Where it all came from.

Writing This Body.

This body has made me aware of many things. It shows me so much on a day-to-day basis, but perhaps one of the most important things that I have gathered from my form is my gender or lack thereof. It feels like a cop out for me to look down and say, “Oh, I have one of those. Well then, this is how I am supposed to act.” That is however where it started. An examination of my form tells you that I am a biological female, fine. The perception of my gender relies on a whole lot more than what is in my pants. I am not saying that this is true for everyone. Certainly, there are those who think that your sex has an effect on your gender and others that would argue that it is the sole factor. This is not my truth. While this realization is fairly new to me, and the terminology even more so, I have never felt as though I truly fit into any particular gender. Certain body parts have been instrumental in this particular discovery so I am writing, not just about one experience, but about many experiences. These stories involve my shoulders, breasts, legs, armpits, ears, hands, eyes, hair, voice and my phoenix tattoo and the roles they played in unearthing myself as gender queer.

Shoulders.
At my tenth birthday party, there were three other girls. We opened presents and ate cake. You know the routine. There were hours after that when we pretended to be unicorns in my back yard. I was the prince unicorn. When asked why I was the prince one of the girls responded by saying that I was the most boy-ish. When asked why I was the most boy-ish there were blank stares tossed around shortly before another girl volunteered that it was because I had the widest shoulders and all good-looking boy unicorns had wide shoulders. I took this as a solid truth and indeed, I do have wide shoulders. What did I learn? I make a very handsome unicorn prince. To the best of my knowledge, this is the first point at which I can remember taking the time to sit down and really consider gender roles and where I fit into the scheme of things. I did not know what to think when I came to no real conclusion. I did not know what to do when I could not figure out where I really stood. If everyone had his or her place, and I could not see mine, then what did that make me?

Breasts
In the fourth grade, I had very noticeable breasts. This is common of women in my family. At this point, they were what really set me apart as a girl. What else would I have thought in the fourth grade? I was very aware of them, as I was the only girl in class who had them. They were an object of marvel for the other girls and they frequently asked about them.
I went to a performing arts school and there was a lot of time spent in the dressing rooms. That is where my most prominent memory takes place. As we were readying ourselves for a performance, I lifted my shirt and a flock of curious girls surrounded me almost instantly. I did not particularly care that they wanted to know, feel, and see as I have always had a love for enlightening those who are curious. It occurred to me during this time that I was able to hold my breasts as a point of pride; this was something people admired about me. Later that night, sitting on my bed, I found myself considering once again the idea of gender roles. If I had breasts and I was proud then that put me into the gender most closely associated with them, right? No, it was not. This was uncomfortable for me.

Legs/Armpits
I have hairy, stumpy legs. I love them to death but they are hairy and stumpy. While I was playing at school, a boy told me. “You have legs like mine. You should not have legs like mine you are a girl. I‘ll bet you have hairy armpits too.” This sort of thing has constantly confused me. It was very difficult throughout my early teenage years to distinguish between what is comfortable and what is socially acceptable. I started shaving after my talk with the boy on the playground. This never felt right to me but I did it for the sake of my acceptance and it was almost eleven years later when I realized that it was dumb. I found that it was foolish of me to think that changing one piece of myself, such as whether or not I shave, would grant me the acceptance of my peers. At that point in my life I was surrounded by people who did not care about who I was but rather what I looked like. Most people, even now, have a hard time seeing around the aesthetics to where the gender really lies. My gender is not in my armpits.

Ears
When I was three my grandma took me to get my ears pierced. I did not really want them pierced but at this point, my grandma had tried numerous times to convince me that it would make me much more feminine, so I obliged. I hated the earrings for knotting in my hair and the care that they required. This being the case I got my mom to take them out early and the holes healed. When I was twelve, I told my mom that I wanted to get one ear pierced. Why just one? Well, in truth, it was a spiritual piercing, but I told my mom it was because I wanted to be a pirate. Now, seven years later, I have three holes in each ear all of which are spiritual. The piercings in and of themselves are not masculine in any way, but the earrings that I wear through them do tend to be somewhat manly. I gauged all of the holes in my ears myself, stretching them to the point of very distinctive pain. The pain and infection that ensued was all part of it. My intent was not to be masochistic, but rather to prove, in some small way, that I was as strong as my male counterparts. The experience of stretching the holes in my ears has made me tougher, more rugged somehow.

Hands
These hands have done a lot it my nineteen years. My hands are deliberate hands. They have learned to defend themselves and me. They write poetry and play music. They have pushed people away and drawn them in. I have made love with these hands. My gender identity plays in here. They appear masculine, they act feminine and they are all across the in between. The sex that my hands engage in makes them feel powerful. Masculine. At the same time they are extremely gentle in a way that perhaps only a woman‘s could be. These two factors allow me to say that my hands have given me the most insight into my lack of association with any gender. I consider my hands to be the most androgynous part of my body. You try to assign a gender to them.

Eyes
I have always considered my eyes feminine. Lined with dark lashes, they have a shape to them that always strikes me as very womanly. I suppose that looking only at my eyes one would be able to tell whether I was a man or a woman. Many people tell me things about my eyes, but most commonly people call them beautiful. This, I suppose, is the other major reason that I call them feminine. Beauty, at least in our culture, is a word that is most closely associated with that which is female or has overwhelmingly feminine aspects. Since this is the case, it would make sense that I would label my eyes as such. I know that many people can tell my sex by looking at my eyes and it is because of this that I have taken to doing the same thing. What has occurred to me, however, is that sometimes it is possible to determine ones gender by looking at their eyes as well. An eye can give away a lot of information about it‘s owner, especially when adorned by makeup or something else of the sort. If this were the case then I would expect that I have very gender-neutral eyes, as I never make them up to be more than they really are.

Hair
When I was young, I had golden brown ringlets that fell past my shoulders. They remained that way until I was five or six. Ironically, my grandma, who is still constantly trying to convince me that I need to be more feminine, took me to her hairdresser and got all of my haircut down to about three inches. My mom was furious with her and my hair grew out for a long time before I got another haircut. I was thirteen when I made the decision, completely of my own accord, to cut my hair short once again. My hair was shaggy. When I bandaged my chest down, which I did quite often then and still make practice of on occasion, it was difficult to tell whether I was a boy or a girl. I loved this; it was a great sense of empowerment to know that I was able to make people question my sex and gender. The first school year after I cut my hair short was perhaps one of the happiest I have had. At my request, and before my knowledge of gender-neutral pronouns, friends and teachers always referred to me as Leigh, never with pronouns, and those that did not know me tended to follow suit. It is very easy for me to thrive in a place where I am not coded by my sex or gender. Everything about my physical appearance was gender neutral from the shoes on my feet to the hair on my head.

Voice
It has been hard for me to associate any gender with my voice. I have never had an issue with telemarketers knowing what sex I am yet when I go to a restaurant people insist on calling me sir. Apparently, my voice is feminine enough to the point that when someone who does not know me talks to me they can identify me as female, but when you put my voice and my form together, it becomes more masculine. This situation is not one that I try to create, it simply happens.
When I sing, however, I often make a conscious choice to sound masculine, feminine or right smack in the middle of the gender continuum. When I sang Romeo and Juliet to my partner, Mara, the first time we met I made a point to sound as distinctly male as I could. I wanted to be Romeo and singing. Some months later, as I put the youngest of our family to sleep, I sang Red is the Rose. My voice was higher then with a maternal Irish lilt. When I sing my favorite love song, Rodeo, I try to sound as gender neutral as I can. I only wish that I could sing it to a telemarketer to see what they would think.
Phoenix
Though my phoenix is an addition to my body it symbolizes much of what I have been talking about in the previous sections. There are two reasons for the bird on my arm. One of these has to do with gender, the other has to do with my body and so I thought it would be appropriate for the work at hand. Half of the reason I chose to imbed this mythical bird into my arm sprouted from being the victim of a hate crime. The forearm where the avian kin makes its home is the one place on my upper body where I suffered no damage. This phoenix is a reminder that I have the ability to become new again and work through the times that come to pass with the knowledge of my history. The other half of my reasoning finds its place within the idea that a phoenix has no set sex or gender. This marking is solely mine. It represents two of the most crucial aspects of my life and with these two reasons at hand, it gives me the reassurance that I am going to find myself and be comfortable when I get there.
I have questioned my gender since I was 10. It was not until I was 19 that I was able to find the term with which I was truly able to identify. I am gender queer. I have never liked labels but it often seems that they are necessary in our society. I assign myself this term so as not to cause too much confusion among the herded masses.