Like a girl.

Better still, maybe we'd all just do things like people.

HEAR HEAR. I've been confused by the gender behavior clubs my whole life.

I don't have the words to tell you just how much I identify with this.

Thank you for writing this.

AngelVixen :-)

Someone once pointed me at the Hello Kitty custom M16 design some guy made as a gift for his wife. I decided I liked them both on the spot.

Most of what I liked to do as a kid seemed to come across to grownups as more or less gender-neutral. Reading, singing, building blocks, etc. I was athletic, but I mostly did the 'girly' sports -- gymnastics and horseback riding. I was a baseball fan as a teenager, and became a football fan as I got older. I always loved climbing anything I could lay hands on that would support my weight, and a number of things which wouldn't.

Like you, I've been lucky in that I've always felt that the body I was born into was the same gender as the one that felt natural to me to be. I'm a girl and I like being a girl. I was helpfully sheltered from the awareness that there was anybody who thought that I was a weird girl till I was about 11, because my mother was equally weird. She went to law school at a time when most schools wouldn't take her because she "was statistically certain to be married and have a couple of babies within three years, and drop out or never practice law." She didn't let me know there were people who thought that these existed "boy activities" and "girl activities" till I was already old enough to have figured out that people thought a whole lot of stupid things, and not care.

I wasn't the athletic type, but I was good in school and a also a little social clueless. I kinda get it now that I'm an adult, but I was so clueless in high school I was *proud* of being a girl that was good at math. I was different! Why everybody thought me being good at math was different makes me sad now.

A few years ago at Capricon, there was a little girl in a blue princess dress...demolishing her opponents at a robot wars competition.

This made me feel infinitely better about the world, knowing that she was in it. I kind of wanted to go find her parents and hug them.

I have so much respect for you, and so much love for what you are saying here. Earlier this evening a friend of mine was recounting some horror stories from her former place of business where women told her it was improper for a woman to date a man she was friend's with first, and she should just find a man to make money for her. This was after she told them she was dating a man she had been friends with for five years. I wish I knew why moving beyond gender stereotypes and heteronormativity is such a slow moving act; one that seems to take a fall down a flight of stairs for every two steps forward.

It's improper to be friends with someone and then find you'd like to date them?

...gracious, my dating history would terrify them, then. Especially since I was friends with psywildfire and killernurd for years before I dated either of them.

AngelVixen :-)

Hey, I watched you grow up. You have always been one amazing person. Fun to know and now run to read.
In case you hadn't noticed. I raised Jenevieve the same way - He-man She-ra, My Little Ponies, Horror Movies for her 13th Birthday, which fell on Friday the 13th (no really, how cool is that?). She grew out of My Little Ponies - which is why you got a box of them when we cleaned out part of the basement - but the Stuffy Collection lives on at her house. She still watches Horror Films, plays violent video games, and loves black, purple and red.
And all her boys love stuffies, and some times get nail polish because they see Mom putting it on and want some too. And Son #3 loves Cooking, and we buy him cooking utensils and cookbooks for his birthday. And Believe me they are all BOYS.
I love it when we don't have to put the kids in boxes. Doing my part to help my kids and grandkids avoid them.
And know that you are supported in being Seanan, because we all think you are Neat!

*giggle* that reminds me of the time my nephew demanded I paint his toenails red to match mine (he was about 4 at the time) - and then proceeded to spend a week mortifying his father because he'd show them to everyone proudly.

Are you familiar with the Janis Ian song "I Play Like a Girl"? It's about playing guitar, and defining "girl" by what you are.

I love this post!

I am definitely not "girly" by most standards -- I rarely wear make-up, I dress for comfort over fashion 90% of the time, etc. My only truly "girly" pursuits are BPAL and jewelry.

Still, I fully embrace being a girl and wouldn't want it any other way.

I wasn't afraid of reptiles, or most household bugs/spiders. Apparently competing with boys in middle school for grades was Not Done, but I didn't understand that. I never understood the Let the Wookie/boy Win mentality, either. I was always fascinated with medical news, and history of the plague, leprosy and St. Vitus Dance. I wish my parents had been a little more forthcoming on how to get a job, or in dealing with moeny.

I have always hated being put in boxes, and the one male Latvian who tried got short shrift. I don't fit boxes very well, although I do more than I used to, alas.

Keep being you, you ARE good at it, and what you write is the more fascinating for it.

Exactly!

and I'm thankful you don't like rape scenes, because frankly it's gotten repetitive and stupid instead of shocking an scary, and that's not something that should ever be less than shocking and a bad thing, but like anything that's overused it's now blase.

Seanan, I love, love, love this post.

As a child, I was a girly-girly-girly GIRL. I was all about Barbies and frilly dresses (I didn't own a pair of jeans, at least not that I actually wore, until I was 10) and tea parties and fairies and pink. I just so happened to fit the box. But I didn't do it because it was what I was expected to do. I did it because I loved it.

And then I got a little older, and the girls around me stopped playing with dolls, and put away their teddy bears, and suddenly it was somehow wrong to like pink or purple, because they were 'girly' and 'babyish'. I still had a box full of Barbies, the only differene was that now I was playing alone.

I'm a 21-year-old, cis-gendered girl. I love pink, and fairies, and Taylor Swift, and wearing pretty dresses with cowboy boots. I still sleep hugging the teddy bear I grew up with, and I cannot walk in high heels. I cop a lot of flack for not rebelling more against the stereotypes, but I can't see the point in pretending not to like something just because I'm expected to like it.

I don't plan on having children, but if I do, I don't care if they fit the boxes or not. Just so long as they are who they want to be. If my girl wants to wear pink and play with dolls and thinks fairy wings are the height of fashion, I will be pleased beyond belief. But I will be just as pleased if she wants to be Superman, or plays with Matchbox cars, or spends all her time climbing trees. I kind of like the idea that, if I do have a daughter, I'll walk out into the backyard to find her leading her Barbies on a gurella mission through the mud to attack her brother's GI Joe tea party.

Whether I fit the box or not, I have no desire to be put in it.

Girls can do anything. Emphasis on the anything.

Left out an all-important sentence in the description of my childhood. Somewhere in there, I should have pointed out that I think my mother would have actually been happier if I'd been a little less girly, since she didn't have a clue on how to handle a child who was pink glitter personified, being quite ungirly herself.

I like remembering my response to 'it's time you stopped doing '---', like 'stop playing with those dolls' - I just narrowed my eyes and started 'collecting' them. Problem solved, people?

I honestly thought being called a tomboy was GREAT. People left me alone after that.

My parents did a damn good job raising me, and insulated me from the worst of the societal sexism out there. So this was approximately my position from anywhere from age 14 to ... hm. 20-something?

Somewhere along the line, I discovered that out in the greater world, the sexism and the gender policing was much, much worse. And my reaction was approximately, "Fine. If only boys do this? THEN I'M A BOY NOW. FUCK YOU." In a skirt. And lip gloss. Because I like skirts and lip gloss. And then fifteen minutes later, it's girl time! So now I get all kinds of nervous when people ask me to put myself in gender-shaped boxes. Someone came through suggestions with a suggestion that made amazing sense, so "FUCK YOU I'M A UNICORN" is now one of the crankier answers in my responses to nosy gender questions.

I'm fortunate to have no major sex-based loathing for my body other than that which stems from the occasional bout of cramps and of course the PCOS funtimes.

I never got a lot of stereotypes about that, but I did do a lot of 'girly' things (like playing with dolls, holding tea parties, ect.), and a lot of 'guy' things as well (pretending to fight monsters in the yard, playing with a Lego castle). I never really thought of them as 'girly' or 'guy' things. They were just things I liked to do. Now I wear pearls, ride horses--and write poems about heroism and war.