gender musings, part two

[falcongrrl]

This entry was written in response to foxmagic's comment on my gender journal entry. It's only tangentially related, if at all, but it was too long to post as a comment (!) so I'm putting it here.

If you're interested...

OK, you asked for it. ;-)

When I read this comment, I immediately went back to grade school. Not even high school, but grade school.

I remembered third grade, when Matt J. came to our class, and all the girls wanted him to be their boyfriend.

I didn't like Matt J, and I certainly didn't want him to be my boyfriend. But there was a certain popularity associated with being chosen to be Matt's girlfriend. And for me, personally, there was also this sense that it would never happen: whether it was my glasses, my focus on schoolwork, my general awkwardness, or just the fact that I thought that he was kind of a jerk...I didn't know which, but there was definitely a sense of not-being-picked, the same way that I wasn't ever picked for kickball, either.

(This is really sounding a bit more pathetic than I intended. :-D)

There was a lot of talk in third grade about liking, at least among the girls. Do you like him? We went to a private Christian school, so we used the phrase 'in God's way' a lot, borderline sacreligiously, or so I think now. We'd say, for example, 'I like him, but only in God's way.' We were being humanitarian. It was sort of a way of saying that we didn't like someone, or at least didn't think he was cute.

So, as early as third grade, other girls would ask me who I liked.I think I ended up saying Michael C., who liked writing stories about as much as I did and wrote some pretty good ones. But he wasn't my boyfriend, just a good friend. (And thereby started a lifelong trend of confusing friendship with love. :-D)

My point to this is that things didn't change a whole lot, even in high school. I mean, yeah, I went to co-ed schools. But I never had that sense of 'being chosen'. I never felt altogether comfortable around guys. I was pretty enough, after a certain amount of time passed, but I was never confident. I got the hang of the whole 'liking' thing (perhaps too well), but never figured out the whole 'getting him to like me back' process.

I think that part of it was the sense of 'achievement' that was bundled up in having a boyfriend for girls of my era (and I truly hope it's changed since then.) People (teens and adults alike) would meet you, and rather than asking if you made good grades or were good at sports, they'd say something like, 'Do you have a boyfriend?' or 'A girl as pretty as you, you must have a boyfriend.'

(A friend and I had a laugh and a conversation about this last summer. My friend is a lesbian, and was talking about this phenomenon, both with her daughter (who's now in elementary school) and with herself. "I mean, I'm a lesbian," she said, "so I wasn't ever attracted to boys, but I always had boyfriends. It was a status thing." It really was.)

The upshot is that I can completely relate to your idea of thinking, "I just don't 'get' the other gender." For a long time, males were just foreign to me. And the dynamic was all about getting them to notice me, and perhaps choose me, and think I was just peachy keen and all that stuff.

I'm trying to think of when that actually changed for me (and part of me honestly wonders how much it has.) Was it finally having boyfriends that did it? Was it being married to a guy? That certainly helped. Even though Dave is far from the 'typical guy', living with him day-in and day-out certainly helped me to know about him in particular, and gave me at least one male perspective to access on a regular basis.

I also have a close gay friend who's like a brother to me, and we used to have long conversations that went a long way toward demystifying men for me (and women for him). I think because we were good friends (and not romantic partners) there were things we felt safe to ask about and talk about that we might not have otherwise.

Perhaps it was my bisexuality that helped as well, once I realized that I was attracted to girls as well as boys (And this didn't happen, incidentally, until I was 29...despite the fact that in that same third grade class I was kissing one of Matt's girlfriends. Heh.) But once I knew that, some of the unspoken rules about married women not being friends with men other than their husband started to seem kind of silly to me. I mean, I could just as easily be sexual with a woman friend as a man friend (the fact that most of my women friends were straight notwithstanding). I think my gay friendship helped with this too, in that I started thinking of guys as friends, and it didn't seem to make a lot of sense to ask them their orientation before deciding if I were going to talk to them or not. Checking for other things (intelligence, kindness, etc) seemed far more important.

That said, I'll be completely honest and say that there are times when my guy friends will do or say something totally different and more unexpected than a girl friend would, and I'll think something along the lines of "there's that 'guy' thing again". But I don't know if it's really a 'guy' thing, or just my own socialization coming out.

My socialization says that y'all are the OTHER. That your approval of me matters and defines my worth in ways I really can't explain. And I like to think I've gotten past all that, have in many ways...but, what can I say, it...lingers.

There. That was a lot more than you asked for, maybe, and perhaps only tangentially related to what you said (if at all!), but it's what's been bouncing around in my head since you posted. :-)

A+

Comments

[ladymerri.livejournal.com]

Um, I just have to say, you and I REALLY need to hang out. Like we didn't know that already. ;) But yeah, I think you're in my brain with most of this. ;)

[ladyperegrine.livejournal.com]

*smiles widely*

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

I, of course, can't make much sense out of any of this, in any direction. Well, anthropological sense, yes, not personal sense.

[foxmagic.livejournal.com]

Fascinating. :)

And, still fascinated!

Thank you for sharing your thoughts with me. :)