Androgony
I’ve become incredibly comfortable in being a guy. So much so that it has ceased to be an issue I think about. She would say this makes it harder for me to understand her issues with it. Maybe there’s some key difference I’m missing. But the funny thing is that I find the idea of changing my identity to be equally interesting and amusing. I think I could learn to play a woman fairly well. And I even think I would enjoy it. I guess I don’t feel that sexuality necessarily goes along with gender, but more importantly, I find gender to be rather unimportant.
The girls I like tend to be a little more tomboyish, more willing to assert themselves and be independent. I see the traditionally “male” ways of interacting (strength, confidence, self-reliance) to simply be more admirable than “female” ones (flexibility, empathy, community orientation). I’m attracted to the female sexuality but overly much to the female gender. (I want a girl with a short skirt and a looooong jacket)
It makes “Her” need for a change to be all the more puzzling, since she still likes women. For her it’s the need to feel like a different person. Yet this feeling for her requires a gender change, rather than simply remaining a femininish gendered male. Though it sounds like the former is simpler than the latter, I think in practice it’s not. “She” still clearly looks male (I don’t give a damn what people say, she’s a much better looking man than woman) and I think it creates a disconcerting situation. I think it makes her far more awkward. That is combined with the fact that “she” still does many of the aggressive rather male style activities (such as cyclecross).
Now it doesn’t bother me that she does any of this. But I think it’s one thing to disregard gender and act how you feel, its another to insist upon a definitional switch. Insisting upon a definitional switch signals to me that this is something VERY important to you. Yet I don’t see a corresponding change in behavior now that she has been “released” to truly be female. Her life seems substantially similar to how it was before the change.
It is not impossible that I will one day feel very differently about this than I do now. There are many many things which pass my understanding or experience. Yet her shift as much ado about nothing. She is still the same person I’ve known, and it is that, rather than any bias, that makes it hard for me to remember that “he” has now become “she.”
The girls I like tend to be a little more tomboyish, more willing to assert themselves and be independent. I see the traditionally “male” ways of interacting (strength, confidence, self-reliance) to simply be more admirable than “female” ones (flexibility, empathy, community orientation). I’m attracted to the female sexuality but overly much to the female gender. (I want a girl with a short skirt and a looooong jacket)
It makes “Her” need for a change to be all the more puzzling, since she still likes women. For her it’s the need to feel like a different person. Yet this feeling for her requires a gender change, rather than simply remaining a femininish gendered male. Though it sounds like the former is simpler than the latter, I think in practice it’s not. “She” still clearly looks male (I don’t give a damn what people say, she’s a much better looking man than woman) and I think it creates a disconcerting situation. I think it makes her far more awkward. That is combined with the fact that “she” still does many of the aggressive rather male style activities (such as cyclecross).
Now it doesn’t bother me that she does any of this. But I think it’s one thing to disregard gender and act how you feel, its another to insist upon a definitional switch. Insisting upon a definitional switch signals to me that this is something VERY important to you. Yet I don’t see a corresponding change in behavior now that she has been “released” to truly be female. Her life seems substantially similar to how it was before the change.
It is not impossible that I will one day feel very differently about this than I do now. There are many many things which pass my understanding or experience. Yet her shift as much ado about nothing. She is still the same person I’ve known, and it is that, rather than any bias, that makes it hard for me to remember that “he” has now become “she.”