Maleness of Being

When dealing with wicked stepfather as a young teenager I often wished I were a boy because: 1) Maybe he would stop making his quasi-sexual advances, and 2)I could possibly be larger and stronger than him ultimately and make him pay for his verbal and emotional abuse against all the other women in the household.

At the time, I didn't want to acknowledge Drama Mama's role in all this misogyny, but I've since had to process that. As a pre-adolescent, I always felt insecure and awkward in my very tall relatively boyish body. I can remember thinking how much easier it would just be to be a boy since I was bigger than most of the boys anyway. Eventually, about a little over half the boys surpassed me in height. I still carried my awkwardness about my early height well into adulthood and wanted to be petite not slightly above average height for a woman.

In the early eighties Grace Jones came on the scene. I loved her short hair cut. I cut my hair this way and received so many compliments. During the time I wore my hair that way, and all the previous times, I'd often thought I'd make a more attractive man than I did a woman. DH did not like my hair so short because he felt like he was having sex with a man.

Thereafter, I wore my hair longer to please him. In the last decade, I've worn it very long to please me.

My body before it was injured to the point where regular weight bearing exercise is difficult, was sometimes mistaken for a man's from the rear. My shoulders and arms muscled up to sizes many men would be happy to have with the heavy work I was doing at the time. I wasn't offended by then and was very happy with my femaleness of being, especially motherhood.

I'm content being of the female gender, emotionally and physiologically. I've resolved my feelings of inadequacy regarding my gender that society imposed on my body shape, size and my own kind of beauty. I also know that being a boy may not have changed the relationship much at all with bullies, but that wicked stepfather may not have married Drama Mama but for the easy access to prepubescent females. But, if not him, then she might have found one who wanted prepubescent males and I would have been exactly in the same situaiton.

Nevertheless, I remember what it was like to question ever so slightly if God might have gotten something a little out of kilter when he sent me here to earth as a woman. Now I just think society and media culture was out of kilter.

A little Twilight Hypocrisy

I was not an early adopter of the Twilight series. I always found the cover pictures on the covers of the books quiet weird. I saw the movie first, then I read the books. DH read the books. I've reread the books.

I've been thinking it would be nice, as a parent, mind you, to simply have had the ability to turn off the Song Children's sexuality until they were thirty or so. This would give time for so many other types of "achievement" required to be a sound adult in our society. Getting the Kid to adulthood with confidence has been real problematic. In some odd functional ways the early quasi-coming out for the Kid, has stifled other developmental progress. This is counter-intuitive I suppose to the commonly held notion, at least in the LGBT community, that early acceptance is better for young people.

By extension, I just wish we could have taken some of the sexuality and gender issue pressures off Girl Song and certainly off myself when I was young. There is a weird societal disconnect with earlier and earlier expectations of open early sexual exploration and ever later marital commitment. I'm not saying that marriages should take place at an early age, what I am saying is that I wish the sexuality and pressures to experience and accomodate sexuality could be postponed to a much later developmental phase for children in our society.

Yet, I do enjoy the Twilight series, and it is all about teenage sexuality and the pressures and the risks that brings in the lives of young people and people in general. Given that I married as a teenager, it is even more hypocritical I suppose. But that story is in the Twilight series as well isn't it? Without the pressures that I felt and the opportunity to meet DH as a teenager how different would my life be? I don't know the answer to that. I think I might have been more financially secure, but with this crazy economy, I just laugh bitterly. But, most people would agree that my life while I have lots of problems and things to deal with, is pretty good overall.

I guess I'm in a pretty typical "developmental" phase as a parent of teenagers and young adults. Funny how life has a way of turning you into a typical parent after all.

That Rather Odd Happiness Thing

Funny how after the parent imposes both consequences and chastisement, the child is happier. What a coincidence. Some principles are eternal, are they not? Now if the sick would only pick up their bed and come to Christ, we'd have it made, at least for a little while anyway.

This little real life vignette is brought to you from the trials and perils of my family life, the characters are not fictional and my dear readers should not fret that I am passing judgment on any one or gloating, or engaging in any other untoward behavior. Just making an observation.