Gender identity

I have to thank a friend of mine, whose last entry I just read, because he gave me an idea of two things I want to talk about right now.

The first one is if I would go back to the time I was 16 years old, with everything I know now, if I could do so. Well, no. Better: maybe, but I would do many things very differently. For example, I would not be the always gentle, nice and understanding person I was, because being too nice sometimes make people walk all over you, and this has been the case. First of all, I would never allow my classmates to exclude me from their “friendships” after using me – the most painful case was Jazzie, since she was my first crush, but this happened again and again. I was a good friend as long as I handled class notes, I offered a nice place where to stay at my house, I paid for drinks. I always had to “pay” for friends in some way. Nowadays, I would rather stay alone. Secondly, I would come out as a lesbian without hesitation. That would give time to my family to come to terms with it and also to my peers to understand it, either to accept me or to reject me. At least, I would not live my life in a long, questionable and heavy lie. In fact, I never moved far away from my 16’s, innerly. I am a 38 years-old-woman trapped in a 16-year-old mind.

Another issue I wanted to tackle is gender identity. I feel like a woman, now. There was a time I felt like a man, and I used to dress in mens’ clothes and cut my hair in a masculine way. I never wanted to change gender, or referred to myself in the masculine form. But it was important for me to be the man also in my relationships with women. I wanted to be the one who holds the door, the one who pays for dinner, the one who takes the other one home. So to say, an old fashioned gentleman, because nowadays women can pay for their dinner themselves. After a while, I felt a shift inside myself, and I started to be more feminine. I remember that one day, in Basel, shortly before I met Kerstin for the last time, I went for a shopping spree and I bought a great deal of very feminine clothes. A friend accompanied me, a straight woman, and gave me advice. Just the day before I was still dressed like a sort of punk – black rags, silver skulls’ necklaces, piercings everywhere and black and red hair. The day after, I had removed all my piercings except for the one in the nose, my hair was black even if short, I wore a normal jeans with a pair of ordinary shoes, a shirt and a coat. This was the end of my masculine phase, and I have been a femme ever since. Kerstin was very surprised as she saw my new mise, I remember her glance and her comment – “wow, you are really elegant“. She was a hard core punk. Since this was the only time she asked me to stay for the night, it might be that she wanted me as a femme and not as a butch; anyway I refused, nothing happened, and I will never know.

On Monday I will start my stage at the archive. I should rather have a look at a couple of softwares I will need to use to classify documents now, so that, with that being said, I conclude and I look forward to reading your entries soon.