Oh right, I was totally gonna blog at least once a week. Way to be on the ball, me! I promise I'll try, but we'll see what happens.
Anyways, today we're going to talk about gender identity and the story regarding my own. Prepare for tl;dr
First thing I'm going to say, is that this image is perfect for my first point. Which is that gender goes far further than just man or woman. This is something a lot of people fail to realize. For those of you who don't know, your gender is NOT determined by your genitalia. That is what your sex is. Your gender is based on many things. Like what personality traits you have, how you handle your emotions, how you dress, things like that. Most people feel they identify with the traits generally associated with their biological sex. These people are
cisgendered. Then there are those who don't feel they identify with their biological sex (to varying degrees). These people are
transgendered. Now, people often assume that transgendered people always associate 100% with the opposite of what they are biologically, which is not always the case. There are some people who feel like they fit somewhere in between male and female, some who feel they fit as both, and some that feel they fit as neither!
Now, hopefully your brain didn't just explode if that was all new information for you. But those are just the basics that I felt I needed to point out before going on my rant on how gender identity has affected my own life.
When I was a little kid- as far back as my early toddler years- I was what my family and many others lovingly called a "tomboy". I hated dresses and skirts and frilly shirts. I hated having my hair brushed, or even played with. I hated hanging out with other girls, I had almost exclusively male friends. I was far from obsessed with the idea of getting married or being saved from a tall tower by some handsome prince. I wanted to rescue my own damn self. I never, EVER, owned a single Barbie, doll house, or baby doll. This is just how it was and I didn't really think anything of it. That is, until it started being a concern for others. Being a kid, I had little sense of what was considered normal or average behavior for a little girl such as myself. I was simply acting on who I was. I don't remember anything making me that way, my older sister was definitely more of the typical young girl, and me and her were not raised so differently. For as long as I can remember that's just how I've been. It was no conscious effort to be "different", I didn't even know it WAS considered different until my mid grade school days.
Now, I don't think I know anybody who wasn't teased at least once in grade school. Kids can be evil little things. So as grade school went on (which I absolutely hated and stayed home as often as I possibly could) it was growing more and more often that people pointed out to me how boyish I acted and presented myself. I vaguely remember even asking my parents once if they were really sure if I was a girl, because people at school kept calling me a boy. It confused me quite a bit. I didn't think I was a boy, I didn't particularly TRY to act or look like one, yet others seemed to think so. My early years basically went on like that. Throughout grade school I only had a single female friend, and by 4th grade there was a huge rumor that we were lesbians. Thinking back to that now I'm kind of amazed bigotry like that can start so early, but there you go.
By the time I got into middle school it got worse. I remember having a gymnastics class and there being a few kids that would harass me nearly every class about how I looked like a boy and blah blah blah. More and more often random strangers whom I'd never spoken to before would just straight up ask me if I was a boy or a girl. I got to the point where I'd just tell them to guess, or say I was whatever they thought I was. I didn't really get why it was such a big deal to everyone else when it wasn't a big deal to me, so eventually I just stopped caring. If they thought I was a girl, that was fine. If they thought I was a boy, that was fine too. It didn't change who I was, and if it changed their opinion of me then I didn't want to be involved with them anyways.
But then my biological hormones really started to kick in, as did puberty. I'm not going to go into details, but I will say that unless I wore incredibly baggy and loose clothes (which I often did) I was asked significantly less often if I was a boy. BUT that didn't stop people from calling me a dyke or something of the like. I thankfully kept up my attitude of just shrugging them off and saying "Sure! I'll be whatever you think." and I continued to care less and less as I got older. Some people seemed to be absolutely determined to make me feel bad or ashamed about the fact that I wore men's boxers and shirts, or distinctly baggy clothes in general. But I had a good amount of friends of both genders that didn't give a shit whether or not I was on the androgynous side, and simply liked me because I was me. I even managed to get some boys interested without compromising myself or making any sort of effort to be more feminine. I've even managed to have a partner for a year without them ever bringing up the "issue", and they seemed to care about it as little as I did. Crazy thought, I know.
Of course late middle school and high school I started to go through that silly phase of "finding myself" and I've gotten to the point where I have a fair amount of traits of both sexes. I cry fairly easily, I have a pretty feminine figure (although androgynous face), long hair, the uncanny ability to read way too much into every little thing, talking too much, having the uncontrollable urge to squeak when I see a cute baby animal, a distinct disability and hatred of physical labor, clingy and controlling tendencies in my relationships as well as babying, etc. Yet at the same I still have almost exclusively male friends (WITHOUT having any romantic or sexual connection to them), I never wear make up, I rarely ever discuss my true feelings, I tend to keep everything bottled up until I explode, a good chunk of my hobbies and interests are considered to be more for men than women (i.e. video games), I'm awful at pretty much all things domestic and rarely clean my room or anything else, I do NOT gossip constantly, I've little to no interest in fashion and 80% of my wardrobe is men's clothes or for either gender, and so on. Obviously these things aren't all there is to me, and not all of them pertain to my gender identity, but I'm listing some of the major gender specific stereotypes to paint an example about how you don't always have to be- and few people are- exclusively one or the other.
To this day I still don't really have an answer for what I identify with, because I don't really care. I don't feel the need to put a label on it. I have friends and family that could care less whether or not I fit a niche, and for those that do care, they can ask themselves why the hell it matters. Hopefully as society progresses and the human rights campaign continue their struggles, the judging and bigotry will continue to become less of an issue. I've had much more fortunate results than a lot of those considered to be transgendered. I've experienced no violence because of it, but many do. Many have trouble finding jobs, or getting any of their basic human rights, and some even become disowned by their friends and family. Open mindedness is always the first step, people.
Some of you might wonder why I didn't really bring up sexuality at all in this post, and that's for quite a few reasons. Mainly because this already huge post would have been twice as long, but also because I want to point out that gender and sexual orientation are not always as closely related as people assume. Any gender can have any sexual orientation. Just because someone is transgendered doesn't have to mean they are gay, or even bi. It's who they identify as as a person, and that doesn't always affect who they are attracted to. I'm sure I'll get into sexuality at some later date, don't worry.
