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I am female.  I was born female.  I'll grant you, I'm not a very traditionally feminine female, but it is what I am. 

I am not questioning that.  I've never questioned that.  I may have, at a few points, wished it were otherwise for the sake of having things a little easier (like a lack of the menstruation and attending labor-intense cramps*), but never had any doubt that I was a girl, then woman. 

I am still not traditionally "feminine," despite my figure and preferring to not waste time and money getting regular hair cuts. 

Does not mean I see myself as any less of, or anything other than, a woman, despite what several people on campus have suggested.**

I do know people who are distinctly otherwise: a woman born into a body carrying the wrong chromosomes, and a man born likewise.

They feel wrong in their own bodies--something I've never felt.  The young man I spoke of earlier...I knew when he was fourteen that he felt not right in his own skin.  Didn't help that the individuals he went to school with as a girl wouldn't let him use the bathroom because he was different, long before he realized that it really was the wrong bathroom. 

One interesting thing I've noticed is that this whole move toward forcing acceptance and approval for everyone who isn't sure whether they are or are not transgender is that it's enforcing stereotypes and gender roles harder than any other social force in the last eighty years.  I've seen women who were not "dressed as women" harassed in women's restrooms.***  I've noticed that, if women don't particularly care for children, their very existence as women are questioned.  I've noticed that women are pressured more to be feminine, to dress, walk, act, and look feminine.  

Ironically, the worst of these offenders are NOT bible-thumping conservative Christians.  More in a bit.

I am still not feminine.  I prefer shopping for jeans in the men's section.  I wear tee-shirts, polo shirts, blazers.  I don't wear makeup.  I don't do my hair--I don't bother with more than a ponytail or braid to keep my hair out of my face. 

I don't get harassed that I'm using the wrong bathroom for my biology because I am your classic hourglass, but I do get questioned.  Others who aren't dressed to the nines, make up and hair done, and have fewer curves, get bullied.  Even on a college campus.

People have attempted to bully me the other way: "You don't dress like a woman.  Why do you insist that you are one?  Why don't you just call yourself trans?  Or something other than a woman?"

I don't knuckle under to bullies.  There is no passive in my aggressive to the point that I have to watch myself so that I don't become a bully.  But I can see how this could pressure others to call themselves something other than what they feel they are...or to try to fit in a traditional, stereotypical mold that they don't want to be bothered with. 

I don't fit the label.  I don't care, but it makes others (mainly the SJW crowd, ironically) that label everyone uncomfortable that I don't fit the label I call myself, and won't label myself as something else.

What the hell happened to "be who you are, and don't let anyone slap a label on you"?  




*Having had children and gone through labor, I can attest that yes, my cramps did get that bad at times. 

**Suggested, then been laughed at by everybody around when I tell them to say that to the two children I pushed from my vagina, or the husband that put them there to begin with.  

***I cannot speak to whether or not effeminate men get bullied in the same way in the men's rooms.