ok..

please don't think I'm avoiding your topic interest...

I very much like the way that you sound warmed to warmed after by men and women

my gender identity formation went off to a bizarre start can't say how or when ... or who or what... but! when I was very little ... I became more identified with what we superficially would recognise as male gender .. liked things (tv?) like guns cars ... (though the line was firmly drawn at mechano and tech stuff like scalectrix had little or no interest I'm afraid,,,) I hated dresses and liked wearing shorts and things and scrapped (but not very well) than female gender roles.... unlike my sibling...

puberty came as a shock and a great disappointment and confusion... to my sense of identity.... discovered that male behaviour could be oppressive and invasiveness in ways that ... seem oddly acceptable or unchallengable to boys and men? and that was not me... somehow... eventually I had to recognise and struggle with I was going to be a woman afterall... one who had avoided the standard cultural models of girl rearing... the dolly/stepfordwives? modelling? ...what goes on of other cultures ... ?? one who had learned about the macho stuff ..but didn't take to it .. and though I didn't recognise it then specifically or intellectually DID like sitting listening to women alone (coffee morning thing) talking exchanging words and stories that they didn't seem to do say when men were about...

so for me it was having to catch up with my physical being mind over matter?... no thankyou mind in matter the journey of understanding the value of the menstrual cycle I mean ...the psychosomatic... what is roughly and rudely dismissed as invalidatory to take part in society is in fact unheard stuff that NEEDS to be heard and reckoned with and responded to ... it's Ministry...

... probably somewhere rescued by .... the June and Schoolfriend book of heroines!!!!!! a shockful of awesome read... there is very little relatable girls literature about at least then.... didn't really identify with boy's literature it was just remotely more tolerable than that for girls... (except the above title!)

GOD BLESS!

Peace and Love..