ManPants: the project that ate my life

So I finished my project about spending a day dressed as a man. Holy Cheese it took me over 10 hours to finish editing the video and I did a pretty shoddy job of it and then wrote one of the worst papers I've ever written. It was one of those wow-this-doesn't-make-a-lot-of-sense-but-I-don't-have-time papers. Awesome.

Here's hoping that 20% of my grade didn't just vanish into nothing.

To be honest the project became half for my soc class and half for this class looking at gender and how it's constructed and how it relates to me. It was incredibly important to me to take it seriously and give it everything I could.

Interestingly my parents and my sister literally laughed at me and my efforts and refused to recognize that this was personally emotionally significant for me. As a result I'm still mad at them and they're confused and annoyed. This should be fun.

In case you're wondering I'm very aware that I didn't manage to pass and I look really bizarre in the photo.

I decided to prepare it in the form of a video diary because I can get my thoughts out much faster that way. I was annoyed that youtube made me split it into two parts because of the length. It essentially comes out to 17 minutes of gender based navel gazing but whatever.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you "ManPants: A Day as a Dude"!!

Anonymous Bosch: blogging, gender, and my mom.

*a side note: my post on the readings won't be up until at least mid-morning due to my life exploding like a marshmallow in a microwave*

It was an ordinary weekend until I found this video on feministing. It's a documentary about three biological females who identify as genderqueer and their struggles in life. It may seem like no big deal but I remembered seeing part of this documentary with my mom when it first came on LOGO a few years ago.

My mom is great. She's loving and supportive and loves the gay community. When we were watching this documentary together she kept asking me if I was going to end up getting a sex change and that she didn't know if she could handle that. I said I wasn't and I wouldn't. Then I left the room and didn't finish watching the documentary.

This weekend I finished it and now I'm freaking out.

My mom said she read my blog post about my hair and was worried I was going to get a sex change. I told her not to read my blog because it's very personal. If I talk about something personal on my blog chances are I don't want to talk about it in person. Example: my gender identity. Because this is so personal if she's reading it and asking me about it in person I feel angry and betrayed. This is like my journal.

Odds are you haven't met me. You don't have any established ideas about who I am and what I should be. You have no real choice but to accept me as I am or move on. If you make me uncomfortable I can delete your comment or go to a different page or turn off my computer. You aren't going to grill me during a family dinner about the odds of me having male chest reconstruction surgery.


I'm not ready to say anything verbally. I'm just not. It's a coping mechanism: if I don't say it out loud it isn't real. I'm not ready for it to be real. I want to be left alone to sort this one out. This is personal. This is not a family matter.

Seeing that documentary just reminded me about all the stuff with my gender and my mom and the ideas of privacy in a world as public as the internet.

One of the biggest reasons the internet is great for spreading ideas and activism is that it's safe. There is no risk of someone throwing rocks at you or recognizing you from work and threatening to tell someone that you have beliefs others may not agree with. The anonymity of the net allows people to safely be who they really want to be.

Right now I need that.

So Mom, if you're reading this, please stop. Everything I write here is mine. My life, not yours. If it's important enough I will tell you when I'm ready. Right now I'm not ready.




Why is my gender suddenly an epic issue?
I'm gearing up for a major project in my Contemporary Sexualities class. I'm spending a day dressed as a guy.

Holy.Frak.

I'm both psyched and utterly terrified mostly because tomorrow I will not only be observing how the world treats me I will also be observing how I feel about myself presenting a masculine gender. The scary part? I might like it. I might hate it and never want to do it again but I don't know yet. The whole ordeal makes me feel as though I don't know myself. My little box I've lived in for my whole life could potentially be blown to bits. In the words of Stewie Griffin of Family Guy, "I don't like change!!" (I know Family Guy is horrible on a million levels but it makes me laugh and I don't feel like analyzing it right now.)






I'll let you know how it goes.

Wish me luck. I could use some moral support right about now.

Precious in the sight of the Lord

I went to check my facebook and for the first time in what feels like years I saw a photo of my grandmother in hospice. She's smiling and holding her sister's face, saying goodbye.

It's strange but I can't really explain how much it hurts to remember she's gone.


In my eyes she's the greatest feminist that has ever lived and I miss her.

Both my parents were victims of abuse and very much had a sense of victim mentality about them. They did their best but when I was verbally and psychologically abused by a teacher they didn't really know how to deal with me. One of the only examples in my life of someone who refused to be a victim, someone who was alway strong, was my grandmother.

When she was 17 she was told that because of problems with her reproductive system she would be unable to have children. She had four.

After a medical procedure she was told she couldn't finish high school because her school in El Paso had stairs and she couldn't use them. She transferred to Las Cruces Union High School and supported herself as a switchboard operator and lived in a boarding house.

After raising her four children she decided she wanted to become a nurse and did it. She went on to work as a nurse at Memorial Medical Center for years.

She spent much of her life traveling and didn't stop after turning 70. She spent a few summers working in Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks holding her own the whole time.

She lived in her own home taking care of herself right up to 6 months before she passed. She was incapacitated by Wegener's Granulomatosis, an auto-immune disease whose treatment would have killed her faster than the disease. But even to the last she called the shots, she chose to end dialysis in June of 2007.

I was the only person in the room when she passed and those moments holding her hand are still the most important in my life. Still the hardest goodbye of all.


I suppose the most difficult part is trying to relate to someone else why someone is so important to you, why you can't let this one go. I'll be honest; it hurts less over time but the pain associated with the memories always lingers.

Seeing that photo of her hurt a lot more than I expected it to. It doesn't help that it's Easter Weekend.
Happy Easter, Wink. I still miss you.