I’m gonna be honest… I’m a tiny bit anxious about posting this? (Or writing it. I haven’t actually posted it yet, so you know.) I don’t post all that much about personal things, and I especially don’t really post stream-of-conscious-ness-y things, though in some ways I wish I could. I edit a lot. The stuff I write is not my undiluted thoughts.
ANYWAYS. I digress! I’ve showed my blog a to a handful of people in real life, and although I’m not really sure if they actually read it, it’s enough to know that they can, and that worries me a bit. I’m not entirely anonymous and all that. But normally I just sort of try to write as though I don’t really care if real life people read my blog, otherwise I’d be worring ALL THE TIME and that’s super not fun. I guess it might be a bit awkward, but…at least I don’t have to talk face-to-face? Yeah, never mind, that was just a RANDOM INTRO BIT which got longer than expected.
Some of you guys have picked this up from my various tweets/conversations with you, but I’m kind of having some issues with my gender right now, I suppose? I just. I am just not 100% sure if I am a cisgender girl, in summary.
I don’t really know. I’ve been kind of considering this for some time now, I suppose, but my main thing is that…you know, it’s not one of those things where I automatically discovered what non-binary meant and said YEP, THAT’S ME. Equally, that didn’t really happen with the general other queerness thing — dude, I don’t think I’ve ever actually said it on the blog but I’M REALLY QUEER, IN CASE YOU COULDN’T TELL — but at least looking back there was kind of signs. A general feeling of difference.
I am basically just A PERMANENTLY CONFUSED PERSON. When I was trying to figure out whether I actually liked girls, or boys, or indeed anyone at all (what am I saying, still am) I spent a lot of time examining and picking apart my own emotions. Like, a lot. I still do that. I research, and then I compare, I feel certain, I research more, and I completely don’t know again. I’m now moderately certain that I at least don’t like girls any less than I like boys.
So, yeah, like I said — with ~gendery things~ that general feeling of ‘maybe this is me’ didn’t immediately happen. And I know that doesn’t necessarily mean loads, but it means that I end up feeling really uncertain. I didn’t particularly have a lightbulb moment, I don’t think, but I just sort of ended up thinking ‘I’d quite like to look like that’.
And THINGS GET COMPLICATED. It’s difficult to disentangle your own emotions from stuff like what society tells us, because they’re all mixed up. Is this just that I don’t feel I fit into the veryveryvery narrow typical role of a woman? Is me wanting to be less feminine a part of internal misogyny? Like when guys open doors for you because they’re ‘being a gentleman’. I’d rather it was just because I was an actual human being and it seemed a nice thing to do rather than because they thought I was a girl.
Anyway. In general from what I can tell, gender is kind of…bleurgh, no one even knows. DOES IT ACTUALLY EXIST? IS IT A SOCIAL CONSTRUCT? I suppose at the moment I feel a lot more comfortable wearing typically masculine clothes… I own a (crappy) binder. I’ve worn it a few times. It’s not that comfortable. But, like, is it just an issue about presentation? Is that kind of thing just part of the gender stereotyping? Would I be cool with just looking kind of more masculine but still identifying as a girl? (Because there are lots of super cool ladies who present more masculine.)
I also don’t really want to give up stuff like Girlguides — I mean, I enjoy it loads, but obviously it is a female space. That seems selfish of me. Does this mean that I shouldn’t be allowed there? Because I do find it a tiny bit uncomfortable when people just assume I’m a girl because of that. (Although it’s fair enough.) I’m not going to give it up just now, though, because I am still figuring things out.
As you can probably see: I just throw up more questions for myself! All the time! *shrieks* I don’t… I’m not really sure what I’m hoping to achieve with this post; some catharsis, I suppose. I’ve been semi-writing-it-in-my-head for some time now. I’ll probably remember loads of things that I wanted to say but didn’t get a chance to.
Also, I know my posting has been a little messed up lately, but hopefully over the holidays I’ll have more of a chance to write stuff and build up some posts for the next school term. 🙂