Strange to be in between.

I had a moment of acute gender!fail this week.

I'm taking a fiction workshop night class this semester.  There are only seven people, myself included, in the class, with a male professor.  All of the other students are guys.  I absolutely did not realise that I was the only female body in the room until the professor commented on it.  I looked around, and I was honestly surprised to confirm this fact--not that everyone else was male, but that I had missed this fact because I no longer think of myself as female.

I occupy a female body.  I'm decently comfortable with that, most of the time, unless the Gender Demons strike and I really start hating the fact that I'm a 38-DD.  I found a vest I totally forgot I had about a week ago.  It's water resistant and fleece-lined, which makes it ideal for this weather, especially considering I usually have my hoodie sleeves shoved up around my forearms anyway.  More importantly, it's just barely too tight, and has a zip-front, which means it does a pretty good job of constricting my ample cleavage.

This vest is the best thing that's happened to me lately.

I'm actually at a very strange time in my life.  I've gone through phases with my identity, and I think I'm about to enter another.  When I was in high school, maybe 2004, I started to realise that I was attracted to women, and so began to label myself as bisexual.  Sometime during college, I began to realise that the bisexual label didn't suit me at all--it affirmed an idea I was beginning to reject, that being the concept of a gender binary.  I can't call myself bisexual and recognise that there are more than two sexes, more than two genders.

Shortly after that, probably circa 2007, I started to notice something strange.  I noticed that whatever magical 'femaleness' I was supposed to feel wasn't really there.  Maybe it wasn't there anymore, or maybe it had never been, I don't know.  I can't remember if I ever really felt like a girl.  I know when I was a kid, I was a tomboy.  I was the antithesis of all things feminine.  I hated dresses.  I loved playing outside.  I wanted to play football in middle school.  (I decided as I got older that dresses weren't so bad, but I'll still buck and snort if forced into a dress or a skirt.  I have to really be in the mood.)  I just did not get 'girly things'.  That said, I also loved playing dress-up with my dolls and my costume box, and I loved playing House and Tea Party.  I've always been a little bit genderqueer.  I liked my Barbies and Easy-Bake as much as I liked my Legos and Hot Wheels.

The truth is, though, that I'm not sure how much the 'genderqueer' label fits me anymore, but that's what I get for lurking over at the What Is Gender forums.  There's a lot more out there than I ever expected to find.

What I find fun about these phases I've gone through is that my writing is clearly affected by it, and my characters usually know before I do.  Dameon was bi before I ever started identifying that way.  Now I have Taylor, who is very strictly a Whatever, and I identify more with Tay than I ever have with any other character, even Dameon.  I wanted to be Dameon's best friend.  I just want to be Taylor.  Which I get the chance to do once a week, and that's enough for me.  It's one day out of the week where I'm not expected to present myself as a girl.  For now, it's all the escape from the Gender Demons I need.