Tuesday, June 9, 2009

"Don't dress so asexually" pt. 2

So this time I promised to explain how being asexual makes me mentally androgynous (a word I can't spell without looking it up).
I think it works like this: Because I'm not interested in 'coupling off' in the traditional sense, I don't need to be particularly female. I don't need to do any of the things that women typically do to find a male partner. I have a really hard time explaining to people without some background in the LGBTA community what that means, because they don't see it in themselves. To them, acting gendered is just a very natural way of being and because they see the obvious differences between themselves and other people who act in a way specific to their gender, they don't see the difference when someone is not gendered. It doesn't help that I look like a very average girl, though I feel like your typical amoeba.
So, when I say that I don't need to do the things women do to find a partner, what do I mean by that? I'm not referring to wearing miniskirts or makeup. Although I think you'll find that sexual women do that much more often than asexual women, there are plenty of sexual women who wear no makeup at all and there are probably plenty of asexy women who wear lots of makeup. I think it's more often the little things- they way a woman walks, the way she looks at a man she's attracted to, the way she behaves around him, and men do the same thing- they walk a certain way, look at women a certain way and behave a different way towards attractive women than they do towards guys.
I often say that I give out 'ase vibes', because I rarely get any attention from men (I mean that kind of attention) and with most guys I find it very easy to be myself, in contrast to sexual women who, more often than asexys, get silly and giggly about men. I think I told a story in an earlier post about an outing with my Girl Scout troop, several years ago, in which these budding teen mothers decided to 'pick up boys'... who then spent the evening talking to me, since I was the only girl who was willing to act like she had a brain in her head.
And while I don't act like a woman, I don't actually act mannish either, leaving me somewhere smack dab in the middle of the gender spectrum. In a group of girls, I feel like the token guy. In a group of guys, I am very definitely the woman. How gendered I feel, and in what way, is affected by the setting I'm in because with my female friends I notice all the little things they do that make them feminine and which I don't also do. With guys, I notice all the little things they do that make them masculine, which of course I also don't do.
You know what? I have a lot more to say about this. Stay tuned for part three, in which the title becomes very relevant indeed and I continue to ramble on about my gender. I'll update sooner this time, I promise.

4 comments:

  1. "In a group of girls, I feel like the token guy. In a group of guys, I am very definitely the woman."

    Hey, that's just like me! I tend to hang out with groups of guys more often though. (I'm also the token youngster, but that's another topic.)

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  2. Funny, same here. Although most of my friends are girls, so I'm hardly ever the only girl in a group of guys.

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  3. What does one dress asexually? Are you sure you didn't mean androgynously? M

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  4. TSP- Yeah, that's the joke. In the first post with that title, I explain it- it's something my friend said once which I found ironic. The posts titled "Don't Dress so Asexually" are meant as a series, since a single post on the topic, saying everything I wanted to say, would have been enormous.

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