There's a Reason I Say "Girl" Instead of "Woman"
"I'm a girl, that's my gender; I'm male, that's my sex; I'm attracted to females, that's my orientation." That's the thumbnail version of me coming out, that's me doing it short 'n snappy.
And I've used "girl" fairly often in reference to myself on the genderqueer and transgender community boards on Facebook, where it's more necessary than usual to be able to refer to one's gender separately from how one references one's biological sex.
So why, you may well be wondering, do I use the word "girl" when I'm not a juvenile? I'm middle-aged. Also, I purport to be a feminist, but feminists have long since gone on record about the disparity wherein male adults get called "men" but female adults still get called "girl". "I am a woman. Do not call me a girl", they have said. So why don't I tend to say that I'm a woman? Why do I use the term "girl"?
Reason A: The Trajectory of Personal History. I think there are many people who, when they visualize transgender individuals, think in terms of how we want to live the adult sexual lives -- the EROTIC lives -- of the other gender. That that's what it's all about, that that's the main thing that we feel estranged from because of our bodies and (therefore) the gender that people assign us to. I do know that there are some transgender people who only became aware of being a different gender than the one to which they were socially assigned when they were adults, although I don't know any personally. For me, though, and for many others with some version of the overall trans identity experience, that stress on adult gendered behaviors and differences is misplaced: we knew it a lot sooner than that, and our overall identities were shaped by already thinking of ourselves as one of the gender to which we were NOT socially assigned, the other one.
In other words, I thought of myself as one of the girls when I was in elementary school. I valued what they valued; I took pride in it just as the other girls did, competed with them on certain levels, participated with them on others, cared about what they thought of me, and measured myself against them in evaluating my self-worth as a person. We were good citizens and generally did well within the system and expected to, and considered ourselves worthy of respect and graceful treatment, which we'd earned through our responsible good behavior. But if and when we did NOT get accorded that treatment, we knew it SHOULD be our due and, after all, one does not behave properly in order to receive such treatment, one behaves properly because it's the right thing to do.
Then, later, in my own particular case, well, it happened that I was attracted to female people. Which, unlike the matrix of personality and behavioral characteristics folks noticed in childhood, WAS fully expected of me on the basis of my biological sex. This complicated things: as a child, I was like the other girls in most of the ways that counted, but unlike them in biological sex; now, as I was entering adulthood, that biological difference took on new hues and meanings, and, if anything, submerged my sense of being one of them into a more convoluted and multifaceted mixture of samenesses and differences.
That complexity nearly destroyed me; I could not untangle that mess, could not separate myself as a male-bodied person attracted to females from the matrix of assumptions and beliefs about males and the meaning and "flavor" and behaviors and cues and signals of males and females in a state of attraction to each other. My samenesses got in the way and left me vulnerable to confusion and hurt; I wanted something new and different from the other girls, something other than what I'd wanted and needed from them up until then, and risked not being able to get any of it, the new OR the old types of connections.
And my understanding took the form of understanding that who I *had been*, looking back over my shoulder at my own past, was one of the girls, a male girl, now trying to negotiate the tricky currents of sexual attraction. And that understanding helped everything make sense and put me on the road to coming to terms with all of it.
Reason B: Children's Lib. Embedded in the pride of being a responsible citizen was always a rebellious refusal to accept the general designation of children as irresponsible little animals with no self-control, not fully human and not entitled to equal consideration by adults as people. Attitudes towards children may be particularly derogatory in the deep south where I grew up as a child, spiced up with a fair amount of Biblical distrust for unfettered human nature and the corresponding notion that humans are good only in the shadow of sufficient threat of punishment for the wicked. But it was a very GENDERED attitude. Boys were bad except where terrorized into being good; girls who were bad were weak and to be pitied and strong girls were good on purpose.
I never accepted the notion that adults were intrinsically better people or more important people. If there were legitimate reasons for our second-class status as children, they resided in our comparative ignorance and lack of capabilities and, IF indeed in evidence, in our immaturity and failure to behave responsibly. I did, as a child, believe the adult world was one in which the responsible folks were in charge.
That was a belief that did not survive my own passage into adulthood. Adulthood is a myth. Mostly, folks wake up one day between their junior year in high school and their 20th birthday, realize that all that wisdom and certainty that they saw adults apparently possessing is NOT going to come their way, and they stop trying to understand the world and instead focus on faking it, copying whoever seems to be doing "adult" relatively well and hoping no one realizes they're phonies. Which isn't likely because everyone else is doing the same thing. There is bodily adulthood, in the sense of puberty and associated biological changes, but "man" and "woman" are mythical creatures, notions of gendered adult selves that are too heavily invested in the notion of adulthood for me to feel comfortable identifying with.
Progress Notes, on the ongoing attempt to sell my book:
The Story of Q--total queries = 393
Rejections: 276
Outstanding: 117
As NonFiction--total queries = 332
Rejections: 263
Outstanding: 69
As Fiction--total queries = 61
Rejections: 13
Outstanding: 48
That Guy in Our Women's Studies Class--total queries = 22
Rejections: 20
Outstanding: 2
--------
Index of all Blog Posts
And I've used "girl" fairly often in reference to myself on the genderqueer and transgender community boards on Facebook, where it's more necessary than usual to be able to refer to one's gender separately from how one references one's biological sex.
So why, you may well be wondering, do I use the word "girl" when I'm not a juvenile? I'm middle-aged. Also, I purport to be a feminist, but feminists have long since gone on record about the disparity wherein male adults get called "men" but female adults still get called "girl". "I am a woman. Do not call me a girl", they have said. So why don't I tend to say that I'm a woman? Why do I use the term "girl"?
Reason A: The Trajectory of Personal History. I think there are many people who, when they visualize transgender individuals, think in terms of how we want to live the adult sexual lives -- the EROTIC lives -- of the other gender. That that's what it's all about, that that's the main thing that we feel estranged from because of our bodies and (therefore) the gender that people assign us to. I do know that there are some transgender people who only became aware of being a different gender than the one to which they were socially assigned when they were adults, although I don't know any personally. For me, though, and for many others with some version of the overall trans identity experience, that stress on adult gendered behaviors and differences is misplaced: we knew it a lot sooner than that, and our overall identities were shaped by already thinking of ourselves as one of the gender to which we were NOT socially assigned, the other one.
In other words, I thought of myself as one of the girls when I was in elementary school. I valued what they valued; I took pride in it just as the other girls did, competed with them on certain levels, participated with them on others, cared about what they thought of me, and measured myself against them in evaluating my self-worth as a person. We were good citizens and generally did well within the system and expected to, and considered ourselves worthy of respect and graceful treatment, which we'd earned through our responsible good behavior. But if and when we did NOT get accorded that treatment, we knew it SHOULD be our due and, after all, one does not behave properly in order to receive such treatment, one behaves properly because it's the right thing to do.
Then, later, in my own particular case, well, it happened that I was attracted to female people. Which, unlike the matrix of personality and behavioral characteristics folks noticed in childhood, WAS fully expected of me on the basis of my biological sex. This complicated things: as a child, I was like the other girls in most of the ways that counted, but unlike them in biological sex; now, as I was entering adulthood, that biological difference took on new hues and meanings, and, if anything, submerged my sense of being one of them into a more convoluted and multifaceted mixture of samenesses and differences.
That complexity nearly destroyed me; I could not untangle that mess, could not separate myself as a male-bodied person attracted to females from the matrix of assumptions and beliefs about males and the meaning and "flavor" and behaviors and cues and signals of males and females in a state of attraction to each other. My samenesses got in the way and left me vulnerable to confusion and hurt; I wanted something new and different from the other girls, something other than what I'd wanted and needed from them up until then, and risked not being able to get any of it, the new OR the old types of connections.
And my understanding took the form of understanding that who I *had been*, looking back over my shoulder at my own past, was one of the girls, a male girl, now trying to negotiate the tricky currents of sexual attraction. And that understanding helped everything make sense and put me on the road to coming to terms with all of it.
Reason B: Children's Lib. Embedded in the pride of being a responsible citizen was always a rebellious refusal to accept the general designation of children as irresponsible little animals with no self-control, not fully human and not entitled to equal consideration by adults as people. Attitudes towards children may be particularly derogatory in the deep south where I grew up as a child, spiced up with a fair amount of Biblical distrust for unfettered human nature and the corresponding notion that humans are good only in the shadow of sufficient threat of punishment for the wicked. But it was a very GENDERED attitude. Boys were bad except where terrorized into being good; girls who were bad were weak and to be pitied and strong girls were good on purpose.
I never accepted the notion that adults were intrinsically better people or more important people. If there were legitimate reasons for our second-class status as children, they resided in our comparative ignorance and lack of capabilities and, IF indeed in evidence, in our immaturity and failure to behave responsibly. I did, as a child, believe the adult world was one in which the responsible folks were in charge.
That was a belief that did not survive my own passage into adulthood. Adulthood is a myth. Mostly, folks wake up one day between their junior year in high school and their 20th birthday, realize that all that wisdom and certainty that they saw adults apparently possessing is NOT going to come their way, and they stop trying to understand the world and instead focus on faking it, copying whoever seems to be doing "adult" relatively well and hoping no one realizes they're phonies. Which isn't likely because everyone else is doing the same thing. There is bodily adulthood, in the sense of puberty and associated biological changes, but "man" and "woman" are mythical creatures, notions of gendered adult selves that are too heavily invested in the notion of adulthood for me to feel comfortable identifying with.
Progress Notes, on the ongoing attempt to sell my book:
The Story of Q--total queries = 393
Rejections: 276
Outstanding: 117
As NonFiction--total queries = 332
Rejections: 263
Outstanding: 69
As Fiction--total queries = 61
Rejections: 13
Outstanding: 48
That Guy in Our Women's Studies Class--total queries = 22
Rejections: 20
Outstanding: 2
--------
Index of all Blog Posts