HOLY SHIT! This is so right on for me at the moment. I had a heated discussion with family after we all stuffed ourselves… My mom says “You’re feminine, deal with it.” and I say, “Mom, I can choose to be more masculine, and I’m trying.” My mom and cousin, who both identify as lesbian women, along with my aunt who is a straight woman, stare at me, perplexed. I continue to explain that society has influenced my mannerisms and gender identity so far, and they scoff. They say, you are who you are regardless of society. That blew my mind. It’s like, they think that because I was lucky enough to be born into a family that has out gay people (actually my cousin only recently came out, and my mom was married to a man for 10 years) that I am automatically gonna feel comfortable being a non-binary/pansexual/blah blah blah being. It’s like they forgot what it was like to come out. Or like they are resentful of me. Or like they don’t understand that power of gender identity- I feel like they think being gay is weird enough for them. My cousin and her wife are both very feminine consumer-types who live in a big house and are seemingly self-conscious and refer to being gay as an alternative lifestyle. Thanksgiving has been interesting… I met ANOTHER cousin for the first time since we were children; she looks a lot like me and is WAY more masculine than I am. And she brought her girlfriend. It was awesome. Her girlfriend had funny eyebrows and a cute butt. That is all.
Not a single person on this planet is born a woman. Becoming a woman, for those who willingly or unwillingly undertake the process, is torturous, magical, bewildering – and intensely political. In his essay ‘Mama Cash: Buying and Selling Genders’, transvestite Charles Anders explains that: “Transgender people… understand more than anyone the high cost of gender, having adopted identities as adult neophytes. People often work harder than they think to maintain the boy/girl behaviours expected of them. You may have learned through painful trial-and-error not to use certain phrases, or to walk a certain way. After a while, learned gender behaviour becomes almost second nature, like trying to compensate for a weak eye. Again, transgender people are just experiencing what everyone goes through.”
Penny Red: No Feminism Without Trans Feminism: for The F Word
