Monday, 01 February 2010

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  Gender, Perception, and Dreams

  When I was in college, I had something of a crisis concerning my gender identity. It wasn't a huge breakdown type of crisis, just a longstanding background thing that just wouldn't go away, making my life quite difficult to handle until I dealt with it. It was such a bizarre thing that it actually became something of a joke among my friends. There were tons of indicators that my personality and lifestyle were much more masculine than feminine - I dated gay guys, who by definition date men. I compartmentalize, for the most part, really well. I was good with maths and science. I can separate sex and romance. I played trombone and drums. I held doors and chairs for others. I think much more rationally than emotionally. I'm into technical and mechanical things. I find women attractive. I can fix my car or build a computer. Guys change around me, generally without a second thought. It's rare for me to do more than skim an instruction manual. I didn't wear makeup or skirts, and given the option between a dress or a shirt and tie, I wore the tie every time. I have a high sex drive. I had very short, spiky hair. I'd always been the more dominant partner in every relationship I'd had at that point. I find excessive femininity in myself to be rather disconcerting, and at the time found it downright repulsive. Every online test that I took told me that my habits, traits, or personality were strongly masculine. I was the wage-earner to my then-hubby's housewife. I dressed in baggy clothes to hide my curves. I got downright angry when folks suggested that I not wander all over Perugia at night alone, but should "take a guy with me". I even hate asking for directions.
  
  But if you look at all of those indicators, each marker is an action, not a state of being. It's all external. Some of these traits are habits or aptitudes that I learned or inherited from my father. Others are choices I made in reaction against my mother's poor example. After those issues are set aside, most of what's left was a strong reaction against my sexuality, and much of it faded in time, after I became more comfortable with my romantic preference (or lack thereof? more on that later) - as though once I came to terms with the fact that I like girls, it almost became okay to be one again. Almost. It wasn't as simple as all that, but that was one big step in the process. It took me a long time to come to terms with the fact that no matter how much guystuff I did, I was still a girl. What I do is not who I am.
  
  That thought makes me think of Batman: "It's not who we are on the inside, but what we do that defines us." Well, okay, kinda, but if the two are in dissonance, one will eventually shift toward harmony with the other, or else there's a lot of psychological damage to be suffered. The result of that process in my own life is that I'm much more feminine now than I used to be. I still have a hard time accepting the term "femme", which is now the joke about my gender/sexuality/presentation. I can't tell you how many of my long-term friends asked after every date before I settled on my partner, "did you wear lipstick?" - I'd almost rather go back to "which dick are you wearing today?". I think most of those friends, however, know that I'm never going to fit on either end of the spectrum, that I'll always sit somewhere closer to center, and enjoy ribbing me about it. And I laugh along, because I know they're right, and I would rather laugh about the discongruities than fret about them.
  
  Yesterday my partner and I were talking about genderstuffs. Even though he was assigned female at birth, it never fit with him. It wasn't all the external stuff that I'd lived with, either, not just stuff he does. No, it's very clearly who he is. He's mentioned before that he was impressed with how easily I switch my vocabulary to suit the situation or present company. He originally introduced himself as female, and still needs to present as female in certain situations, and I generally keep right up (well, except when I accidentally called him "mom" to his dog, or when I almost used his male name with his cousin at Christmas, but we'll ignore those for now). I didn't think that was really such an impressive thing until a discussion I had with a colleague of mine on Friday, about how she'd found the inability to gender-type a student to be incredibly disorienting. She's one of the most open-minded folk that I've met, especially in our profession, and even she had a very difficult time with the ambiguity. That really stuck with me, and I brought that discussion up with my partner, eventually realizing that maybe my inattention to gender is really not the norm.
  
  Later in the evening, he mentioned a dream that he'd once had in which he was female, which was odd for him. Normally he dreamed in male. It made me think about genderdreaming, and I paid attention to it last night as I was asleep, which I'll discuss more shortly. Today at church, another musician mentioned that she'd always dreamed male as well. Her gender expression has been quite fluid over the course of her life, but she's always had masculine dreams. She said that came of age when SRS was first being overtly performed in the US, and she had looked into it, but had been frightened off by the inconsistency of results at the time, so she chose to remain in her body as it was. It made me think even more about the dreaming thing.
  
  Most of my friends would vouch for the fact that I treat people like people, regardless of age, gender, culture, presentation, history, race, orientation, background, or other characteristic. Each person is unique from each other, but each person is similar to all of the others as well, and I treat each friend not as Christian or Muslim or atheist, asian or african or caucasian, man or woman, orphan or rich kid, straight or dyke or fairyboi, teenager or senior, I treat them all as human beings. Each person is a unique entity, and while they may have traits that could predispose them to certain experiences, mindsets, behaviours, or choices, there is no reason for me to change my interaction with them based solely upon those traits, so I don't.
  
  I was kinda-sorta seeing a girl for a while before I met my partner, whose lifestyle and values conflicted so strongly with mine, that to have anything resembling a committed relationship would have involved more compromise than I could in good conscience make or ask. I do not judge her for her choices, nor do I think poorly of her as a person - she is still a very good friend who I love dearly. I'm just very pragmatic about relationships (yeah, another masculine trait), and wasn't willing to invest my time, energy, and emotions, into something that would, in the long term, become unhealthy. Even so, she has told me that she felt completely safe with me, because she knew that I would never judge her, I would never take advantage of her weaknesses, I would never be jealous of her strengths, I would never intentionally hurt her. Because I accepted her as just another individual human being, she was able to recover from some damage she'd taken in her previous relationship, which in turn enabled her to move into a very positive relationship which she is still in today. She would likely be the first and most vocal of my friends to say that those traits that differentiate each individual from the next have never been points of judgement for me.
  
  Gender is just another of those traits. When I kicked the abusive ex out, I took a year to get my bearings and rediscover myself as my own person. When I felt that I was ready, I began looking for companionship again, but only among women. I only posted, and only responded to, lesbian adverts. It didn't have anything to do with a preference for a particular set of physical characteristics, or a certain relationship dynamic. My biggest reason for only wanting to date women was that I never wanted to risk being pregnant again. It did horrible things to my body and my brain, and I alienated some very close friends with my hormonestupid choices. I still have trouble looking at myself in the mirror sometimes because of the things I did. Those friends who stuck with me will attest to the fact that I was downright certifiable when I was pregnant. If not for that fact, gender would not have played a role at all in my choices as I sought a new mate.
  
  So when I met my partner, his gender expression was just another element of his uniqueness, just another manifestation of the struggles that every person deals with on a daily basis. It didn't throw me off balance to change name or pronouns (although it did slightly throw me off to realize that it didn't throw me off). I chose to quit seeing other people, quit posting my ads or responding to others', because I realized that I wasn't likely to find another person whose imperfections complimented mine so well, and whose positive traits were almost everything I'd been looking for. In short, he was "everything I wanted, but nothing I expected." The gender issues, along with any other struggles we face, are just another embodiment of the same relationship growing pains that everyone deals with. No relationship is easy, and while our unique difficulties are not likely to be shared by much of the general population, the fact that we struggle is.
  
  Once again, gender really doesn't play a part in my mindset concerning the entire situation. I've come to view myself as pansexual, because the term bisexual really supports a binary system, and I think anyone with any experience in the queer community will tell you that gender isn't a strict dichotomy. Not by any stretch of the imagination. I don't consider gender to be a deciding factor in my romantic choices, because each person is unique, and while gender and expression/presentation are certainly aspects of that uniqueness, they're just one aspect. Those same friends who tease me about being effeminate, also tease me about the fact that I don't really have a "sexual orientation". I don't have a gender preference. I'm not picky, I'll settle for just about anyone. Well, not really, but that's how the joking runs.
  
  I paid attention to my dreams last night. You sometimes hear people talk about whether their dreams have colour, or are monochromatic black-and-white. As I plummeted through the void that I often find myself dreaming when I'm facing a new relationship, my pale, flat body floated, fell, tumbled, careened, and flew, my red hair floating around me, and no appendages of any sort breaking the aerodynamic flow. My older child's blue Sonic the Hedgehog costume is pretty cute, but I'm not sure why I dreamt it being worn to a disciplinary hearing after some retaliation toward the classmates who are already calling the poor kid "gay" as an insult. When I was laying in my partner's arms, playing with his curly brown hair, looking into his deep, intelligent, gorgeous eyes, the only thing on my dream-mind was how wonderful it felt to have his arms around me, as I pulled the rainbow afghan up over us, then rolled over to face his hands which had been at my back, and traced the blue veins under his pink skin. I've always dreamed in colour.
  
  However it seems that I don't dream in gender.

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