My Gender Workbook

As a kid, I had an alter ego. When my sister and the-boy-from-across-the-street and I would play what ever make-believe game we had come up with for the day, I was always John the Mechanic. To clarify: I was not a lady mechanic with a masculine-sounding name, I was a dude who rode around in a car (actually a bicycle, but I swear it almost resembled the Duke's General Lee) and fixed shit. I also spent this time trying to pee standing up outdoors, cause that's what guys did, and guys were cool. The Duke boys, Michael Knight, and MacGyver were my heroes. All I knew about girls was that they played with Barbies, and I wanted no part of that.

Growing up in the eighties you'd think that I could have found at least one super heroine to latch onto. I'm pretty sure I saw an episode Wonder Woman at some point and Princess Leah was cool, right? Right. It's just that they were pretty and sexualized and nothing at all I could imagine being. Their male counterparts were all strong and stoic, visionaries who got the job done.

I was in third grade when I learned how to be a girl. My best friend from second grade (also a tomboy) had moved away over the summer, and I started to spend time with two neighborhood girls who were best friends and really popular. This would be the first and only time that I too could call myself part of that desirable and oh-so-elusive group. Being scrutinized in a way I never had before, I started to pick up the necessary skills to survive in that odd zoo. I learned to talk on the phone, how to have sleepovers, how to fold and pass notes, how to be mean, how to talk about boys, and that Michael Jackson is cool and Alvin and the Chipmunks are not. I never really felt like I was any good at these (girl)things though, and it came as no surprise when in fourth grade my social status had placed me back into the invisible space I had occupied before. I was different though. I knew that boys were no longer my allies or comrades in arms; they were supposed to be boyfriends and having one was important.

Over the next few years I would learn that the easiest way to be a girl was to support a boy. From 7th grade on I was a girlfriend...to someone. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't victimized, I wasn't any more pathetic than any other high-school kid "in love", and I mostly liked the guys I dated. I just learned how to play a role, and I played it really well. So well, that after college, after sleeping with women, making girl friends, feminism, three cities, a few long-term adult relationships, Buffy, self-defense and martial arts classes, I still have a tiny part of me that is defined by my relationship to a man (that's a very abstract and archetypal man, so don't go thinking I'm talking about any one man in particular). I wish I could explain that better. It's like how I imagine it must be to have the same job for twenty years and then retire. You're no longer going to work, but you still see yourself as the person who got up everyday to do that particular job. It may take years to see yourself as the person who now gets up and gardens instead.

I recently have had a number of dreams in which I am a man. There is nothing remarkable about these dreams, I just know when I wake up that in the dream I was myself, doing dream stuff as a dude. I want to think that's weird, but it's not; it just is. Despite my early gender-bending experiments I've come to really like being a woman. I've spent thirty years in this body, and I know how it works and I don't want it to change. So I think these dreams (and my new obsession with the uber-masculine Malcolm Reynolds) point toward some unexpected and much appreciated personal growth.

I think I'm starting to fully realize that those things I have admired and loved in my heroes are qualities I can find within myself.