The Life and Times that I forgot I was a Woman.
There have been two times in my life where I actually forgot that I was a woman.
I was a little stoned one night and I went to the loo and went to sit down on the seat. For some reason it then occurred to me that, oh I'm sitting down this time, and then realised that I always sat down to go to the loo, (apart from the times I used to stand and pee, but that is another story), and then realised I was a woman. It wasn't that I thought that I was a guy, but it was more the sudden awareness of feeling temporarily genderless or unaware of gender. Most of the time in my everyday life I am not specifically conscious of being a woman or of being Indian, which brings me to my next story.
The other time was when I went home to have dinner with my family. I didn't realise that they had company, so when I walked in I was a bit startled by these strangers that were sitting at the dinner table with my family eating dinner, mother and daughter. This was odd and unexpected to me since I did not know who they were or why they were there, and so I was trying to concoct explanations as to who and why since I couldn't just straight out ask in polite company, "Hey, who are you and what are you doing here?" The only feasible reason I could come up with was that my parents were trying to set me up with a 'good Indian girl', and that they were trying to do it subtly and just invite them over for dinner when they knew I'd be home.
This has been done before in my family, albeit trying to manufacture a heterosexual coupling, where my parents would talk to the other person's parents and then they arrange a meeting to meet, and then the two youngens would finally meet, whether the son or daughter want to continue meeting is decided by themselves with consultation with the family elders after their first meeting. I profusely let my parents know that no such thing was going to be arranged for me since the background I come from 'arranged marriages' are common.
'Love marriages' were uncommon and even frowned upon, and so these subtle or perhaps not so subtle encounters became familiar to me while growing up. Moreover, being anything but heterosexual is definitely not cool from what I understand about Indian culture. So that fact that I temporarily forgot this, but more so forgot I was a woman... again, led me to think that my parents were trying to set me up with another woman. Thankfully before I acted on these thoughts did I realise that I was being delusional. I realised that it was not the done thing around here.
The first time I forgot I was a woman may have been because I was stoned but it was still an interesting experience regardless. To have an embodied experience where I temporarily forget about sociological construction, as in arbitrary categories like man and woman, and then realise before it is of any consequence is comical to me. Also, the fact that it is possible to forget sociological constructs is a beautiful thing.
2025 Reflections
It's been 16 years since I wrote this and I no longer identify as a woman. I have transitioned gender since then and so it makes sense that this was my gender dysphoria surfacing. I wrote this when I was unsure whether I was still passing as a woman or not. I would never hide it, nor would I flaunt it. It was always unknown to me on a daily basis which gender I am passing as. This has gotten me in some confusing situations where I did not know how I was being received and was unsure how to proceed accordingly. Growing up in a cross-cultural context that was very gender segregated caused me to be socialised as a women just to survive.
As an adult navigating this world in a gender that I seem to be publicly transitioning into and have no real experience with has been fairly difficult, and I seem to be rejected from the culture of man since these guys have already sexualised me when I was passing as a woman. That same misogyny and disrespect has crossed over to these people just openly disavowing me because I don't fit their idea of what an ideal man would be. It has been a fairly ablest experience. I would like to mention at this point that this is a good example of how minorities seem to be put on a pedestal to set a "good example" for others to follow with the burden of dispelling negative stereotypes.
