Why do you want to look like a man?

By Laura Couto in Feminismo às Raízes, original in Portuguese here.

My clothes are bought in the men’s section. The hair on my legs are longer than most of the hair on my head. I never wear makeup, no matter if I’m going out to buy bread in the morning or going to a party. People on the street often call me “sir”. Others take to insulting me, sometimes calling me a “dyke”, sometimes calling me a “faggot”, in both cases demonstrating their disapproval of my physical appearance. I see small children asking their mothers, in whispers, if I am a boy or a girl. And I get asked all the time “why do I want to look like a man?”.

The answer is simple. I don’t want to.

And I don’t look like a man.

I look like a woman who refuses to perform femininity.

My hairy legs don’t make me look masculine, they’re MY legs, and it’s MY leg hair, and I’m a woman. My “boy” clothes dress my body, the body of a woman. My naked, unpainted face is the face of a woman. I am a woman, and this is not defined by a haircut or a choice of clothing, or by lipstick and heels, or by underwear and men’s deodorant applied to hairy armpits. There’s nothing “manly” about me.

I am a woman, and this is not a choice but a fact. Because “woman” is a reality imposed on me, from the day I was born and given a woman’s name, to the day I was six years old and I was told, on a hot summer day, that I couldn’t take off my shirt because in the future I would have breasts, until last night when I walked home in a hyper-attention state with the house keys clasped tightly between my fingers, following every movement of every man who walked in the same dark street.

I am female because, since before my birth, when an ultrasound image informed my parents that I would be born with a vulva, I was raised to be a member of the female class, the reproductive class, the sex class, the underclass. I was taught to always accommodate others and speak softly, not to draw attention to myself, and to spare men’s egos and feelings. I was taught that the boy who pulled my hair and threw his toy train at me, aiming for my head, probably did so because he liked me, and that’s how boys are. I learned that if I did the same to him, I was a troublemaker, someone who causes troubles. That being assertive is ugly, it’s not a girly attitude. That one day I would marry and have some man’s children, and that was practically fate, a certainty of life. That my greatest value was in my appearance, much more than in my mind. I’m a woman because I’ve been taught all these things, and I’m a woman because people expect me to know all these lessons by heart, and follow each one of them.

When people ask me why I want to look like a man, what they’re really asking is why I refuse to present myself as a member of the female class. They are asking me why I am not playing the role of femininity, presenting myself pleasantly and harmlessly in the eyes of the ruling class, the male class. My mother once worriedly commented that she was afraid my presentation and attitude would make me a target for male violence, and she is right in her concern. I am perceived as a member of the underclass who refuses to behave and present and fulfil the role imposed on me. I refuse to shave my legs to look like an innocent, vulnerable prepubertal child, or to wear shoes that force me to walk “tiptoeing,” slowly and with precarious balance, and this infuriates men, for it is a conscious act of rebellion. This is me saying I don’t belong to them. That I will not please them. That I don’t want your attention or your approval. And men often violently treat those who refuse to do what they want.

My choice of physical presentation makes me a negative example. I am the ugly, hairy lesbian feminist, the one men use to warn other women. “Don’t be like her,” they say, “or no man will want you.” But I don’t want them either, and I don’t want to look like them, or be like them, or have anything to do with them. I want to be free from men and their arbitrary standards. I want to be able to walk proudly, without guilt or shame for not being “feminine,” the way a woman is when she’s not covered in paint and restrictive clothing, a woman who doesn’t care about pleasing men.

I don’t look like a man, and nothing is going to make me look like one. I’m just an unadulterated woman. I chose myself over them, and I chose other women over them. If that makes men hate me, so be it. I’m a woman, and they’re gonna hate me anyway.