Long before I went to graduate school and learned terms like, "deconstructing the gender binary" I was, well, deconstructing the gender binary...with frogs and Tonka trucks. My poor parents (bless their hearts) called it "being a tomboy".
As many lesbians, (and my poor parents, bless their hearts) will tell you, trying to encourage a little person to conform to a gender role when it doesn't feel natural to them is a lot like herding cats.
Not that I've ever actually herded cats-although many lesbians do this successfully. That, or corralling dogs. But that is for another post.
Anyway, it's what I imagine trying to herd cats might be like.
My mother (bless her heart) did her very best. She dressed me in colorful, fluffy and frilly things. She put me in tights, and delicate little shoes. She put my hair in...umm...curlers...and praised me when I didn't try to climb every tree or stomp in every mud puddle that I came across.
And yet, I would STILL do these things. My favorite shoes were waffle stompers. My favorite clothes were jeans from Sears and Roebuck, made from some kind of material that is probably used by NASA today to protect rocket ships. I wanted my hair to look like Sean Cassidy's.
Try as she might to buy me baby dolls, and Easy Bake Ovens, I was happier making mud pies, and building dirt roads for my Matchbox cars. My friends in the neighborhood where I grew up were all boys. Michael, Jerry and I wrecked that neighborhood.
We climbed, and ran, and built, and explored. I brought home snakes, salamanders, newts, toads, frogs, bugs, turtles...whatever I could catch. One time my parents went driving around the lake near our home looking for me, because they were going into town. They finally spotted me bent over in a ditch, and pulled up beside me. When they called my name, I stood abruptly upright. According to my poor mom (bless her heart), I had two fistfuls of live garter snakes, just dangling and writhing.
I'm so glad my parents survived my childhood. Really. Bless their hearts.
Anyway, Michael, Jerry and I built death defying jumps for our bicycles. My bicycle, by the way, originally came as a pink and white "girl's bike" with long sparkling tassles on the curved handlebars, and a big banana seat. The boys had awesome BMX bikes, so I gradually replaced the pieces on my bike, one at a time, until I had a kind of a girl's ghetto version.
I'm so glad I survived my childhood. Bless my heart. The forks on that dreadful BMX/ Barbie experiment were like toothpicks, and I flew off the jumps at the bottom of "Deadman's Hill" just as the boys did.
Jerry did have a sister. Her name was Jolene. and as I remember, she was slightly older than me. She was also the only girl in the neighborhood that I knew. We would play together every once in a while...but she ALWAYS wanted to play with Barbies. Needless to say, I did not relate to the clothes, and the long, blonde hair, and the fixation on this Ken guy.. I wanted to play with the pink (gag me) Corvette, and push it down the stairs...with Barbie in it...so we could then stage a Tonka truck rescue operation.
This is probably why I didn't play much with Jolene.
Gender roles are an interesting thing. In sociology, we say they are "social constructions"...meaning that, culturally, we just made the shit up. I can't explain why it is, but it seems to be that a lot of gay women ignored the "gender system" when they were girls, and still do it today.What I'm describing here isn't a desire to BE the opposite sex...keeping in mind that the terms "sex" and "gender" are not synonymous. Those things are all valid in their own-but different than what I'm referring to.I know that I am very happy and comfortable being a woman. I wouldn't change it. But, I have no idea how to operate high heels or mascara. At all. Seriously.
I'm just talking about my inherent resistance to sugar, and spice, and everything nice. I know a lot of lesbians who had similar experiences growing up. I also know a LOT of lesbians who can rock it in high heels.
I am just not one of them.
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