i really also think about how much boys are taught ways to perform masculinity & how it is legitimised through tangible things like building a career etc but with women i find that from a young age our identity, behaviours, & thoughts are always spoken about in relation to other people/things ā gender roles within the family, how weāre perceived by men, our friendships with other women, our relationships with material things etc etc ā and this shows up in the labels that women are often given too! so and so is someoneās daughter, girlfriend, wife, mother etc etc. i envy the freedom of boyhood so much, the freedom to just be (this is not to discount the toxicity of traditional masculinity, i just think that boys are still afforded more āplayā and therefore have more opportunities to develop their sense of self).
maybe i am also biased because of how iāve grown up & whatnot but i never really understood what it meant to quote unquote be a woman or perform femininity. i only saw this modelled within my nurturing friendships with women as iāve gotten older but when i was younger, in church it was always āok well donāt do this or that because x y z will happen to men if you doā or within my extended family it was often āare you seeing anyone? when are you having kidsā. damn what happened to asking about how iām doing or what my dreams are!!!
long rant sorry !! but thatās my long winded way of saying āi feel youā haha
Jun 28, 2024
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šŖ
thank you for being vulnerable. but yeah, as a cis woman, boyhood always made me wistful in a way that i couldnāt really place. i am a woman and am comfy with that. personally, girlhood and womanhood are an important part of my artistic vision and practice as that experience has its own lessons and experiences that i wouldnāt trade for the world. however, i think the (what seemed to me when i was little) lack of societal pressure from the helicopter of culture for boys was something i was for sure envious of. as i grew up, i realized men and boys have plenty of their own societal pressures to reject or succumb to. i have two younger brothers and the novelty of boyhood sort of wore off for me as i watch them grow up. but thereās still a piece of young me that longs for the potential of earnestness in young male friendships and adventure. i think it would also be cool to walk around at night with headphones on in a lot of places.
Jun 28, 2024
š»
and I feel lucky about that; it made me who I am today!
But as an adult woman I can definitely relate and I imagine what it would be like to feel that sense of freedom from being perceived as a woman and the societal expectations that come with that. Sylvia Plath said it best in her journals:
āYes, my consuming desire is to mingle with road crews, sailors and soldiers, barroom regularsāto be a part of a scene, anonymous, listening, recordingāall this is spoiled by the fact that I am a girl, a female always supposedly in danger of assault and battery. My consuming interest in men and their lives is often misconstrued as a desire to seduce them, or as an invitation to intimacy. Yes, God, I want to talk to everybody as deeply as I can. I want to be able to sleep in an open field, to travel west, to walk freely at night...ā
I do think though that itās fruitless to fixate on these things, imagining the grass to be greener on the other side and essentially wishing you could have grown up and lived as another person, because 1 itās not possible 2 the life you imagine has so many downsides to it too that you canāt even imagine not having experienced itself and 3 if you were a different person then the You you are now wouldnāt exist, and that would be a shame! I also think men are having a tough time now and many of them are probably just as neurotic, inhibited, and fearful as women.
Obviously people are free to reject these notions and live life as whoever they want, and I respect and appreciate those who choose to do this, but Iām not interested in doing that for myself. Instead, I challenge the boundaries of what it means to be a woman in the ways that I can, which feels like the right choice for me!
Jun 28, 2024
ā§ļø
Prescriptive gender is a prison. Rather than gender being a form of self-expression, gender is treated as a pass/fail test for how well you can conform to cultural expectations.
Since I was young, I remember feeling a great deal of pressure to conform to these expectations around what āmenā are meant to be. You like sports, cars, womanizing, aggression, and not having feelings. I felt so distant from this ideal. I was sensitive and shy, and I preferred spending my time being creative in some way
For a long time, I felt like I was failing at ābeing a man.ā In many ways I was! Because I didnāt need toĀ bea man. All I needed to be was myself.
Itās taken me a long time to separate myself from prescriptive gender, sharpening in on which aspects of masculine energy I identify with and which I donāt. Iām not done yet. Maybe I will never fully be. The self continues to evolve over time, and I suspect aspects of my gender will too.
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