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firefly124One of the things that being more active in the LGBT community has led to is giving way more thought to gender and gender identity than I ever had before. Up to the last year or so, I'd only knowingly met one person who identified as transgender, and what I knew of that person and their situation was pretty much the extent of my knowledge on the subject. And even getting to know more transfolk and learning more generally hadn't caused much in the way of navel-gazing on the subject of gender identity and presentation.
Until, that is, one of my coworkers reacted in unfeigned shock at the mention of my wearing a dress.
Granted, I mostly live in jeans when I can. This is due at least in part to the fact I was not allowed to wear them when I was a kid. There were two things I did with some urgency once I was 18 and legally an adult: registered to vote, and bought my first pair of jeans. And I've been fortunate to work two jobs for the last several years where the wearing of jeans is not only acceptable, it's practically expected. As a peer tutor in a community college, you dress, well, like a college student, whatever that means to you. For most of us, that means t-shirt and jeans. As a residential assistant in a psychosocial rehab agency, it's actively encouraged not to overdress, so as not to make it evident to random people in the grocery store that we're the Staff Person assisting the Mentally Ill Person. Yeah, often they can see that anyway, but it's way more obvious if you're all dressed up and the client you're with is wearing last-year's $1 Goodwill outfit that has clearly seen better days.
But I hadn't thought I projected an image of being someone who "wouldn't be caught dead in a dress" as I've known several women to say. I actually like dresses rather a lot. Some of my favorite summer outfits are calf-length but fairly casual cotton dresses. And if I'm "getting dressed up," to me that nearly always means a dress. The exception to that is business wear. I do not have a figure that is conducive to wearing pencil skirts, which seem to be the core around which The Women's Suit is built, so I'm more inclined to wear something with pants (even as I rant about the lack of pockets, which I'm quite sure nobody ever does to men's trousers).
The point to this, though, is that that comment led me to thinking about gender identity and presentation in a way I hadn't before. Because my first question was a startled, "Do I really come off that butch?" Frankly, er, I doubt it. In fact, I can even hear Kennedy uttering that line to me that she said to Willow about there being no possibility of that.
However, I'm not uber-feminine either, at least by the markers we tend to use in our society. I do, by preference, spend much of my time in jeans. I'd probably rather have my teeth pulled with no anesthetic than spend a day shopping for any apparel especially shoes. I go through phases of wearing make-up regularly, but mostly I can't be arsed. Shaving the pits and legs is about the same, though that's a bit more seasonally predictable. Not entirely, but a bit. I love math and science to the point of being a bit of a geek. Okay, sometimes a ridiculous geek. On the other hand, I've been in one pink-collar profession (social work, of which psychosocial rehab is a subset) for a decade and just spent the last several years getting licensed in another (nursing). I wear my hair long and get cranky when people suggest that, at 43, I'm too old for that. (I have every intention of being one of those 80 year-old ladies with a silver braid down her back, and told my MiL as much the last time she was carping about it.) And I've clearly internalized a lot of societal programming on "how women communicate," because the very-stereotyped theories put forward in Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus resonated like the TARDIS cloister bell when I first read them.
So, given that I accept the idea that gender is more a spectrum than a binary, where on that spectrum am I? *shrugs* Somewhere firmly on the feminine end, but not the extreme end, I guess. Firmly enough that, until that comment was made (and probably with the timing it had, as I doubt I'd have given it remotely this much thought 2-3 years ago), I'd never given whole lots of thought to the amount of traditionally masculine things I do and traits I apparently have, at least not with regard to how it all fits into my own gender identity.
I'm rather glad that my coworker did make that comment and spur this reflection. Knowing more people today than I ever have whose gender identity and presentation isn't something they are able to just take for granted, I think there's some value to not taking my own for granted either and giving it some thought and prodding now and again.
Until, that is, one of my coworkers reacted in unfeigned shock at the mention of my wearing a dress.
Granted, I mostly live in jeans when I can. This is due at least in part to the fact I was not allowed to wear them when I was a kid. There were two things I did with some urgency once I was 18 and legally an adult: registered to vote, and bought my first pair of jeans. And I've been fortunate to work two jobs for the last several years where the wearing of jeans is not only acceptable, it's practically expected. As a peer tutor in a community college, you dress, well, like a college student, whatever that means to you. For most of us, that means t-shirt and jeans. As a residential assistant in a psychosocial rehab agency, it's actively encouraged not to overdress, so as not to make it evident to random people in the grocery store that we're the Staff Person assisting the Mentally Ill Person. Yeah, often they can see that anyway, but it's way more obvious if you're all dressed up and the client you're with is wearing last-year's $1 Goodwill outfit that has clearly seen better days.
But I hadn't thought I projected an image of being someone who "wouldn't be caught dead in a dress" as I've known several women to say. I actually like dresses rather a lot. Some of my favorite summer outfits are calf-length but fairly casual cotton dresses. And if I'm "getting dressed up," to me that nearly always means a dress. The exception to that is business wear. I do not have a figure that is conducive to wearing pencil skirts, which seem to be the core around which The Women's Suit is built, so I'm more inclined to wear something with pants (even as I rant about the lack of pockets, which I'm quite sure nobody ever does to men's trousers).
The point to this, though, is that that comment led me to thinking about gender identity and presentation in a way I hadn't before. Because my first question was a startled, "Do I really come off that butch?" Frankly, er, I doubt it. In fact, I can even hear Kennedy uttering that line to me that she said to Willow about there being no possibility of that.
However, I'm not uber-feminine either, at least by the markers we tend to use in our society. I do, by preference, spend much of my time in jeans. I'd probably rather have my teeth pulled with no anesthetic than spend a day shopping for any apparel especially shoes. I go through phases of wearing make-up regularly, but mostly I can't be arsed. Shaving the pits and legs is about the same, though that's a bit more seasonally predictable. Not entirely, but a bit. I love math and science to the point of being a bit of a geek. Okay, sometimes a ridiculous geek. On the other hand, I've been in one pink-collar profession (social work, of which psychosocial rehab is a subset) for a decade and just spent the last several years getting licensed in another (nursing). I wear my hair long and get cranky when people suggest that, at 43, I'm too old for that. (I have every intention of being one of those 80 year-old ladies with a silver braid down her back, and told my MiL as much the last time she was carping about it.) And I've clearly internalized a lot of societal programming on "how women communicate," because the very-stereotyped theories put forward in Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus resonated like the TARDIS cloister bell when I first read them.
So, given that I accept the idea that gender is more a spectrum than a binary, where on that spectrum am I? *shrugs* Somewhere firmly on the feminine end, but not the extreme end, I guess. Firmly enough that, until that comment was made (and probably with the timing it had, as I doubt I'd have given it remotely this much thought 2-3 years ago), I'd never given whole lots of thought to the amount of traditionally masculine things I do and traits I apparently have, at least not with regard to how it all fits into my own gender identity.
I'm rather glad that my coworker did make that comment and spur this reflection. Knowing more people today than I ever have whose gender identity and presentation isn't something they are able to just take for granted, I think there's some value to not taking my own for granted either and giving it some thought and prodding now and again.
