How Do You Learn Your Gender?

I've said this a thousand times, I'll say it a thousand times more, I identify as a woman for political reasons, and a lot that began because I was..well, assigned female at birth (which is not at all to insinuate that is the only cause or valid path to being a woman, it happened to become mine because I had no idea there were other options). I didn't know what constituted my gender but as a kid, you're told what it means to be *a girl*. It wasn't bodily determinations, at least not directly, most of my gender was taught to me as restriction and disenfranchisement. It didn't really matter what *girl* meant to me, society was going to treat me how they had already decided girls were to be treated. So, my relationship with my gender became about reacting to, dealing with and fighting against sexism, misogyny and systemic disempowerment. Womanhood was taught to me as a lack of freedom, rights and power, so my comprehension of my gender became entirely about opposing those systems. What does being a woman mean to me? It means undoing and fighting against oppression *for everyone*. That is *all*. I'm a woman because I'm *treated like* a woman, I enjoy womanhood because representing as a woman who is challenging social and legal norms is important to me politically.

That is how it has been for me, for most of my life. Of late, however, I've been thinking about gender outside of a social system. I realise that I have no real personal relationship with my gender, it has no meaning to me and any gender-conforming choices I make in terms of aesthetics are either incidental or a result of social conditioning (and the moment I realise that, I seem to be unable to make those choices anymore). I see, around me, that people do different things to enjoy their genders or signal them, but when I try to figure out what I would do, I have no answer whatsoever. We have a tendency to begin at clothing and so I have been thinking about clothing and gender (specifically, my gender).  The way I see it is that either one dresses in things that make them feel/look *good* or they dress in things that make them feel like themselves. I use a specific math to dress myself but all my clothes are essentially the same. I have nice black pants for formal things, normal pants for normal things. I have nice black shirts for formal things and plain black t-shirts for everything else. I have some black dresses and some black suits and ties. Clearly, the main theme is that everything is black because it makes the world easier for me. Over the past five years or so, I just bought the same clothes on an annual basis.

But these aren't the clothes in which I *look* good. I mean, I look *fine*, but they aren't what qualifies as beautiful clothing. I can look good in nicely rendered outfits, little shorts and floral tops, or whatever. I can look good in a saree. I can look good in a skirt with a cute top. My goal with clothing isn't to *look* good nor is it to be creative with fashion (all of which are perfectly worthy goals), my goal is to make clothing as easy as possible for myself because I am annoyed by the fact that I have to dress myself every day. That sentiment does not have a gender. When people tell me I should wear some colour and it will bring joy to my life or I will look nice in it, I don't think they realise that the difference is in our goals with clothing, black is not a choice that signals despair or belief I won't look good in something else, it only signals ease. I really liked something Mae Martin said on their show "Feel Good," they had to do a television spot and they were really excited so they asked: "*What should I wear? A nice white t-shirt or maybe a nice black t-shirt?*" That is sort of it for me. Those are all the options and that makes me very happy.

But, say, as an experiment, I think about clothing that makes me feel like myself. I can think back to outfits I've really loved wearing because they made me *feel* like myself. Like the tuxedo I wore to my wedding, I loved the combination of red, talon-like nails, a cumerband and men's tailoring. I loved wearing a white shirt, suspenders and red as fuck lips. I enjoyed wearing a giant, super cultural nose-ring with trousers and a bow-tie. Of late, I've been trying to learn some classical Indian dance forms, and I've been really excited by the prospect of combining the men's outfits with the women's dance-forms, or just combining all kinds of clothes that are designated by gender and wearing them all at once or mixed up. There is an expression of gender to this for me, and all of these clothes made me *feel* like myself, which has got me wondering, why?

The clothing is just a symbol for a larger question, really, the question of, how does it *feel* for me to be a woman? And the answer is, like nothing. I don't *feel* like a woman. I feel like a..person. The personal pleasure I get from exploring gender is from..fucking around with its symbols and disrupting those systems. I mean this completely outside of a political sphere (where, as mentioned before, my gender has meaning to me and I have cause for continuing to identify as such and that's mainly the patriarchy). In a personal space, one where gender can be enjoyed and discussed and understood, it has no meaning to me and the clothing I choose to express myself is quite clearly aimed at neutralizing the gendered connotations of articles of apparel.

I wonder what that means.

Imma have an introspective gender journey. Let's see where this ends. I feel like I already know.