Losing Access to Sisterhood: Tomboys, Masculinity, and the Unmaking of a Girl

[ismnotwasm]

(I thought this a good alternative viewpoint to Sea's excellent thread on feminized men)

When I woke up to International Women’s Day celebrations, the first thing on my mind wasn’t politics, but the personal connections I didn’t know I would forfeit the minute I stopped wearing skirts, traded in my long hair for a frohawk, and fell in love with a woman.

I used to have a very close-knit circle of female friends; we defended each other from perverts at crowded bars, cried on each other’s shoulders, told each other we were beautiful whenever the world made us doubt that we were, and gave each other relationship advice, regardless of the gender of the person we loved.

We were sisters. It didn’t matter if we were tomboys or not. We were sisters. It didn’t matter that some of us wore skirts, and some of us wore shorts. We were sisters. That was all that mattered. Right?

Wrong. The second my gender presentation transitioned from straight girl femininity to queer masculine “inbetweener,” I lost most of my sisters. I’m a different kind of woman now. And all of a sudden women I used to call my sisters don’t know how to interact with me. I’m still a woman, but the reactions to my expression of womanhood have changed, drastically.

This is the kind of experience that informs my work as a media activist. I’m always thinking about which perspectives are missing from political conversations and representations in pop culture: who is being excluded? why? how can our political movements become more self-reflective so that we can identify who among us is being left behind, and become stronger advocates for the kind of progress that includes them. Incidentally, in the fight for women’s equality, the people most frequently excluded from consideration and celebration, often enough look just like me.

http://www.spectraspeaks.com/2013/03/womensdaytomboys-masculinity-and-sisterhood/

(Edit: I'm in the middle of a long airport layover *sigh*)

[Helen Reddy]

1. Thank you for sharing this wonderful article!

Don't forget to take that machete out of your shoe, those Homeland Security guys are ill humored.

Have a non eventful flight.

[ismnotwasm]

2. We aren't big fans

Of TSA. We have several unfortunate stories. This time, outbound from Seattle, I had my hair in a twist and they checked my hair. Two bobby pins held it up. Two.

Almost back home, three hours away.

[niyad]

3. k and r and thank you for sharing this with us

[MadrasT]

4. This was interesting to me as the writer seems to share traits with me.

But I can't say I feel like I have lost my "sisters".

I transitioned from "straight girl femininity" to neutral-bordering-on-masculine (because when I did straight girl femininity I felt like I was wearing costumes and playing a role).

The women I know seem to take me as I come.

The backlash I got was more from men who knew me "before" and "after'. Many of them were very attentive and kind before, and now they treat me with a layer of contempt. As if... how dare I shun femininity and deprive them of... what, another pretty girl to enjoy?

Fucking pisses me the fuck off, yes it does.

I figure if the reason they were so nice to me before was short skirts, high heels and make-up (and I am no longer interesting to them without those things) then fuck 'em, they weren't the kind of "friends" I really want the have around.

[redqueen]

5. It's possible that it's more of an issue in the black community.

I know that in the Hispanic community, acceptance of homosexuality is a tough fight, and gender norms are still deeply ingrained.

I bristled at the use of 'masculine' to describe what, to me, seem gender neutral things in this article. Such language, to me, seems to be the most insidious method of reinforcing gender norms.