In her very public coming out, Caitlyn Jenner said that being a woman was primarily a mental state and lifestyle, and that left me wondering what it means to feel like a woman.
I completely support the right of transgendered people to be treated with respect, and that includes using the bathroom and locker room that matches their gender identity, and it is none of my business whether they have had, or want to have, sex reassignment surgery. But I can't help wondering if those who identify as transgendered, but don't want to change their physical bodies aren't more rebelling against the way society rigidly defines gender than feeling that they belong in a different body. If Bruce Jenner had felt free to live whatever lifestyle he chose, would she still have felt like Caitlyn, not Bruce?
I come at this from the perspective of a cis woman, but one that should probably be identified as gender nonconforming, since my attitude toward society's rules about appropriate attire, behavior and profession for a woman has always been to ignore them completely, or at least mostly.
I wore dresses to elementary school because the school's dress code demanded it, but my childhood hero was Robin Hood, not Maid Marian. I read and watched swashbucklers and space opera and high fantasy and identified with the male heroes, because the hero part was far more important than the male part. In my childhood world, pretending to be Robin Hood didn't mean pretending to be a boy. I was always more interested in playing with stereo steam engines and model trains than Barbies.
Once that dress code was out of the way, I wore skirts or pants as I pleased and my parents supported me in doing so. For most of college I dressed in three-piece suits, complete with necktie, carried an attaché case, and wore a fedora. I know that a young man would not have had the same freedom to come to school in a dress. I took mostly science and math classes until I settled on a history major, with an emphasis on military history.i was often one of 2 or3 women in a class of 30. I wore a short, some would say masculine hair cut most of my life. Many people would have considered my lifestyle masculine. I never really though about it.
Nor am I sure what defines a feminine lifestyle. I have not watched Jenner's new show, but most of the ads I have seen seem to involve clothing. I have never cared that much about clothes (unless I am putting together a costume, but that's an entirely different discussion), and I don't have a closet full of shoes. I decided to let my hair grow about 5 years ago, and I'm having fun playing with it, but I've never thought of that as a gendered decision, since until very recently my brother's hair was still longer than mine. I still wear men's dress shirts more often than frilly blouses, but I wear skirts when I feel like it. I have had this freedom because no one who disapproved of my choices was in a position of power over me, and I can conform to societal expectations when necessary (job interviews come to mind), but I think of that as just another kind of costume.
If gender is socially constructed, are those who identify as transgendered, and consider it primarily a matter of mental state and lifestyle, different from me because I have had greater freedom (privilege?) to ignore society's gender norms? Or is there something essential to male/female identity that I am missing?