Gender Spectrums

As a girl who's had boy's short hair from eighth grade till the end of my Sophomore year, having actually buzzed it in my Freshman year and just let it grow from there, I think I have quite a bit of authority through which to write about this topic.

The barriers that exist between men and women and how we dress, what we buy, how we wear our hair are hard to escape. With the buzzcut,  people routinely thought that I was a boy. On second look, noticing red lipstick or a skirt, they revised their opinion. I must be a butch lesbian. Only those play roller derby anyway! I could shake them by the shoulders and shout "I AM SAPIOSEXUAL AND SLIGHTLY MORE FOND OF MEN!!!" and they would not get the message.
So yes, there are gender lines. But they are cross-able.

I know one boy with beautiful long auburn hair and people always ask him when he's going to donate it, like that's the only reason it could be so long. I know another boy, however, with equally beautiful dark brown hair down to his butt, and his sister (who happens to be my best friend) is completely confused because he has recently become very popular with the half of the home school group that finds men attractive. Most of them are female. She's somewhat horrified, as she's considered "slapping him in spandex" when her aunt threatened her with beauty pageant participation.

That example of a "masculin," straight, attractive, vaguely popular guy with long hair isn't in sheltered OPRFHS,  but in adult Chicago where they take college classes with adults and take public transportation everywhere.

It is socially easier for the oppressed to become like the oppressor than it is for the oppressor to become like the oppressed. As someone put it somewhere along the line, "We have done a good job raising our daughters like sons, but not so good a job at raising our sons like daughters."

It's harder for a boy to wear high heels than it is for a girl to wear tan, clunky, hiking boots. Harder for a boy to wear a skirt than it is for a girl to wear pants, even "masculine" pants. But boys are doing it. Even very heteronormative boys.

So the gender line is blurring. Faster for women than men,  maybe, but it will fade eventually
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