Running free and making wild nourished my spirit, which was part “native American warrior,” part nature freak. Swimming in the sea and playing baseball with my dad came second nature. Later, I found myself laughing at the wrong sort of jokes, and thinking there must be something odd, like I fell out of the raunchy tree and hit every branch.
Did that make me a Tomboy?
I recall the night a significant other referred to my sashay as “well oiled hips,” and my abandonment for pleasure a “soulful trip between the sheets.”
With one short detour, my hair has always been long and wavy, and there’s no denying my penchant for girly girl makeup, hippie chick cloths and love of flirtation. I’ve been on a decade long on-again, off-again quest to claim my inner femme fatale, since my thirties when I recognized that integrating all of me including my sexuality was at the heart of healing old wounds.
Does that make me a Goddess?
On the days I climbed the corporate ladder with the big boys, one would have hardly thought so. Those professional suits and squared shoulders were a testament to my desire to accomplish tangible results. I am capable, hear me roar was the mantra of the times, though there was that one day I chanted “Ooh rah!” when I was interviewing along with 20 former military men, all of us vying for the same position in sales and marketing. I closed each interview that day with, “I’m the best man for the job,” and was given the offer the next day.
Did that make me a dude?
My children are evidence of a softer, nurturing side, the one keen on preparing home cooked meals, snuggling under blankets and kissing imaginary monsters away. Love for my children is a perpetual gnaw in my heart. Motherhood brought out my fiercely protective and intuitive nature. It has also been an intellectual journey; where a solid role model was lacking, I turned to friends and recommended books to fill in the gaps.
Being a mother in one way is the least controversial aspect of womanhood — everyone needs a mom — though what we do in the role is scrutinized, leaving us on an tiresome search for approval and answers to questions we never knew we’d ask, alternatively joyed and exhausted from the lifelong commitment.
Does that Make Me a Mother?
Now that my eldest is a young adult and moved out of my home, that dedication has taken on the angst and relief of letting go. The weeks before he moved out, I cried daily. Now when he calls, my heart skips with joy. I’ve been a full-time single mom for years, and the relationship I have with both kids is solid. One day, in another blog, I’ll write about breaking the patterns of abuse.
For now, I marvel at birthing two remarkable children who entered this world with everything but instruction manuals.
Does Having a Womb Make Me a Woman?
The idea of gender used to seem simple to me. I was born female and never had doubt that the rest of me identified as female too, even when throwing a ball or a punch, pinning my partner with my body or his tie, swearing like a sailor or kissing the one in uniform.
On a few occasions I experienced visceral reactions to queer women; I attributed those charges to the feminine in me responding to the masculine in them. Anecdotal conversations with bi and lesbian women clarified this dynamic for me. None of those reactions dislodged my sense of self; on the contrary, I understood the fluidity and continuum of sexuality and attraction, that we are far more than the sum of our parts.
Does that Make Me an Ally?
When I grew up, hardly anyone came out in school as gay, let alone as queer or transgendered; today, my middle schooler knows kids who identify as both, and asks questions on the topic of sexuality and gender and identity without a hint of fear or repulsion. Those candid conversations reveal the advances we’ve made socially, and also provide feedback and insight into my evolving beliefs and sneaky biases.
Two friends are navigating that journey with their children, and I can only watch in wonder and support for the love and acceptance these children are receiving from their communities, a much different environment from my youth in the 80s at the height of the AIDS epidemic when being gay was a death sentence.
Does that Make Me Evolved?
Which brings me full circle to the beginning of this blog when I eluded to a childhood obsession of mine; native American cultures. Even before I started school, I was in awe of America before, and not because I grew up watching Westerns. The allure was deeper than that; if such a thing as reincarnation is real, than what I was experiencing was more than just a Hollywood romance with the topic. I was, and continue to feel, an ancient tug of a way of life like an old memory that fades the more you focus on it.
That is why I continue to believe, and have shared with my daughter that modern society could learn a thing or two from ancient cultures like Native American tribes. Who and what we are at our core and our nature is a many-shaded tapestry. Our understanding of biology and gender continues to evolve, and it must.
What Makes Me, Me? What Makes Us, Us?
What I have learned is that mixed gender roles are part of the Native American traditions, with documented stories of two-spirits found in dozens of tribes and every region of North America and native cultures. The term Two-Spirits can be used abstractly, to indicate contrasting human spirits or identify someone who embodies both masculine and feminine spirits within one body. For the sake of clarification–I’m not an expert, only an intrigued student of life — one could think of women like me who are born and identify as female (female-female), men born and identify as male (male-male), women born female with strong masculine traits (masculine-female), and men born male with strong female traits (feminine-male). This is an example of a four-gender system, though through my reading I’ve come across many suggested classifications that have as many as nine genders.
What would happen if we embraced a two-spirited gender system in the mainstream social milieu? What if we understood that many people are comfortable on the outer edges of the male-female continuum, and many were just as naturally suited to love and play in the two-spirited realm?
On matters of gender, sexuality and spirituality, it comes down to this for me: some are born male and identify as such (or not), some are born female and identify as such (or not), and many are born queer-like and identify their own way too. It’s not the biology that matters so much as the heart and soul.
The idea of Two-Spirits suggests a deeper wisdom and compassion for what it means to be human, sexually and spiritually so. How our desires pulse is bigger than biology or the mind, neurochemicals and hormones, personal sexual experiences, aches and pleasures. Something grand, the divine architect of it all, must have known exactly what she was doing.
An earlier version of this blog was originally published by the author in 2009 in Elephant Journal. Edits were made to reflect the evolving nature of her understanding of the topic.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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You may also like these posts on The Good Men Project:
White Fragility: Talking to White People About Racism | Escape the “Act Like a Man” Box | The Lack of Gentle Platonic Touch in Men’s Lives is a Killer | What We Talk About When We Talk About Men |
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