chicating

The power of of women noticing and supporting each other never fails to amaze and delight me. Removing the male gaze is damn near impossible in this culture, but ... yeah, it doesn't happen enough, in fiction or in life.

I had a plot-bunny about a week back that could have come out of my own teenaged past, but I'm not sure I could write it, even now. I was a boy who noticed girls, who wanted to be social with girls, who didn't quite want to be one of the girls, but didn't quite _not_ want to be one of the girls. If I had not been in the South in the 70's, I think it would not have taken a large cultural shift to open my mind to the possibility of being trans. But I really just didn't have the vocabulary.

Anyhow, the plot bunny had to do with a young gender-ambiguous protagonist working through the differences among crushes, romantic feeling, profound admiration, and desire to emulate one's older peers. It was a complicated journey for me even without throwing gender identity into it -- one line kept rolling around and around in my head: "I don't know whether I want to take you out for movies and ice cream, or just sit here and hold your hand and listen to you talk all night."

I'm rambling again. I really liked the piece.