Someone wrote…

My mother isn’t very girly, so I never was, growing up. I didn’t start wearing girls’ jeans until late high school, and that was primarily due to peer pressure and the fact that I wanted boys to notice me. Then again, I didn’t start wearing jeans at all until high school either.

I’ve been wondering, lately, how different my life would have been if my mother had conformed to gender norms. There are times when I think that the only reason I’m at all comfortable being female is because my mother always was, and she’s a lot like me. Neither of us likes girly clothes, although she likes skirts (and I don’t). Neither of us likes shopping, or the color pink, or talking on the phone. I’m often jealous of her for having smaller breasts and hips than I have. But she’s never seemed uncomfortable being a girl, so I don’t think I ever considered the idea.

If she weren’t like that … If she were more conventionally a woman … Would I have grown up to be how I am, except more resentful, more confused, and less comfortable with myself? Or would I have become more girly by following her example? I have no idea.

I’ve become progressively more confused in the past year or so … I don’t know exactly how to think about myself. I’m female, and I’m fine with that. I wish I didn’t have big breasts, or big hips, and I wish I could wear boys’ clothes all the time. I dislike skirts, and girls’ clothes are too tight and revealing. On the days when I wear turtlenecks to work, instead of women’s button-down shirts, I feel much more comfortable. So I guess I’m just a girl who doesn’t conform to gender norms.

Nonetheless, I can’t help but wonder about how it would have been different, had my mother been different.

How did your parents affect your identity?

And what are you thinking about gender right now?

Someone wrote…

I love my breasts. Sometimes. But most of the time, I wish I didn’t have them. Because it would be so much easier to live my life without them. So much easier to look how I want without them. So much easier to feel like I’m not constrained to being feminine and female without them.

But I’m too scared to admit it to the point of saving money for the surgery. I’m too scared to admit that I just DO NOT WANT to have breasts, even though I still want to wear make-up and skirts and pretty lingerie.

What’s your experience?

And what are you thinking about gender right now?

she ain’t heavy, she’s my brother, originally uploaded by hayleylouisabrown.

Copyright to Hayley Brown. Used with permission.

Someone wrote…

When I was a wee girl I didn’t think of myself as very feminine. Now the hips and waist speak noisily “feminine”, but I’m rather pleased with my barely there breasts. I wonder how much of that is the reason I still can’t do my hair or put on makeup – not a lack of confidence or self-conscious desire to look or be taken unproblematically “seriously”, but a feeling that there’s nothing I feel the need to reclaim. And maybe I should.

What’s your experience?

And what are you thinking about gender right now?

Someone wrote…

We hear a lot about people bending their age with Botox and anti-wrinkle creams. We hear a lot about people bending their bodies with diets, piercings, tattoos… We hear a lot about people bending their hair colours, skin colours, weights and heights.

Why is gender such an issue?

What’s your experience?

And what are you thinking about gender right now?

Anja Flower wrote…

Sometimes, yes, I do feel greedy asking the world to restructure their views and treatment of gender to fit me. But then I remember the fundamental flaw in that argument: I’m not asking people to restructure how they treat gender to fit me, I’m asking people to restructure how they treat gender to fit everyone. What’s the point of wearing this gender-binary coat that fits some people roughly, some people barely, and others not at all? What do we gain from it?

What are you thinking about gender right now?

Someone wrote…

i’m thinking about gender all the time. and almost all the time it hurts in a funny, slow-building ache kind of way–except for when the ache turns into a peak and i’m in a panic and i can’t talk myself out (no one can talk me out). and then sometimes things like this happen.

i recently tried to explain to someone why i hated high school. sure it was catty, sure there were the stupid stereotypes that always rubbed me the wrong way, and sure i was certain i was above all the things the other kids pretended to be. but those things didn’t come out in my explanation.

“i was lonely,” i said. i was lonely because i went to an all-girls high school, and even though there was a niche, even though there was a place for the outcast girls, there was no place for the not-girl. i had no words then to explain why i always felt so ugly, why i was so obsessed with losing weight. to anyone else, it probably looked like the typical focus of a teenage girl. how was i supposed to tell them that i always felt out of place, that my tits felt (and feel) too big and i wanted (and want) them gone? i didn’t want to be skinny to be “hot”. i wanted to be skinny to be a boy. i wanted my curves to melt off because curves were sexy in the way girls were sexy and i didn’t want to have anything to do with being a girl.

i have a better vocabulary, now, to express my frustration. but my frustration is still there. my language let me work through the “being a boy” phase; now i just want to be nothing. i want to be the shapeless, sexless things that are not like people at all, not mired in some man-and-woman binary where i have to choose things i don’t want (things i never asked for in the first place). i don’t know what came first: my body-image issues or my gender issues. but don’t you think you’d be lonely, upset, self-destructive, and fucking full of issues if there were no way to fix them?

i want masculinity without manhood. i want to retain some femininity without being forced into the mold of a woman. but it doesn’t work that way. no matter how much weight i lose, i’ll still have breasts and hips and i’ll still feel wrong. no matter what hormone therapy i go through, i’ll still get turned into something that’s not quite me.

“i don’t want to be a girl” i used to say.

and my dad would ask dismissively “so you want to be a boy?”

i’d say “no” and he’d just shake his head because maybe in his eyes i was being petulant and difficult — like 16-year-old daughters are.

“well, you don’t have any other choices,” he’d say.

and the conversation would end there. and even though i know better now, i still live in a world that doesn’t think so. i still have to lie a little to try and feel more normal; i still have to vault too far over the line to try and find some degree of ‘rightness’ in my life. and while uniqueness is all well and good in its own right, i’m still lonely and i still feel ugly and i feel mostly crazy almost all the time.

What’s your experience?

And what are you thinking about gender right now?

Someone wrote…

Biologically, I’m female… and I take my pronouns feminine.
I’m not particularly androgynous, but I do get awkward stares and whispers on occasion in public. Sometimes I’m even referred to as “sir” or with other masculine pronouns.

I’m not 100% comfortable with “girl,” but I accept it because “boy” would make me even more uncomfortable. I haven’t found a better alternative and “undefined” breaks my heart.

No one understands this confusion.
“You’re a GIRL.”
“You’re my GIRLfriend.”

I know. I know that.
But it doesn’t change the fact that I’m confused.

I just want you, I want someone, to understand and accept that I’m confused…
…and things may change some day.

Will you love me then?

this is pretty much my story — just out of someone else’s mouth. thank you, whoever wrote this.

What are you thinking about gender right now?