Hi! Lesbians?

[Bookworm]

Hi @"baristajedi" welcome back!   

Yes, there's not many women on the forum these days. There were a few back in the day. Pix is still around though, she popped on to say hi the other week.

[andy]

 @"baristajedi"

[Pix]

Hey, lesbian here.

I was called a "boi" among lesbians (different from gay male bois), though I didn't identify as such, when I was younger and always a tomboy.  I'm mellowing a bit on that, but then I'm 37.  (See, now what woman reveals her age then?   )  

I'm quite comfortable in the non-binary zone, but at the same time never felt a need to label myself as such.  I'm just me.  My grandmother never married and I spent plenty of formative years with her.  The extended family prizes self-reliance, even for females (and people who think I'm assertive and even fiery for a female might be shocked--and frightened--of some of the other women in my family, maybe later I'll share of how I actually got into a physical fight with my homophobic aunt as it's pretty funny in retrospect, and she started it).  And my actual parents were so dysfunctional that I'm sure they could've been prosecuted for neglect at the very least, but it continued to make me more self-reliant. 

When I was 6 I was shunned by girls, I believe primarily (but not exclusively) because parents wanted to "protect" their children from being exposed to my family.  They were less protective of boys and I ended up mixing with them a lot that no doubt contributed heavily to my tomboy behavior for the rest of my life. When I was 10 a girl from a similarly messed up family moved one street over and we became friends, and through her I started hanging with girls again, but ever since I've always had one foot in girl world and the other in boy world.  Some of those times could be amusing to share as well, but it's kinda beside the point and I'm just not up to sharing right now (mainly just don't have the energy for it at the moment). 

'Course getting into trouble if I ripped or stained more expensive girl clothes only encouraged me to wear "boy" clothes, and in the Texas heat (especially riding in vehicles without air conditioning) meant I preferred my hair short (though I generally had to have someone cut my hair for me).  Ironically, I was close to my older male cousin who, as a teen, grew his hair long and used hair products like plenty of girls (though he was very macho otherwise) whereas I didn't, which further blurred the boundaries. 

My new best friend and I saw The Crow at age 11 and then we snuck in to see it again (making it my first R-rated movie).  I related to Sarah in it a lot for understandable reasons (and could go on a paragraph or two on a brief summary of why, and why I was inspired to imitate her in some ways but not in others, but I'll skip) and I really, really wanted a skateboard, which I saw as a girl thing, not a boy thing since the only movie I'd seen a kid, a girl, use one was The Crow.  (And back in Texas of the early 90s, it WAS a boy's thing.)  What was heart warming over this is that even though Granny tried girl me up a lot, she bought me my own skateboard as a 14th birthday present (and I can count how many birthday parties I got as a kid on one hand).  

I'd later mix with the "thrashers" my age as the only girl ('course these days there are girls only classes for would-be skateboarders, but times have changed).  I also made friends in the scifi/fantasy section of the library where I met others, mostly boys, into it and I became close to them as well.  Plenty would ask me about girls they were trying to date but I was just as mystified for the most part.   Of course this wasn't easy and there were misunderstandings with both boys and with other girls that are...less amusing.  (Later I'd get put into an Adaptive Behavior Class which there were only 2 other girls in an otherwise male classroom of nearly 20, and as a bonus, most of us shared a common background.  That school program sucked, but it was one of the times I didn't feel like an outsider, and I got along equally well with boys and girls in class.) 

I know the media I chose helped.  Generally speaking, a lot of scifi and fantasy (even Isaac Asimov pretty much beat second wave feminism to the punch, at least the rare time he featured a female protagonist or character), and being blissfully unaware of the "bury your gays/lesbians" trope, I was lucky enough to find plenty where that didn't happen.  (In one, over half the characters died with the lesbian couple--which the author was casual about, not trying to make a social point--were among the few who survived as well as necessary for the good guys to win and without being sexualized, and I had no idea how radical that was...yet.  I still have that book somewhere, let me check...it's Changeling by Chris Kubasik, first published in 1992, I think I read it when I was newly 16, making it 1998, possibly 99 if early in the new year after.) 

I liked game books (that is you make choices for the characters, which could be male or female even if for a general audience, it just wasn't considered important), and got excited when some came out aimed at female readers...until I saw it was focused on romance, and even put my characters in such situations that she sits and cries when a knight comes to offer aid and you have to choose if the character trusts him or not (and if not, she gets shunted to the Bad Boy archetype that she transforms with the power of her love as he saves her).  I quickly went back to the general game books and left the girl game books behind. 

I share this because I think it contributed to why I wasn't traditionally feminine, though at the same time I didn't feel male.  I just felt like me.  And I'm sure many (including haters) would say that makes me non-binary. 

I did face some trauma while living out on the streets as a kid, and many people I was exposed to could make me scared to be a girl.  Whether it was feminists telling me female = victimhood (not that all do that) or like the supposedly enlightened punks who saw me chase off 3 skinheads (to be fair, I think they ran more from the crowd surging forward than from me, but I still held my own for about a full minute before that happened, each one a male bigger than me) went to mocking them for being beaten by a girl than me for holding them off (whereas when a small guy even beat up or chased off a much bigger guy was given respect, I was not), plus the misogynists (and also like the guy who tried to physically kidnap me for a pimp in broad daylight), and unfortunate brushes with more standard media, I did subconsciously absorb that being female put me in danger, and so for awhile I emphasized my "masculine side" for want of a better word. 

I didn't realize it until my early 20s when a stud lesbian wanted me to become more feminine and I realized I was afraid.  I'd work through it, and even found being somewhat femme fun (for awhile), though if my stud girlfriend thought it would make me more passive or spineless then she learned the error of her ways.     And as it helped me in business I kept it up since then, when working, though to me it's no more who I am than the church clothes people wear when they go to church (and then become different people for the rest of the week).

If I were to label myself today, it would be "gender neutral."  For the most part, I do agree with those that say gender is a social construct regardless of the biology (and I think how the standards change generation to generation as well as society to society are proof enough of that, such as when cheerleading was a man's sport and blue was for girls representing the purity of Mary and pink was for boys showing a "healthy flush" as just one of many examples that I could go onto essay mode if I were to let myself), and I encourage men and women be themselves, rather than who they're expected to be because of their gender.  Of course if they LIKE living up to the standards (even if it's of another gender) then by all means, have fun (as long as it's not deliberately putting others down). 

Not too long ago I was a volunteer at a homeless shelter.  I learned one of the guys described me as really cool "but if she puts on the strap-on, run." (I didn't tell him that would probably turn a lot of guys on.   )  I share that because it made me (and others) laugh, and because I think he, like others, sensed what many consider "male energy" in me. 

I'd share my thoughts on what my Taoist friend thinks of it all, but at this point I'm tried of typing, and may be boring you.

But if you want to know more about me, I summed up the last few years here at [url=https://gayspeak.com/Thread-Catch-me-up-...ill?page=2]page 2 on Catch Me Up if you will[/url].