Bathroom Laws and Baby Faces

[ayun]

I started wearing my hair super-short when I was in elementary school. Hard to say exactly when, but certainly by third grade I had tried it out. That combined with the way I preferred to dress and a somewhat-late and sudden puberty meant that I spent years being routinely mistaken for a boy. Every time it happened I was delighted

Comments

[jasonlizard]

So you've always fucked with people. Color me shocked! Shocked

[ayun]

I think in some ways, that gender is becoming such an issue with some people means it's become a general non-issue with everyone else.

I like the way you put this, and I think I agree. The average level of giving-a-damn is probably lower, but the people who do give a damn care waaaaay too much.

random associations

[badriyaz]

This post has stuck in my head since I read it a couple of days ago. Although babybat me would have furiously rejected any such theorizing ("how could you possibly understand my suffering and darkness?!?"), I think perhaps my going full-on death rock Batcave goth just as I was really hitting the swing of adolescence at 16 was a way of removing myself from the whole social context of what boys are like and what girls are like, and therefore not having to conform to any of it. Which I would say now is partly a somewhat noble thing but also pretty completely an avoidance thing as well, because eventually you have to deal with it in one way or another. Enough about me signified girl that I wasn't often mistaken for a boy (except when I buzzed all my hair off and kept it that way for a while), but I also got that same horrified "how can/why do you do this to yourself" thing. Sometimes it was even out of a spirit of caring, which was why I was usually polite in my responses. I could never figure out why doing what I wanted with my own

[brigid]

the last part, totally. obviously throughout our lives we all have stages or beliefs that make us cringe in retrospect, but the whole thinking i was some special snowflake for not getting along with/being super comfortable with other women, and assuming that that was on them as opposed to on me, is in the top 3 for sure.

[kirkjerk]

Last night a mixed band I was in (accordion, melodica, mandolin, electric bass, trombone, me on tuba - getting ready for Porch-aoke in Somerville) was practicing outside, and a family came over, 2 parents and a kid, maybe around 3? The kid had long black hair, and everyone assumed was a girl but later someone mentioned was a boy. Looking back I think everyone talked more "sweetly" to the child than they would have otherwise... I remember being impressed by the kid's boldness (playing a maraca and tambourine etc) but maybe I would have felt that less sharply had I known it was a boy, which is kind of sad