The more I learn about gender, the less I am able to confidently define or explain the concept. Growing up, I had a relatively antagonistic relationship with being a girl. I definitely felt that some part of girlhood was inherently silly or frivolous based on the media I consumed and the viewpoints of the people around me. I remember being on the playground with my brother and a boy who lived across the street and hearing the boy’s mother proclaim with such confidence that you know that it could never be three girls playing together nicely because two of them would always go off and talk about the other behind their back.
This type of thinking did not provide a very stable foundation for me to feel confident or comfortable in my gender for a while. I remember in first or second grade really trying to assert myself through interests or behaviors that were stereotypically masculine because I thought that was a way to be taken seriously. I did not have the information I needed to challenge these ideas about gender, which I find infuriating as an adult! I really wish that I could have been introduced to more gender diversity when I was really little because I think it would have saved me a lot of time and frustration throughout my life.
As I got older, my perspective on gender changed drastically. I was no longer surrounded by the idea that women were fundamentally different than men and I could look far beyond the gender binary. This definitely improved my relationship to my gender, but I still had a lot of growing to do. The most important and valuable perspective on gender that I have gotten to experience has been through interacting with and reading the perspectives of queer people. Gender and sexuality are so interrelated that it is hard to challenge gender expectations without also challenging expectations around sexuality.
Through knowing more queer people, I was able to reconsider so much about my identity as a supposed straight, cis women. I had taken so much of my identity for granted and was finally able to challenge myself to question whether parts of my personality and behaviors that I took for granted were just things that I had accepted because they were pushed on me in service of heteronormativity and cisnormativity. This allowed me to eventually realize that I myself was bisexual, which only further allowed me to tear down notions of gender that was holding onto.
I felt supported enough in that identity to try things (like growing out my body hair) that I don’ know if I would have been able to if I continued to think of myself as a straight women. Now, I feel the most comfortable I ever have in my gender because I don’t really hold myself to any ideas of what being a women must be. This was definitely not something that came naturally, I very intentionally challenged myself to do things that made me uncomfortable in my gender (like growing out my body hair) in order to see if it were actually me or societal expectations that convinced me to do things.
