luxemburger

...and other things I find interesting.

(Most of these things relate to beginning to identify as trans.)

(Also, I really ask a lot of rhetorical questions.)

In something of a list-like form:

1. Okay, so. Truth time: I haven't liked the way my body has looked since before I hit puberty. (And before I hit puberty I don't really remember caring one way or another how my body looked, so it's not necessarily puberty that made it wrong or whatever, it's just that previously I think I had no opinion but for as long as I have had one, it hasn't been positive.)

But the thing is, I've never allowed myself to think too much about why I don't like the way that it looks. The way that I think, everybody's got a whole bunch of stuff they don't like about themselves. As long as whatever it is you don't like isn't too big of a deal, why not just brush it off and focus on the things you do like?

I mean, I've always found that the more love you show yourself, the more love you have to show other people, and the more love they have to show you (and themselves!) right back. It's a good cycle. And body hating doesn't really fit into it. So I don't hate my body. I've always tried to love it the way that it is, for the way it feels, for the things it can do. For certain ways that it can look, certain suggestions that can be made... but rarely, if ever, just solely for the way that it looks on its own, generally speaking.

So. I've been looking back, obviously, and thinking about those moments when I would begin to think about what it was that I didn't like/didn't recognize/didn't feel comfortable with about my body. But because I never let myself continue those thoughts it's impossible to say (and I really don't care now, because it no longer matters) how much of that was me not liking its shape because I've always been heavier and less muscular than I'd like and how much of that was me not liking its shape because I've never looked like the almost twinky, effeminate boy I've always pictured when I close my eyes. But I do know that it was both of those feelings in some kind of ratio.

2. Tangential Question A: Why, out of all the questions that I've asked myself, have questions about personal dissatisfation with my body been literally the only ones that I refused to ask (let alone answer)?

3. Very Similar Tangential Question B: Why were gender related questions always off the table when sexuality was always on it? Do sex and gender not often go hand in hand? Why did I embrace my sexuality and then cut off any question of my gender?

4. Tangential Answer for A and B: Because my body, the one that I have now, and my sexuality are things I was "born with", so to speak. I have done little to develop either, other than to allow them to develop themselves. This was the best form of love I thought I could show myself. To allow myself to be however I am and to accept and love myself for that.

However, in my mind, if I had to change myself to love myself better, that would not really be loving myself at all.

...and also, relatedly, it feels kind of hard to justify being a feminist when I don't relate to something so seemingly decided as whether or not I'm male or female. If women's bodies are beautiful the way they are (and they are), why can't I accept mine the way that it is? And if men and women are equal, why would I be happier being seen as a man than I am being seen as a woman? If there's no difference, what difference does it make?

5. New Tangential Question A: What difference does it make?

6. Not Really An Answer, But Interesting Tangent On Men And Relating To Men In The Light Of New Tangential Question A: Recalling how uncomfortable I always felt around male peers and how I avoided male friendship for quite a number of years (despite a few significant exceptions). The general feeling like I would never "belong" among boys, like they could see right through me and I would always be too awkward and introspective and unaccomplished to fit in. How I didn't feel the same when I was around other girls, because most of the time I wasn't particularly concerned with fitting in with them.

7. Also Not Really An Answer, But Second Interesting Tangent On Men And Relating To Men In The Light Of New Tangential Question A: Comparing how I used to feel around male adults as opposed to male peers. I had very few male adults I was close to. There was mostly my dad, my first stepdad, his father and uncle, my dad's brothers (whom I might have seen twice a year), and then later my second stepdad. All of the above men being fine gentlemen, most of the time, outwardly showing respect to women and generally being stand up guys. However, all of them, with the exception of my dad's brothers, have shown me how they "really" feel about women behind closed doors. Or at least about certain women. Often times the woman being my mother or, less frequently, another female member of the family.

And a) I think the things they've said to me are disgusting, however often I've empathized with specific, circumstantially understandable sentiments but b) I find it fascinating that none of them ever included me as one of the women they were disrespecting. I always seemed to be classified in a different category altogether - if anything I often felt treated as a comrade-in-arms by the older men in my life.

8. The Last Point, Continued: Ugh. I have been the ears for way too much misogyny by people who are supposedly better than that. I think this is one of the things that's going to take me the longest to unravel. What does it mean to relate to women as a man (or something like a man), and not simply as another woman?

How do men feel about women? How does this something-like-a-man feel about women? How does one go about becoming a man when one doesn't want to be much like any of the men they've been closest to in their life? Who becomes your role model? Who do you aspire to?

9. Obviously I Know How I Feel About Women, All Right, God: For that matter, can I define what it means to be a woman? Can I define what it is to be a man? Does it matter if I can't? Is that something I should be able to do?

10. I Don't Have A Clue: I... don't have a clue. All I know is that I keep realizing things about myself that I feel like I should have known sooner and that those things I'm realizing keep lining up in really interesting ways but that ultimately so far they've only left me with more questions than I had to begin with. And it is sort of terrifying, but sort of awesome, and I am sort of actually afraid my brain might explode with geeky introspective glee/gloom before this is all over, because it is really doing a number on me so far, let me tell you.