Being my own person
Someone wrote…
I have always felt like being “me” was what really defined me, way more than being a “girl” or having tits and vagina. I really love my body and wouldn’t change it for anything, but I have always felt uncomfortable in a dress or a skirt, almost as if I were in drag, while I really love to play with masculine fashion (shaved head, Doc Martens, male perfume if any).
I feel different from other girls, and I wouldn’t say that being “a woman” has a huge impact on my identity – I try to be my own person and that’s it… But at the same time, to leave behind that label in my head feels a bit like cheating on feminism: we/they have fought so hard to say “you don’t need to be feminine to be a woman” that telling everyone I’m genderqueer or anything like that makes me feel as if I’m letting “them” exclude me from “my” gender because I don’t pass some kind of “girl test”… I’m so confused!
What’s your experience?
Category: your voice 2 comments »
May 11th, 2014 at 10:55 am |
I think I feel something similar. I’m ok with my body being the way it is but I don’t feel like I’ve got a gender. I don’t feel like a woman.
I can’t figure out how much of that is due to internalised misogyny from society in general, how much is me being nonbinary (if I am), how much is the gender binary being nonsense anyway (which I believe it is), and on top of all that, how much of it is bad associations due to having been abused very badly by the female members of my family (though none were conventionally feminine presenting either) but not by any of the men. Even without that last part I think it’s a lot for anyone to unpack. If I could define what I think a woman is it could be a start in figuring it all out, but I can’t seem to!
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May 11th, 2014 at 8:38 pm |
I soooooooo get this. (Or think I do LOL!). I wrestled with a lot of the same questions for a long time. In the end, where I got to for myself is that feminism taught me to trust my lived experience, and in my case that means I came to identify as genderqueer. It wasn’t an idea I took on, it was more a bottom up thing. Part of how I know I’m on the right path is how much has unlocked for me – I feel much more comfortable in my body, in my relationships, in my life… my relationships with women have shifted *significantly* for the better, as has my relationship with femininity and female-assigned roles. Same with men, masculinity, non-binary folks, androgyny… really everyone and everything. Accessing more of a sense of aliveness overall tells me that this isn’t about internalized misogyny or any of the things I was worried about. Hope you find where your aliveness is too <3
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