I went on Birthright when I was so far in the closet I was practically in Narnia, and so went as a girl, to the best of my ability.

I fell in love with Israel, wanted it more than I'd ever wanted anything else. It was home, though I knew nobody.

I was not raised Jewish (my father isn't), so then, and during my subsequent times in Israel, I was more concerned with "passing" in that respect, as religious enough to not offend others that were when necessary, etc. - when you're already pretending to be one thing, "fake it til you make it" and all, adding another thing you're not to the presentation isn't that much more of a stretch.

It's only since I couldn't get into the army there (or any other job, couldn't learn Hebrew) and so came home "for good" when the money ran out and I became isolated from the Jewish community (I fit better with the Israelis than the locals) that the facade of religious-ness crumbled, and with that, my flimsy attempt at "womanhood".

It was never more than a costume.

And I'm still confused. Because when I have more money, and try and learn some more Hebrew, I still want to try and go back. And that's a good amount of what's holding me back from being a man, the fear that I won't be accepted in Israel if I'm trans, particularly as I'm gay on top of that, and would be better off there as a woman.

And then I saw another transman's post about Birthright.

And now I don't know anything anymore.

mood: homesick music: Tabitha's Secret - "This Is Not A Love Song"

Because it's still awesome being called "sir" even if the person goes "ma'am" a moment later when they see your Tokidoki backpack-purse. Even if it'll never happen if you're the one that has to open your mouth first.

When your mom, who knows absolutely nothing aside from your habit of dressing like a slob (in her opinion), says you look about 16, today...and then says she's not sure whether that's a 16 year old girl, or a 16 year old boy. And doesn't complain about the confusion.

When she brings up that it's actually your dad that didn't want a boy - she's always said that if she had a boy, she'd have left it at the hospital, saying they're too much trouble to raise - because he thought he'd place unfair expectations on it. And here I'd never even got the impression that he'd noticed I was, technically, a girl.

What *do* they think that I am? What did they want from me? Were they trying, in a way, to raise their own little Storm? Yeah, I had that "Free To Be You And Me" record, too. Or was it just the way things were in the 80s, when every boy had their Cabbage Patch Kid?

I still don't want to say anything, because I still don't know everything. I want to just be, for now.

mood: happy

"Sex" is a biological term used for determining reproductive compatibility in organisms that reproduce sexually. The members of most species can be differentiated on external examination by humans with sufficient knowledge of said species. They will typically be predominately "male" and "female", with some indeterminate, in varying proportions depending on your species, sample size, and age of specimens. Mature males and females are needed for non-assisted reproduction in the wild. Whether an indeterminate individual is useful for breeding, and how, depends on the species and individual.

Some species can also change sex for reproductive purposes, however this is not generally a characteristic of mammals. If you isolate two male cats in a room with no special equipment, and they manage to create a litter of kittens on their own, chromosomes should be analyzed to confirm suitability as male reproductive test subjects, and all possible entrance/escape routes should be secured. Cats can get through much smaller spaces than one might expect. Lab coats belonging to rival researchers should also be analyzed for cat hair.

"Gender" is a qualitative assessment determined by self-reporting. Due to very large numbers of male humans saying they are "men" or "boys" and females "women" or "girls", it has been incredibly common through the ages to simply look at a child at birth and call it the gender most popular among members of the same sex, long before the baby is capable of communicating anything beyond lack of satisfaction with its physical conditions. Genders outside of this strict masculine-feminine binary are ignored entirely, as if they do not exist! Babies not born as clearly male or female are also assigned a gender, and even more disturbingly, quite often physically assigned a sex, when one is not needed for reproduction for many years, and which may not even be the one that matches their potential reproductive capability!

The term "gender" is now often used interchangeably with "sex", even on paperwork where only two options are given, and for species that are unable to communicate with researchers to the extent required to determine an individual's gender identity - is it because people just can't think of "sex" as referring to anything but something naughty, and prefer to avoid it entirely? Are there simply too many individuals of the majority gender for their sex in the business of drawing up forms? A qualitative measurement at least requires a tick box for "other".

Do you require information on who somebody actually is, which may not be something you've heard of before, or are you asking about their unaided reproductive potential? They're not the same thing.

mood: nerdy music: Placebo - "Every You Every Me"

Shopping online is much more fun when you can order stuff and have some clue that it'll fit you. This is virtually impossible in the women's section, since for the most part, "standardization" is a dirty word, and size charts don't usually help. Anyone buying women's jeans online needs their head examined, because even when you think you know what size you wear in a particular brand, if you take it on faith, you'll find things get thrown completely on their heads and your size 2 and size 8 will be very, very close in size, and a size 6 will appear that's smaller than both. This actually happened when I was trying jeans on in a store, once...and this was a brand I'd previously considered about as reliable as it gets. I'm still not quite sure how companies using odd numbered jeans sizes work, since it makes no sense that I can fit into a 6 or an 8 but an 11 will be too small. Tops? *Usually* somewhere between a M to XL...usually. Not a guarantee!

Shopping online in the guy's section? Pretty much like shopping in person. The numbers have something to do with your actual size, for jeans, and I can be pretty sure that a 30 waist from most brands will fit, toss it in the cart, off we go. Tops? Small for men's, XL for boys, M if it's Hollister or I want it to not fit as tight. Can we get any easier than that? (Of course, my buying regular unisex t-shirts in large hasn't changed, though, since they still tend to shrink and I like 'em baggy!)

And looting the clearance bins? Usually, what you find is the smallest and largest stuff, the "average" having been snapped up while it was still regular price. As, by women's standards, I am at neither extreme of the sizing range, I have to dig through a *lot* on that side to find anything that'll fit, and last season's stuff is, well, last season. Being pretty small for a guy...stuff that'll fit is often still there when I get there! And the fashion changes aren't nearly as extreme for guy's stuff, so you're far less likely to end up with something anyone will notice and think "That's so last year". Basics can quite often be found cheaper, too! Sorry guys, I'm stealing your clothes, thanks.

I wonder if it should have been a clue when I was first unleashed on civilization with a job and a bit of money to buy my own clothes that my preference for everyday school clothes was baggy cargo pants, t-shirts with obnoxious sayings on them, and a baseball cap with Stan spewing all over the brim, when I couldn't skateboard to save my life and it certainly wasn't the predominant style among girls at my school...

mood: devious music: KO - "Capable"

I hate being seen as a butch woman, because it makes guys avoid me like the plague relationship-wise (well, that may also have something to do with the fact that I'm not exactly the prettiest, girliest thing around, even if they do know my history of dating guys!), I find actual butch lesbians tend not to like me much either (had one as a boss, so difficult to get away from), have a hard time getting to know exclusively straight women (somehow it seems that anyone that's willing to talk to me turns out to have at least some bi leanings!) unless there's a gay male middleman around, and then of course there's always the "I don't hit girls, but you don't count" stuff that ranges from jokes to (in school) actual violence from the homophobic crowd. Despite presenting as a woman, still, and liking only guys.

Transitioning, at least if it were accomplished via "magic wand" and not surgery that leaves scars and currently less than acceptable, to me, results, would make me happier with my body, and happier in bed certainly, but it wouldn't make me any less gay than people think I already am, so I can't see much out-of-bed social benefit, the way society currently is. And of course, with the people that are picky about real flesh and blood male parts, still not going to get anywhere.

And then there's the whole "to what" thing, being not entirely male, but a somewhat male-leaning androgyne. Sufficiently distinct from a female leaning one that I want the other parts, but I'm not entirely a man, either. I do also think I'm the same *person* I'd be had I been born with the other set of parts, though, gender expression-wise.

mood: confused music: Vienna Teng - "The Tower"

I See The Problem. (Which, for you type junkies out there, I quite like as the long form of ISTP, though I don't believe I actually am one, myself. Most of the time. Depends on if I'm fixing something, and how.)

While I was indeed assigned a "sex" at birth, which in most people is rather difficult to screw up, merely a matter of documenting "tab" or "slot" (or "indeterminate" in some cases, which leads to a whole different set of problems and frequently non-ideal solutions, but that's not where we're going today) on the requisite paperwork, the whole "gender" seems to be more than merely a matter of looking at a baby, or the color blankets it's wrapped in, from the outside, since as we all should be aware by now, you can't always tell one from the other.

But most people seem to get one of those, too. And this is where things go kinda funny. Because I think I missed that one. Packing defect at the manufacturing plant, and someone else got two in their box. Now, I don't know how these things are handed out in the great metaphysical ether, whether you get to choose what sort of bodies you want ("Well, this model here's a little more convenient in many situations, but it can't replicate itself without relying very heavily on one of the other type. The one that's much closer to self-replicating tends to be a bit prettier and less hairy, but the overall strength isn't usually quite as high, and they usually grow a bit smaller." - swayed into choosing a female body by them selling it as though I could reproduce by budding, quite likely!) or it's entirely random, but given the rather large numbers of people with genders that match up to their sex, I would guess that the assignment of genders has to be some sort of automated process, subject to occasional glitches in the assembly line.

Now, I'm not sure if I'd been given one as an aftermarket add-on by my parents, things would be different, because there's a hell of a lot of people out there with parents that did seem to think they had either a "son" or a "daughter" and weren't particularly thrilled with being given this form of direction from their parents, of course. It's just an interesting "what if". I may have been a more "normal" female, or I may have pushed back harder and become more masculine than my current state of existence. I feel like a lab rat, almost - subject #394 in "What happens if you raise a kid to think gender is optional?"

mood: contemplative music: Our Lady Peace - "Superman's Dead"

Why is it any more gramatically difficult to wrap your head around the singular "they" than it is the plural "you"? English evolves, seeing as we don't generally still use "thee" and "thou" and such. The only difference between singular and plural "they" is in the same place as with "you", with "themself" vs. "themselves" as "yourself" vs. "yourselves", and we handle the latter just fine. Unless someone only uses "yous", "y'all", or "all y'all" for plural "you", they should be able to handle a singular "they" just fine. And I don't hear much "y'all" or the others around here. Must people build mountains out of molehills just because they like the look of the scenery that way, even if the resources would be put to much better use building a mountain somewhere one was actually needed? If it's equality, so many places that need more help, and if it's grammar, how about a crackdown on putting apostrophe's in the wrong place's and Using Capitals Everywhere But At The Beginning Of A Sentence? Could really use a little less of that.

mood: frustrated music: The Police - "Message In A Bottle" tags: confusion, epicene, gender, grammar, pronouns, they

(bitch/post inspired by/crossposted from a comment I made elsewhere)

I seem to be failing at the whole clothes thing. And the whole "cleaning up" thing. It might be easier if I had one stable gender, all the time, but things just...aren't that way. How is a mostly androgynous with significant male leanings (but still sometimes swinging in the female direction) person housed in a female body supposed to outfit themselves, anyways? I'd like a book on this, please!

You can't get by with an entirely androgynous closet, it sort of fails for special occasions. And when you're technically female bodied and Jewish, and like to vacation in desert climates, there's certain places you really need a decent wardrobe of skirts for, whether it feels like you're wearing a costume or not. (given my observance level, the skirts are just one part of the rest of the whole "passing" thing with the more religious, though, and in that situation, they're more like camouflage, hiding my complete and utter lack of normal Jewish upbringing as a child, rather than making me feel like someone's gonna notice I'm in drag like it seems to me among non-Jews if I'm wearing one - strange how that works!)

Of course, give me a closet full of girly stuff and I can't put it together beyond jeans and t-shirts in women's styles to save my life. I just don't have that bit in my brain that most women do that enables me to put an outfit together. Give me a closet full of *guy* stuff, beyond t-shirts and jeans and cargo pants, and some of it's not going to fit too well with the whole boobs and butt deal, and my mom's definitely going to notice! (though not with guy's jeans, as she always used to wear them herself, not having much of a butt, and thought it was weird that I couldn't...)

The last time I did a major wardrobe cleanout, my mother and then-boyfriend actually had to take me shopping and explain that girls wear tighter (and less obnoxious) clothes than guys do - I really hadn't differentiated before, past skirts and dresses and suits and ties for formal wear (of course, having been in cadets, I was rather comfortable with the shirt and tie deal), a t-shirt and pants was a t-shirt and pants and had no gender attached to it, to me. I agreed because it was worded more like "you look like a slob", and I really had no desire to be an unattractive member of either gender, thanks. With the unwritten assumption of food crumbs and a bad smell always stuck to you. (I've also gotten good at throwing things out with pit stains on them since then, but stuff that fits, I like, and has holes in it takes much longer to go)

I wore a shirt and tie with a skirt to my university graduation, melding my ancestral tartan with a religious variant of my work uniform, as I had to go to my shift right afterwards, no complaints. Closet panic when I had to go to a funeral, no shortage of black clothes, but the button up shirt, the girlier dress shirt, and if the former, with a tie? Pants or skirt? I ended up going with a black "queer sweater" (the style having been named by a bi ex, it's really a Steve Jobs sort of sweater) and a skirt, but heavy duty boots. Goth...the accepted third gender. Particularly when you know you'll be upstaged in the goth department as soon as another friend you expect to come shows up.

I need a gay friend to go shopping with, my mother just ain't cutting it. Never mind the fact that I'm not out as anything to her. Closest I've got since my last moved away is barely bi ("I'm attracted to you, and some other guys are hot, but I've never dated any, so I don't know what that makes me") and can't even dress himself.

I so need some closet help. (and then we can work on decluttering the rest of the place...)

mood: confused music: Default - "Let You Down" tags: androgyny, clothes, confusion, gender