1. Yesterday the kids started a new ice skating class. We’ve signed them up for skating, or skating lessons, the past couple of years. We live in Minnesota, ice skating is a social and recreational tool! (I do not know how to ice skate, but I moved here from Illinois!)
I admire K’s grace and flair for physical activity. I admire M’s dogged persistence. While very different skills, both serve well for different things.
2. I may start tucking in my shirts. Maybe.
I stopped tucking in my shirts around, oh, 1986 or so. I did not want people to look at me and see a girl. I did not want people to look at me and see breasts and hips and waist and ass. So I stopped tucking in my shirts, and for years wore a denim jacket with, um, everything. (The denim jacket fell apart sometime during high school. Thank you for mending it, you who did so. Though the aqua embroidery floss was an affront to my gender identity at the time, I appreciated that you didn’t join the chorus of people who said I should throw the jacket away.)
I started tucking in my shirts around 1993. This was the year I discovered I a) wanted to use my body for various girl-related purposes and b) learned what butch gender identity was supposed to mean. The key points from my perspective were I could wear button-down shirts tucked into my jeans with a wide leather belt and the cuffs rolled up, and girls would appreciate this. Or, rather, the kinds of girls I wanted to notice me for looking this way were the kinds of girls I wanted to do things to/for/with/at/other-more-lewd-prepositions-here.
At some later point, though, I stopped tucking in my shirts. Butch as a gender identity became a more complex and nuanced thing for me. I was partnered, and didn’t spend a lot of time trying to attract women by how I looked. The fashions were altering, and the pressed button-down look was no longer so prevalent, which made me stand out some when I wore it. Also, man, keeping broadcloth shirts ironed is a pain in the ass.
The biggest changes, though, were that I broke up with my partner at the time, and then a couple years later acquired children with J. I was busy with other things than how I looked.
It occurred to me a few weeks ago that I have some belts I really like. I wear them, but no-one ever sees them. I could solve this by tucking in my shirts. As I considered this, I realized that the various former pro- and con- shirt-tucking reasons really don’t hold a lot of pull for me right now. The sex of my body is what it is, and I’ve gotten some lovely positive feedback on it over the years. The gender presentation I pursue is really not the subject of anyone’s conversation. No-one is looking at my thirty-eight-year-old self and judging me on how well I perform femininity. And, frankly, if they are, they can judge away. It doesn’t actually affect me or my identity or my life. And the size and shape and function of my various bits are what they are. Pretending I have a body other than the one I have does not make it magically different.
All together, I think the signs point to an experimental period of tucking in my shirts again.
3. I have talked to work about my vacation requests, and I think I’m just going to commit to C2E2. I have about an 80% chance of getting the weekend off of work, and I’ve coordinated the absence with J. This is all to the good, as Chicks Dig Comics is launching there.
\o/
Filed under: Autobiography, Books, Parenting | Tagged: chicks dig comics, gender, kids | 2 Comments »
