Actually, I'm Just Not a Girl

Last week I wrote a post titled I'm Not Just a Straight Girl who Also Likes Girls, which started out as an explanation of why I can't be myself with straight guys and ended up with me wondering what my problem with femininity was. "I should try to reclaim being female," I wrote, and immediately loathed the very idea.

I spent the rest of the day in a tense, irritable state. Partway through the evening I realized I hadn't told the truth when I said I was ok with my female body - it was more like I was resigned to it. Because years ago I used to wish I was much more androgynous, that my breasts were smaller and my butt was thinner. I thought that was the only way I could be ambiguous, which was what I wanted - I wished my look was such that people couldn't tell if I was a guy or a girl. 

But I hadn't thought about that much for years. I'd been dating guys (who were unquestionably straight) since high school, and they didn't want to see me in baggy pants - never mind trying to look like a guy! So I learned to live with flare leg jeans and girlie shirts and short shorts, to the point I started to like those things, in a way (Stockholm syndrome?!). But after my blog post churned up my thoughts about bodies and gender and where I actually fall, those thoughts came to light again. No, I'm actually not totally ok with this body.

And then a discussion about breasts and bras set off an anxiety attack about my breasts. I had disliked them at times, but I had never hated them so much before. Suddenly I just wished they would go away.

And then the person I was talking to asked if I thought I was still actually a girl, or if I might be genderqueer or trans, and I fell apart. I don't know! I cried.

I still don't know. I'm not coming out as anything, except probably not a girl. I do know that wearing sports bras wiped the anxiety away, and seeing myself looking flatter makes me feel amazing. So do men's button down shirts :3 Guys pants and shorts don't seem to have as much of an effect, probably because I've worn such things since high school. But I am slowly gathering things to actually dress up as a guy - which is something I want to try, but not how I want to be all the time.

For now, I think I'm swinging toward the masculine because I've spent so long forcing myself to be feminine. Right now, even just the tad bit of femininity that women's shorts, dress shirts and regular bras bring to my look is unbearable. It's a disguise I carried on too long; it became repressive. Looking masculine, meanwhile, is new and exciting - and a little scary. I'm afraid of tipping the balance too far.

Because I don't feel like I want to be a guy, and I don't want to give people the impression that I do. Most days, I believe, will be a balancing act. Men's shirt and women's shorts, something of each. Or neither. I realized this is probably the reason I prefer t-shirts and cargo pants to anything else - they're not gendered. Anyone can wear t-shirts and cargo pants. They don't make me a guy or a girl, just me.

I do still intend to dress up as a girl sometimes, too, cause it's fun to put on a short skirt and fishnets and scandalize people :3 Honestly, I've called that sort of thing "dressing up as a girl" for years now, because it always felt like crossdressing, just as much as dressing up as a guy would.

Initially I thought nothing else would change, but now a lot of little things are starting to scratch at the back door of my brain saying, no, that's not right, because you're not a girl >.< But I'm not sure yet how big of a deal this actually is, so I'm gonna wait till those little things get louder to do anything about them.

I can't even say for sure what I am, except I don't feel like a girl, and don't want to be a guy either. The words I'd choose to describe myself are androgynous, ambiguous, confusing - that's how I want to look and be perceived, anyway. At times I've thought of myself as genderless, but I can't say for sure if that's the case, or if I actually have a bit of both. It does kind of seem that neither glove fits; they both feel backwards no matter which way I put them on. But the way I feel most comfortable describing myself, really, is "just me." :D

Yay for guy shirt and flatness! :D

I'm Not Just a Straight Girl who Also Likes Girls

In most of my past relationships, which have generally been with men who see themselves as 100% straight, I've come to the disheartening realization that there was a part of me they didn't get, or even couldn't accept. This shouldn't have been surprising, really. It can't be easy for a guy who's used to straight girls to wrap his head around the fact that wearing a skirt feels like crossdressing to me, or that I'd like to sometimes be perceived as tough and macho rather than as the soft and sensitive person I am most of the time.

I don't really know how much of this I share with other bisexual women - whether they also feel like being "the guy" sometimes, and don't feel very feminine most of the time. I do know that I vastly prefer a relationship without prescribed gender roles, where we can make it up as we go along, and I can be the way I feel like being, not what society says a human in a female body should be like.

It's not that I want to be a guy or that I don't want to be female. I'm fine with inhabiting a female body and even with dressing in a way that shows it off to a certain degree - although I kind of hope that with my sailor arms, even girlie shirts and tank tops look a bit macho on me ;) Mainly, I just feel that I don't fit in with other women, or more like with the conventional idea of how women behave. Part of this stems from a frightening level of internalized misogyny - women are shallow creatures who only care about shopping and getting their nails done, women are catty and gossipy - yikes! Where did that come from?!

I would venture probably from my rather judgmental mother, who dislikes shopping, fancy nails, makeup and all those other things that I grew up regarding as "feminine." I suppose I didn't really have a very positive idea of what being feminine meant while I was growing up, so I tried to avoid it. But not being able to (and not wanting to) be totally masculine either, I ended up in a sort of genderless void.

I suppose as a feminist I should try to reclaim being female, redefine the gender so that I can be feminine and still open doors for people, pay for dinner on dates, push people around in mosh pits and not give a shit about nails or makeup.

The prospect of that makes me feel very tired just thinking about it, but it would probably do the world more good than me sitting around complaining about how straight guys don't accept me ;)

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Update, 7/29/15: This post keeps popping up as the most popular post on my blog, and so I thought I ought to point out that it doesn't reflect how I see myself at all anymore. It was followed by this realization, and as of summer 2015, this post most accurately reflects how I see myself at this time. You can read a lot more about my identity in all these posts about gender identity and this one about my sexual orientation.

At the same time, I must acknowledge that this post about not feeling very feminine seems to resonate with a lot of female-assigned people - some of whom ended up being trans or non-binary, but also with cis women who just don't feel feminine. Based on the feedback I got right after writing this post, it seemed I had said something that a lot of female-assigned people that I knew were thinking and feeling. That's the primary reason I've left it up after all this time, when it doesn't really represent who I am anymore. It probably still speaks to someone, and if so, more power to you.