#about gender

[dismanibus]

Gender is tough, too. But I guess I'm never going to write that story about it so maybe I'll just talk about it here. Maybe with toast, since I'm also starving and I probably shouldn't be writing if I'm both starving and over-caffeinated at the same time, so, uh. After.

And then I got so tired. Nothing new there I guess. But it'll also make it hard to make a coherent post. Maybe nobody expects a coherent post from me anyway? I don't know.

Anyway, this was another thing that was talked about before. I'm always reading these convos like... I wish I could say something but it's not my place to say anything so it's just hypotethical talk and concepts and what-ifs and so. But gender was always tough for me and I think that conversation illuminated some of why? Which also feels kind of cheaty, that when we talk about "headcanons" we so often just talk about... kind of what's real for us or maybe could be. Like tracing memories in a way.

Again I'm tired and my cadence is off. But it's like. I was born weak and small. Way smaller than Geta was. I guess I looked funny in some way too, big head small body type of way. Not in a ~medically significant~ way or anything just like, you could tell something was off with me and since I didn't eat properly for the first however much it made me thinner while Geta was getting fatter, and we were early, so I think there was just a lot of factors to how I looked and that probably affected me a lot later, too. Talking about gender and how that maybe was for the Caracalla in the movie or in our hypotethical stories I think I realised for the first time just how much I was actually put into a girl's role growing up. Everyone treated me as fragile because I was and always sick and just not growing well but also like I was just generally less capable and not smart and not strong at all, as if you can't build strength. I don't think there was ever any reason I wouldn't have been able to build strength? I was small but that doesn't stop people from building muscle. I was clumsy too but that also doesn't stop people from building muscle. Like okay maybe don't let me on a horse I can agree on that but for everything else I don't really know why not. I didn't have fragile bones or thin skin or anything like that, just poor coordination and whatever that word is for tracking your body's movements and location. Proprioception? I'm not googling that.

But it's such a stupidly self-fulfilling prophecy like, oh Calla can't do this or that so let's not teach him to do those things. I could tell from pretty much the start that men didn't consider me to be one of them. Geta always got favoured by men and treated as a boy and I never did. It's like, people would play along with it because obviously they knew I had a dick but beyond that I guess it just didn't register to them that I was like... actually a boy. So for my whole life I've been looking up more to women and imitating women than men, and interested in things like fashion and beauty more than things like - insisting on training my body? Nobody would have stopped me from exercising but I didn't know how and I didn't like it, I just don't like pushing myself, and getting out of breath and being in pain from exercise is actually awful so why would I have done that? But I loved dressing up and painting my face and hoarding jewelry and getting custom made this and that, obviously when I was older, as a child we didn't have access to things like that and everything was provided for us. As twins we were usually dressed the same way until later in our teens anyway, and made up the same way, there just wasn't a lot of choice there until we had access to some semblance of power and authority to ourselves. At which point I was ordering a lot of things already.

But I also didn't actually have any women in my life? Like aside from slaves and the like. Beyond like, nursemaids and people I had around for sex later I don't think I was ever talking to women and I definitely wasn't talking to girls. I guess that explains a lot about me. So when I say I was looking up to women I don't mean personally, I mean like, in terms of interest and how to dress myself and so on. Not in terms of behaviour or anything of that kind, that all came from men, since men were who raised me (and Geta).

It's kind of... not great to notice posthumously (I love that I can say that actually) how people treated me differently because of all of that after we came into power and in general after we stopped being seen as children. So much of the sneer I got wasn't so much for my behaviour per se but a lot more because they thought I wasn't a man. A man can behave whatever way but in my case the way I wasn't doing man right was the thing that really pissed people off, I think. I was just... everything they didn't want to see in a man and particularly a ruler. I think I could have done everything right and still have been seen the same and no one would have respected me. Because all that time I was basically a woman and a woman has no place in government, much less at the top. So Geta was the real emperor and I was his empress or some actor in a dress basically. Add into that the whole about how I'm definitely taking it up the ass and whatnot that went with it. Seemed natural to them then I guess. Funny how it still seems natural to people, that if you're effeminate and not a real man you probably also take it up the ass as a natural consequence. I don't know where this is going but I just don't like any of it.

But what I think I was getting at is that I don't actually know what gender is for me, because I've never gotten a good example from either side of the fence. I don't really feel like I know how to be a man or know if I'm even capable and so many aspects of it just don't interest me at all, but I also know for sure that I'm not a woman either, I'm really just disinterested in being manly is what it is. And I think a lot of that is stupid and pointless and exhausting and uncomfortable for no real reason, or a good reason anyway.

And I guess funnily this made me understand the magical trans man me headcanons better. In a way I guess I have a similar experience, if we ignore the whole thing about HRT being completely impossible in those circumstances and also the fact that nobody would have allowed it at ANY point and all of that like. Anyway. Yeah I guess I have that experience.

[luluugah]

“C'est OK” - an old comic about misgendering. English under the cut !

ENG : It’s okay to misgender me. It’s normal and I’m used to it, even people most close to me do it. There is an adaptation time, it’s a transition after all. Though it’s no use trying to find excuses or justifications. Playing a misunderstood role, saying that it’s complicated. I have no wish to explain what’s what and how things work. I’m not a Circus freak, I’m a normal dude.

[2018]

[blurred-cat]

i've been thinking a lot lately about the concept of gender and being trans again. and why i didn't previously think that label fit me, changed my mind, and have now changed it again.

i'm not trans. i've simply reclaimed who the fuck i was supposed to be.

this is reclamation.

i was always me. i was always who and how i was going to be regardless of socialization or else i wouldn't be who i am now. take out the socialization, expectations, and societal "norms" from the picture, and i would have been this way without having to "transition" to "change" from what i was assigned, because there was no assignment (in this scenario)

so like. sure. for communication's sake, i say "trans" but inside i exist outside of and beyond this dumbass expectation that i even agree with concept of gender

and the one i had, i was assigned. my consent was not involved in the matter nor was it a concern. and with a baseline like that, why the ever loving fuck would i agree to not question the rape of my identity?

why the fuck would i continue to agree to enforce conditions upon myself that i disagree with and was never asked if I wanted?

it is a violation of my autonomy as a human being and i will no longer stand for it.

[nekcihcetaruccayllacilbib]

on another note the state of being a preteen/teenager is inherently kinda tied to the trans experience bc you hate your body and your voice and your social position and you keep searching fruitlessly for yourself in your reflection and you try to get people to call you a different name and sometimes it sticks but usually people will deadname you anyway and eventually you just give up and sometimes (apparently this is "usually") you learn to be happy or at least content with the way your body is but there's always that period of time when you wanna tear off your skin and become one with the ocean

[glitch-punk]

you are happiest on the road, when you're not here or there, but in-between,

that yellow line running down the center of it all like a goddamn sunbeam.

Andrea Gibson - Your Life // Barnett Newman - Concorde

[moncuries]

and what will i want when i am done wanting this? or will the want ever be fulfilled at all? and what margin do i use to mark that? and when is the want a part of me and when is it placed upon me? and will everything i ever want be coloured by the comparison of wanting this one thing? i want

[deathlygristly]

You know how I am really confused about gender?

I just searched for gatekeeping in an Appalachian forum. I was reading all these people trying to draw lines around their identity and put themselves and others in categories, and none of it made sense.

Some were saying “If you have the exact same experiences as me then you’re Appalachian but if not then you’re something else.” Others said “It’s whatever lines the government’s Appalachian Regional Commission drew.” The only ones that made a lick of sense were the people saying “If it feels right to you to identify as Appalachian then you are.”

I reckon that’s what near about any social category of humans is. Because the mountains just exist no matter what we call them, and the conditions that created the human society and culture around those mountains are deep and complex and a good bit of it is probably unknowable without access to an enormous amount of correct information and the time to comb through it all.

So the best answer is if thinking you’re Appalachian feels right to you and it makes your brain happier to exist in, then you’re Appalachian.

I was so confused because I would try to listen to people talk about gender, and they were all drawing their own lines in their own ways and some of them were very loud about how their lines were the Correct Lines, but they would contradict others who were equally sure and loud that their personal lines were the Correct Lines. So my neurodivergent traumatized brain got confused and it was like okay, but I don’t experience any of these lines but loud and angry people are scary and I am bad and wrong if they’re angry around me.

But really it’s just human brains being human brains and drawing human lines that don’t have a meaning outside the brain of the person who drew them. And it’s probably okay for me to draw a human line that says “I can have a boundary against angry gatekeepers.”

And I guess to the best of my brain’s understanding of itself, I am inside my Appalachian line but I just don’t have any gender lines to be in or out of.