The space in between

It could be anything really. For me, I am most preoccupied with identity. What makes up that space between our ears? How do we squeeze ourselves into cultural spaces, or dominant society?

It's taken me nearly 31 years of deconstructing the reality that surrounds me in Western European colonized North American society to be able to embrace my gender divergence. I do not fit neatly into what it means to be a biological/behavioral man or woman. I lie somewhere in between.

I was taught from a young age that liking certain things...basketball, wrestling, bmx riding, wearing cargo pants, bodybuilding and cutting my hair short were cause for scorn and exclusion. "You're a dyke!" I remember being called by boys in the playground whom I was looking to play with. I think it was because I was better than them. Or, at least I gave them a run for their money.

Being challenged by a perceived girl made these boys somehow more "girlie." They had already ingested lessons and cues that power and strength = maleness. Timidness and weakness = femaleness. Enwrapped in this idea of weakness in being challenged by a girl is the internalized misogyny of male domination. If you are weak, you are a pussy. If you are strong, you're a man. Homo's are faggots. Faggots are pussies. Gender phobia and violence is derived from innate fears of homosexuality, which in my opinion, is derived from a fear of losing male power and omnipotence, corresponds with misogyny and leads to transphobia.

I had not heard that term before. Dyke. I asked my friends if they knew what it meant. It seems that because I liked to do traditional "boy" things, this qualified me as a "dyke." At this time I had no sense of my sexual attraction to women, and thus became enraged with this categorization based on my likes and dislikes of activities and way of dress. All I knew was that this label hurt, and was meant to degrade.

I did not understand why I wasn't accepted into the dominion of All Things Male, but I knew it was unfair exclusion. Weekly, I would engage in fist fights, tripping and choking with boys on the playground to reclaim some foothold of respect for my masculinity and personhood. Between the ages of 7-10, this was all that I knew to take power back. But it didn't work. I was no more respected for my fighting on the school ground as a hysterical other. And it made me even more of a dyke in their eyes.

Throughout the years these early imprints of gender have haunted me. Like many, I hid my gender preferences until they could no longer sit underneath the pressure of my truth. A truth that comes with severe consequences in moving through the world as a masculine person whose body is read as female. Consequences which my transsexual sisters and effeminate male brothers understand all too well.