Can you open this for me?

A day of observations

People will probably think I am a friek or something, with my off the wall observations 🙂 I’m guilty. Obviously under the circumstances, I am more in tune or aware of some of the male/female gender roles with Jamie, not trying to be over-analytical, just trying to be observant.

Tonight Jamie was setting up dinner while we were all coming into the kitchen to sit down to eat. I noticed something extremely feminine about her, when she reached out to Drew and handed him a bottle of Diet coke tonight and said to him, “can you open this for me?”

As many females could relate to me, it is VERY, I repeat, VERY frustrating to not be able to open some of the jars, caps or tops of products. It’s one of those statements, “if we can put a man on the moon, why can’t we XXXX fill in the blank, make things easier to open!!”  Guys have that little extra ummmphh when it comes to that, and it can be frustrating when you try so hard to open something, hand it to someone, and they open it it like 2 seconds.

So Drew in our house, fits that bill. When something needs to be opened, where’s Drew, “can you open this me?” Whola, it gets opened. I never noticed Jamie either asking for help, or struggling. But tonight without even trying, she handed the bottle to Drew and said, “can you open this for me?” He grabbed it, opened it, Whola! it opened. I wonder if guys even recognize that skill or not, or are oblivious. Drew acts obliviously. But he must get asked that 10 times a week.

We have a dog at home, and when I go to the store and buy a 40lb bag of dog food, even when I have Jamie with me, I leave it in the trunk of my car for Drew to bring in. Once Jamie tried to bring it in, but she broke the bag just trying to grab and maneuver it. I wonder if she has have been set back or embarassed by her lack of strength while presenting as a boy. 

When I observe Jamie, she already exhibits many what I would call feminine traits, that she authentically demonstrates unconsciously. She won’t have a problem in my eyes, when the time is to present female. I do not know if the TG girls that are out there, experienced this when they were younger. Most are subtle observations, but some of these are becoming more consistent or pronounced.

– Cross her legs naturally when she sits

– Has her foot and toes pointed downward when her legs are crossed. 

– Limp wrists sometimes when she talks 

– Has her hands folded sometimes in her lap when she sits

– Folds her hands over knees when she has her legs crossed

– Hands at her hips

– Folds her legs under her when she sits on the couch

– Hates any hair on her legs, I never taught her how to shave, but all summer long she had hairless legs (she wears sweatpants during phys ed, I guess so nobody notices). She barely has even have that much hair you could see anyway, with her having blonde hair. 

I’ve also noticed some passivity in her some of her behaviour when it comes to Drew, that reminds me on how I was growing up with my two older brothers. Jamie was sitting by yourself on the couch watching a DVD in the TV room the other night, and when Drew and his 2 friends came into the house, they immediately went into the TV room, and in like perfect rythym, Jamie shut the DVD off and went upstairs to her room. I was sooo pissed, I called Drew into the other room and said, “did you ask Jamie if you could use the room? You just can’t do that” He just entered and expected to take over the room. Of course he played dumb. But I remember acting like that with my brothers, I just deferred to them and their friends. It’s not right I just think it’s instinctive.

When I was taking our family christmas picture this year, one of the first takes I took, was Drew in the middle, Jamie was to the left being the oldest and Aly to the right of Drew being the youngest. One of the first pictures Jamie was turned right shoulder out toward the camera, with Aly repeating the pose from the other side left shoulder out, with Drew square to the camera with his arms around both of them. AWESOME picture of a brother with his two sisters, until I knew I could not send a picture out like that yet to family members. It was such a girl pose on Jamie’s part. It was so cute. 

The other kind of awkward thing, I am not sure how to deal with yet. Is when I was a young girl, like most girls, I used to love to watch and help my mom get ready for work, and I am like that with Aly. She is always in my room and I’m fine with it. But Jamie is very curious I’m sure about applying make-up, doing hair or her eventual emerging female body, (much like I was), but other then me being in a bathrobe, I am not comfortable at all or think it’s appropriate to have her in there in my room when I am getting ready. But I have kind of just excluded Aly, which is probably not right, just to make sure that Jamie does not feel bad. I’m sure I will feel comfortable in time, but admittedly kind of awkward. But I’m sure it’s important part of a young girl’s development.

Another observation of Jamie is her voice. Now her voice has not changed at all, but what’s painful is to hear her “boy” voice. I know presenting as a male she is obviously very sensitive to it. Especially at school. You might think with her trying to gain a female identity, she may be trying to over  compensate her femininity, that’s not the case at all. Sometimes I feel it is the other way around. She has natural female behaviours, and compensates when she presents as a boy. She does this “low” voice thing, and tries to use slang words to act cool, just like a girl would trying to act like a boy. In a boy voice, she uses the word “dude” a lot, As I stated the last couple of entries, her female language and conversation is very evident when it is just me and Aly around.

I am probably over analyzing, but I think I can understand the duality pressure and pain of a gender transition, just watching Jamie. It has to be sooo confusing, and just as powerful when it all gets aligned. 

Drew is with his dad all weekend, so I’m home with Aly and Jamie all weekend. We don’t have anything planned, but will look to do something nice with the both of them. TGIF, Love, Dana

8 comments January 15, 2010