The duality of gender in me

Having written a bit of an introduction last month which given the sluggish nature of the internet around here I thought I would write something about the duality of being as it affects how I am.

This is a fairly straightforward gender typical set of presentations of the sort I was used to in infants and juniors many moons ago.

Girls wore skirts (or dresses) and boys like me wore short trousers which back then believe me were short and at our school it was a fairly simple uniform with no caps and blazers and we did were dress shirts (or blouses for girls) rather than polo tops.

That presentation is fairly free of gender stereotypes other than the whole skirts/short trousers thing where girls in time become able to wear trousers and parental ("he's big boy now") pressure pushed older boys also into (long) trousers.

To be honest I had no big issue with with wearing short trousers and still do but I positively hate wearing long ones and did like to wear skirts too.

That was an issue then and even for a number today with fairly gender neutral uniforms that still is an issue.

Why not make skirts or skorts an option for both boys and girls?

As someone who is very much mentally a child the way I present is more in line with actual children, never "sexy" or "edgy"

All of that is gender presentation, the way you express it through dress but you may express it through play but how that balance between my masculine core and the feminine side alters in real time affecting how I see and feel things too.

It's not like you have a switch between the two but they move and blend making me, well me.

I'm just a sissy gurl really not a transgender.

Secrets

To say Enid Blyton wasn't an influence on me would be to miss something that overlapped the other big thing in my life boarding school life as I read one while at the other and a good number of her novels I read were about communities of children in boarding school like me, living in the country or as this series starts with children running way from uncaring and abusive even by the standards of the time adults who were responsible for them, making a new life with amazing resourcefulness.

 I did eventually get the Secret Island in hardback which isn't really an adventure book in the way all the others are but more an account of their lives giving you the background to the adventures to unfold as we learn about Jack, Peggy, Mike and Nora.

The Secret of Spiggy Holes is the first adventure proper  introducing us to important people such as Prince Paul of Baronia. 

As with the first one it took ages to find a serviceable hardback and like the other, it didn't come with the full colour dust jacket although the images in both are replicated as frontalis so it's just an irritant not to have the actual jacket.

This is a more modern edition, the 1991 omnibus published by Mulberry of the last three novels, the Secret Mountain, Secret of Killimooin and Secret of Moon Castle being held captive in the Secret Mountain, travelling the the Killimooin Forrest where they feel a ferocious band of robbers  hangs out and exploring Moon Castle looking for ghosts at the end of night.

Rugrats

One of the first shows I watched when I had Sky Television was Rugrats which was a cartoon versioned depiction of the world of the Infant/Toddler on Nickelodeon which at the time was just single channel.

It was interesting to watch for the explorations of those infants characters passivity to dominance from extroverted to very introverted and how the group interacted with Angelica often getting the upper hand.

I bought several dvd's including the full length animations for home watching as like a good number of us, we are watching very much from a more child-like mindset, seeing parts of ourselves reflected in it.

The Definitive Drifters

Some sounds it has to be said do take me back in time not least for much of that time I was glued pretty much to the radio listening to 'oldies' shows and then there  are some acts I recall as both oldies at the time but contemporary too and the Drifters are one. 

Let's say I've always been a fan of Ben E King's singing  and of such songs as Save The Last Dance For Me, Up On The Roof, Under The Boardwalk which was covered by both the Stones and the Undertones and Saturday Night At The Movies to the point of borrowing various hit compilations.

Equally for me I have childhood memories that included new songs recorded for the UK market such as Kissin' In The Back Row  Of The Movies, Like Sister and Brother, There Goes My First Love and You're Than a Number In My Little Red Book still very much the same sound but with more a poppy production that I loved to bits as new songs.

That was why I bought this 2 cd compilation because it's two thirds the classic late fifties and sixties classics very well mastered and a third those UK seventies 45's all one one album in chronological order too.