I think that I might politically identify as a lesbian.

I avoid store employees because I’m afraid of them asking me ‘can I help you ma’am?’ and other fun social paranoias

Ma’am

MA’AM

MAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA’AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAM

I was running many backed up errands today and I found myself at a multitude of places.  I was at Home Depot for part of it looking for replacement table legs and every time I walked down an aisle and there was an employee I darted down a different isle.  I kept wondering why I was doing it.  I analyzed my appearance, which was I was wearing my usual tight pants and this baseball jersey I found in the donation bin at the Salvos and it catches a bit on my love handles in a particular way that accentuates my hips I guess.  I also had my brown bag which strangers always comment on being my ‘purse’.  I also recently put these wooden beads I found on my dread-matted hair strande-whateveritis-thing on the side of my head.

I realized that I was afraid that based on my appearance that someone was going to gravitate towards me because I was obviously feminine-looking and thereby lost and confused in a hardware store, and also that they would say that thing that I was trying very hard to escape, ‘CAN I HELP YOU, MAAAAAAAAAA’AM?’

It happened when I had stopped to look at paint anyway.  I wanted to fall to my knees and shout “NOOOOOOOOOOOOO~!” while blinking into thin air like I just died in a video game.  It WAS kind of like I lost a game, a really boring one where I spent 30 minutes avoiding employees.

It happened everywhere else I went too, and it always happens more when I have my bag, or as other people call it, ‘my purse’.  I obviously know that the general public sees bags as some sort of woman accessory or something.  So I know that this factors into the pronouns that people use for me.  My appearance is on the line as is, but I feel like the bag just pushes them over into deciding I’m in the ‘she’ range.  It irritates me.  1) I like my bag and it’s useful and I don’t want something like strangers gendering me to stop me from using something that I like and 2) I get annoyed at myself for getting uncomfortable using something for the societally implied femininity of an item.  

I thought about how it would be seen if somebody with obvious male secondary sex characteristics like a beard were using my same bag.  Then it somehow relates to the person’s sexuality and not their gender.  If I’m seen with a bag I’m labelled as female = girl/woman.  If someone that’s generally referred to with male pronouns by the public is seen with a bag, they’re labelled as gay.  Uhm.

Lastly I thought about when I used to be called ‘miss’ more often than ‘ma’am’.  People always call me ‘ma’am’ now.  I think it’s because they think I look ambiguous or butch or something.  I used to think it had something to do with age but I think it has something to do with something else as well, as most people tend to think I’m younger than I am.  When I was called ‘miss’ I had long hair or looked more visibly femme or was in some way deemed more appropriately sexually attractive to the average straight dude.   Now since I’m not playing that game no more I get ‘ma’am’, like a verbal backhand to my silly gender stereotype rebellion which is CLEARLY inappropriate for such a lady.  People also call older females ‘ma’am’ because we’ve been taught that their conventional attractiveness meters have expired.

I just wanna team up with old ladies and punch some faces in.

Kids that come through my job still being the only ones who initially use my preferred pronouns

While their parents continue to use the wrong ones.  Sometimes they try and correct their kids but their kids keep using ‘he’ and the parents look all embarrassed.

Sometimes I’m like ‘what is you’re problem’ and ‘your kid is actually the right one’ and then their embarrassment switches to themselves and they slink away all abashed

This happened twice today and we weren’t even busy.  It has got me thinking about how adults seem to be superimposing their ideas of what I should be on me.  I’m 5’4”, I don’t have an All American Male Haircut, and I work in a fabrics and craft store.  I’m sure that there are many more variables.  However on the days where I don’t seem to give a shit and I outright ask a customer why they decided to use ‘she’ for me, they often say ‘well…you….you have a braid on the side of your head (one person even called it a pigtail) and most of them say ‘because you work in a fabric store’.  They probably think more stuff, but these have been the only two things that the’ve verbalized to me.

I assume that the kids are not at the point where the seeminly inarguable notion is drilled into their heads that these variables have a societally accepted and enforced binary gender.  Sometimes I think about the fact that they’re probably just reading me as male because I have short hair and a kind of man-ish face, and maybe because it says ‘Art’ on my nametag, and they’ve already been taught what male-sounding names and short hair mean.  But I decide to still find solace in the fact that they think that I’m not female based solely on my occupation, that both males and females (because I’m pretty sure they’re taught that there are only 2 things) can work in a fabric store.

So today at work I was stationed at the cutting counter, cutting fabric for people.  This person was at the counter with their kids who looked about 4-6ish, having me cut various fabrics for them.  They told me that they wanted them to start learning the basics of how to handle fabrics and sewing early, and as I would be measuring things they would turn to the kids and say things like ‘see how she measures a little extra’ and ‘she’s straightening the fabric edges’.  

After maybe 5 minutes the one kid eventually sighed and was like, ‘that’s a boy,’ as if they were really irritated that their guardian hadn’t picked up on it at this point.

Couldn’t conceal my poorly contained snorts of laughter.

At my job random children correct adults on my pronouns or gender.  It’s happened on numerous occasions.  It’s kind of interesting.  Even though I still don’t consider myself really male, I still prefer male pronouns.  The kids are always closer to what I prefer than how adults react to me.

some thoughts on androgyny

shuraiya:

Note: These are my own opinions and are in no way meant to represent anybody else’s experience with androgyny, or the expression thereof. This is my own word vomit.

ALSO I’M REALLY SORRY ABOUT THE FORMATTING I CAN’T SEEM TO FIX IT 8|

an·drog·y·nous

   [an-droj-uh-nuhs] 

adjective

1. being both male and female; hermaphroditic.

2. having both masculine and feminine characteristics.

3. having an ambiguous sexual identity.

4. neither clearly masculine nor clearly feminine in appearance:the androgynous look of many rock stars.

5. Botany. having staminate and pistillate flowers in the sameinflorescence.

Right there is the dictionary definition of androgyny. I think I want to discuss the first, second and fourth definitions more than the others. And definitely no botany in this post, haha!

So, uhhh I don’t know how to start this off. I guess, I was thinking about androgyny today and how I relate to it and how I feel about it, and I realized something. Androgyny and how it’s expressed and advertised is less a combination of masculine and feminine characteristics and more so an erasure of the feminine. Sure, you have effeminate male models like Andrej Pejic, which I’ll try to get to more later, but most androgynous women are played up because of their lack of feminine attributes or features, because they look masculine.

Not because they have an aesthetically pleasing appearance that is a combination of both traditionally masculine and feminine features, but because they. look. like. men. And fashion copies this, giving women masculine fashions that are made feminine by color choice or accessorizing. But they’re not feminine by default. They’re masculine, because masculine is regarded as positive, and the correct thing. Many of us are pretty well aware of the pervasive concept of women as The Other (right there with non-white people, non-Christians, non-binary individuals, etc.)… and I feel like, androgyny as it’s presented to us is just promoting that idea even further.

Like, you have to eradicate your femininity in order to be considered a human being. And I feel like … sometimes, androgyny is encouraged or adopted by people in order to do that. To feel safer in a world that victimizes women. I also take issue with that, because there’s nothing wrong with being feminine. There’s nothing wrong with being a woman.

I also take issue with the way we are presented with androgyny because it’s another way to romanticize this unattainable, but preferred, ideal. You must be mannish in appearance, have small or no breasts, no hips. But there’s still this expectation of femininity somewhere, embedded. You’re androgynous, but you’re still sexualized. Sometimes, I wonder if androgyny is celebrated by some people because it allows a man to engage in homosexual fantasy without “actually” being gay. I don’t know. I can’t really speak to that. 

Another thing that bothers me about androgyny and how we’re supposed to regard it is that you know who is androgynous? Beautiful/handsome, tall, thin, white men and women (if you’re a women, you must have small breasts or bind). Like Andrej Pejic, like David Bowie, like La Roux. It’s rare for me to see plus-sized, non-white androgynous individuals celebrated or thought of as attractive or ‘actually’ androgynous. And that makes me really sad. 

I guess on that note, I just… think that there needs to be more variety in what we consider, as a whole, androgynous. I’m tired of the erasure of the feminine. I’m tired of androgynous meaning “women who look like men”. I want it to mean “having both masculine and feminine characteristics”. I personally have a mannish face— I have low slung brows, a long face and my features, without the help of makeup, are typically read more like a man’s than a woman’s. I honestly think of myself as handsome rather than pretty; and I’m fine with that. I have short hair, because it suits my face better. But here’s where MY definition of androgyny comes in— I love wearing dresses. And skirts. And lady clothes. I often wear masculine clothes, but they aren’t my entire wardrobe. I go back and forth. I’d love to see more men in dresses; I’d love to see people take elements of masculine and feminine clothing and create a hybrid that suits them. 

Another thing, I think androgyny isn’t just an aesthetic feature. I think there is such a thing as androgynous behavior. A lot of people like to ask myself and coarsefur who the man is — an offensive and heteronormative question, yes — and I can honestly say that we are both the man and neither of us are the man. There is no clear cut line of where our so-called gender roles end and begin. We both cook, we both clean, we both do crafts, but we also both fix up things around the house, we take turns paying for things. This is probably unraveling at this point but I guess what I’m trying to say here is, if you’re comfortable with it, strive for androgynous behavior. Get out of the mold that tells you you must clean, cook, and care for children and nothing else (of course if that’s what you want to do, DO IT!! I really admire people who want to be parents and homemakers. They are really amazing!) if you want to learn how to fix an engine or if your partner needs you to kill a spider, kill it for them or if you want to build a bookshelf. Don’t let society’s idea of masculine and feminine activities or attributes get in your way. Do what you want!

I guess… that’s it… I’m sorry if this wasn’t very well written… I just have a lot of thoughts @B@

I really enjoyed reading your thoughts on this and I’ve been thinking about how a lot of the time when somebody refers to somebody looking androgynous they mean “a boyish-looking girl” and how by default people seem to expect an erasure of femininity to qualify for the term.  And I’ve been cranky about how praised the shedding of feminine characteristics and adopting masculine characteristics is lately.  It’s like everything masculine is somehow seen as inherently more RADICAL and COOL, especially if you’re FAAB.

And now for BOTANY FUN, I remember being so smugly satisfied when I learned that flowers that have both male and female reproductive segments (androecium and gynoecium) are classified as ‘bisexual’ and are also referred to as ‘perfect’.  I know that bisexual isn’t referring to the flower’s sexual preference but whatever, it made me feel like in the flower world I was cooler than everyone.

So ‘bisexual’ references the flower’s possession of male and female reproductive units, and it’s also referred to as ‘androgynous’.  And in this case androgynous seems to be used as a synonym with hermaphroditic and I find that interesting.

FLOWERS

You know you’re a transmisogynist when…

youreatransmisogynistwhen:

You expect CAMAB trans people to spend thousands of dollars on hormones and surgeries (both of which being things that they may not even want)  before you’ll respect their pronouns and gender identity.

(via nonop)

iamtheproblem:

littleelk:

Oh crap, I sort of forgot why I’m on testosterone again.  What is it that I wanted?  I dunno.  Maybe I’ll remember in the next couple days again, but I’m forgetting why this matters or at least mattered but I’m also forgetting why a lot of things mattered lately.

You wanted to look more like me, remember? Because you’re not ambiguous enough and hate being called ma’am. 

PROBLEM OVER.

ps. butt hair.

The butt hair was one thing that never left me from round one.  That sounds almost romantic except when I remember it’s about BUTT HAIR.  WHich was one thing I never actually wanted but oh well.

I do hate being called ma’am but sometimes I feel fucked up about manipulating my appearance to ellict a tailored response from the public.  Sometimes I feel a strong compulsion to search my being for hints of misogyny like toxins hidden in my fat deposits.  What about ‘female’ IDing societal language causes me to rail against it so violently?  If anything, I DO feel more female than male (at least when it comes to kinship because I relate better to and feel more comfortable with people who ID as more female) so what about those pronouns and honorifics negates that?  Sometimes I feel like I’m throwing the people I feel more connected to overboard because of my own undealt with internalized misogyny.

BUT THAT’S JUST THE LANGUAGE PART OF IT.  TBC, I guess.  Body wise, yeah I would rather be more Candice Evans-y shaped.  A weight shift would be nice, but who knows if that will even work out for me the way I want it to.  I may just be predisposed to being this shape.

Another thing about that is it makes me real self-conscious about my weight.  Which has made me feel horrible, because weight is such a policed thing already and I hate it and the way I express myself about my own weight sometimes.  It’s not actually the numbers on the scale that bother me though, it’s that when I gain weight it all accentuates my chest and hips that much more and I struggle more and more to hide them and it makes me insanely depressed.