Recently I wrote a post where I admitted that I'm questioning my gender identity, and in this post I thought I'd try to talk about that a little more.
To begin with I don't think I was a very masculine child. I cried a lot, and was scared a lot, and was a very imaginative child often in the worst ways. I still swear I saw a woman fly past my window in a basket one night, and that on another a crone's voice came through the curtains. I wasn't sporty or tough, nor particularly academically gifted, outside of reading. In fact I got bullied a lot and hated sport from an early age because I was well aware of how weak I was. One of my memories of prep school is the games teacher pulling my head out of a rugby scrum by the hair and telling me to "get your head in properly, you girl". I had few friends, and the ones I made quickly seemed to default to picking on me, and calling me names. At the same time, my parents tried to "toughen me up", though I don't want to go into that. Over time, I became insular, quiet, and a loner. I didn't trust anyone, and it wasn't until university that I began to come out of my shell, and made friends. My friend Lesley was a key part of that, hugging me into submission and telling me that I was actually worth something.
I know that I played with Lego, Transformers, and He-Man toys. I remember reading Fantasy novels, miring myself in Moorcock and Eddings as a teenager, and I suppose those are typical markers of a type of adolescent male experience. My one foray into roleplaying, as a teenager, was disastrous because I got bored of it very quickly (I don't like dungeon crawls, even now). These hobbies - Fantasy, Comics, Roleplaying feel very gender neutral to me now, far from the male ghettos they once were.
What I haven't done is take the step from that sort of thing to the sport, DIY, beer, and cars - which seems to be what society tells me men should like. I'm also not into action films, James Bond or anything like that. So, culturally I at least feel fringe, but also quite disconnected from masculinity. Though, at the same time, I do like history, politics, RPGs, and some comics (though my like of books where men in fetish gear beat up other men in fetish gear... sorry, I mean superheroes... has worn thin and I am tired of their violence). So I feel quite confused by that angle, and I don't know that it really means anything. If I'm honest, I don't know that anything like that really matters where things like this are concerned.
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I also look at the things I'm meant to be, that my gender dictates, and I feel numb. I'm more drawn to the list of gender stereotypes for women, they feel like they fit me more. At the same time, I feel more like my skills fit that nurturing vibe, for one thing unless its building furniture, I hate DIY and feel indifferent to the "man things" that I'm meant to enjoy/find fulfilling. I'd rather cook and clean. I want to make my own clothes too, preferably dresses, skirts, and blouses because I think male clothing is boxy and boring. A trip to the shops to buy clothes feels like to be confronted by myriads of ugliness, and I long for nicer garments with softer cloth. If I were to dress as a man then ideally I'd like to wear the fashions of the 18th Century, but even that pales in comparison with my desire to dress in beautiful dresses.
What I'm finding is that these feelings shift and fade, some days I feel more female, some days more male, which makes it confusing. I suppose that's why they think it Questioning. What I worry about is that this is just my brain being... my brain. That it's another sign of my mental illness and my tendency to push things away. I don't think it is, but at the same time I don't trust my brain and second guess myself pretty much constantly. All I can do is press forward, seek counselling, and try to make peace with myself.
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