(no subject)

Everyone has things they blog about. Everyone has things they don't blog about. Challenge me out of my comfort zone by telling me something I don't blog about, but you'd like to hear about, and I'll write a post about it. Ask for anything: latest movie watched, last book read, political leanings, thoughts on yaoi, favorite type of underwear, graphic techniques, etc.

(Advance warning that I will friends-lock for the usual reasons: very personal things, and work-related horror stories.)

(no subject)

So as I'm getting a ride back from my meeting with my A Certain Library Person*, and she tells the "joke" that goes,

"If you ask a woman where north is, what does she say?"
(points at the sky).

"That's a pretty terrible joke," I say.
"But it's true."
"I never get lost. And if I do get lost I can get my bearings from the sun."
"Yeah, but most women--"
"Not on the planet I'm from."
"Yeah, but for women over thirty, 'cause they don't drive, their husbands drive them everywhere."

AAAAAAUUUUUUGHH.

Okay, I just needed to say that.

I think most "men's brains are like THIS, women's brains are like THIS" stuff is complete BS for any number of reasons, but the most personal and petty one is that by almost any measure I have a man's brain.

(1) I don't talk.
(2) I can easily orient myself, and I really like maps.
(3) I'm good at math.
(4) I don't really care how I look.
(5) Sometimes I'm sensitive (or more often, oversensitive) to people's emotions, but just as often I can be extremely dense.

And I spent most of my middle school years, not trying to be more feminine, but building up emotional defenses against the idea that I wasn't feminine enough. What I was, was: Canadian, culture-shocked, friendless enough not to have anyone to show me how to perform femininity, extremely disinclined to get up any earlier than 6:00 just to preen, depressed, and so resistant to the idea that I might ever be pretty that I never really tried.

(I could be wrong, but I do think the Canadian thing is important; I think if I'd stayed I'd have gotten a year or two more to adjust to the girly stuff).

Some of those still apply, actually, for better or for worse. I've gotten better at not succumbing to dualism and thinking of myself as (basically) a brain in a jar, but I've still got a ways to go. I'm still trying to figure out how to deal with skin care, and hair care, and clothes shopping in a way that's authentic without being apathetic -- apathetic being my natural inclination.

I like being a woman, actually. (27 days out of the month, at least). But it's so hard to tease it apart from the gender roles that would cast me as a bad specimen of womankind.

*Yes, THAT library person.