When I read Grunthus Grumpus’ article on Unfuckable Me on this site, it triggered a cascade of thoughts for me. Looking back I see now, it was my own misogyny that very early on, I had decided that I am not going to be pretty.
I was not an ugly kid, but I still decided that I won’t be pretty. Today, I feel to an utmost certainty that I am not pretty, and even slightly indulging in dressing up makes me feel like a fraud. I disrespected femininity. I saw it as shallow. I saw it as an act, playing up the damsel role to impress perhaps to get the approval of men, and so, definitely inauthentic. I also disrespected the kind of guys who fell for that display of femininity. At times I would think I want to be a boy so I can show boys how to be better at using their privilege to create something positive, instead of just jockeying for supremacy. I wanted to access the power that even young boys seemed to possess- of being the last word in a discussion with friends, of everybody in your family pandering to you, of that automatic respect and partiality that teachers bestow on guys for being rebellious.
The sexualised self of myself adopted stifling masculine notions of sex. In my teens, I ended up discussing sex with only guys, and I have inherited this shitty competitive framework that men are conditioned with when it comes to sex. Sex has actually become a list of to-dos for me. Have I done that? Have I experienced this? Next time I need to try that. How many times I have done it? This was so detrimental and toxic for me. I was so frustrated to not be able to masturbate as easily as a guy, not reach orgasm as quickly as the guy; just imitating this twisted focus on the sex and not the eroticism to reach the head space for sex. How many sex-ed videos and columns and books created by women have I watched/read to decode how my own body works and how my own desire manifests itself. Despite that, there is a sense of the male gaze transfixed at the back of my head.
There is this struggle when I don’t know if I am playing into it, or this expression of desire and sexiness is mine alone. Even the suspicion that I am catering to men can shut me down. Because my reality seems like an ironic dorky ugliness in the face of a singular type of beauty, my fantastical desire requires utter narcissism. In my real life, I may appear unconfident, hesitant and overthinking my awkwardness. In my fantasies, that is definitely not me. I imagine a space where I am assertive and I know what I want and can ask for it and have it. Also, everything is about me! There is no performance to please anyone other than me. But I can no more bridge the two in my erotic life. I also can’t bridge my intellectual belief of equality with men and my reality that teaches me to be suspicious of men, and that woman men.
These internal and external conflicts have no positive effect on my personal life. There is so much more that Gruthus Grumpus talks about, which I relate to in some way. I get her angst.
Yet, I am hopeful about overcoming my own thought-police, and bridging that gap between what I want and what is. Being aware of where all this stems from, and reading about gender helps me place my experience in context. I can externalize the problem, and work to be closer to an authentic me. I’m getting there, bit by bit by bit.
Tame Shewolf has been reluctantly blogging since 2009. She has always been interested in talking about sex and sexuality, but only recently mustered the courage to write about it.
