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falling through the cracks
Aug. 3rd, 2008 12:27 pm(in which I confess weakness and failure of imagination)
Anyone who has read here semi-regularly, or talked to me for any length of time at all, has probably heard me say things about the gendered state of social interaction, specifically that I think most people automatically expect humans to fall into either easily identifiable male or female, that they naturalize that expectation, and base a lot of their assumptions and default settings on it. At this point, I think that's old news, from my perspective, but it's still an important stepping off point.
I also talk/write pretty openly about identifying myself as neither man nor woman (I'm leaving the largely invisible assumed link between sex and gender nigh implicit), though to be honest I write much more openly about it than I talk about it in much of my daily life. I have often complained, and still complain, that perceptual and categorical limitations of others invariably lead to me being defined as something which I do not identify myself.
It's a relative new thing for me to look at identity as both internal and social (here is a more in depth look at the topic), and today I'm not liking a lot of what that says about me, to me. I think I used to fight more successfully for a not-man status (because that's almost always the default to which I am assigned) than I do now, and I think part of it had to do with social manifestation. Due to some circles in which I moved (goth, glam, *cough*larp*cough*), and the opportunities they presented, I played more openly with some of the visible markers of not-man-ness, approaching-aspects-of-woman-ness (using general defs, not mine, but not feeling the scare quotes today). Sure, I suspect that no matter the ensemble, I was generally taken as a man in girl clothes (except for a few times I think I was read as transsexual), but it seemed like there was enough of a confusion of signals and manifestation to leave people with the slippery idea of, hopefully, at least, "this may be a man in a way I don't understand man" (which, while a long way from ideal, is still better than most default interactions).
But for a variety of reasons (the post-millenial practical death of goth, absorption of spanky industrial, often frustrating glam djs and loss of venues, general suck of prominent larpers, etc.) those opportunities are no longer available to me, and I've not replaced them in kind. To be honest, I'm not sure in kind exists locally; if it does, I haven't found it. What I've found surprising (and disappointing) is that my sense of self as anything positive, gender wise, has been fading as those externalizations recede, leaving me to define/feel my sense of gender in the negative (not a man, not a woman, not some point on an imaginary line between them). It seems I have a problem finding a positive, internal sense of a gendered self without some social reality.
To be sure, some of this I've denied myself. I'm stupidly suspicious of my friends, who've stated repeatedly and often (less so over time, probably in part due to the vehemence and dismissiveness of my rejection) that I could manifest pretty much any way I wanted around them. To the extent that such a rejection was unexamined, I think it was a mistake, but emotionally, my reaction still makes sense to me; it doesn't feel socially real or meaningful if acceptance (too strongly positive a word, but I'm word stupid right now) is based on individual relationships with me, with personal affinity. I don't think I've been able to articulate that until just recently, but I don't think it's an a posteriori justificaton: more a untangling of meaning.
What this shows me about myself is that while I can have a sense of self which I think is valid and legitimate (not a man, not a woman), the socially defines aspects of identity seem rooted, probably unsurprisingly, in what feels socially possible, viable. To the extent that a social identity, or the social aspects of my gender identity, doesn't appear possible, it reflects on the internal framing of my sense of my own gender identity. In other words, I am shocked and disappointed to discover that the line between internal and social is fuzzier and permeable in both directions.
I find myself at the moment having difficulty reconciling an internal sense of self which rings true, and a feel of the social terrain in which there appears no sufficient possible manifestation of said self, and no amount of willpower or thought seems to be able to help me bridge that apparent gap. This is affecting me in a host of bad ways, from body image, social disengagement, contraction of horizons, inability of/failure to imagine something better towards which to work, usw. I need to find a way to get over this, or at least a crossing point, but also one that doesn't feel like capitulation or defeat.
Anyone who has read here semi-regularly, or talked to me for any length of time at all, has probably heard me say things about the gendered state of social interaction, specifically that I think most people automatically expect humans to fall into either easily identifiable male or female, that they naturalize that expectation, and base a lot of their assumptions and default settings on it. At this point, I think that's old news, from my perspective, but it's still an important stepping off point.
I also talk/write pretty openly about identifying myself as neither man nor woman (I'm leaving the largely invisible assumed link between sex and gender nigh implicit), though to be honest I write much more openly about it than I talk about it in much of my daily life. I have often complained, and still complain, that perceptual and categorical limitations of others invariably lead to me being defined as something which I do not identify myself.
It's a relative new thing for me to look at identity as both internal and social (here is a more in depth look at the topic), and today I'm not liking a lot of what that says about me, to me. I think I used to fight more successfully for a not-man status (because that's almost always the default to which I am assigned) than I do now, and I think part of it had to do with social manifestation. Due to some circles in which I moved (goth, glam, *cough*larp*cough*), and the opportunities they presented, I played more openly with some of the visible markers of not-man-ness, approaching-aspects-of-woman-ness (using general defs, not mine, but not feeling the scare quotes today). Sure, I suspect that no matter the ensemble, I was generally taken as a man in girl clothes (except for a few times I think I was read as transsexual), but it seemed like there was enough of a confusion of signals and manifestation to leave people with the slippery idea of, hopefully, at least, "this may be a man in a way I don't understand man" (which, while a long way from ideal, is still better than most default interactions).
But for a variety of reasons (the post-millenial practical death of goth, absorption of spanky industrial, often frustrating glam djs and loss of venues, general suck of prominent larpers, etc.) those opportunities are no longer available to me, and I've not replaced them in kind. To be honest, I'm not sure in kind exists locally; if it does, I haven't found it. What I've found surprising (and disappointing) is that my sense of self as anything positive, gender wise, has been fading as those externalizations recede, leaving me to define/feel my sense of gender in the negative (not a man, not a woman, not some point on an imaginary line between them). It seems I have a problem finding a positive, internal sense of a gendered self without some social reality.
To be sure, some of this I've denied myself. I'm stupidly suspicious of my friends, who've stated repeatedly and often (less so over time, probably in part due to the vehemence and dismissiveness of my rejection) that I could manifest pretty much any way I wanted around them. To the extent that such a rejection was unexamined, I think it was a mistake, but emotionally, my reaction still makes sense to me; it doesn't feel socially real or meaningful if acceptance (too strongly positive a word, but I'm word stupid right now) is based on individual relationships with me, with personal affinity. I don't think I've been able to articulate that until just recently, but I don't think it's an a posteriori justificaton: more a untangling of meaning.
What this shows me about myself is that while I can have a sense of self which I think is valid and legitimate (not a man, not a woman), the socially defines aspects of identity seem rooted, probably unsurprisingly, in what feels socially possible, viable. To the extent that a social identity, or the social aspects of my gender identity, doesn't appear possible, it reflects on the internal framing of my sense of my own gender identity. In other words, I am shocked and disappointed to discover that the line between internal and social is fuzzier and permeable in both directions.
I find myself at the moment having difficulty reconciling an internal sense of self which rings true, and a feel of the social terrain in which there appears no sufficient possible manifestation of said self, and no amount of willpower or thought seems to be able to help me bridge that apparent gap. This is affecting me in a host of bad ways, from body image, social disengagement, contraction of horizons, inability of/failure to imagine something better towards which to work, usw. I need to find a way to get over this, or at least a crossing point, but also one that doesn't feel like capitulation or defeat.
