androgynous me

So yesterdays post, was a keeping everyone at arms length way of talking about me....   I have been slowly telling people in blogland, and sometimes it is just very hard to get people to understand what it really means, to be androgynous.  And how it has made me feel..... different my whole life.

Did you know there are actually four components of gender?  Identity, presentation, performance, and role.  Gender identity concerns how you think about yourself.  Presentation describes how you look.  Performance is how you act.  Role is what you do for a living, and domestically.  The last three is gender expression, which is external.  Identity is internal, how you feel.

Gender should not be thought of as binary construct, because everyone is a blend of both masculine and feminine traits.  Some of express more from one end of the continuum, some are more blended, and some like me are in the middle.  Neither quite female nor quite male, but somewhere in the middle, but for the most part I lean more towards the male side.

I had two dolls that I loved to death,  Suzy and Scotchy.  Suzy was a baby, and she was fairly small.  Scotchy was a toddler type of doll, and I loved him to death.  But, to me?  They weren't dolls, but my babies, and every day I would wash their faces, and change their dresses.  Yes, Scotchy was a boy, but he wore a dress.

My favorite toys though were cars of all sorts, mud, the woods and my bike. I loved climbing trees, jumping the fence to get away from the cows that we had riled up.  We loved to throw cow patties at each other!  My aunt hated it, made us stink like you wouldn't believe, cause we didn't always use the dried ones.....

In high school there was no dress codes, unlike in junior high.  Needing school clothing I started looking at the clothing, and nothing seemed right to me at all.  To flowery, to frilly, to pink (shudder), and then I found a cool tee shirt.  Had a graphic design on it, in shades of black and grey.  I tried it on, and it fit perfectly!  So, back to that area again and started picking up shirts and pants, and everything not only fit my outsides, but made me happy as to what I looked like in them.  They were all boys clothing.  In fact I saw several of my shirts on guys at school.  And everyday was happy to get dressed, unlike in previous years.  I ended up getting boy tennis shoes and several jackets.

This was a bad time period for me at home, and I was drinking quite heavily.  There were several times, I allowed guys that I had just met to take me home with them.  Yeah, home.  I usually dated out of high school aged guys.  And several of them, were surprised as hell that I was a girl, when they got my clothing off.  Some of them got my clothes back on just as fast, and others, well.......  The one thing this group of guys all said, was that I didn't seem or act like a girl.  And I took that to be a compliment.

Through out all of my years of school, including my year of college, I have been severely bullied by girls.  I have no idea why they don't like me, maybe they sense the difference in me?  I don't make friends very easily with women, and the few that I have had, all have turned on me, in a very cruel and unnecessary manner.  To be honest?  I don't understand women at all!  They for the most part are a complete and total mystery.

Most of my true friends have always been male, always.  I understand guys, they make sense to me.  And when I am with guys?  I am at ease, and my full personality comes blooming forth.  I am relaxed and happy, and that is a very unusual state for me to be around women.  After knowing me a little bit, most all guys tell me that I am not like any other woman they have ever met.  They say I make sense, and why can't all women act like me.  Maybe because I'm not fully a woman?

The only full on female part of me?  Is being a mom.  And yes, I know guys can be very nurturing, but honestly?  I think those men, have a great amount of female in them.  I love and cherish my job as a mom.  It is the most important thing I have ever done or will ever do.  And funnily enough?  All the boys have told me that I am not a woman!  And then they feel the need to fix it up, thinking they have hurt my feelings, and they add, your just mom to us.

Do I hate my body?  For the most part no.  I out grew that when I had my first baby.  I came to love my female body at that point, and was totally awed and amazed at the wonder of growing a new life inside of me.  Before?  Yeah, I was never fully comfortable in my body, it always felt not wrong, but not right either.

So, that is me.