adult education
My mom, despite her feminist sentiments, for some reason raised my sister and me without ever making us cook, clean, or do housework. When I went to college, I picked up laundry and cleaning pretty quickly by neccesity, but it wasn't until junior year that I took the plunge and formed a cooking group with some of my friends. I discovered that not only liked to cook, but I was pretty good at it too. Over the course of the next three years I went from knowing nothing to cooking from a 600 page specialty Indian cookbook. Learning to cook was a liberating process all around-- there was joy in doing it (and eating the results!), a bit of freedom from traditional male gender roles, and a sense of self-sufficiency in that I finally knew how to take care of myself.
Seven and a half years after I started transition, today it hit me while I was blow-drying and curling my hair that I've finally learned how to do 'femme' well. I've been thinking about what it would have been like if I had learned to do 'femme' without a boat-load of shame, guilt, anxiety, and obsessiveness. I think about what it would have been like to learn how to do make up as just as skill- just like learning how to draw, or how to change a tire, or how to do a spreadsheet :) Instead of learning it like that, I went in with the added baggage of a) this is something I'm "wrong" for wanting to do, b) this will magically transform me into this mystical idea of 'woman', and c) no matter what I do I will be bad at this stuff. I think about the fact that, seven years on, each time I put myself together, I have this sense that if I don't get it right, I'll look like a freak and a pariah and no one will want to talk to me. I wonder how long it would have taken me, and how much more liberating it would have been, if I had learned to do 'femme' like I had learned how to cook. Interestingly, the point at which it finally became joyous was the point when I discovered other femme transwomen (namely A & D), and not surprisingly also the point when I finally started 'getting it'.
One of my favority quotes is from Robert Heinlein-- "A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects." It's so bizarre that we've chosen to specialize in our notions of gender. Why shouldn't a human being know how to both fix a carborator and put on false eyelashes? Why do we attach so much value to gendered skills? Whether it's our professed sense of incompetence (I'll NEVER know how to change a tire!), or our intense emotions (femininity is a prison!), or sense of alienation from each other simply because we have different skill sets (I just don't understand women!)... I think it's time we stop being insects!
Side note: sadly, I do not know how to fix a carborator. :)
Seven and a half years after I started transition, today it hit me while I was blow-drying and curling my hair that I've finally learned how to do 'femme' well. I've been thinking about what it would have been like if I had learned to do 'femme' without a boat-load of shame, guilt, anxiety, and obsessiveness. I think about what it would have been like to learn how to do make up as just as skill- just like learning how to draw, or how to change a tire, or how to do a spreadsheet :) Instead of learning it like that, I went in with the added baggage of a) this is something I'm "wrong" for wanting to do, b) this will magically transform me into this mystical idea of 'woman', and c) no matter what I do I will be bad at this stuff. I think about the fact that, seven years on, each time I put myself together, I have this sense that if I don't get it right, I'll look like a freak and a pariah and no one will want to talk to me. I wonder how long it would have taken me, and how much more liberating it would have been, if I had learned to do 'femme' like I had learned how to cook. Interestingly, the point at which it finally became joyous was the point when I discovered other femme transwomen (namely A & D), and not surprisingly also the point when I finally started 'getting it'.
One of my favority quotes is from Robert Heinlein-- "A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects." It's so bizarre that we've chosen to specialize in our notions of gender. Why shouldn't a human being know how to both fix a carborator and put on false eyelashes? Why do we attach so much value to gendered skills? Whether it's our professed sense of incompetence (I'll NEVER know how to change a tire!), or our intense emotions (femininity is a prison!), or sense of alienation from each other simply because we have different skill sets (I just don't understand women!)... I think it's time we stop being insects!
Side note: sadly, I do not know how to fix a carborator. :)