A Thousand Ways to Do Gender

[affreca]

There's a point that I want to yell at people that "They've never been given a deliberately gender neutral name and it shows." I am starting to realize how much I internalized how my mother views gender. She told me a young age that she gave me a gender neutral name (though it was in the process of becoming more of a female name and is rarely used as a male name these days) so that people would have to meet me to learn if I was a boy or girl. Listing military service on my job applications (because veteran's benefit helps a lot when going for government jobs) would probably confuse more people if I didn't keep applying to jobs in which people knew me before the interview (I'm pretty sure being known has helped me get my last couple of jobs).

But that means I sometimes pick and choose what things are worth being feminine about. I don't wear makeup because I dealt with the fear of wearing it wrong by never starting. I foolishly spent years demonstrating I could be just a macho and drink hard alcohol. Lots of other thoughts follow on, but I'm not sure yet how to articulate them without being needlessly hurtful.