I have very nice handwriting. I blame it on three years of Catholic school.
Anyway, back to the here and now - my middle school cooperating teacher published a book on jazz improvisation recently and uses it as a textbook in his class. The book has fill-in-the-blank sections where students can write in licks to help improve their solos.
Today, I left my copy sitting out. A 7th-grade girl walks up to it and exclaims, "This must belong to a girl! I can tell from the handwriting."
In my head, I'm thinking something along the lines of "Bahahahaha, you're halfway right" but that could lead to awkward gender questions that could get ugly very quickly (just visualize the headlines: Teacher Tries To Turn Kids Queer), so I respond with a "Yeah, that's definitely mine."
The girl could not have looked more mortified. She handed me the book and started stammering an apology. I just laughed it off and told her I took it as a compliment. She still kept apologizing. I repeated that it was no big deal. She's still freaking out to the point of almost crying. Like, whoa. This girl is usually really, really chill. What's going on here?
Aside from the fact that she felt embarrassed for misgendering her teacher, there's a dynamic playing out here that is tied to how we speak about gender: I don't think we as a society take femininity as a compliment enough. We attach words like strong and powerful with men and masculinity and use phrases like "Man up," "Be a man," "Grow a pair," "That takes balls," etc. to represent the ideal. On the other hand, we bring people down by feminizing them with words like sissy, bitch, faggot, girly-girl, "Don't be such a girl," "You throw like a girl," etc. By using this kind of language, we practice a steady stream of unconscious sexism, homophobia, and transphobia. Bam.
Language is powerful - even regarding idle commentary on my handwriting.
Just saying.
Whoa, did I just write a serious post?
/soapbox
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