for Ruthanna, on growing into your gender identity

Dear Ruthanna,                                                                                                                11/05/14

                I didn’t change out of my pajamas this morning. 9:30 a.m. and I’m still wearing sweats, curled up in my mustard-yellow papasan chair, listening to William Joseph. At twenty six I am a far cry from what the your-age-me imagined I would be. I was pretty sure I’d be a doctor or a nurse; everything else I thought was wrong. I thought I’d be married to a pilot and have boy-girl twins who by now would be at least four years old and live in some remote part of the world doing missionary healthcare. 

                Haha. I’m smiling now. I would have died of horror to see myself, this muss-headed sweatpants creature that is fifteen pounds heavier than my ideal body weight and still puts heavy whipping cream on her applesauce. I’d be distressed about her dating life, her religious life, her ever-more-liberal political views, how short her skirts – when she even wears skirts – are. I’d look at her ringless hands and feel that she missed her purpose. 

                And then when she stumped by me on her way to the kitchen for more creamed applesauce, I’d be upset by the songs she sang. But I think I’d be more upset by her singing voice. 

                I used to try so hard to sing in a higher range that now singing in my natural range sometimes catches me off guard… feels strange, even though it feels right. 

                I don’t know where all my picture of an ideal woman came from, but the woman I was trying to grow up into is a far cry both from who I now am and who I want to be. I think this is largely because I focused on external indicators of what I considered feminine maturity, rather than the inner calm some of those things come from.

                Some of what I thought of as womanly is. It is universally perceived as female to have a 0.7 waist-hip ratio, to have thick shiny hair, to have breasts. These are elementary indicators of body estrogen levels. Some things about human identity are given to us whether or not we ask for them. You can tamper with the chemistry built into you, or surgically alter its external expression, but the fact of your chromosomes remains a fact. As it turns out, I have fallen short of the womanly physical ideal. I have a 0.8 waist-hip ratio and my hair is unalterably on the thin side. On the plus side, I do like my cup size. :)

                Some of what I thought of as womanly isn’t, or shouldn’t be, limited to the female spectrum. It is stereotypically womanly to be warm, nurturing, inviting. Maybe that’s because testosterone promotes aggression and women are supposed to have less testosterone than men. Ergo, in contrast with men, women should seem less aggressive. This is a faulty conclusion. Women also produce testosterone. I know many aggressive, competitive women… like you and I. Have you ever seen women compete with each other, fight for something, defend someone? Female aggression is a brutal, backstabbing force men can’t compare to. I do think that some of the force of female aggression ties into our relational nature. It seems to me that on a basic brain-hemispheric level, women are a little more relationally oriented than men… which means that our aggression might have a stronger socio-relational motivation than men’s would. Men also produce estrogen. And you and I both know that men can be warm, nurturing, inviting people too. There is nothing like the way a dad or brother – or, let me tell you, a boy you like – can comfort or invite or make you feel safe. So even if some of the mantras we have heard are correct, even if the sexes do gravitate toward different expressions of aggression and inclusion, the characteristics by which our cultural background conditions us to judge actualization of gender identity are false markers. Stereotypical male/female traits are neither opposed nor exclusive. They’re elements of being human and no group deserves a monopoly on being human. A tender, creative man? I’d crush on him. An assertive, competitive woman? We’d either be good friends or even better competitors. 

                Some of what I thought of as womanly is just weird. Here we get into singing voices. I’m a second soprano or an alto. I’d love to be a full alto or a tenor. But growing up, I wanted to be a soprano or a sopranino. This weekend when you slept over and we watched Bollywood clips on youtube, you made fun of the tinny-voiced female singer in one of the movies. I laughed because the boys used to do the same thing. But for years I thought I had to sing like that to have a female-sounding voice. My fear that I would be perceived as inadequate at being a woman altered a lot of my self-expression. I wore clothing I didn’t like, tried to express my personality in ways that never stopped feeling unnatural, had categories in my mind for which guys I should or shouldn’t find attractive (largely based on how “nicely dominant” aka balanced combination of alpha/beta male I thought they seemed), and tried to sing outside my natural range. It takes a lot of effort to maintain a charade. And because I couldn’t relax, I just kept falling short. Falling short and being uncomfortable, both. 

                See, here’s the thing. Being a man or a woman ultimately means learning to breathe. 

                There is so much of life that is outside our power. We can’t determine how we are made, that sex is black-and-white, whether a Y or an X sperm finds the egg, the doses of intrauterine estradiol that inalterably shape our fetal brains, our natural hormone secretion patterns, the twining of our DNA. We can’t control how we are perceived, how we are received, whether we are everything everyone else - or even our self - was looking for. I accept my butt, most of the time, but I wouldn’t have chosen it. And if the gods of embryo-creation asked me, having had the girl experience, I might choose instead to be a boy. But this is it. This is me. 

                And here’s what is in my power. Caribbean body born into North American society? Bring sexy back and apologize laughingly for taking up more than my “fair share” of the Metro seat. Thin hair? Thank you that I have hair. Single at twenty-six in a segment of society where earlier marriage is the norm? Prize the freedom to sleep over with my little sisters and sit muss-headed in sweats in my papasan chair. Brain more analytical than a girl should be? Analyze the difference and then throw out the analysis. Second-soprano voice, halfway between ranges? Love having a voice. Attracted to alpha males who don’t have a particle of balancing beta, or vice versa? It’s a different ride every time; enjoy it. This is life. It didn’t ask us if we wanted to be here or how we wanted to experience being here, but here we are. Breathe deep and put both hands through the open sunroof and own what you have because air is free and so are we. Sometimes it gets stuffy… open a window or a door. Leave the room. We are inescapably oxygen-dependent, but there are so many places to catch our breath. Why protest? And we are inescapably limited by sex and gender and chemistry and DNA, but there is so much room to give and receive and express and be shaped. Embrace. 

               This is what I am "getting" now and what I want you to get: You aren’t a female trying to measure up to the world’s definition of womanhood; you are Ruthanna-woman teaching the world what it means to be Ruthanna-woman. 

              No one else could ever do it and no one else ever will.

               No rush. It's an unending process. There is nowhere you have to get to, just learn to be all the way here. And in right-now here, you are a girl. Be all Ruthanna-girl. Girlhood is precious. Embrace that too. I don’t know when it ends, but I know I’ve lost some of it and I never had some of it, and I miss it. There’s a necessary exchange involved in growing up. But maybe if you can be all-the-way-where-you-are, instead of trying to measure up to where you should be, you can own more of your girlness than I did. 

                Just breathe in and enjoy the ride. 

                Tab