Adventures in gender identity

I’ve always had an interesting relationship with gender. The more I learn about other people’s perspectives, the clearer it has become to me that I don’t experience gender in the same way that a lot of people do. In that I don’t really experience gender except in so far as other people’s assumptions about mine impacts on me. Ideas about gender don’t inform how I feel about people. It plays no role in who I am attracted to. I’ve had extended periods of time where it wasn’t really part of my sense of self at all.

The spaces I like best are the ones in which gender doesn’t automatically play a role. It’s one of the many reasons I like steampunk spaces. People are expressive in those spaces, and creative and playful. You can’t assume anything about a person based on what they’re wearing or how they present their bodies. No one tends to assume that a sexily-presented body is an available body. There are people who express and celebrate bodies, gender, sexuality. There are people who play and subvert. There are people who express themselves in ways that have more to do with what they’re enthusiastic about than it has to do with how they relate to their gender. I like that a lot. I love the diversity.

I’ve come to realise that what goes on in my head is much more significantly me than anything that happens with my body. The people I am most engaged with are the people who share ideas with me. Looking back at my life this is no doubt why I’ve always invested heavily in my creative relationships. Those are the spaces where I get to show up mostly as a thinking being.

I’m often uneasy about my body. I’ve had plenty of uncomfortable experiences around people misunderstanding me based on what they think my body means. As a female-presenting person I’ve dealt with a typical amount of sexism. I’ve had people try to tell me who I am and what I can and can’t do because I happen to have breasts, and I’m not a fan. 

Of late it’s become increasingly apparent to me how head-led I am. How much I crave the ways in which I can connect with other people, mind to mind. I’m excited about ideas, and I’m a highly emotional entity, and the people who do best with me are the ones who see further than the accident of how I look.