“Those Studies Don’t Include Me:” The Dilemma of Self-Advocacy

Part I, Chapter 6

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April 7, 2021
Wednesday

9:08am

Suzanne talked about this podcast about women’s sexuality and I sort of checked out. When she invited feedback I brought it up, very gently. I said I think there’s some language adjustments that can help me feel included. She immediately started telling me what she “meant.” She cried, then asked me for help. Then she said she could just avoid talking about gender. It was a classic example of how not to apologize. But I’m choosing to keep working with her because she’s helping me in ways I’m not getting elsewhere and she takes my insurance.

April 8, 2021

Thursday

8:35am

Yesterday I had this moment of clarity and cohesion between my mind and body and the external world and I felt this flow and a oneness. I teared up and said, “We’ve got this.” I started thinking about ballet and piano as a kid and how I had this impulse to do them but entered through the wrong window. Then in middle school in choir, trying out for Madrigals and not really trying…same motif of keeping the stakes low by not trying, and also thinking I was good enough not to really try, like not studying for tests. Fear around finding my own voice in music on piano or my actual voice, and in dance. Trying to be perfect instead of myself. And now I’m singing and practicing the singer’s breath for my gut, finding joy in singing, finding my voice on guitar, finding a new connection to my body. Body and voice.

Kinda nauseous.

They say women can’t have sex without falling in love. So when I had sex with my first boyfriend in college and I didn’t fall in love, what did that mean about me? Did it mean I’m not a woman? Did it mean they were lying to me about what a woman is?

When I was a kid, I thought everyone wanted to be a boy. It seemed to me to be obviously the better option. I wanted a brother, I wanted desperately to grow up to be tall, I liked being “mistaken” for a boy—it seemed to be the only benefit of late puberty with a flat chest and no hips to speak of. At the same time, I desperately wanted to grow up. I thought eventually womanhood would come, and the sooner the better. I wanted to wear makeup as soon as I could, to use deodorant, and shave my legs. I wanted big boobs, like I saw on TV. I thought growing up would bring the comfort and ease I craved. I remember my mom telling me that my dad had wanted boys. I never interpreted this to mean that he didn’t love me and my sister very much, or that he was disappointed, but I clung to this story because I, too, wished I had been born a boy.

Once I entered my twenties, for a while I felt I could redefine what “woman” meant. That I could be the example I didn’t have. I remember turning 27 and looking at a proverbial watch, thinking, When does this womanhood kick in? But eventually, it started to seem strange that we only had these two gender categories for such a wide range of experiences. When we look a little closer, we don’t; we have way more—they’re just seen as subsets of two larger categories, or derogatory. Butch, femme, lipstick lesbian, tomboy, sissy, metrosexual, jock, bro, meathead, androgynous—these are all terms we use to describe gender variation. So why has our culture clung to a gender binary?

Binaries are easy. Two categories are easier to market to than infinite denominations. Profit dictates the means of control. It’s easier to study two categories scientifically, though arguably the studies reducing a group of test subjects to two genders are doing bad science, ignoring not just trans people but intersex people, while lumping all cis men and cis women into two categories so often regardless of various other identity intersections such as race, class, ability, and so on.

For a long time, I felt attached to the history of womanhood and feminism and didn’t want to let go of that. But I also began to recognize the liberation that could come from freeing myself from the binary. I could be both, neither, something else entirely. “Nonbinary” seemed to be an identity all unto itself, with a unique set of struggles. Eventually, I let go of the search to figure it out. What’s my gender? (I look in the mirror:) It’s whatever this is. It’s whatever this is today, and tomorrow, and the next day. My experience of gender changes. Sometimes it feels like I’m a boy in a dress, other times it feels like I’m a woman. Boy feels right sometimes, while man never does. Woman feels right sometimes, but rarely girl. Nonbinary, genderqueer, genderfluid—other. I like other, or all. Can I select all?

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