sit like a lady
"in my childhood when i naturally sat cross legged i would hear 'cover yourself up! sit like a lady.' i'd be like 'why? what am i doing?' you don't know what that means as a kid. if you need to know: sitting like a lady means sitting up straight with your knees touching each other. i like to take the space i need to sit. having a dress on and sitting with your legs open maybe there's a perceived 'raunchiness' in having your genitals so exposed. 'ladies don't do that.' there are judgments related to class, promiscuity, or being a provocateur when women sit this way. women are expected to be covered or edited. these are the scripts i've learned and seen on television my whole life reinforced by the women in my family: very formal, proper, traditionally feminine women. my sense is 'i’ll take the space i need and be how i want to be in my body.' whatever 'maleness' lives in me gives me permission and privilege to feel ok taking the space i need to sit comfortably. i’m aware of when men take up space that feels violating to me. i’m not attempting to do that. i’m feeling like i can be expansive rather than get smaller without overstepping. men easily take up space and women don’t easily take up space in that same way. that’s the thing that’s lived in me since i was a kid. i didn’t understand it and i didn’t understand how gender was a part of it. perhaps this is less about 'maleness' and more about equity and feminism.
to talk about wholeness i need to acknowledge my queerness and to look at the gender binary system. people often think that folks are either male or female, femme or butch, a top or a bottom. we have these concepts that live in opposition to each other. i feel my best when i feel all parts of myself are expressed, meaning the 'feminine' and 'masculine' parts of me. i’m female and i have large boobs so i’m very female presenting but with all this internal process and experience that is not stereotypically 'feminine.' there’s a disconnect about what’s expected of me based on my female body versus my internal experience of gender. i think a lot of people live a life 'male' or 'female' rather than living the 'in between.' that’s what gender queerness and queerness in general offers to me.
there are moments where i feel alive in my wholeness and there are times when i hear a comment (like 'sit like a lady') and that incongruency comes up for me. i’m reminded that 'what i’m doing doesn’t fit in that box.' my wholeness doesn’t fit into that binary system. there’s a disconnect... there’s sadness and surprise. then i get to choose what i do with that. i could be bummed out or i can say 'alright, we don’t experience things in the same way, that felt different for you, that looks different, there’s an incongruency, ok.'
my mother was the one who requested that i 'sit like a lady.' i asked my mom over dinner one night 'what did you mean when you said sit like a lady?' we talked about my grandmother and her attachment to highly feminine expression. my mother does not present as traditionally feminine and has attributes society assigns as masculine: she’s very practical, blunt, direct, and assertive. it’s interesting to be told to be more feminine by someone who is not feminine herself. i have three sisters who are very feminine: curated makeup and hair, and outfits with coordinated colors, shoes, and jewelry. they didn’t learn this from my mom. we had a great conversation wondering how they ended up so femme when she never modeled that for us.
the only direction for gender expression as a child was what i perceived to be this very feminist message that said you can do all the things boys do, BUT keep your knees closed and sit up straight! so i fixed cars, went fishing and played softball! i wore men’s clothing for the majority of my adolescence and my parents never said anything about that. my mom did ask me if i was gay starting at an early age. she was onto something but i wasn’t aware of it. for her sexuality and gender expression were connected. for me they were not.
my mom was generous to be part of the photo shoot so we could connect 'sitting like a lady' with her. we played with different versions of sitting and sharing space next to each other. when she saw the photographs they didn’t resonate with her so she didn’t want to be part of the final product, but she was definitely a part of the experience for me. my mom was very aware of my legs being open. she was trying to make me smaller and to keep my knees together. i had to keep reminding her that that was not the point. it was interesting to be edited while being intentional about not editing. she couldn’t let it go. i found humor in it. it felt also a little bit like theatre because i’m not intentionally going to spaces with dresses on to high kick but it was part of the art, it was part of the experience.
the message my mother gave was really direct. there’s an expectation. i haven’t heard that message from the rest of the world as directly as hearing 'sit like a lady' from my mom. the impact of hearing those words is that it has shaped my sense of wholeness as a young person, an adult, a queer woman, and a gender non-conforming person. there’s the internal experience we have of gender and wholeness, what exists everywhere else, and how we navigate that – what we do and don’t do.
it comes down to a sense of not feeling seen (meaning, wow my female identity is swept under the rug because of my posture, mannerisms and clothing choices!) i didn’t start sitting like a lady. i was never like 'oh i must do this, this is the way to acceptance.' i was like 'this is me, love it or leave it.' but then its a little bit sad in some ways. i think about the relationship of what our family, friends, and community want from us and what we have. if those are lined up its pretty mutually beneficial, its pretty great. if those things don’t connect then it doesn’t feel good.
it makes me realize where i do have this alignment: confidence to identify my queerness in professional and social spaces, my friendships and the people i'm close to, the openness and sense that nothing surprises most people in the queer community, and the beautiful shift that's happening in our culture around gender non-conformity. there are more visible trans people in the media and that is meaningful for our understanding of gender expression and wholeness. the youth are experiencing gender expression and identity in a totally different way. we still know the tv show 'leave it to beaver': june cleaver with pearls, freshly baked cookies, and women at home vacuuming in high heels. but that's not their reality. those kids don't know about 'leave it to beaver.' i get excited about all that.
in the queer community, this idea of a gender binary, femmes and butches, i think its slowly going away for my generation vs. the people who came before me. when i first came out my thought was 'do i pick butches or do i pick femmes?' i was confused and asking people 'do you think that i’m kinda butch? i feel kinda butch. do you think that femme girl would like me...?' really funny. i now know my queerness exists in so many different ways and i don’t think about gender very often in that very clear male/female, femme/butch way. i’ve dated all kinds of folks across the gender and queer continuum. that’s my experience and it feels like where the queer community and everyone else a little bit is moving toward. i always think of queerness as a big umbrella you can fit a lot of things under! lgbtqia2 (lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, transgender, genderqueer, intersex, asexual, two-spirit.) ** (see below for more inclusive acronym.) queer is the way i’ve chosen to identify. one of the reasons i didn’t come out earlier is that the word lesbian did not resonate with me, i preferred to be called gay when i first came out. when i found queer i was like 'oh! there is room to be and have ALL the feelings. i can be who i am being queer.’
i think about people who have ongoing divergent internal and external experiences of gender. i want people to feel safe to explore and push past those boundaries that are originally set for us based on society - and to see what’s out there. i want people to know they don’t have to be limited by male/female options. its huge but it feels that simple. you can be ok with all of the different versions of your gender identity, your sexual identity, and however they intersect. you need a way to feel safe inside in order to be able to do that, which is a privilege. i’m not sure how people can get that safety if they don’t have it.
i appreciate this experience because i had that conversation with my mom. it's not a conversation i ever thought to have with her. thankfully i was at a point in my life where revisiting it was not harmful or painful to my sense of self. it was really interesting to learn about her. we got to talk about her not being a very feminine person, my sisters being very feminine, and the humor in thinking about how all that was possible and i never turned out that way. i feel grateful that we had many conversations about it. naming something we had never talked about was pretty special. we don’t talk about gender expression in my family and we had a new conversation about gender and gender expression.”
our wholeness: an empathy and photography series honoring our diverse truths, tenderness, power.
sit like a lady
** a more current/more inclusive acronym for humanity’s diverse genders and sexual orientations is lgbtqia2s+ lesbian, gay, transgender, queer, questioning, intersex, asexual, agender, two spirit, plus. the plus represents identities and experiences the letters do not encompass such as nonbinary, gender nonconforming and more.
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