I’M NOT A F***ING DRAGON
Surge is a student blog at Gettysburg College where systemic issues of justice matter. Posts are originally published at surgegettysburg.wordpress.com Through stories and reflection, these blog entries relate personal experiences to larger issues of equity, demonstrating that –isms are structural problems, not actions defined by individual prejudice. We intend to popularize justice, helping each other to recognize our biases and unlearn the untruths.
Abstract
When I was little, I pretended to be a wide range of animal-monster hybrids. Not just during play-time but always. I didn’t understand my gender, but what people expected and demanded of me, the behavior of a little girl, I could not give happily even as a child. So I fell into imagination and animal/monster-play to escape. This stopped with age, naturally, and my behavior became gender transgressive within the bounds of personhood rather than monsterhood until I became aware of my queerness as just that. I found like stories from other genderqueer and trans people in my life. I’m not suggesting all genderqueer and trans people pretended to be non-people at any opportunity in their childhood, nor that any child acting that way is genderqueer or trans. But the lines overlap a bit. [excerpt]