Gender Thoughts - part 1

Who I am: thoughts on who am I and how I got there, maybe . . . possibly.

Hello all,

Before Christmas on the radio I heard ‘The Little Drummer Boy’, the David Bowie and Bing Crosby version and it sparked a memory that I then proceeded to regale my fellow car passengers with. We were just on the way to Aldi for our weekly shop, it was in need of doing as R has had Covid (again) and we’ve been isolating. We think he caught it off me as I had had a horrible head cold the previous week, but thought it was just that, a simple head cold. It ran its course a bit weirdly, but run it it did, I just never thought to test. R had more of a cough. I haven’t gotten rid of the Covid cough since my first infection eighteen months ago, so I suggested he test thinking it would come back negative. It didn’t. Anyways, I digress. So we are on the way to Aldi to do some shopping and on the way I hear the song I sang 50+ years ago in my Reception year at my first Christmas school production.

As mere Reception children we were only meant to sing the ‘rum pum pum’ section. However, I already knew all the words so I sang them all. I remember the performance very vividly. We changed into our black slip on plimsoles, no idea why, and in pairs, me with my partner Harvey, my friend who lived in the same street as me, lined up and were led into the huge assembly hall. I remember the sleek white floor, with its stuck on lines. Green lines, red lines, white lines. The gym equipment pushed against the wall, the apparatus, wooden rungs resting against ropes against the breeze block wall. The hall where we listened to ‘Music with Movement’ broadcast over the crackly old radio that was situated high up in the corner. We filed in and Harvey and I slid on our knees into our places sat at the front, the long white socks we wore helped greatly but my knees were skinned from the friction; all the other classes filled in the space behind us. Harvey and I were soon bored. We wriggled and squirmed, poked each other and giggled. We earned the glare of our teacher.

On an aside I don’t remember much about my reception class teacher, just snatches. She didn’t believe I could read before I went to school and started me back at the beginning and so I refused to read. She made me start again in maths too, but at least I was able to write so I just made up extra stuff, mainly sums, to do. I got told off for that. We sat at certain tables for certain subjects. One day I came back in from playtime and she accused me of deliberately weeing on the chair I was about to sit in for Maths. I told her I hadn’t, that I didn’t sit there for English, the lesson before break time, and got quite cross about it. Why would I wee on a chair I was about to sit on? When would I have done it? Why didn’t she believe me? She got angry with me and holding my upper arm quite tight had a good old feel of my bottom to see if she could feel my wet knickers. They were dry. I remember feeling completely aggrieved and telling my mother that evening. She complained to the school, again. (The first time was about my reading, where she was told I would just have to fit in and start the reading scheme from the beginning. Peter and Jane 1a. I was offended, as I had already finished the whole scene at home and already moved onto chapter books. I was a hyperlexic child.)

Undeterred, Harvey and I continued to misbehave. I saw no need to be cognisant of a lady who wasn’t nice to me and didn’t believe what I said. We saw the head mistress approaching. She was an older lady, at least older to us, grey haired, tall and thin, dressing in brown tweed skirt and jacket. She was stern. But, she also had a moustache and chin hairs, and these made me and Harvey giggle. We thought she was a man in disguise who kidnapped children and made them her, his, slaves. As she walked up and down the ranks of children, her brown, sensible, leather shoes clicking on the floor, as she issued orders and instructions about how the production should proceed, we decided to lie on the floor and see if we could look up her skirt to determine her sex. What we expected to see up there Lordy knows. It would be dark, she would definitely be wearing pants of some ilk, and genitalia would NOT be on view even if the light reached that far. We decided to lie down and wait for her to pass over the top of us as she paced the length of the hall. We didn’t get far into our plan. Once laid down we were noticed immediately and the head mistress herself soon stood in front of us. Her sturdy, imposing shoes and thick stockinged shins right in front of our eyes.

“Sit up.'“ Her voice loud and booming. “Sit up. Stop lolling. Arms folded, legs crossed.”

Her voice insisted we comply. We did, immediately there was no doubt about it, and then later sang with great gusto to make up for our misdemeanour. It was a good concert in the end, though I always wished I’d been one of the upper junior (Yr 6) boys who were allowed to bash the drum. I mean drum! I don’t think my parents attended. They rarely did as it was quite difficult, my father worked full time as a teacher in a secondary school; Physics was his thing. He had the only car. My mother looked after my younger brother. I don’t remember her being there, but maybe she was.

Anyways, it got me thinking about gender. We assumed she wasn’t a woman, even though she dressed like one, because of a few menopausal chin and upper lip hairs. We assumed we could look at genitals and know what a person was. I mean, we were 5 year olds and brought up in the very early 1970s, you couldn’t really blame us. Kids nowadays know a lot more, even 5 year old can be taught it is right to ask a person’s pronouns and not to assume.

I struggle slightly with the concept of my gender. My sexuality is set. I’m straight, but I very much appreciate a beautiful female body and/or brain but I don’t feel sexual attraction towards them. I can look at female lips and think they might be wonderful to kiss, but I don’t want sex with them. It’s just not there; not me. But my gender? I was born a female, and raised as a female. I was a ‘tom-boy’. I always thought of myself as a girl, I was told I was a girl, and I accepted it, but I didn’t particularly like it, but I also didn’t dislike it. It was just what it was. And so then that brings me back to wondering, if I know I’m straight and like men, then I must be a woman irrespective of genitalia or how I feel, mustn’t I? But what if I don’t care about my gender, if I don’t feel feminine or female? If I accept what I was assigned because it’s easier to do so. Because actually I really don’t care. What does that make me? And does it really matter, especially does it really matter to me? Maybe I will work that out over the course of a couple of posts.

I wanted to be a boy but not in a way that I thought my gender would ever change, or that I thought I was born into the wrong body. I just wanted to have a better life, to do boy things, be allowed to wear trousers whenever I wanted rather than forced into skirts and dresses. I dislike flowery prints, lace, girly stuff. I wanted the life that boys had. I wanted to feel important, to have my opinions listened too, to not be dismissed for being just a girl. I could see the inequality, even in my own family that portended to be all for equality and feminism. My younger brother was the golden child that could do no wrong, who was always believed, who got stuff I wanted, stuff that was gendered.

For Christmas when I was about 5 and my brother 3 my father spent a very long time hand building our presents. He disappeared into the shed in the garden for hours at a time and we weren’t allowed to disturb him. He was meticulous and the quality of his work amazing. Come Christmas morning two huge presents sat under the tree and I watched with eager eyes as my brother unwrapped his, a beautiful airport with viewing area, runway, planes and buses. Bright white with green edging, a grey runway, a parking area on the top of the building with a sloped road for the cars to reach the top. White lines dashed the road indicating the up and down routes. Eagerly I ripped the paper off mine. A dolls house, with furniture and tiny people. Papered, carpeted, a staircase up the middle joining the floors, four big rooms all beautifully decorated. I can remember the feeling of intense disappointment even now. I still, 50 years later feel ungrateful, even more so as I now understand the amount of work that went into it. Both buildings had working lights, and my father excitedly showed us both how to work them. But it was a dolls’ house. A girls’ toy. A toy where I could practise being a mummy and wife. Where was the excitement in that?

Apparently, and I don’t remember this at all but my Mother later told me, I took all the smaller pieces of furniture and stamped on them. My grandmother had scoured second hand shops and markets and sourced those pieces of furniture with great personal endeavour. My parents were furious with me and I was punished.

That dolls house sat in my bedroom for years, an object that I was forced to find space for on the limited shelving in my bedroom. Wasted space as far as I was concerned. Occasionally I swung open the front of the house and switched the lights on and off, rearranged the remaining furniture a small amount, placed the family of dolls on their beds, drew the curtains closed, and shut the front for another year or so. My favourite piece of furniture in that wooden house was a small bookcase with removable books, just small bits of balsa wood with paper covers, all in shades of red that I took out and arranged in shade order, before replacing them. I disappointed my father by not playing with it more often, whereas my brother played with his airport almost daily for a long time. Looking back what surprises me is how passionate my father could be about gender equality, especially in his job, but that it didn’t always feed through into the home.

Around the same time, we took a family trip to France, and visited Paris. We visited a few shops to buy ‘us kids’ a present to remember the trip by. I remember the narrow old street we walked down as my father sought out a particular antique shop he had been told about. Full of the most incredible antiques and curios, it felt golden, warm and encompassing; I loved it. We were allowed to wander around and ‘look but not touch’, and there were SO many wonderful items to behold. Shelf upon shelf of treasures, some behind locked glass, some items stacked upon each other, some hanging from the ceiling. The isles were narrow and crowded. It was fantastic. My brother was encouraged to choose an item and settled on an ancient rapier (blunted). It was amazing. The domed crossguard was delicately etched and the decorative effect beautiful. It sat gracefully in the hand even for a 5 year old, finely balanced, and I loved it. I fully expected to be allowed to choose my own after my brother, there was a whole old whiskey barrel full of them waiting for me; even though he had first choice despite me being the eldest. I had my eye on a couple, my brother’s choice was the best but there were others. I was once again disappointed. I wasn’t to have a sword. It cost a lot that sword and I was told my family couldn’t afford two. On the recommendation of the shopkeeper we hied it off to another shop nearby that sold dolls. DOLLS! I was bought a small plastic doll in traditional Breton costume that sat within a clear plastic cylinder. I was told that what made her special was that her eyes opened and closed. She wasn’t for playing with though, just looking at. A pointless piece of tat. Even then, back in the early 70s, as a young child, I could tell tourist tat from the real thing. I cried. My father threatened that I would have nothing and I would have been happy at that, the injustice was already done. My mother insisted I got it to be fair. It sat on my shelf alongside that dolls house for a couple of years until one day annoyed at yet another inequality injustice I removed her from the box, something I wasn’t allowed to do, took a pencil and poked those bloody eyes out. Back in the box she went and she sat there again until discovered by my mother whereupon I feigned surprise at its damage and the doll was removed.

I think I disappointed with my lack of femininity; I was always dirty, my hair always tangled and full of twigs and leaves. My mother often asked if Id been dragged through a hedge backwards. Well no, I pushed through myself, deliberately, forwards. I climbed tress, I jumped brooks, built dens and dams, I had been stung so many times by nettles that I became immune and felt nothing. I was bronzed and lithe. This was back in the 70s when parents tended to kick their kids outside to play after breakfast and didn’t see them again until they were hungry. We weren’t expected to be inside much. I wore wellies, trousers, and jumpers. Not for me short skirts, dresses or frilly tops. If inside I played with Lego or Meccano, or when slightly older Airfix kits. I was definitely not girly. When outside I often pretended I was a boy named either Jack or Casey who was 15 and oh so grown up. I didn’t feel I was a boy, I just wanted to be one.

By the time puberty came along I felt betrayed by my body. Breasts appeared and my brother teased me mercilessly about them, which seriously didn’t help. I wanted to rip them off and go back to being flat chested. What use were they? I was sure I wasn’t going to have kids, so they needed to go away. Sadly we don’t get a choice and I sit here now with my ample boobage still wishing I could unzip them and put them in storage. Secondary school uniform was torture. As a girl I was required to wear a skirt. Unlike most of my friends who wore their skirts rolled up at the waist exposing maximum leg and who unbuttoned their blouses as low as possible, I draped this traitorous body in voluminous long skirts and baggy jumpers stretched to their limit. I looked like a stray. Gone was my straight up and down body and it developed curves, hips, breasts, etc. My hair was even more wayward and I had no idea how to calm to curls or tame the frizz. I eschewed makeup and had mildly bad facial acne which I constantly picked at unconsciously. Needless to say I wasn’t popular, couldn’t keep friends, and was bullied. I watched girls being sexually harassed on a daily basis, I may not have looked feminine but I avoided those encounters. I survived.

The need to be assigned a gender is pervasive in our society. The newish trend of holding a gender revel party before a child is even born now is seen as the norm. Pink for girl, blue for boy. Before the child is even born gifts are gendered, colours assigned, expectations set. Lego which was once marketed as a toy for all now splits its base with different colours for the different genders. This article great explores the concept (Gender neutral lego). The Lego I played with was a mixture of primary colours and was advertised as a toy for everyone to play with. I followed instructions and experimented with brick patterns for houses.

I read early fantasy books, Alan Garner was one of my earliest introductions, along with Ursula Le Guin, J. R. R. Tolkien, and Dianna Wynne Jones. None of my classmates, especially the girls, had heard to them. They mainly read horse books, The Silver Brumby by Elyse Mitchell; The Black Stallion by Walter Farley; and many horse books by Christine Pullein-Thompson. I read them too, most interested in the descriptions of horses and their colours, in the fabulous scenery, the feel of nature and wildness in my hands, oozing from the thin paper, transported from the ink to my head. It was encouraged as a typical acceptable subjects for a girl to read about. And I rode, so apart from the fact that I wished I was galloping across Gondor, staff in hand, cloak flowing behind me, it was a very normal girlish activity.

And with that perfect image of me in your head I will stop (Ian McKellan but with my face) This has been a very long discourse so far, and I think I need to end it here and work on part 2. My brain is struggling to workout where I am going with this in the long term. But as I’m using this Substack to just write and to keep writing, and not just give up, I think I need to publish anyway and worry about form and style later.

If you want to follow along this disjointed journey in for part 2 press the subscribe button below