Femininity

I watched Hannah Gadsby's Netflix special recently. Her show went beyond self-deprecating jokes into a deeper analysis of how society fails people on the fringes. You felt her anger at injustice and sensed her sincere desire for humanity to do better and be better. You laughed because she timed her jokes exactly right. You are taken aback when she reveals the intentional omissions to the material she shared earlier on. You're prompted to reflect and feel uncomfortable. Thoughtful, targeted scrutiny is an unlikely characteristic of a stand up comedy show.

In the special, Gadsby cracks a joke about the time a man wanted to beat her up for chatting up his girlfriend. Her gut wrenching conclusion to that initial punchline comes over 30 minutes later when you least expect it and shocks the audience into silence. Her ensuing statement about her lack of femininity and how that influenced what happened is a lot to take in.

I reflected a fair bit on her comments about femininity. The feminine typically refers to the expected physical characteristics of a woman. Femininity also tends to get a bad rap, associated with weakness and softness. It's telling that one of the most insulting things you can call a man is related to the feminine.

Physically, I am not what is considered conventionally feminine by East Asian and Western standards which tend to favour lighter skin tones and petite features. I have fairly broad shoulders and an angular facial structure. As a child, the typical refrain from my parents and well meaning relatives was to stay out of the sun and avoid getting tanner than I already was.

My memories around femininity are varied. My main reference point for how to dress and act while growing up were my two older brothers. I wore their hand-me-downs. I played with their toys when they weren't looking or lost interest in them. I had Barbie dolls too, but they didn't seem as interesting. On trips to the toy store I was always drawn to the superhero action figures aisles. I remember looking longingly at the action figures I couldn't have for whatever reason my parents articulated.

I recall how my mother used to make me wear dresses to Sunday Mass as a child. I would angrily throw a tantrum about how tight fitting they were, how suffocated I felt, to no avail. Eloquence when distressed is not a child's forte. When we had evening engagements or dinners to attend, the options were skirts or dresses. In my teenage years, my mother seemed to come around, allowing slacks and blouses for these events. 

Femininity in an all-girls school is all encompassing; everyone did it differently. No one except for the teachers and the occasional nun cared that you sat with your legs splayed out under your desk because it was more comfortable. We snapped our friends' bra straps for kicks, and changed in our classrooms after sweaty PE lessons. When our friends were going through a rough patch at home, we sat by them in some quiet corner of the school as they sobbed their eyes out. When you're in this environment for a decade, you develop a flexible, malleable understanding of what femininity means.

By the time I got to university, I could no longer run away from the fact that I liked women. Around the time I became more comfortable with my sexuality, I began to enjoy wearing dresses for me. I toyed with colour and patterns in my outfits, dyed my hair, and painted my nails. I discovered a stylistic freedom and femininity I hadn't given much thought to when preoccupied with adolescence. 

There is a bit of a stylistic conundrum that comes attached to being a gay woman. I questioned for a while if I dressed a certain way because I actually liked the femininity of an outfit, or because I wanted to avoid being identified as a lesbian. I wasn't comfortable with people I barely knew approaching me to ask if I was gay simply because of a tell, let alone because of something I was wearing. Butch lesbians and more masculine presenting queer women don't have this benefit of invisibility. Hannah Gadsby experienced this first-hand.

Needless to say, my relationship with femininity and its impact on my life has been a long and winding road. These days, I wear clothes I'm comfortable in and like. I balance the gentleness of empathy with firm rationality. It is a mistake to equate femininity with weakness and masculinity with strength. Femininity is and should be diversely portrayed.

Holding Hands Should Be Simple

All we were doing was holding hands. But someone was staring. There's always someone staring. The stares vary- hostile glares, disgusted looks, some furtive side glances. Most days we don't let go, we continue walking, eyes straight ahead. Occasionally we feel unsafe, unsettled, and we do. Other times I meet their eyes evenly until their gaze shifts away.

Pause for a moment to consider how ludicrous it is to be grateful no one has verbally or physically attacked you for holding the hand of the person you love. Bracing for an affront is always in some small dark corner at the back of my mind. We're fortunate to live in a city where we can hold hands and even show some small gestures of affection in public. Small gestures, because even for a city as liberal as Vancouver, people can get attacked for appearing to be anything other than heterosexual. Most people get to walk down the street holding hands without a second thought about feeling unwelcome or harassed for doing so. A safe society is the most basic building block of any city.

There are many things we could explore about hand holding. We could discuss at length how hand holding helps couples experience a closer bond, about how it reduces pain and anxiety. We could talk about how comforting it can be or how our hearts race when we first hold the hand of a lover. But we won't, not today.

That's because holding hands should be simple.