My Gender Bothers Me, or Yes, I'm Messed Up.

I read an excellent post (to which I can sadly not link, as I do not recall whose blog it was, nor what series of magical links took me there) from a woman who wondered if she were a 'bad feminist' because she hated all things womanly, all things 'girly'.

This problem I know well.

My mother is bi-polar and also has borderline personality disorder just to make life a bit more interesting than the normal mood swings associated with bi-polar. My father is a rather stoic, unemotional man, save for the few fits of rage brought on by malfunctioning household appliances, bad drivers, and "oh, c'mon!" ref calls during the Bears' football games. He was also the rational, logical counter to my mother's extremely creative, hair-brained, overly emotional personality. So, as a child, I sought to fully emulate my father to the exclusion of everything 'girly.' Girly, to me, meant taking everything personally, worrying waaayyy too much about one's appearance, and worrying waaayyy too little about others. It meant my mother. And I did not want to be anything like her.

As a child, I had little ability to consciously sift through "womanly" traits and pick the ones which were not repulsive--rather, everything female was terrifying to me. So, I played with the boys, became morbidly depressed when forced to wear dresses, steeled myself to physical pain, and excelled in math and science. I was also horrified when it turned out that I would not be a waify tomboy in appearance, but would, rather, have (ARGH!) curves.

But now, I'm an adult female, and while I am proud that I am better than most men on the pool table, and certainly at taking a derivative or inverting a matrix, I find myself consistently repressing emotions in an attempt to avoid becoming the image of my hysterical mother, or any hysterical female, for that matter. So, when someone elicits feelings from me, I feel self-conscious and angry at myself for feeling an emotion. My inner monologue goes something like this:

"Don't be such a friggin' girl about it!"

But I am one. And that shouldn't be terrifying, but it still is. I still cringe at the thought of showing my emotions to others, or admitting when I love someone, or telling others that they've hurt me. And because I'm angry at feeling something, I usually lash out at the person because they've inadvertently forced perceived feminity--perceived weakness--onto me.

And anger is manly, so anger is fine.

So, as I try to sort through my feelings about femininty and emotions, I feel like I'm wandering around in a friggin' forrest of confusion. But since I haven't yet determined if confusion is feminine or masculine, I guess I'm okay here for now.