Comments (0) I’ve mentioned before that I live in the same city in which I grew up. (Well, the larger city imediately south of the city in which I grew up.) I’m living with friends from highschool, working with organizations where I was involved pre-transition, and so on. So it shouldn’t be a surprise to me at this point that A) I’m going to run into people at parties who I haven’t seen since highschool and B) most of my friends (and their friends) are not queer.
I was watching some TV with one of my roommates the other day and she was flipping between (among other things) Bridget Jones II: Tumbling Over the Edge of Reason and Into the Pit of Obnoxiousness. There’s a scene near the end (spoiler altert!) where one of the characters professes her not-very-well-hidden love of Bridget Jones. Jone’s reply, after a particularly ridiculous kiss, is “I’m afraid it’s still men in general, Mark Darcy in particular that I love. But if I ever decide to punt for the other side, there’s no one for me but you.”
I mentioned to my roommate that – if a girl ever professes their love for her – she should not respond like that, as it’s rather condescending.
She said, “No, I think it’s flattering!”
(Been bad about posting this week. Sorry!)
I’ve been thinking a lot about situations where my behavior or interactions or presentation will be functionally the same before and after transitioning, but where there’s still a large emotional and/or perceptional shift. For example, while out with friends over the summer, I jotted this down during the cab ride home (in the interest of full disclosure, I was not exactly sober at the time):
There is a subtle, yet fundamental difference between being catty (with ‘the girls’) and being an asshole (with ‘the guys’).
In all fairness, ‘the guys’ that I’ve hung out with aren’t exatly the assholish type, nor ‘the girls’ really the catty type. But I’ve noticed a few times recently when out with friends in girl-mode that there’s been a subtle shift in my interactions with the men and women in the group. And I think there probably is an actual difference in interactions, but I think a lot more of it is based on my own emotions and perceptions of the situation and me feeling more comfortable in girl-mode than I ever really have in boy-mode.
Which brings me to what I really wanted to talk about: being perceived and/or thinking about myself as a heterosexual man versus a gay woman.
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