If You Could Be...

[ahunter3]

So I was casting about for a topic to blog on. (I don't usually have difficulty coming up with something, but given that I try to pump these things out once a week I guess it's inevitable that sooner or later I'd have nothing in particular in mind when the time came, right?) I mentioned this to my partner and she joked that I could borrow a page

Comments

[ext_3728435]

It’s interesting to see “womanness” broken down like this. So often people seem to shy away from specifics when they talk about gender identity.

Good lord, I would give up any and every item in that checklist if I could be free of the “sex object” one.

But if I could choose “a la carte,” I’d take all the stuff associated with being “morphologically female.” I would want (if it were possible) to break down the personality-related items into more specific sub-items, because I have some but certainly not all of the stereotypically feminine traits and values.

The best I can do in real life is to dress androgynously enough to (hopefully) make people second-guess their assumptions about my personality/talents/values, without obscuring my physical femaleness.

[ahunter3]

>Good lord, I would give up any and every item in that checklist if I could be free of the “sex object” one.<

I am starting to think of the experience as akin to sound. Like either you are subjected to never-ending deafening mind-numbing screeching cacaphony or you are kept in a soundproof room and go for years without hearing anything. Neither extreme is at all pleasant.

For what it's worth, getting older seems to attenuate matters a bit for both designated genders. Things are at their most polarized for the young.

[ext_3728435]

Sorry it took me so long to reply.

You may be right about the sound metaphor. It’s just hard to imagine being annoyed by silence when you’re overwhelmed by cacophony.

I do feel that things are already somewhat better for me as I approach 30. I’m supposed to feel sad about being less attractive to men as I age but instead I’m like, “FINALLY.”