So it’s only hitting me today, but I’m realizing that my mother was... literally a radfem. And that the ideology she operated and groomed me upon and denied me womanhood/girlhood was literally consistent with her radfem beliefs, and the way she violently reacted when I told her I was simply a man was also consistent with her radfem beliefs -- like.
Both of my parents, I feel, have always had this knowledge that I’m intersex, or at least not a “usual” child. I’ve never been held to like... dyadic afab gender roles or anything, ever. Not even by peers.
I wasn’t allowed girlhood/womanhood by her. The definition is too narrow. And by radfem definitions, if you aren’t in that narrow space, you’re a man. It’s binary like that. And if you’re a man, you’re evil and irredeemable. Asides from my father not really raising me with gender or holding me to a (general definition: like that used in legal documents?) man’s expectations, the way I learned gender inherent was just... different. I could never be a woman and I wasn’t allowed to be one anyways. You can either be an evil not-girl (a man) and try to be more of a woman (which you can’t, and the definition is always changing to exclude you) or you can be a man and accept that you’re evil and irredeemable and all sorts of stuff.
Although the way my father handled gender was very neutral. I don’t know how to say it. I’ve talked a bit about how my father was.......... well basically the concept of a “malewife”? without the online fetishistic nonsense associated with it; the idea that a man is absolutely responsible for cooking, cleaning, maintaining home, maintaining family. And for me, despite my father dropping the ball a lot - I still learned that emotional nurture is required as a part of that, too. My mother never did that for me. Well, my mother was drawn to ideologies that, as Stevie said, are progressive but give her an advantage no matter what because she’s into power tripping... but for my father, I found freedom in being able to have a manhood Like That. It was everything I wanted about being a person and being responsible and still having the space to care for others intrinsically. That is the kind of manhood I got.
That made my mother really, really, really fucking angry!
You have to understand that that woman was never taking care of anybody at all. She simply did not have the capacity to. She did not truly care about others out of the goodness of her heart - only self-serving narcissism. She wanted to butter herself up to look good. She could not cook. She never cleaned. She never nurtured or protected us or managed the household. She was like... exhaustingly incompetent. And she’d get furious at you if you took over that role for her to get anything done, because that’s HER role, she’s a WOMAN, and a MOTHER, and that’s HER JOB, so don’t you try to ACT THE PARENT.
I just can’t live in a world where manhood is something described as so intrinsically awful anymore. It was never like that for me. No, it was something freeing. For me, manhood was even more about caring for others intrinsically than what notion of womanhood I was told I had to adhere to and grow up with. It never had room for me in the first place. And now they’re mad that I rejected them as a whole? Go choke on the biological essentialism that leaves you all fucked up like that in the first place.