Like a girl.

Wow. No wonder I feel like you're a kindred soul, never mind that I've seen you in person at just one Con so far. Fandom is your niche, where you're free to do and look like whatever makes you thrive without being judged.

I've mostly taken it for granted that whatever I do (cooking, housecleaning, puttering in the yard, lifting weights, taking Sweat-n-Swear classes, pursuing my aggressive macho career, nurturing my kid, changing my mother's adult diapers, yelling about politics on the internet, singing, reading just about any book there is) is by definition a masculine thing to do, because I'm a man doing it. If you like doing all of those things, then they're feminine things to do. And it ain't on my top 100 list of things to argue about.

The important thing is, you know who you are and what you're going to do. And if the totality of who you are and what you do is different from what most other people are being and doing, then it's all the more likely that you're going to be the only one around who can fill a specific, necessary niche without so much competition from women or men; and therefore, the more likely you are to succeed.

In fact, in your case, you're already there. Look at that NPR list again. You have my respect and admiration, and clearly not *only* mine.

I'm a cisgendered guy; and I can relate to everything you said.

I never thought about what I should be interested in. I just was into what I was into. As you can imagine; it caused me a few issues.

I agree with you 100% about rape's pervasiveness in most media forms these days. Half of the crime dramas on TV now seem to feature rape prominently in the majority of their episodes.

I love a good horror flick or novel; but I'll take my entertainment without the rape, thanks.

holds out his fist and says "go ahead, bump it"

Good gracious, chile, of course you do what you do like a girl.

It is not "cute" that you know the lineup of the X-Men or details about horror movies. It. Is. AWESOME that you do.

It's not your problem. It's their problem. They want to be able to fit people into little boxes, and they can't handle the fact that you fit into a shiny crystal dodecahedronical pod that will only admit you after you recite Mairzy Doats.

People fear what they don't understand and they hate what they fear. Do you, as the colloquialism goes.

Those of us who think you rock will continue to think you rock.

Everybody else can go sit and spin.

Well said. This sort of thing is on my mind a bit lately because my wife's pregnant with our first child. We don't know the gender yet, but I hope that we can manage to let our child grow up to be someone as comfortable with whoever they are without stressing too much about gender stereotypes. But then, I'm a guy who's dabbled in things crafty from cross-stitch to crochet to woodworking because it's all making stuff. :)

One of these days I'll have to actually write down a rant about things like "Cooking's a girl thing!"/"So all chefs and bakers are girls? Try again."

Seanan, I know I haven't met you in person, and I don't know whether I ever will. But I like you as a person, and when you say things like this it reinforces that hard.

Love and My Little Velociraptors to you :)

I understand your rant and agree with it. I still can't get my dad to realize that I have more mechanical aptitude than my older brother and that though I may be quiet, I am observing everything, just like a cat.

otherwise:

"when I combine my Bedazzler with my chainsaw"

And now I cannot get out of my head a jewel-encrusted Chainsaw. I think that would be awesome! *wishing my dad had left a chainsaw here so I could cover it with rhinestones*

I'm fortunate to be cisgendered. I have always been a girl, felt like a girl, known I was a girl.

So did a hell of a lot of t-gals, sweetie, it's just no-one believed them if they said as much.


Also: This?

I always just assumed it would eventually go away, and we'd all get to be people, and the girls would do things like girls because girls were doing them, not because of some innate "girliness" of the things, and the boys would do things like boys for the same reason. [...]
I am a girl. That's not changing. I am a snake-loving frog-catching horror-watching virus-studying skirt-wearing Midwich Cuckoo Marilyn Munster girl. I'm not getting by on anything. I'm not making comments on gender politics when I combine my Bedazzler with my chainsaw. I'm just being me.

THIS! :-D

(Says the chick with the axe in the kitchen cupboard...)

The world needs Marilyn Munsters.

And, I'm going to quote you this because it's at least tangential, and you'll like it anyway:

"Someone asked Emily what she wanted to be, last weekend. So she said to me, later, "I guess when you are sixteen you are not allowed to answer that you want to be a velociraptor." and I said, "Sure you are. That's a great goal." and she said, "Fine. I want to be a Princess Velociraptor."

(comment on FB)

That's a fucking awesome goal. I think I want to be one, too, actually!

I remember when boys told me:
You play like a girl
It's a matter of genetic history
You play like a girl
You can't be in my band
You can't play like a man
But there's one thing that you can do --
Teach us to play like you

-Janis Ian, "Play Like A Girl"

You know you are who I want to be when I grow up, right? *hug*

I love this post!

I have a male friend who is bisexual but cisgendered, alternates between black fingernail polish and pink, collects My Little Ponies, and generally gives gender stereotypes three middle fingers.

Myself, I'm a trans-woman, but I, too, never cared much for gendering activities. I was as likely to play cars or superheros with the boys as I was to play house or dolls with the girls. I had Legos, toy cars, stuffed animals, dolls, even Barbies. And though my parents were strictly anti-gun with me, I'd use sticks or stuff to make guns, usually some kind of ray-gun. Sometimes I was a teacher or babysitter for my dolls, and then 5 minutes later I'd be the captain of a fishing vessel in the middle of a storm, or a superhero captured by my own version of Orion slave women. Yes, you heard right. I don't know how I became aware of it, possibly TV, but I was a little perv as young as seven, drawing naked women with boobies or naked men with... other things, some of my imaginings with plotlines that revolved around my nebulous understanding of sex. And I got in trouble once in elementary school for telling dirty jokes.

All my childhood, I never gave a shit what others thought of any of it. Other people (aside from family) were uninteresting at best, not real to me at worst. And if a family member said something I didn't like, I ignored it. I have always been unashamedly me, despite getting bullied frequently for it. I survived the bullying by withdrawing further into my imagination until I was pretty much utterly lost in there.

Puberty didn't change anything, except to make the perviness grow stronger. It wasn't until I was about 15 when I started coming (back?) to reality. It was weird, like waking up from a long and involved dream. I didn't change much, really, in that sudden transition, but I had a clarity and thoughtfulness about everything that is startling to think back on. My "gonna be me, I don't care what y'all think" attitude changed only in that it became something I decided consciously to continue with. Though to be honest, it wasn't exactly a sudden shift. The process of returning to reality started when my sister was born, with me dragging my feet for years in a process that was not pretty to be around. When one has one's roots firmly planted in fantasy because reality is painful to deal with, being dragged back to reality is going to be a violent process. And it was.

Anyway, enough of that.

Along similar lines:

It's a good thing we didn't go to school together; I don't think they would have been able to handle it, lol. I got in trouble for drawing adam and eve in class; my mother's reaction was simply to ask me not to do that in school :)

Thank you, there is so much I want to say but there is too much so Thank YOU!

A favorite poster of mine featured a Gabrielle Reese looking back over her shoulder in mid-game concentration with the words -

"I run like a girl.
I throw like a girl.
I serve 97 mph. Like a girl."

You go girl!

I sometimes wonder how long it will be until psychology defines this condition of self-awareness and satisfaction, this mental state in which you can be you however you are and everyone else can be, too... as a disorder. It isn't exactly the normal state of affairs, and by your own testimony, it has presented impairment opportunities to you in certain social situations. That you were not necessarily impacted wouldn't really matter in terms of making definitions.
I wonder if they'll call it Marilyn Syndrome.

I think you are doing a fine job of being yourself! I think it is always weird when parents try to be pigeonhole children.

I just wanted to say, along with everyone else, WORD!

And if I still paid attention to it, I'm sure it would be even worse now that I'm [apparently] a grown-up. I'm still a mix of 'feminine' and 'masculine' I was growing up, but now I apparently have a 'motherly' aura, leading to lots of 'when are you going to have kids?' and 'what do you mean you don't want a family?' and 'isn't your biological clock just killing you?' And yet some part of me still expects people to wake up one day and realize that people can just be, you know, *people* and live according to their individual principles, needs, attractors. Apparently I am an optimist. Huh.

The song that comes to mind is When I Was a Boy by Dar Williams.

David sews. I'm more likely to be able to fix a computer.

And it never fails to amaze me how often friends, and often ones that should know better, ask if I can ask David to look at something funny their computer is doing, or if I can help them sew something.

This is an awesome post.

I was yet another minion on this army of "girls who do boy things and girl things." I had my My Little Ponies fight *space battles*. Against my *matchbox cars*, wherein they were occasionally saved by my Transformers. And then maybe they would all attack my Care Bears. Being an air force brat, I insisted that all Decepticons were actually secret good guys because it was utterly stupid to me that the *airplanes* (Which are the most awesome things ever devised by man) were evil. The first bedroom I really remember was decorated in a theme of "Fighter jets and kittens." It was also very, very pink.

This made me think of you. Tea and cake? http://www.flickr.com/photos/48010887@N07/4831763166/

When I was five I told my mom I wanted to be a boy. We're still having long discussions about this.

That aside the whole, I really hate the I guess you could call it the Girls Can Only Like Pink Stuff phenomenon. I grew up just before it started up really hard by the marketers. When they came out with the pink LEGOs I was always just "Why? what's wrong with regular LEGOS?"

It sort of damages everything, I think and hurts kids like you were who want to be a mix of both. I'm quite certain my brother is like you as well and it would have been nice if he could have gotten the Barbies and I got the GI Joes. I swear we must have gotten some genetics mixed up. He loves traditional girls stuff and I love traditional guy stuff.)

Perhaps in time we'll get all this silly crap sorted out. Until then... pink painted chain saws of DOOOM?

your diverse range of likes and interests, is one of my favorite things about you...

where were the girls like you when i was growing up?

i was stuck in the tomboy box.

That is a great post. And it's so true. When I was little I was a girly-girl because that's how things were done. But I also went out and caught bugs and read about dinosaurs and was into things other girls weren't.

I got older, stopped wearing pretty frocks but didn't become a full blown tomboy. But, I can still hammer a nail in straighter than my brother and can do woodwork - but I also love to paint and draw.

I write horror and love to read romance fiction. I'm not any one stereotype and I think it bothers folk because they like to put people into little boxes and leave them there.

I once got told by someone who’d read a short story of mine that they wouldn’t have believed something so horrific could come from someone who looked so wholesome. I took it as a compliment :)