back here again

[adrienmundi]

So, I'm at that point again where an acquaintance/potential friend has expressed interest in becoming something closer to an actual friend, and I'm wondering when and how to have that awkward conversation: "Yeah, you know, those things you probably think about me, or don't even think about but just assume I'm cut from the same cloth as just about everyone else you've ever met? Yeah... well, I'm not."

I hate having to have those conversations. It's not fair to me. To the uneducated, unquestioning eye, I look like a guy. I hate that; my body doesn't do what I want it to, even with endocrinological intervention (another issue about which I'm bitterly unhappy, and have whined at great length elsewhere). Clothed, there's no reason for anyone to assume I'm not what they think I am, and I'm not in the habit of disrobing to prove a point. No, I've got to say something, and it doesn't really get any easier.

It summons up all the anger and frustration I feel about a dearth of categories, a possibility of different signs, different options, of a failure of interpretation because no one knows to look for anything other than the expected, the unquestioned. It makes me hate the structural straight jacket, and it makes me feel like I'm failing in some way, like it's my fault things aren't clear at sight or by behavior, even though I know it's (probably) not.

Fuck, at least in this case, it would be so much easier if I was gay.

Comments

[sororbabylon.livejournal.com]

You know, you pessimist you, that I did not know anything about your gender when I met you, and I thought you were beautiful. Then, I learned about your gender, and I thought you were beautiful. Your partner-in-crime and goddess extraordinaire of a lover thinks you are beautiful beyond words. James thinks you are beautiful. I wonder if maybe you are the only one who doesn't see the big giant A. IS BEAUTIFUL elephant sitting in the middle of the living room.

Not everyone is hung up on parts. Maybe this person will surprise you. Just maybe. I mean, maybe they won't, but maybe they will.

[adrienmundi]

First, thank you. It's nice to hear, and it means something.

Secondly, though, it's not so much about being hung up on parts; it's about acknowledgment of self, of something fundamental to me (and, I'd argue, to most; I think a sense of gendered self is pretty core to most) that, unless I draw attention to, probably won't make the radar screen of possibility. It's not that I'm convinced it will go badly; it's that I have to work extra hard to get what most people get in terms of social acknowledgment for basically nothing. *I* won't know that it's cool, that I might be accepted or even (metaphorically) embraced unless I bring it up, because the default settings don't have room for me, but I still think I should have a shot at that level of acknowledgment. Does that make any sense at all?

Aha!

[sororbabylon.livejournal.com]

Ah, okay. It makes perfect sense. The fact that the conversation even has to happen is what hurts. Not being the default hurts. I grok that.