Are you a daughter, are you a son? Strange trade offs have long been made.

 (Possible content warning for gender stuff and abuse stuff)
(Title of this post is taken from an Adrienne Rich poem called "That mouth")

I learnt early the being a girl was dangerous, that an inability to be a girl when you were supposed to be was  also dangerous, just as dangerous. Somewhere though, my inability became a refusal because that was all the power I had. The choices I made as a child when it came to gender were not choices but acts of survival.

And the Bone Collector has decided that I need to unpack those choices, that I need to unpack my terror at being seen as a woman, as being seen as feminine, of admitting that I like coded feminine pretty things. It doesn't matter where I end up, it doesn't matter if I decide my labels are woman or genderqueer, my pronouns are she or per, it doesn't matter if I end in the same place i started, I just need to do the exploration and the fear facing.

I need to let go of my derision of femininity, feminine things, girly things, pretty things, that covers my terror of them. (well feminine things that are not inherently damaging to people.)

The thing is, being a girl is dangerous, we do not value girls and women, we let men hurt them, assault them, kill them, grind them down. We are punished by being both too much and not enough woman like.


And there are still litanys in my head ...If I could just have been a boy, if I could have been his son, if I could have been enough of a girl not to need teaching what girls are for

And all these things from, you don't need a career because when you grow up you will be a mother and a wife, to, you are his reward, he will love you if you do this, to, all these men are going to do what they like to you because we need to teach you how to be a real woman, are things I learnt early and learnt deep and are still enemy outposts in my head

Just writing this makes me anxious and edgy, like acceptance of being a girl, or acceptance of feminine things gives men permission, open access to hurt me, use me, do what ever they like with me.

But that is what i need to untie. It's not femininity that is dangerous, that is terrifying, that is wrong, but it is male entitlement, male anger, male indifference, that is dangerous and throwing out, cutting of, part of myself because of that is not healthy or fair on myself.

And I already hear criticism, "why would the Bone Collector care about this? What makes you important enough to her that she takes time out to let you know you should do this? " and all I can say is "I don't know, I don't know why she cares about me but she  does"

And maybe this is a type of war and I am a type of warrior, the thought of growing my hair long, which is one of the demands I accepted from her, terrifies me so much that sometimes it makes me shake and cry, this is one hell of a battle


But a battle that needs fighting if I'm going to be all I can be