(no subject)
Ah, time for another poll-y type thing.
*** Anna's Inquiring Mind Episode #12,38493 ***
Can you recall a time when some circumstance or event made you accutely conscious of an abstract aspect of your identity -- your nationality, race, enthnicity, gender, appearance, sexual orientation, religious or political affiliation, class, social status, educational level? Something that had been determined by your birth/upbringing rather than your choice, but that was nevertheless a part of your identity? I have in mind particularly circumstances in which you felt reduced to or especially judged by that single aspect of your identity.
If you can recall several of these -- What's the earliest? What's the most recent? What's the strongest/most frequent overall?
1. EARLIEST:
I think my very earliest (clear) recollection of feeling reduced to a single aspect of my identity is a memory from second grade. There was a tall handsome blond boy in my class, Phillip B., who somehow seemed to have a huge head-start on all the other seven year-olds on matters of sex. Girls weren't icky to him. He loved them. He dominated them. He would chase them around on the playground and try to kiss them. He pushed them into bushes. Most of the girls found him fascinating, a strange mix between cool and gross; personally, he scared me to death.
At some point, he and a girl called Meghan became 'boyfriend and girlfriend'. This was new stuff to us. In kindergarten, the tradition was that if you had a crush on someone, you drew a picture of you and them getting married, and (if you really had guts) you gave it to them. I received several of these pictures (Jonathan, Thomas, Andrew, Seth, and one girl whose name I really, really wish I could remember now...) and drew a couple myself (Jonathan, Kai). I liked the tradition very much. But 'boyfriend and girlfriend' scared me. Meghan, who had been cool before and a friend of mine, now acted like an idiot around Phillip, and Phillip had gotten even more swaggery and intimidating, and the worst part was that all the girls in the class seemed to think it was enthralling and giggled about it constantly.
One day Phillip and some girls and I were all sitting around a table doing worksheets. The girls were asking questions about girlfriends and boyfriends and what it meant to have one, and Phillip was holding forth. I don't remember what he was saying, but I remember being annoyed.
I got up to get something, and as I came back to sit down again, I heard Phillip saying that Meghan wasn't his girlfriend any more.
"Really?" asked one of the girls excitedly. "Who is it now?"
He looked at me, and grinned in a way that made me feel sick. "Anna," he said.
Everyone looked at me. I didn't know what to do, or what to say. A wave of incredibly intense feeling swept over me that I can only describe now as being the sudden, acute, and somehow deeply physical realization that I was female. And that being female meant that eventually I would have hips and breasts and carry myself differently and dress differently because of them; that I would be 'sexy', in the eyes of others and perhaps in my own as well; that Phillip had singled me out because he thought I was pretty, and maybe because he knew I didn't like him, and that my being female somehow gave him the 'right' to do this.
As I slid into my seat, I felt myself moving differently. As though my hips had grown or something. I can't quite describe it, but the way I moved at that moment, I felt as though I were suddenly affecting the body language of an adult woman.
I absolutely hated the feeling of Phillip looking at me, in that 'gotcha' way, but I also knew that the girls were looking at me, evaluating me, maybe being jealous, maybe envying me, maybe thinking I was pretty. Personally, I felt revolted, awkward, flattered, lonely, self-conscious, angry, powerless, powerful, embarrassed, debased, exalted, filthy, frustrated, and accutely uncomfortable. In other words, I felt nearly every emotion that I've felt since when I get unwanted attention from a member of the opposite sex. That may sound impossible, since I wasn't quite seven years old yet, but to the best of my recollection it's completely true.
So yeah. "Anna's First Sleazebag". Heartwarming story, huh?
2. MOST RECENT:
The passing of Prop 8. Somehow that really brought it home to me that, in the eyes of the law and of a very large portion of the population, I am a second-class citizen, biologically and/or morally unfit to retain the rights of a 'normal' person.
In most respects, I was born into the sphere of dominance/privilege-- middle-class, white, two parents, etc. Somehow Prop 8 really drove it home to me that, while I have been fortunate enough thus far not to experience real oppression as a minority, I am a member of a minority, and it's one that has less legal protection and social acceptance than almost any other except transgendered people.
I knew it intellectually already, but somehow now it seems true and personal and real and immediate and disturbing in a way that it never did before.
3. STRONGEST/MOST FREQUENT:
Getting hit on by uneducated lower-class black men. Especially on the occasions when the guy gets angry at me for giving him the cold shoulder and implies/says that racial difference is the reason I don't want to talk to him. Nothing else makes me more acutely conscious of all of my top five social identifiers (educated white middle-class gay female), or more frustrated, angry, and guilty about how utterly powerless I feel to do anything positive in these situations.
*** Anna's Inquiring Mind Episode #12,38493 ***
Can you recall a time when some circumstance or event made you accutely conscious of an abstract aspect of your identity -- your nationality, race, enthnicity, gender, appearance, sexual orientation, religious or political affiliation, class, social status, educational level? Something that had been determined by your birth/upbringing rather than your choice, but that was nevertheless a part of your identity? I have in mind particularly circumstances in which you felt reduced to or especially judged by that single aspect of your identity.
If you can recall several of these -- What's the earliest? What's the most recent? What's the strongest/most frequent overall?
1. EARLIEST:
I think my very earliest (clear) recollection of feeling reduced to a single aspect of my identity is a memory from second grade. There was a tall handsome blond boy in my class, Phillip B., who somehow seemed to have a huge head-start on all the other seven year-olds on matters of sex. Girls weren't icky to him. He loved them. He dominated them. He would chase them around on the playground and try to kiss them. He pushed them into bushes. Most of the girls found him fascinating, a strange mix between cool and gross; personally, he scared me to death.
At some point, he and a girl called Meghan became 'boyfriend and girlfriend'. This was new stuff to us. In kindergarten, the tradition was that if you had a crush on someone, you drew a picture of you and them getting married, and (if you really had guts) you gave it to them. I received several of these pictures (Jonathan, Thomas, Andrew, Seth, and one girl whose name I really, really wish I could remember now...) and drew a couple myself (Jonathan, Kai). I liked the tradition very much. But 'boyfriend and girlfriend' scared me. Meghan, who had been cool before and a friend of mine, now acted like an idiot around Phillip, and Phillip had gotten even more swaggery and intimidating, and the worst part was that all the girls in the class seemed to think it was enthralling and giggled about it constantly.
One day Phillip and some girls and I were all sitting around a table doing worksheets. The girls were asking questions about girlfriends and boyfriends and what it meant to have one, and Phillip was holding forth. I don't remember what he was saying, but I remember being annoyed.
I got up to get something, and as I came back to sit down again, I heard Phillip saying that Meghan wasn't his girlfriend any more.
"Really?" asked one of the girls excitedly. "Who is it now?"
He looked at me, and grinned in a way that made me feel sick. "Anna," he said.
Everyone looked at me. I didn't know what to do, or what to say. A wave of incredibly intense feeling swept over me that I can only describe now as being the sudden, acute, and somehow deeply physical realization that I was female. And that being female meant that eventually I would have hips and breasts and carry myself differently and dress differently because of them; that I would be 'sexy', in the eyes of others and perhaps in my own as well; that Phillip had singled me out because he thought I was pretty, and maybe because he knew I didn't like him, and that my being female somehow gave him the 'right' to do this.
As I slid into my seat, I felt myself moving differently. As though my hips had grown or something. I can't quite describe it, but the way I moved at that moment, I felt as though I were suddenly affecting the body language of an adult woman.
I absolutely hated the feeling of Phillip looking at me, in that 'gotcha' way, but I also knew that the girls were looking at me, evaluating me, maybe being jealous, maybe envying me, maybe thinking I was pretty. Personally, I felt revolted, awkward, flattered, lonely, self-conscious, angry, powerless, powerful, embarrassed, debased, exalted, filthy, frustrated, and accutely uncomfortable. In other words, I felt nearly every emotion that I've felt since when I get unwanted attention from a member of the opposite sex. That may sound impossible, since I wasn't quite seven years old yet, but to the best of my recollection it's completely true.
So yeah. "Anna's First Sleazebag". Heartwarming story, huh?
2. MOST RECENT:
The passing of Prop 8. Somehow that really brought it home to me that, in the eyes of the law and of a very large portion of the population, I am a second-class citizen, biologically and/or morally unfit to retain the rights of a 'normal' person.
In most respects, I was born into the sphere of dominance/privilege-- middle-class, white, two parents, etc. Somehow Prop 8 really drove it home to me that, while I have been fortunate enough thus far not to experience real oppression as a minority, I am a member of a minority, and it's one that has less legal protection and social acceptance than almost any other except transgendered people.
I knew it intellectually already, but somehow now it seems true and personal and real and immediate and disturbing in a way that it never did before.
3. STRONGEST/MOST FREQUENT:
Getting hit on by uneducated lower-class black men. Especially on the occasions when the guy gets angry at me for giving him the cold shoulder and implies/says that racial difference is the reason I don't want to talk to him. Nothing else makes me more acutely conscious of all of my top five social identifiers (educated white middle-class gay female), or more frustrated, angry, and guilty about how utterly powerless I feel to do anything positive in these situations.