Today, for the second time this month, a stranger got confused about my gender, and left me in a position in which I had to consciously think about the fact that I’m supposed to have a gender, and what that means as a result. It’s an uncomfortable subject to confront.
My relationship with my gender is full of contradictions, and the incident today felt like a prime example. I was walking out of a public bathroom, just as a woman was walking in. When she saw me she stopped, and confusion flickered across her face. She said “oh”, and began to turn around. I made a show of stepping back and gesturing to let her past, thinking I was merely in her way. She did a bit of a double-take, then saw the sign on the door – a stick man and a triangle-skirted woman superimposed on top of each other, indicating that the bathroom was mixed. She seemed to breathe a sigh of relief, and muttered “so it’s unisex”, before strolling on in. A few seconds later I realized she’d mistaken me for a guy. I immediately felt irritated, but I couldn’t figure out why.
I like being androgynous, and I like it when my gender is ambiguous to people. Dressing and presenting myself in a gender-neutral way (with a bit of variation) makes me feel comfortable in my own skin in a way that being “girly” never could. If there’s one thing I hate it’s being viewed in an overtly gendered way, something that’s basically a fact of life for everyone society views as a woman. I’m sure I can speak for the majority of us when I say I’ve always been deeply uncomfortable with being treated as female first and a person second, whether that means being subjected to ideas of chivalry that so easily slip into condescension, disrespect or even aggression; or problematic assumptions about the kind of things I’m interested in and what my priorities are. The former comes almost exclusively from men and is obviously extremely harmful, while the latter actually comes from both men and women and is mostly just ignorant, but still harmful in its own way.
Of course, there is absolutely nothing wrong with being feminine, and femininity itself is in no way responsible for the harmful behaviour it so often incurs in this warped patriarchal world. It’s not the fault of feminine individuals when they are victims of sexism and prejudice: it’s entirely the fault of the people who perpetrate that sexism and prejudice, and those people need to be held accountable for it. I am not trying to devalue or demonise femininity in any way. Society already does that more than enough. All I’m saying is that femininity in its conventional sense is not something I identify with. It’s just not me, and so it’s generally a relief when people don’t automatically view me as a girl, because that’s not how I view myself.
But this is actually the core of the issue, and I eventually realized that it’s why I was annoyed in the public bathroom today – “feminine” is almost universally synonymous with “female.” It was much easier for the woman to use the fact of the bathroom being unisex (which, incidentally, is not the same as gender-neutral because it still upholds a gender binary) to “solve” the problem of my being there. She instinctively judged that this tallish, short-haired person in a plain black jacket and jeans, with no visible curves, makeup or accessories (i.e me) had to be a man. It didn’t occur to her that I might be a woman who just wasn’t presenting in an overly feminine way; much less that I could have some other non-binary gender identity. More to the point, it didn’t occur to her that my gender should have been in no way relevant to her trip to the toilet.
Thinking back, there have been a lot of incidences in the past when my androgyny, which should have only positive implications, has clashed with other people’s problematic perceptions of it. This often leaves me feeling conflicted and insecure about something that is an integral part of who I am. Dating is an area in which this tends to come to the fore. On the one hand, I’ve internalised the idea that heterosexual men are only attracted to hyper-feminine women. Hurtful and ignorant comments from boys at school, combined with two decades of seeing the mass media construct a narrow and unrealistic standard of femininity which all women are supposed to subscribe to, has not exactly left me feeling particularly desirable as I slouch around in oversized hoodies and boxer shorts or display my hairy armpits to the world.
I remember clearly the moment when I was 17 and I decided to stop altering my appearance in ways I didn’t feel comfortable with. Rejecting the external standard of femininity that had dominated my life, after years of trying to be something I was not, felt liberating. But by choosing to stop pandering to what I thought men wanted, I also unconsciously resigned myself to the idea that no man would ever find me attractive again. It didn’t matter that I knew rationally that men don’t all want the same thing, or that they are also perfectly capable of rejecting gender norms. In my head I was no longer a pretty girl, and therefore I found it very difficult to imagine that any straight dude could be attracted to me. I still haven’t gotten past this.
On the other hand, when guys do fancy me, I worry that it’s because they are fetishizing me as a girl who looks like a boy, and that they’re using me as a vehicle for their own pretensions of being sexually subversive. This isn’t as implausible as it sounds – it really does happen, and it makes me temperamentally suspicious as well as insecure. The thing is, I am not a girl who looks like a boy or wants to be a boy, and I don’t want my partner to get off to the idea of me being a boy. I don’t identity with femininity, but I don’t identify with masculinity either (although I do admire female masculinity as a queer stylisation). If gender is a spectrum, I am somewhere in the middle. That is to say, I am not primarily masculine or feminine; I’m just me. To be seen as anything else makes me almost as uncomfortable as being told that girls with short hair are ugly, or some such bullshit.
Despite these pitfalls, being androgynous definitely has its advantages too. A lot of men treat me as invisible because I don’t conform to their idea of what a woman should be, and although I sometimes find this insulting, I like to remind myself that these are not the kind of men I’d want to associate with anyway. Being androgynous simply means I don’t have to waste my time getting to know men who are only interested in talking to women they see as sexually relevant. Likewise, women who ostracise me or treat me with hostility because I don’t relate to their femininity are not the kind of friends I’d ever want (although thankfully I haven’t really experienced this since I left school). There’s also the incidental, rather troubling advantage of not getting harassed in clubs or catcalled on the street anything like as much as my more feminine friends.
I also still have all the privileges of being cisgender. I’m perfectly comfortable with she/her pronouns, and I’ll never have to come out to family, friends or colleagues as anything other than the gender I was assigned at birth. I may have mildly irritating experiences in public bathrooms and airport security lines, but I am in no way equating this with what trans people have to go through in similar situations. I have never feared for my safety because of my androgyny, and I don’t have to witness the endemic murder and abuse of people like me in the way that trans women do. There are no oppressive laws targeted at me. Being a white, middle class, mostly straight student protects me from most forms of prejudice and discrimination. Even my own skinny body seems to be on my side when it comes to not having femininity pushed onto me. I know I have it easy, and it’s important to remember that not everybody does.
Being androgynous comes with its own unique territory to navigate, but I wouldn’t change it for the world. It’s taken me a long time to realize that if being a gendered individual doesn’t feel right, then I don’t have to be that. And if other people try to force that onto me, screw those people. Femininity exists on an opt-in, opt-out basis, and I feel more comfortable opting out. So if you see me in a public bathroom, don’t assume that there’s been a mistake. Where I’m concerned, everything is exactly as it should be.
Pictured above, counter-clockwise: Samira Wiley in ‘Orange Is The New Black’, Millie Bobby Brown in ‘Stranger Things’, Ellen Page, Hartbeat, ‘Kino’s Journey‘.
The Truant Pen 