musings
I was on the phone with my mom the other day, and she was telling me a story about looking through old pictures with my niece, K. K is 2 and half, and painfully adorable. When she doesn't act like a mini-version of her mom, she acts like a mini-version of me. In fact, she probably looks more like I did than my sister did, mostly because her complexion and hair color and closer to mine then.
Apparently, K identifies her mom and me in kiddie pictures. "Mommy, Unc-A'it." "Long hair and all," my Mom comments, as if there's an issue of gender here. I'm much more impressed that she can relate the small child in the picture to the adult she sees in person every 6 months. I don't think she's even bisecting people into male and female yet, much less connected "uncle" to "male". But whatever.
To me, the really cool part is that there's one picture of me that she reliably refers to as herself, no matter how much my mom argues. "So where's the blue jacket, K?" I identify with my niece so much that I really love that she identifies with me. We webcammed last month and she instantly knew who I was and her face beamed. I need to get on them to webcam more, not to mention getting myself a winter flight back to visit.
So I was telling this story to a GRE student of mine, and I found myself editing the story to say that K pointed at a picture of her mom (not me) and said it was herself. WTF was that about? Why am I writing myself out of my own story? What am I hiding from? There were so many ways to have handled that, plenty of which don't involve gender 101 in the slightest. Why did I run to invisibility? I don't like that.
On the other hand, I do feel like I'm finally, finally reaching a presentation that reflects myself and my reality. I realized this morning that I started T a shade over 10 years ago. Wow. I still have mixed feelings about that decision. What compelled me, as someone who doesn't and never has identified as masculine, to take T? How do I have such a complicated and outside the "mainstream" identity? I don't know. But I do, and it's been surprisingly consisted, though I may have expressed it in various ways over time. I am a femme guy. I have a very clearly femme sensibility, but it's a man's femme.
Since the femme conference, I've been feeling empowered to wear my hair up and back in a "feminine" ponytail, as opposed to down and back in a "masculine" ponytail, and I've been using brightly colored elastic bands. [Man, I can't write these words without quotation marks, I don't think. it's like "intelligent design. But I digress.] I bought this amazing hawaiian shirt with pineapples at the Cupcakes and Muffintops sale that I've been wearing with pride. I like these small things. I think, for me, femme is in the small things. Femme is in declaring that my hair is finally as long as it was in high school. Not because short hair isn't femme, but because it's part of my femme identity, and I'm proud to extend it back in my lifetime. Luckily, I went to HS in the early 90s and my (male) best friend had hair as long as mine. But I also want to keep aware of when I'm hiding myself. If I tell that story about K again, I'm going to say it was me. If anyone asks, I had long here back when I was two, too. It's true. Hey, it was the late 70s! We all had long hair back then.
Apparently, K identifies her mom and me in kiddie pictures. "Mommy, Unc-A'it." "Long hair and all," my Mom comments, as if there's an issue of gender here. I'm much more impressed that she can relate the small child in the picture to the adult she sees in person every 6 months. I don't think she's even bisecting people into male and female yet, much less connected "uncle" to "male". But whatever.
To me, the really cool part is that there's one picture of me that she reliably refers to as herself, no matter how much my mom argues. "So where's the blue jacket, K?" I identify with my niece so much that I really love that she identifies with me. We webcammed last month and she instantly knew who I was and her face beamed. I need to get on them to webcam more, not to mention getting myself a winter flight back to visit.
So I was telling this story to a GRE student of mine, and I found myself editing the story to say that K pointed at a picture of her mom (not me) and said it was herself. WTF was that about? Why am I writing myself out of my own story? What am I hiding from? There were so many ways to have handled that, plenty of which don't involve gender 101 in the slightest. Why did I run to invisibility? I don't like that.
On the other hand, I do feel like I'm finally, finally reaching a presentation that reflects myself and my reality. I realized this morning that I started T a shade over 10 years ago. Wow. I still have mixed feelings about that decision. What compelled me, as someone who doesn't and never has identified as masculine, to take T? How do I have such a complicated and outside the "mainstream" identity? I don't know. But I do, and it's been surprisingly consisted, though I may have expressed it in various ways over time. I am a femme guy. I have a very clearly femme sensibility, but it's a man's femme.
Since the femme conference, I've been feeling empowered to wear my hair up and back in a "feminine" ponytail, as opposed to down and back in a "masculine" ponytail, and I've been using brightly colored elastic bands. [Man, I can't write these words without quotation marks, I don't think. it's like "intelligent design. But I digress.] I bought this amazing hawaiian shirt with pineapples at the Cupcakes and Muffintops sale that I've been wearing with pride. I like these small things. I think, for me, femme is in the small things. Femme is in declaring that my hair is finally as long as it was in high school. Not because short hair isn't femme, but because it's part of my femme identity, and I'm proud to extend it back in my lifetime. Luckily, I went to HS in the early 90s and my (male) best friend had hair as long as mine. But I also want to keep aware of when I'm hiding myself. If I tell that story about K again, I'm going to say it was me. If anyone asks, I had long here back when I was two, too. It's true. Hey, it was the late 70s! We all had long hair back then.