I want to wear those things together.
Someone wrote…
I’d like people to understand that there is a difference between confusion and flexibility. If I wear a top hat and a tie, it doesn’t mean I want to be a man. If I wear makeup and a lace skirt, it doesn’t mean I consider myself a woman. And wearing those things together does not mean I can’t decide what I want to be. It just means I want to wear those things together. I’m not the confused one. In fact, I’ve got it all figured out.
What’s your experience?
Posted by julian on March 1st, 2010 at 08:00 am
Category: your voice 12 comments »
March 1st, 2010 at 8:20 am |
AMEN!!!
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March 1st, 2010 at 10:51 am |
I agree, people always accuse me of being confused when really it’s them who don’t understand what is going on with me, and they don’t want to take the time to find out.
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March 1st, 2010 at 11:17 am |
“I’m not the confused one. In fact, I’ve got it all figured out.”
i love this~~excellent response.
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March 1st, 2010 at 1:56 pm |
I feel like I’m pretending to be someone I’m not if I present an all “masculine” or “feminine” appearance. Sometimes it’s fun to dress up as a man or a woman, but I’d rather be myself.
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March 1st, 2010 at 3:31 pm |
@Leah — I know what you mean! I feel even more like I’m in drag if I’m wearing all women’s clothes than I do wearing all guy’s clothes and binding! Some sort of balance is more fun and comfortable, although I tend to lean more towards the masculine side.
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March 1st, 2010 at 4:26 pm |
My thoughts exactly! I first started thinking this way when I heard about how Adam Lambert identifies as a man, but likes to be able to express himself in as many ways as possible. Now I no longer see his hairstyle as necessarily feminine… it’s just a hairstyle!
To me, dressing as a woman or a man is like putting on a costume. If you dress as a bunny, that doesn’t mean you identify as a bunny… I suppose you could make an argument that it means you’d like to be treated according to that role while in the costume, but since women are so diverse, that doesn’t necessarily work either.
I used to avoid things that I thought of as feminine – maybe I still do – but now I tend to think of everything as genderless unless it’s several features put together, and even then you never know.
Definitely the real confusion is in conflating a skirt or hair length with femininity. I know lots of women-identified people who only strike me as outwardly feminine and otherwise one might say androgynous or genderless! Or outwardly androgynous people whose personalities could fall right in like with femininity, if we employ the binary. But without the binary, people just *are*.
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March 1st, 2010 at 5:00 pm |
The problem for me is the lack of a middle ground. We all know the stereotypes for masculine and feminine, but the grey area of androgyny is harder to define. On one hand, that sucks, because I’d really like it if people knew how I identify just by looking at me. On the other hand, being able to define my androgyny in the way I choose is very liberating.
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March 1st, 2010 at 6:18 pm |
Also, by associating top hats and ties as “for men” and lace and skirts as “for women” we are just further re-enforcing the gender stereotypes.
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March 1st, 2010 at 6:38 pm |
It makes it hard to be androgynous whenever someone looks at a dress and thinks “Girl!” or at a tux and thinks “Boy!”. Which totally sucks. This is why I have a lovely pipe dream of inventing a line of unisex/androgynous clothing.
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March 4th, 2010 at 2:45 pm |
Yes, yes, yes! Thank you. Agree completely.
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March 18th, 2010 at 11:02 pm |
Meike – it can take some searching, but it can happen. I was told to buy a ‘posh dress’ when I went on a cruise, and I bought a feminine suit instead. As a ‘male-bodied’ (what?) girl, I passed (I think) but not without being interesting!
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May 13th, 2010 at 7:14 am |
I’m glad there’s someone elso who feels this way!
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