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i guess this page should start with me, really, since that's where all of this began. having grown up as the eldest of two daughters and having gone to an all-girl Catholic high school, my gender upbringing has been predominantly 'woman' or 'female' or however you'd like to put it. i had long straight black hair for most of my life, wore make up and dresses on occasions, drooled at pretty boys and dated not-so-pretty ones (haha!)... but there had been a part of me that longed for something else. i was jealous of the boys my age, of their loyalty for one another, also known as male-bonding. i felt that girls my age were fickle and shallow and vengeful. sometimes i'd present myself as a brute tomboy in order to win respect from the guys, but then quickly reverted back to the prettied girl because guys like feminine girls better. i would write and say 'mankind' instead of 'humankind' to try to enjoy a piece of that male-dominated intellectual culture, in which i was never fully welcome as an equal. i grew up as a girl but longed to be a man, in the cultural sense of the terms, not the biological.
this past year has been an incredible journey where my physical self is finally catching up with my inner self, among other huge changes. while my 'transformation' involved a simple hair cut (but doesn't hair say SO much about a person?) and a slight change in my wardrobe, people take this journey in a myriad of ways when it comes to gender and sexuality. some women bind their chest. some men bind their genitalia. some cross-dress or go drag. some people receive hormone injections. some people go through a series of surgeries. not only is gender unfixed but so is sex. we live in a marvelous age! Other Examples of Gender Play Imogen Stubbs in Twelfth Night Eowyn as Dernhelm in Lord of the Rings |
