these early experiences, observations and feelings I do actually have a resentment when it comes to women - not other women though, but people putting me in that category. People applying those "rules" to me. People pointing out how I don't look the part or act the part or asking intrusive questions like "don't you want to become pregnant?" Any time at all someone does that it's like I go right back to being 12 again and resenting the hell out of people making assumptions about me, telling me how I should be behaving and putting me a box I didn't belong in. I've made a life for myself regardless, but I still have the "F" on my birth certificate ... I never changed my name and people are always going to refer to me as female in some instances. Not really a way around that. Luckily little incidents that set me off to thinking this way don't happen that often.
So, does that make sense? Anyone else feel this way?
