Greys between blacks and whites

There’s a great debate whether it is because of genes or nature. I say experience has a lot to do with molding one’s identity and sexuality. But then again, being a first-born daughter, I might have been exposed to more than the normal levels of testosterone in the womb. Yes, going by Marc Breedlove‘s findings, my ring fingers are noticeably longer than my index digits, both left and right. But pseudoscience aside, my life is a jigsaw. Each piece has a story to tell about how I got to where I am and who I am today.

It was not easy growing up in a society that expects conformity to traditions. I got bashed for qualities I possessed and activities I did that were out of the ordinary. The little town where I spent my childhood produced more girls my age, and so I found myself outnumbered by skirt-wearing wretches in school. I tried to restore the balance by assuming the male role. While the girls frolicked with their dolls, I was busy trying to figure out how the toy car was assembled.

I never took to wearing dresses. I never felt comfortable in them. They don’t fit the sporty body I was born with. And this has forever trapped me. As a kid, I took pleasure—or refuge—in sports: karate, basketball, cycling, judo, volleyball, swimming, running, tennis, and sipa, which I played for six years during grade-school recess with boys mostly.

Dance presentations required the class to partner girls with girls. While I didn’t dread the performance itself, I always found myself feeling uneasy about the attire, although once in a while, I got to wear a guy’s outfit. And that was when I discovered that I could get away with it if I persisted.

At an early age, this was my reality. But even now I find it hard to convince myself to attend formal gatherings, not because I don’t want to, but because I am not comfortable with society’s female glad rags. I know that a lot has changed and that I am now presented with a lot more fashion options, yet I don’t want to risk being stereotyped. So I end up hiding, closeted.

I am an introvert. I grew up in a family that expresses love implicitly. I spent a great deal of time debating my sexuality with myself, and I have avoided discussing it with anybody but my closest friends. When I was younger I could intimidate my peers to a certain degree (or at least I thought I could). But that was my way of telling them to hold their tongues on the topic. But the fact that I chewed on it meant it was important to me.

It’s true when they say that being queer is never a choice. Like most queers, I tried to find the answers to the why and how. I am a nonconformist. I challenge many of the rules that society has made. I can’t accept that girls should train inside the house while boys wander to acquire skills outside; or that parents know what’s best for their sons and daughters even if it means imposing upon them their own standards; or that those in their late 20s should be married and start a family where the wife gives in to the husband’s authority. I have been an obedient daughter, but docility is something I couldn’t manage. It isn’t in my nature to succumb, so I break away.

Growing up, I admired music bands. But while everybody else was screaming for the lead vocal, I cheered for the drummer or the bassist. While everybody in my class was learning to play the guitar, I found myself wanting more to bang the drum skins better than to strum the strings. I open and browse a novel at the bookstore from the last pages. I use my other hand to write just because I can. I am an oddity.

Perhaps it’s my obsession with perfection. I am not easy to please. As an artist, I never rest until my designs are executed to the minutest detail. Intuitively, I seek out faults and fix them. I have these ideal images in my mind of how things should look or perform. Could it be that I check girls out not because I lust for them, but because I admire their perfect lean figures and crimson lips and handsome faces and attractive smiles and nice little toes? Sure it can’t be all about physique, but I wouldn’t be honest if I say it doesn’t matter. This shouldn’t be surprising, because centuries ago the female Greek poet Sappho already described and wrote about her attraction to women in her love poems. Could it be that I know that I could never possess my perfect image of a woman so that I search for it in a mate?

More recently, my reservations have been growing about the union of one man and one woman under whoever the couple believes their Supreme Being is. I do not loathe guys, and I was born to the Christian faith. But I resent the fact that marriage gets bounded by society’s dictates on what needs to be accomplished or sacrificed.

I was a product of one marriage. My fondest memories as a child happened during the early stages of my parents’ marriage, until it reached the tipping point. Then I started asking questions. I noticed that other families seemed to have gone through the same episodes. I am not one to judge every other marriage as I haven’t tied the knot myself, but my family fell into its vicious pattern. It’s something that I’m not sure I want to be part of.

Don’t get me wrong. I’ve had my share of heterosexual attachments. I dated guys in the past and genuinely returned their affection. I loved like a real Filipina—delicate, thoughtful, submissive (although I wrestled against that last quality). I am no stranger to the feeling of comfort and longing and knowing that I have someone familiar who cares about me and what I do. The memories that come up today are not unpleasant at all. I felt then that I was loved, but I also found myself turning loose from a tight muscular cuddle as if I were stifled.

Looking back, I see me in those relationships subconsciously fitting into society and tradition, trying to prove to people and to myself that I was straight—and losing. I am looking more for a partner in life than a husband.

I find it weird that the most critical battle of the queer community today is the legalization of same-sex marriage, yet I am not sure that I am amenable to it. I like the idea of equality and acceptance once a relationship is legalized, but if it were to be subject to the same criticisms from society, then what’s the use?

What’s tough about being queer is that there’s a lot of uncertainty surrounding it. Who gets to ask whom out on a date? Who walks on the riskier side of the road? Who opens the door? Who is expected to flatter whom? Maybe this is the very reason I am not coming out. I want to remain discreet and unpredictable and uncategorized. No conventions for me.

I bet even queers who have outed themselves cannot explain why they feel the way they do. I know I can’t. I’m still trying to make sense of all of it with my quarter of a century’s smarts. I’ll stay the course. The Indigo Girls anthem speaks to me:

…“There’s more than one answer to these questions

Pointing me in a crooked line

The less I seek my source for some definitive

The closer I am to fine.”

ILrR, 25, is taking her master’s in commerce at the University of New South Wales.