Afraid of My Masculinity
I was born with female anatomy in 1977 and I currently identify as female. For as long as I can remember I have worried, hated, and tried to dress up the parts of myself that I felt fell into a Western Fundamentalist Faith Cultural definition of masculinity.
Brought up in a fundamentalist faith tradition I feel in some ways I have always been at odds with “my knowing”. Leading comes naturally to me, my empathic nature has always been strong. As a child I was afraid of “my knowing”, it was if my knowing was a threat to the very nature of who I was being raised to become, a woman submitting to the authority of male leadership.
I remember in elementary school we had a band recital; I played the flute. For our recitals we all stood with our music stands in front of us. I have always stood with a stance of confidence even if I don’t feel it inside. That stance is one straight leg with foot facing forward and one leg slightly out with my foot pointing out to the side. It feels good, it is subconscious, it was “my knowing” being expressed through my body even though my mind was always very anxious.
After the concert my dad pointed out my stance during the recital and I perceived his response as though I was being cocky and that I was too much. Now as an adult I think he saw something in me that he wished he had and when he pointed out my stances there was some awkward pride in his statement. Here is where things get muddled, he was the man of the house, the head of the house, at the young age of 11 or 12 I felt ashamed for having qualities that only those born with male anatomy are “supposed” to have. I now know that anatomy and gender are not one in the same, however the culture I was raised in believes they are.
As a child I became hyper aware of how I moved in public spaces and became angry at having to make myself small in my family home. Now my parents would probably say I did not make myself small at all. Often my internal battle to be someone I was not, would burst forth in anger and I was very vocal and frequently quite mean not only to my family but to myself.
I am the shortest in my family at 5’9, I know right? Even being the shortest in my family I was still one of the taller kiddos at school. I have always been keenly aware of my broad shoulders, even at my skinniest times in my adulthood. I have small breasts that only gain size when my weight increases. I have perceived my voice as an octave lower than what culture deems as a “female voice”. I have believed for so long that all of these physiological traits were my hindrances from finding a partner, from experiencing love. I ignored them, I boxed them up and dissociated from them. I love to wear my hair up in a top knot and when I do I constantly think about how my broad shoulders are on full display. I often avoid my reflection in the mirror when I have my hair up because I feel very “butch”, I feel as if the parts of me deemed masculine are on full display. My inner child is terrified of coming anywhere close to being called a lesbian. She fears my reflection in the mirror. Her fear can be so loud that it overpowers “my knowing” of who I am.
The knowing that I am exactly who I am supposed to be. The knowing that gender norms come from a hetro-normative perspective that are created to operate in binaries and used as methods to control narratives of culture and class.
Shedding my fundamentalist faith beliefs about gender was one layer letting go of my shame and accepting who I am. However, it is much deeper than one layer and if you look at the example that nature gives us, shedding is not a one-time occurrence.
To live from “my knowing” is a daily practice to acknowledge, love on, and see all parts of me as one. To be embodied is to not only have peace when my eyes are closed for mediation but to open my eyes and welcome my reflection in the mirror. My reflection is often the most challenging part for me. It is in seeing my reflection that my fears are the loudest. I have held this belief for so long that if people could just see beyond my outsides, then they would really love my insides. A belief that has left me trying and working so hard. A belief that has left me exhausted. A belief that has left me feeling as an imposter, that I have just barely been “passing” to fit into groups, communities, or workplaces.
In my truest form I am loud, dramatic, goofy, confident, and sometimes a little nonsensical — when I don’t want to think too much. I rarely if ever express all of these parts of me at one time, because I am afraid I will no longer “pass”, I am afraid of being perceived as too much, I have been told I am too much. When I am told I am too much it triggers the childhood trauma of not fitting into feminine cultural norms. As an adult I have been told I will eventually come around to the cultural norms of doting on my partner who identifies as male — yea that’s not going to happen.
I have been attracted to men and women my whole life and not acknowledged that part of me until my late thirties. Growing up I was taught that it was wrong to have same sex attraction and I was deeply afraid of ever feeling anything remotely close to their definition. As trauma does, it affects many aspects of our lives. Being afraid of same sex attraction not only made be afraid for and of people identifying as gay who were going to hell (back when I believed in hell and only knew the word Gay for everyone in the LGBTQIA2s+ community) it also made me afraid of the parts of myself that I had deemed masculine making me “gay”. Yes, there is a whole lot of misconception and lack of understanding in the sentence I just typed and yet my lack of knowledge and learned fear of “non-Christian” science created fertile soil for such a belief.
I have spent a good portion of my life staying “busy” making sure that I am “passing” for the cultural definition of female in the United States. I have recently come to realize how much energy I have put into the work of “passing “. I love identifying with my culturally deemed femininity traits and I am working on holding and accepting my culturally deemed masculine traits. The reality is that both femininity and masculinity are social constructs. “My knowing” of who I am, embodying all I am, encompasses all of me, and is vital to my existence. In desperation for community, of any kind, I have sought to be “passing” most of my life, I have sustained community with my empathic nature of observation and my ability to have empathy for others. I have used these aspects of who I am as exterior, individual tools, instead of absorbing them into my embodied knowing of simply being me.
I believe all human beings are ever evolving and it is when we stop evolving that we choose to silence our knowing. Evolving will always have different seasons of growth which is why I believe that a daily practice of choosing and embodying our own knowing is essential.
