Name change.

I'm changing my name!  Yep!  I shall henceforth be known as Cliff Pervocracy.

Details:
a) I'm still going primarily by "Holly" in real life, but I'll answer to "Cliff."
b) My pronoun is still "she."
c) No big deal if you call me "Holly" from time to time. I realize this is an abrupt change, that not everybody reads every post, and I won't be upset or anything.  I expect to be "Holly/Cliff" for a while and that's okay.


Reasons:
a) Anonymity.  "Holly Pervocracy" is too close to my real name (my real name is "Hailey Bervocracy") and I've had some privacy scares recently.  A new name will help maintain the division between my real life and my work/school/family life.

b) Gender, part 1: Holly is a rather unambiguously feminine name, and I am a rather ambiguously feminine person.  I'm more comfortable with a masculine/neutral name.

c) Gender, part 2: I'm curious if my treatment on the Internet will change what I appear male to the casual viewer.  I've heard a lot of stories about women being engaged in discussion when they posted as "X" but treated with condescension or cynicism when they posted as "LadyX," and I'm curious if I'll have experiences mirroring that.

d) Maybe it'll stop skeevy dudes from thinking this blog is a personal ad.  NO I DO NOT WISH TO SEE YOUR PENIS SIR NO THANK YOU.

e) I like the idea of a chosen name.  In my despotic utopian fantasies, everyone would have to change their name (or consciously and explicitly choose to keep their birth name) upon reaching adulthood.  (Or better yet, every ten years.  This would result in a lot of middle-schoolers named Rocketship Dinosaur McExplosion and that's awesome.)  It's such a big and important part of your identity, it seems odd to just go with whatever you were handed.

Especially with what you were handed as a baby, when your parents couldn't know the sort of person you'd grow up to be.  Certain names fit certain sorts of people, and it's hard to predict that fit from a newborn.  "Cliff" is a name that's tough but dorky, macho-outdoorsy until you remember it's short for "Clifford," and that seems to fit me far better than "Holly."



f) The big one: I want to.

I've been having issues with wanting things lately.  Something in my brain, part from my family and part from society and maybe part just me, tells me that simply wanting a thing isn't a good enough reason to do it.  It tells me that wanting is inherently selfish and unbecoming, that wants must always be placed below all other considerations.  I can do a thing because it's healthy, because it's feminist, because it makes other people happy, because it's educational.  I can't do it just because I want to.

(This has not made me a beautifully selfless and giving person.  More "neurotic and passive.")

Honoring our own desires is not something we're taught to do.  It's assumed that kids are balls of cheerfully self-indulgent id already, that all you have to be taught is how not to eat everything and hump everything and name yourself Rocketship.  The lesson on "actually, indulging yourself in safe and considerate ways is not just okay but necessary" never really comes.

So it's something I'm learning as an adult.  I'm learning that eating delicious things makes me healthier than diet-and-shameful-binge cycles.  I'm learning that asking for sex doesn't always get me laid but it has a much better track record than not asking for sex.  I'm learning that when I have the time and money I'm allowed to go out and do silly things.  (Did you know Boston has a trampoline park?!)  I'm learning that well-considered self-indulgence is not half as annoying or gross or immature as allowing yourself to turn into a big bitter ball of frustrated desires.

I've wanted for months to start using this new name, and my "Wanting Isn't Good Enough" brain kept digging up objections.  It'll be inconvenient for people!  It'll be confusing!  It'd be okay to change to a masculine name if you were trans but since you're not then you're not allowed! It's frivolous!  It's self-indulgent.

Damn skippy it's self-indulgent.  It brings me happiness and does nothing else for the world, and that's okay, because bringing me happiness is something real and important.

So call me Cliff.  It'll make me happy. :)

The Praises of Phases.

(Programming note: I live, as many of you are aware, in the Boston suburbs. It's starting to get a trifle stormy up here. If my power or cable are knocked out or my home is damaged, there may be some interruption in your Pervocracy service. As opposed to the usual "I slept late and then I totally had to, like, do a thing" interruptions.)

I've been through some goofy phases in my life. Various things I have been, and am not now:
-Animal rights advocate
-Hardcore liberal
-Hardcore libertarian
-Anime fan
-Fanfic reader and writer
-Horror fiction writer
-Indie filmmaking nerd
-Shapeshifter roleplayer (don't judge me!)
-Observant Jew
-Obnoxiously condescending atheist
-Eclectic pagan (okay, still sort of this)
-Definitely gay
-Definitely straight

Sometimes I worry that things I see as fundamental parts of my identity now--kinkiness and masculinity, in particular, but really all of it--are just phases. I was kinkier a year ago, and girlier. (Then again, I can look at this entry from four years ago and see that this isn't my first time feeling uncomfortable with the trappings of girlness.) But sometimes I worry that even thinking about these things is just my youthful exploration. What if all of my current identity--gender and sexuality and beliefs--turns out to be some goofy phase? What if, ten years from now, I've "grown out" of all this and I'm totally "normal"?

Then I will have had a great ten years. And I'll know so much, too! The awesome thing about going through a lot of phases is that even if the convictions don't stick with you, the knowledge does, so I'm a non-fan who can tell you all about OTPs and Mary Sues and plot bunnies, a non-observant Jew who can tell you which bugs are kosher and what the prayer is for going to the bathroom (you thank God that none of your holes are closed up), and a non-filmmaker who knows what to do if the best boy sends you to the grip truck to get a box of F-stops (punch him). If I'd had one cohesive identity from birth to death, I don't think that my knowledge and experience of the world would be as broad as it is right now.

So "just a phase" shouldn't be used to discount things that were genuine parts of your life and self but didn't happen to be permanent. You were real then and you're real now, no matter how different; and you'll be real tomorrow no matter what changes. I'm embarrassed of some of my past identities, but it's an "I was pretty annoying, huh?" embarrassed, not an "I wasn't expressing the real me" embarrassed. It was the real me.

Is all this just a passing phase? Maybe it is. That's okay. It's real right now.

Pink just isn't my color.

A question I've been mulling over: Is the reason feminine things make me uncomfortable because I'm unfeminine, or because feminine things suck?

Makeup, for a forinstance. Am I annoyed by it because I don't like the way it makes me look and feel? Or is it a legitimate problem that women are expected to spend significant amounts of time and money masking their faces, often with an underlying message that their real face isn't good enough?

Do I like wearing men's clothes because they're generally more comfortable, practical, and dignified--or because I like dressing up in men's clothes?

Did I hate pink things and dolls as a child because boy's toys were more interesting and more empowering, or because I wanted to play like a boy?

Did I idolize (and dress up as) male superheroes and action heroes because they got all the best parts, or because they were hypermasculine?

Am I bothered by being called a "girl" because it's infantilizing, or because I don't want to be a girl?

I don't like being treated like a woman. But sometimes I don't see how anyone would like being treated like a woman, the way we treat women.



I think that it's some from column A, some from column B. Which is why I'm a feminist, and also, unrelatedly, unfeminine. I haven't yet decided on a label for my unfemininity--for right now, let's just go with "unfeminine woman."

(I also realize that my inability to distinguish has ticked off some happily-feminine people, probably even in this very post, and I'm sorry about that.)

Or... here are some things that I really haven't confessed to anyone, even Rowdy, but I guess I'll just have out with them. I've been, at home or out when I wouldn't run into anyone I know, binding my chest and packing. Just to see what it was like? And what it was like was... kinda gleeful. It made me happy. Some of that was just "I'm doing a different and unusual thing!" happiness, which I certainly do get. I don't know if it all was.

I know what my name would have been, if I were born male. I really like it.

Sometimes I pee standing up.

I don't know what this means, if anything. I'm really, really hesitant to say "hey everybody, I'm a guy now!", for about a million reasons. I don't feel strongly, certainly male. Although I'd love it if my overall body shape was more masculine--and in fact I lift weights partly for this reason--I'm fairly happy with my vagina. I've had some masculine tendencies for a long time, but this hardcore gender uncertainty is a relatively recent thing for me. And I sort of feel like I'd be trivializing trans people by taking myself super seriously when this is more like "a thing I've been fucking around with lately" than "a thing I have to do."

I keep wishing there was some kind of test you could take to determine your gender, but then I keep thinking that if I need a test and don't just know, it must not be that big a deal to me. (Also, I found several such tests, and they were all like "do you like pink and flowers, or do you like blue and trucks?" See the first half of this post...)

So... "unfeminine woman." At least for now. Holly, she, her, and retaining the ability to thunder at Cosmo, "Why, I'm a woman, and I never..."

I'm a woman, and uncomfortable with a lot of the crap that comes with that, and some of that's me, and some of that's the crap.




I've gotten through this whole post without really facing the question of what "feminine" or "woman" even mean, but that's just because I don't have any freaking idea.

Why I want to fuck my boyfriend up the ass.

Because he enthusiastically consents to it, yeah yeah, and because it's a morally neutral act that carries no shame, sure sure, of course. But these are only reasons not to not do it. Let's talk about why I want to do it.

I want to do it because I love my boyfriend's butt. I love my boyfriend, much more--but I love his butt in a completely separate way. Frankly, my relationship with my boyfriend and his butt is nearly polyamory. Rowdy has an exceptional butt, a truly world-class ass, round and strong and smooth, and it's a joy just to touch. To outright fuck it, to have that amazing ass tightening beneath me and that smooth skin pressing against my groin, would satisfy a primal lust for a thing of beauty.

I want to do it because it fucks around with gender. I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but I'm not very comfortable with being a girl? I love the feeling of having a cock. Obviously I can't feel it exactly (although with the base right up against my clit, quite a bit of sensation gets through), but I love having my cock stroked and sucked. And fucked. It's the thrill of sex mixed with the thrill of violating gender roles, and that's a lot of thrill right there. (I'd have to ask my boyfriend to get his perspective on this, but I don't think of it as making him more feminine. I want to look down and watch a man get fucked.)

I want to do it because it could hurt him. Not that I would! Psychologically, I can't. I've tried to hit him several times (with his agreement and encouragement), and the relevant Batman sound effect is not "bam" but "piff." I can't bring myself to do it. Nor could I bring myself to cause him pain by fucking his ass, but the fact that I could is powerful. It means that I have to be conscious of myself during sex, be responsible rather than impulsive in my actions, and be highly, highly sensitive to his reactions. I'm usually pretty uninhibited, so that's a new way for me to experience sex. It's also sexy as hell to have someone at my mercy because I am inside his body.

I want to do it because it turns me the fuck on for reasons I can't even elaborate here because I don't understand them myself. I want to do it because thinking about it gets me wet and squirming. I want to do it because I've had dreams about it. I want to do it because every time I've played with a man's ass is a crystal clear and thrilling memory in my mind. I want to do it because it's fucking hot and hotness is a thing unto itself.

I want to do it because umf. Yeah.

Not the destination that matters.

In all this kerfuffling about my gender identity, I've come to realize one thing for certain. And it's not what gender I am.

It's that I am fucking lucky, goddamn privileged, to be surrounded by people who are comfortable with my uncertainty and willing to accept whatever decision I do make. I don't have a boss telling me "the dress code specifies females must wear makeup." I don't live with anyone who will kick me out if I start dressing or acting funny. I don't live in a country where my gender expression is regulated by law.

Whether I'm butch, transmasculine, genderqueer, genderfluid, tomboy, boi, androgynous, genderless, or just a different sort of cis woman--I'm glad to have found a subculture and a group of friends where these are all recognized identities. I'm glad that I can tell my boyfriend "I don't feel like I'm really a woman" and he can answer with "hm, I know what you mean, gender's a funny thing" and not "of course you are" or "then get out." I'm glad I can post about this on my blog and get a wide variety of thoughtful responses and not a "lol wat, ur gay."

Having the freedom to question and change my role in sex and society, and to do that in an atmosphere without one right answer (or even two), is one of the biggest and best freedoms I know. I just wish more people had it.

What I really want to say to the public, to the blogosphere, to whoever reads this, with all my hemming and hawing about my gender is not what gender I am. What I really want to say is that it's okay to hem and haw about your gender, or about the way you express that gender. There's a lot of possibilities--including never knowing for sure--and not one of them makes you less of a person.

I woke up as a man today. Maybe you didn't.

My last post has gotten pretty heavily criticized. And I think the critics are right.

I think the problem I have is that, for me, femininity is something artificial, something added on. Obviously not everyone experiences it this way.

I, personally, feel masculine when I'm not trying and feminine only when dolled up. I, personally, feel like femininity is uncomfortable and inconvenient. I, personally, feel like femininity is something that requires me to make effort and make changes, and masculinity is just how I am when I wake up.

I, personally, am not everyone.

I, personally, really may not be a woman.

I woke up as a man today.

This morning at 7 AM, the alarm went off, I woke up, and I was a man.

Oh, no penis or anything like that. All the effects of that second X chromosome were in place as usual. But as I wiped the sleep-crusties out of my eyes and kissed Rowdy good morning, I was presenting as a man. I wasn't wearing makeup. My hair wasn't blow-dried nor ironed. I hadn't shaved my legs or armpits. Still foggy with sleep, I wasn't talking in the high lady-voice I can put on, but in my normal much deeper and much less sing-songy tones. I scratched and farted like a man. I even--being still sticky from sweat from the current heat wave--smelled like a man.

Butt-ass naked and half-asleep, in a completely "default" state for a human being, I was about as masculine as a person can get. Sure, I was a shower, some deodorant, and some clothing away from performing tidy masculinity--but that's beside the point. A man rolling disheveled out of bed is in no way feminine.

I suppose a nightie and girlier mannerisms would've helped a little, but there's no way to roll out of bed fully feminine. Femininity is work! After you get up, you gotta put your lady on, or you'll look like a man all day! I haven't done it in a while, but it takes me about eight products and sixty minutes to be fully not a man.



This is a major problem I have with gender. On one hand, I want to value masculinity and femininity equally--every form of gender expression is equally good, right? On the other hand, I often feel like certain aspects of femininity are impositions or hindrances. High heels and men's shoes may be equally valid fashion statements; but if I've gotta run somewhere (or, in my case, walk), I know which one I'd choose. It seems to me that a lot of expressions of femininity are inconvenient, labor and money intensive, or submissive. The fashions and mannerisms expected of women are generally more sexualizing and less useful than the ones expected of men.

As I sometimes do, I'm ending this post still unresolved. I don't want to be one of those feminists--the ones who tell women that if they wear makeup, they're supporting the patriarchy, so their individual choices are invalid. But I can't shake the feeling that some individual choices are a lot more--inconvenient,if nothing else--than others, and those are the ones women are traditionally encouraged to make.

In a world where many women have grown up believing that they shouldn't leave the house without putting their face on, how do I reconcile "it's sexist that women are expected to put on makeup" with "it's a woman's choice if she wants to put on makeup"?



EDIT: This post offended a lot of people. See this for my amendment/apology, and this for my last word (for today) on gender identity.

Two Silly Ideas.

Two ideas have been floating around in my head for a few months now, and I'm not sure if either of them is good. I'll probably do the first and I'm probably not taking the second seriously enough.

1. The Girl In The Closet.
I want Rowdy (or someone else I trust both as a person and a BDSM top) to shut me in a walk-in closet for 24 hours. Maybe a whole weekend. I'd get a jug of water (maybe a little food if it's a whole weekend) and reasonable allowances for potty breaks, and that's it.

Why: Partly as a kink thing, but mostly as a mental-clearing thing. In a weird way it almost feels like something I need, a reboot for the brain, a forced mediation. I'm a person consumed by my distractions--sex! blogs! food! electronics! hobbies! TvTropes!--and while I treasure most of those distractions, I also want to know what it's like to live without any distractions at all. It's something I would do independently, but I don't think I can force myself. So I'll get someone to force me.

Why not: It could just be a giant waste of time. I could become sufficiently physically or mentally uncomfortable that I only think about the discomfort. I'm also a little afraid that I'll beg out early and regret it, but I would not agree to an arrangement that didn't give me some way to safeword out.



2. Renouncing My Gender.
Maybe I should have said "the person in the closet." Because I'm not sure I'm a woman. I've got a female body and that doesn't bother me, but there's nothing else that convinces me I'm a woman. I'm thinking of officially declaring this and living (in kink/feminist circles, at least) as officially genderless.

Why: Not only am I not sure I'm a woman, I'm not even sure what evidence could convince me. I don't think I'm a man; I think I'm genderless, or other-gendered, or something. (Sometimes I don't understand how anybody knows what their gender is, but I take people's word that they do.) My gender is "person," and beyond that, I don't know how to define it. I don't feel manly or womanly in the least--I don't even know what "manly" or "womanly" are supposed to feel like.

Why not: I feel like I'm still taking this too lightly. I know that I'll still have to be a "woman" with family/work/school/etc. anyway. I'm only talking about myself here, but I feel weird announcing a "non-standard" gender, like I'm trying too hard to be "special" or something, like that time when I was a teenager and I typed in British spellings for a year. I don't want to alienate potential partners (or current/former partners!) who are attracted to women.

I also worry that maybe I'm overthinking it, maybe being comfortable in a female body is all it means to be a woman, and you don't have to feel like a super womanly lady girl person to be a woman.

I also worry that I'll totally lose my feminist "I'm a woman, and I think that..." cred.

For the time being, I'm still a woman. I'm sort of a "woman, but what the fuck is a woman anyway?", but I'm a woman. Right now. I'll keep you posted.

What about teh bathroomz?

This Sunday, I'll be volunteering in support of the Massachusetts Transgender Equal Rights Bill, which would add gender identity and expression to the state civil rights laws which prohibit employment/housing/education discrimination and establish penalties for hate crimes.

One of the most common objections raised to this sort of legislation is also sort of silly--the public bathroom issue. People are concerned that it'll be easier for people to get into the "wrong" bathroom and make people uncomfortable or perv on them or even assault them. Which I think is ridiculous on its face; it contains the unspoken assumption that trans people are dangerous, and that bathroom segregation is a crucial safety measure. Plus, there's been no epidemic of people dressing up as cis members of the other gender to sneak into bathrooms. (I think guys have actually caught on that we just pee in there. All we do is squat and pee and ideally wash our hands. It is not exciting.)

But this raises a major objection to bathroom paranoia: what about teh cis people?

Because, let's face it, there are some women assigned as women and living as women who, by fashion choices and/or genetics, look awfully masculine. (Ditto feminine men.) If we decide that bathrooms have to be used according to assigned sex, how are these people going to prove they belong? How does a stranger, on casual observation of a clothed person, know their assigned sex? Sure, the spectre of cis people having to somehow prove their gender in order to take a leak is as ludicrous as it is offensive... but so is the spectre of evil trans people hiding in bathrooms waiting to strike.

Personally, I'd like all bathrooms to be unisex, and I think they'd quickly become no more dangerous or awkward than a unisex reading room or unisex elevator. But failing that, we should at least not enforce the bathroom thing. Not only is letting people use whatever bathroom they want a reasonable accommodation for trans people, not only is it a reasonable accommodation for many cis people, but it also helps guarantee the safety of both cis and trans people. Because I have a suspicion that far more people have been assaulted or threatened in the context of bathroom enforcement than have ever been menaced by cross-dressed bathroom lurkers.

I've been fascinated lately by the slipperiness of gender, and this is just another example of how impossible it is to enforce rules based on the idea that gender is not only binary and biological--but binary, biological, and obvious.

Short hair.

I cut off all but a couple inches of my hair. It's way comfier and easier to maintain now.

But I didn't realize, when I did it, how much I would be running head-on into a minefield of gender and sexual anxieties. It wasn't a deliberate act of gender fuckery; I went in for a woman's haircut and showed the hairdresser a picture of a woman.

Within a day, I was getting called "he" and "sir."

Which I don't mind, when it's an honest mistake. If someone wants to believe I'm a man and treat me in good faith like a man, that's fine. In fact, if I were a little more passable I'd almost be curious how far it would go. What I do mind is when someone recognizes me as a woman, but as a woman who's presenting wrong, and gets either nasty or excessively "so, since you have short hair, tell me about your genitals" intrusive about it.

And it gets to me. I wish I were a Gender Warrior. I wish I had the strength to answer every "are you a boy or a girl?" with "really, would it affect you?" But I have an ego, I have sensitive spots about being called ugly and unsexy, and frankly, I have me some tender widdle feewings. At the same time as I want to be a Gender Warrior, I also want to be attractive and be liked.

It scares me that my first thought was "I could wear makeup and dresses and that would even it out!" Because it would. But it wouldn't be a matter of making myself happier, or even really prettier; it would be a matter of getting people off my back. It would be letting strangers--and the very meanest and dumbest strangers at that--tell me how to get dressed in the morning.

And my second thought is outright fear that, with something as simple and silly as a haircut, I might have bought myself a ticket into some really dangerous bigotry. I look like a lesbian or a trans man, and although I'm not, good luck explaining that to the sort of people who can't be decent to lesbians and trans men in public. (Then again, it's kind of a grossly privileged thing to say "don't call me that, I'm not a lesbian!" instead of "don't call me that, you shouldn't call anyone that.")

And my third thought is "oh no, it's going to be much harder to get laid now!" Rowdy likes androgyny, but it seems like most straight men like femininity, and I do feel a bit bummed that I might've blown my chances with them. Even some of the guys I've dated before liked me to be feminine, and in a weird way I almost feel like I'm betraying them--making them retroactively gay or something.

But I have all these nervous little thoughts, and then I look in the mirror, and all I can think is that I look good to me. I look like I'd like to look. Whatever the risks of being unfeminine, there's a great reward in feeling comfortable in my own skin. If my appearance were a mask, something that existed to show to others, it would be a failure at its task; but as a face, something that is also a part of my self, it has value.

I like my short hair. It scares me, but it also challenges me. It doesn't allow me to hide behind "don't worry, I may be an ally to weirdos, but I'm normal" quite as easily. And I can get a goddamn comb through it. I'm going to keep it for a bit.



Now, what really challenges my self-identity is the fact that with all the dyed parts cut out, I'm blonde now. I'm a goddamn natural blonde. This, I don't think I can integrate into my self-image.

Genderless.

I know I'm late to the party when it comes to commenting on the whole "child raised without a gender" kerfuffle, but I wanted to say this:

I can't think of many things crueler than going up to a child and saying:

"Hi, little Storm! Welcome to the world! It's a big exciting place! But there are a few rules. Some of the fun things you see, you won't be allowed to do, even though other kids do them, because of the way you were born. You're able to do these things, and maybe you'll want to, but you're not allowed, because everyone says so. And if you do those things you're not allowed to do, other kids will make fun of you and grown-ups will think there's something wrong with you and when you get a little older you might even get beat up! In fact, you're not even allowed to want to do these things!

Because of how you were born, little Storm, there are clothes you can't wear, clubs you can't join, ways you can't talk, toys you can't play with, sports you can't play, names you can't use, haircuts you can't get, and entire ways of being and acting and expressing yourself will be closed off to you! For no particular reason!

Have fun out there, and remember, don't do the things half the other kids are having fun doing, or you'll get in big trouble!"

Now that's permanently damaging.

DSMocking!

May 2013! Blue cover, maybe! No famous actress or model on the cover because that would be really weird! The major resource codifying the diagnosis of psychiatric disorders! Yes, folks, it's the proposed draft of the DSM-V! This being the Pervocracy, let's look at the sexy parts!



In my opinion, the entire Paraphilias section is coming at things wrong by listing out specific fetishes. I don't think it matters whether you're an exhibitionist or a masochist; what matters is the problems it causes. In my perfect world, all the specific paraphilias would be out of the DSM and replaced with:

Sexual Adjustment Disorder: A person has difficulty accepting their fetish, orientation, or form of sexual expression (often but not always exacerbated by the attitudes of their friends, family, and community). They experience significant distress or impairment not from the fact that they have the fetish, but from the fact that they haven't healthfully integrated the fetish into their identity.

Sexually Abusive Disorder: A person has a persistent desire to sexually coerce, exploit, or abuse others--the specific form of the coercion is not as significant as the fact that it is coercion.

I realize that the DSM is only intended for diagnosis and not treatment, but diagnosing someone as "your problem is that you have Fetishistic Disorder" suggests that the treatment is to get rid of the fetish, rather than to help them express the fetish in healthy ways.

The particular shame of the Paraphilias section is Transvestic Disorder.
A. Over a period of at least six months, recurrent and intense sexual arousal from cross‑dressing, as manifested by fantasies, urges, or behaviors.
B. The person has clinically significant distress or impairment in important areas of functioning.
The concept that there are "right" and "wrong" ways for people to dress according to gender is bad enough without codifying it into the medical literature.

It's also sexist, in that I wear "men's" clothing all the time, but I'm unlikely to be considered a transvestite because it's only weird when men do it. Which is sexism against men in limiting their clothing options; and sexism against women in saying that our clothes are so weird that you'd have to have some kind of funky fetish to want to wear them.

I realize that the language includes the "significant distress or impairment" loophole that almost everything in the DSM does, but this loophole isn't a "get out of bad idea free" card. For example, many people are significantly distressed or impaired by being gay, but we don't list homosexuality as a disorder with the "but don't worry, that's only if it's hurting you!" caveat, because the sexuality itself isn't a disorder. It's a matter of, as I described above, adjustment, and should be diagnosed as such.

I also wonder--and this isn't an accusation but a question--how much the "sufferers" of each condition have been included in the construction of the DSM-V. I get the impression that much of it is written from the perspective of "these are some patients that, I, a totally normal person who never does anything weird at all, have objectively observed," verus how much input was received from people willing to say "as someone with a thorough education in psychology who also happens to like wearing frilly panties, these are my experiences."



And then we have the minefield that is Gender Dysphoria. Unfortunately, this can't simply be tossed out with "being trans isn't a disorder!", because currently a diagnosis is often necessary for trans people to get drugs or surgery or alter legal documents listing their sex. And the wording has certainly improved from when it was "Gender Identity Disorder."--referring to "assigned gender" rather than "his or her sex," and being considerably more specific of what the manifestations of gender dysphoria might be.

Nonetheless, it still calls being transgendered a disorder. It still veers close to the "identifying the wrong part as the problem" issue present in the paraphilias section. And it also necessarily buys into gender roles and the concept of two fixed genders.

Being cis myself and not having a full view of either the legal or the psychological implications of a Gender Dysphoria diagnosis, I don't have specific alterations to propose, but I do want to point out that it's problematic.

Reading through this section, I couldn't help noticing that I would have handily qualified for a diagnosis of Gender Dysphoria in Children. Which is weird, because I'm cis; I'm somewhat masculine and rather uncomfortable with the entire idea of gender as a package deal, but ultimately I'm okay being called a lady and having lady parts. But I played "male" roles extensively as a child, to the point of asking to be called by various male names (including Batman, okay, but woe betide anyone trying to make me be dumb ol' Batgirl) and refusing to play with any toys or games I considered "girly." How much of this was true gender dysphoria, how much was internalizing the sexism of "boys are tougher and awesomer, so I want to be a boy!", how much was reaction to the fact that due to sexism a lot of boy games were awesomer, and how much was simple preference independent from gender? Shit, I still don't know.

I do know that "treating" me, either to make me into a proper girl or to transition me to a boy, would probably not have been a good course of action compared to simply allowing me to grow up as a masculine girl. I'm not saying this is the case for all non-gender-conforming kids, but it illustrates the difficulties in a diagnosis that hinges on accepting traditional gender roles.

The good news is that the people writing the DSM-V are accepting public comment, and they are still very actively in the process of revising the diagnoses. If you disagree with the way they're defining identities as disorders, you can do more than shake your fist at the sky; you can up and tell them. I'm going to.

Prove it.

When I was 9 or so, I was on the schoolbus with a female friend when an older boy came and sat next to us. "You're not really girls," he said. "You look like boys to me. You look just like boys." He wasn't joking around. He was accusatory.

"We're girls!" we said, confused and slightly hurt.

"Oh yeah?" he said. "Prove it. You know how." He glanced at our crotches.

We went back and forth a few times with "But you know we're girls!" and "Nope. Only one way to prove it." My friend, embarrassed and flustered, flashed him her labia. I didn't, but I also didn't stop her or tell anyone. He went away.



It scares me how much of people's adult lives are spent reenacting this same scene. Simply identifying myself as a woman doesn't ever seem to make me woman enough. If I don't look woman and act woman and talk woman, I might accidentally be a man, and that would be terrible.

This is what the intellectual-feminism types call "performing gender." It's when you put on makeup not because you like to wear makeup, not even because you think the makeup makes you look attractive, but because you don't want to look like a man.

And at its heart, it's subject to a horrible circularity of argument. If a woman has visible facial hair, saying "she doesn't look like a woman" ought to be a blatant oxymoron--you're looking at a woman right now, so I'd say that's what a woman looks like! For a woman to change her appearance for the sole purpose of looking "more like a woman" ought to be as silly as dressing your dog up as a dog.

This is an equal-opportunity form of sexism, too--how many times a day are men implored to act like "real men"? With the implication being that if they screw it up, they'll be... fake men? Women? Gay? Probably gay. From how they dress to how they walk, the desire to not be gay dictates way too much of the social behaviors of millions of guys who weren't even attracted to men in the first place.

(Digression: I think this constant pressure to broadcast "I'M A STRAIGHT MAN REALLY I AM" is responsible for, among many other things, street harassment. Most guys who hoot at women in the street aren't doing it because they think it'll make the woman drop to her knees in adoration and arousal; they're doing it to prove to their buddies--or themselves--that they're a straight manly man.)

Never mind "this is what a feminist looks like"--now I want a t-shirt that says "this is what a woman looks like."

Gray coveralls.

One of the more high-level charges frequently brought against feminism is "you want men and women to be the same!" The intended image, I think, is a society of people with shaved heads in gray coveralls addressing each other cooly as "comrade" and regarding sexual passion as a primitive relict.

Well... yeah. I do want men and women to be the same. But that doesn't mean I want people to be the same. If men and women were the same, there would still be tall and short people, shy and flamboyant people, cold and nurturing people, people who want to do it on the first date and people who're waiting for a ring, people who work as nurses and people who work as pilots, people who wear short skirts in the winter and people who wear long sweaters in the summer, people in pink and blue and red and black and purple. They just wouldn't have it decided for them randomly at birth.

Vive la difference? Vive la six and a half billion differences.

Gender smörgåsbord.

I think I've come up with a metaphor that clarifies my view of gender.

Imagine a big table with tons of dishes laid out. Some of them are physical traits, some of them are psychological. There's everything here from "big biceps" to "played with dolls as a child." And there are all traits here, not just things you'd associate with gender--this is a table of traits, not of mixed up boy things and girl things. "Brown hair" and "likes classical music" are on there too.

Go ahead, load up your plate. Load it with anything.

And the really important thing here is that the dishes are not paired off. "Chest hair" and "breasts" are not a dichotomy. You can get one, both, or neither. Ditto "watches pro wrestling" and "sews prom dresses." Certainly some dishes are popularly eaten together--"penis" and "testicles" is a perennial favorite combo, and "penis" and "likes racecars" do seem to have some mysterious association--but they're not locked together. It's possible and acceptable to have one and not the other. Then again, anything that's possible is acceptable. And any combination is possible.

Gender is a prix fixe menu. Pick one of two and eat what the chef serves you. And if what he decides to serve you is a shit sandwich, well--depending where you are and which course the shit sandwich is, the consequences range from trivial to life-threatening if you don't eat it. If you get some or most of your courses off the other menu, the fact that it's "the other menu" is something everyone's explicitly aware of.

But when you eat off the smörgåsbord, it's not really about mixing up gender any more; it's just about mixing up traits. And at that point, I feel that the entire concept of "gender," to even refer to the existence of the prix fixe menus, no longer serves any purpose. To see someone's combination of traits and go "well, yeah, but you're basically a woman then, right?" is to miss the entire point.



Ultimately, though, my cute metaphor doesn't really matter. Because whether you say "wow, it's exactly like that" or you scratch your chin and say "hmm, I see things differently," or even if you say "I'm offended by this because it seems dismissive of certain gender identity issues," you're not the intended audience. (Also if you're some sort of smartass that goes "what, 'has a gender identity' isn't a dish?") The intended audience is the people who are not reading, the people who would go "what is this gay shit" if they did read: the people who will treat people like shit if they feel they're committing a gender violation. Whether the shit consists of tiny backhands like "it's cool how you're a girl but you do guy things" or crappy pseudo-tolerances like "I don't care what you do in your private life, but you have to act like a normal person at work" or outright harassment or attack... it's shitty.

And I don't understand it. I've tried to dissect the thinking behind gender enforcement and I always get stuck. I don't think there is a thinking, at least in the sense of a set of principles that you could lay out logically and defend. I think it's more like a cognitive association. "That person looks funny" may be a shorthand for "that person is making me think too hard. I should be able to label someone in one swoop and know everything about them." There's also a heaping helping of homophobia--if someone isn't a clear gender, then maybe they can't be clearly heterosexual, and OH NO WE CAN'T HAVE THAT.

And there's just no explaining to a certain kind of person that we don't even require genetic heirs for inheritance these days, you can write your will out to pretty much who ever you want, plus most of us don't need to have more children so there will be more help on the farm, so the whole homophobia thing is seriously obselete. Go get a bug up your ass about the essential rightness and God-ordained fact of primogeniture or something.

Gender?

I seriously don't know that I'm a woman anymore. I mean, I don't think I'm a man. And I don't really have it in me to tell other people not to be their gender. But...

I just don't know what I do in an average day that's womanly. I'm female, but that doesn't necessarily imply "woman." I wear dresses and skirts and such sometimes, but so do plenty of guys. I'm occasionally sort of frivolous, occasionally obsessed by "cuteness", and occasionally sort of shyly passive, but so are a lot of guys. And then again sometimes I love to wear cargo pants and stompy-boots and act assertive and aggressive and horny and use power tools and watch "Mythbusters." But so do a lot of girls.

So how the hell do I know I'm a woman? I sure as hell don't feel any deep-down "I just know it, I just do" sensations. And stepping onto dangerous ground--how do we know anyone is a woman?

Being genderless is often conflated with being sexless, which I decidedly (for either meaning of "sex") am not. But what then? What if I don't have a gender? How will we know what jobs I'm qualified for? How will we know who's supposed to lug 'em around if I have kids? Oh God, how will we know if I'm hot?

The last is somewhat legit--if gender doesn't mean anything, then why does orientation mean anything? And doesn't this kind of conflict with trans (and cis, for that matter) people who do seem to have a "I just know it" about their own gender? I totally cannot answer those questions.

I'm still going by "Holly." I'm still going by "she." Fuck, I'm still going by "woman" for everyday non-philosophical use. Those are mostly out of momentum and a desire to avoid getting treated weird. I'm still standing up for the rights of women, if only because I sure as hell can't stop the world at large from seeing me as one. Female rights, at any rate.

Sometimes I think--and see two paragraphs above for why I'm not going to push this, but I do think it--that the whole idea of having two personality types assigned to two biological roles, or even not assigned, is just a complete crock. People is. Beyond biology, I don't know that it's meaningful or in anyway useful to divide things down into two terribly ill-defined yet painfully stereotyped groups. People just is.

Zero-sum gender.

Rowdy mentioned to a coworker that I have more power tools than he does. "Wow," the coworker said, "doesn't that kinda challenge your masculinity?"

In one sentence, so many layers!
1) Power tools are masculine. Owning power tools indicates, or perhaps causes, masculinity.
2) One would not expect a woman to do anything masculine.
3) If a woman is masculine, this makes her partner less masculine.
4) If a man isn't masculine, that's terrible.

All of which is particularly unfortunate considering that power tools are so useful. I didn't buy an electric drill to feel like I had a big swingin' cock (when I wanted that, I bought a big swingin' cock); I bought it because I was assembling furniture for my old apartment. Is it feminine to sleep on the floor?

But the interesting part for me is step 3. It's the idea that there's a limited amount of each gender role in a relationship, so if one partner is more masculine, the other must be more feminine. You see this a lot in the way certain people approach homosexuality--the idea that every lesbian relationship is butch/femme, or every gay relationship top/bottom. "Which one of you is the 'man'?" I think it even underlies more outright homophobia--how can you have a marriage or raise a child if you don't have people playing two distinct roles?

It's a bizarre extension of this thinking to be in a heterosexual relationship, but violate the unwritten rules just a tiny bit, and get "which one of you is the 'man'?"

Cock.

Man I love strapping on a cock. It's not that I am or want to be a guy, just that it's nice to have the option from time to time. There's something fundamentally pleasing and satisfying, even comforting, about having a nice chunky piece of sexual equipment filling up my pants.

(I've always felt like this comic describes a fun way to be.)

It's not about dominance either, by the way. Having a cock does not make you automatically the top, as quite a few boys I know could tell you. I have had my cock ridden by a guy who was holding me down.

And I love having a boyfriend who is nearly as enthused as I am about the whole subject. He has a little hesitancy about the physical implications of playing with my cock, which is understandable, but not about the "oh no, if I enjoy having sex with a girl, but it's the wrong kind of sex, then that's like gay sex, which might make me gay, which would be terrible."

Then again, I'm amazed at the things Rowdy actually enjoys that in other relationships I would hope to "get away with" at best. Sexual perversion, of course, but also my enduring lack of competence or enthusiasm in the realm of femininity. Finding out that he actually thinks I look good with no makeup in cargo pants, rather than just putting up with it when I'm too "lazy" to get into drag proper feminine attire, is such a "you can have chocolate every day" feeling. Also, farting: not a dealbreaker. (Don't laugh; "girls don't fart" is a fucking issue. God knows how many belly cramps we've suffered holding it in over the years.)

Last night Rowdy and I were watching porn and cuddling and he was alternating between stroking my cock and playing with my pussy, and all I could think was, shit, what the hell deodorant should I be wearing?