[ SECRET POST #2471 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2471 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 034 secrets from Secret Submission Post #353.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

Re: When did gender become a thing for you?

[diet_poison]

This is a question that's really important and interesting to me.

As a kid I went through both a "girly" phase and a "tomboy" phase. I think I'm really lucky that nobody questioned the latter, even though my appearance and behavior made most strangers I met think I was male or be unsure. That's long over, but to this day I still don't wear makeup (don't want to spend resources on it and I like my face the way it is) and I didn't get my ears pierced until about 3 years ago at age 20.

I'm a Christian but grew up in a couple pretty liberal church communities (way more liberal than my family actually haha). Now I'm in a nondenominational community that's pretty average in terms of Christian social beliefs, and I find myself missing the old communities I was in. I've had some pretty heated arguments, for example, about gender. It's a lot of people telling me that men and women are Equal But Fundamentally Different, and then listing a bunch of traits I don't have or the exclusion of traits I do have. Also hearing (both in that community and also online spaces that aren't religiously oriented) that women are supposed to want certain things in a man that are not what I want. It's more complicated, but that's the basic jist of it.

It's started to make me uncomfortable and angry, like, are you saying I'm not really a woman? Or that I'm sinning by not being the kind of woman you say I should be? Or that if I somehow force myself to be an entirely different personality type that I'll somehow be happier? Seeing bullshit like the shit I read today from crazy, back-asswards MRAs and their ilk about how women just want to be dominated, should be insecure, are valued only for beauty/fertility, etc. (and yes all of those things were said unironically and directly on these blogs) just makes it worse.

I'm a pretty dominant person. I'm opinionated and blunt; I like being in control of situations; I tend to take the lead socially among groups of mutual friends; I want to be respected, and I can't imagine ever, EVER being happy in a relationship where I was expected to defer, be submissive, and accept a traditional role. I'd be miserable. All the time. I have a bunch of traditionally feminine traits too, though not all of them. Basically: I don't fit in a box. At all.

Relationships are a big part of it. I'm straight, and I'm attracted to men who are NOT dominant and I can't stand men who are loud or cocky or arrogant or even physically come across as being a Man's Man or Good Old Boy. I remember being really happy in my first relationship (of 3+ years) being the one who made the decisions a little more often (largely because he wasn't a very decisive person), was the leader in social settings, and was just generally waaay more assertive than he was. Oh, and he was physically smaller than me too (taller but weighed a bit less, and while I could stand to lose 20 or 30 pounds now, I was at a healthier weight then). And I still think he's the most beautiful person I've known (yeah I'm a sentimental dumbass lol), and I always thought he was very masculine. Not traditionally masculine, but that meant jack all to me.

tl;dr I'm female, always have been, always will be, and I'm tired of people telling me I'm Doing It Wrong.

Sorry for the long comment. This is actually the abridged version, but this rant would go on forever if I let it...I have Feelings and Opinions, obviously -.-