I’m the oldest of four kids. After me I have a brother and two sisters. I was a tomboy my whole life. I have pictures of myself around age 4 with a short haircut and a home made coat my grandmother made for me. I remember telling people I was a boy, I insisted I was a boy when they said, “what a nice little girl!” The short haircut was at my request; I wanted a “boy haircut”. It was tolerated until I got into adolescence. Before sixth grade I was held down by neighborhood boys, kissed and groped against my struggles. This happened on at least three separate occasions, and each time I knew it was my fault for trusting them, my fault for being alone with them, my fault for being too weak to fight them off. I definitely knew better than to tell my parents. I didn’t want to get punished for it at home too. Still, playing with the boys was way better than playing with the girls. With boys I could ride my bike all over, play football, dig through the dumpsters for aluminum cans, fish and jump off the pier with our bikes. Girls played house, dolls, tea. I tried to be tough.
When I wanted a BB gun, my brother got one. When I wanted a tough, badass bike my brother got one. My dad was and is a very strong-tempered angry man, unpredictable. My value was less than my brother's. I got a boyfriend in elementary school so the meaner boys would think harder before messing with me because I was “Eddie’s girl”. When we played kiss-tag at recess, I caught girls and held them until the boys could get there and claim them. Getting breasts was the worst betrayal I could have imagined—until I got my period. My whole life started to change.
When I went to junior high, I went to my first dance. I sat alone in the bleachers watching everyone and an older boy asked me if I wanted to dance. “Sure, I guess!” “Well good luck getting anyone to ask you, har har har.” “Asshole,” I mumbled under my breath. Then a girl came and sat near me. We talked, danced a fast dance together (not touching of course), and I told her about the jerk guy. She could hardly believe it. On the way out, she asked me my homeroom because she wanted to write me a note the next day. Finally, a friend! Some boy called her over and I could tell they were talking about me. She looked at me and laughed; when she came back I asked what they were talking about. “Oh, he just wanted to know if you are a boy or a girl. I told him you are a boy, of course!” “But I am a girl.” Nervous laughter. She was shocked. I asked her what she was going to put into that note. “I was going to ask you to go with me!!!” She never spoke to me again, talked shit about me in school, gave me dirty looks for the next two years.
Another girl who was clearly a lesbian had a crush on me but I had learned my lesson. I made sure she knew I didn’t like her AT ALL. I fought with boys in the lunchroom, had boys snap my bra and poke me in the crotch with a wood and metal ruler, tease me out of shop class. The shop teacher told me not to sign up for shop next semester, it just wasn’t worth it. I was tired of being on the bottom of the food chain. I became a gender conformist. I got whistles from men on the streets and heard about a girl who was raped in the park one block away from my house at nine o’clock at night. A park I always played in until way after dark. The one with the library in it—my sanctuary!
I dated a nineteen year old when I was fourteen, I was never without a boyfriend after that. Boys were much easier to understand than girls, much easier to please and figure out. When I had a hickey, my mother told me I was playing with fire, that I would reget it for the rest of my life. I was born out of wedlock, so she knew what she was talking about I guess. I was the mistake she has had to live with for the rest of her life.
I still faced harassment from men. I (happily) lost my virginity when I was fifteen to a nineteen-year-old boyfriend. He moved away after a couple of weeks and never called me again. My boss at the Y cut my hours when I wouldn’t go out with him. I was sixteen, he was twenty-three. I had sex with the English teacher advisor to the school newspaper when I was seventeen and the News Editor of the paper. He was thirty-four. My high school teacher advisor to the Forensics club asked me to spend the night with him when I was a freshman in college and helping judge a Forensics competition. I was eighteen, he was in his fifties. My sophomore college English teacher asked me to wear high heels and humiliate him, make him crawl around and call him names while he licked my shoes. I didn’t think I could not laugh so I turned him down. I did get a “C” in that class, but I deserved better. I do regret not doing it, it would be kind of fun now. There’s more, but you all get the drift. I don’t need to go into the daily little humiliations we face, the chronic impact of these throughout our lives.
I never saw myself as a victim of abuse. I consider myself one of the lucky ones. So many of women’s stories are worse than mine. A psychology professor asked my sister out when she was in college and she asked me what to do. "Go out with him! Flirt, bat your eyes, pay attention. You will get an A!" She just couldn't do it. I can't believe that is what I told her to do. The whole thing is what I always called, “just growing up girl in America”.
Now I am a feminist. I don’t conform. I wear what is comfortable and get my hair cut how I like it—short. Three years ago I heard a lecture about LGBT-welcoming work places and I fit the description of transgender. HUH?? I am not trans gender. I am not –not trans gender. I am not cis gender. I am a woman, I am my gender. My gender isn’t me.
How did I learn this? There was no women's studies department at my school. There were no women's studies classes or elements in any class. I observed the world and started to notice. I did my senior seminar on how Nietzche treats women and got a D from my misogynist assistant professor. My real professor was on leave of absence because he got a divorce and the guy who filled in actually told me he liked working with runaway girls in NYC because of the "sexual tension" between him and the homeless, abused girls. I met a woman who was a worker at fest and she started me on my feminist path by bringing me to A Room Of One's Own in Madison, talking about fest, and finally I went to the michfest bb. The discussions, although intimidating to this baby feminist, were informative and helped me at least know where to look for books. Going to fest was part of my journey, and living for JUST ONE WEEK without the misogyny constantly on my back made me start to realize what freedom might feel like. Looking and seeing, every person here is a woman, every bearded, muscled, butch and every high heel wearing in the dirt, dresses and fishnets taking out the garbage, using the sledgehammer, laughing and sighing together WOMYN born and raised.
