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Monday, August 24, 2009

periods and privileges

So the following are two standard conversation / situations I’ve lucked out on, in terms of finding suitable responses. These strategies are, however, fairly idiosyncratic and not to be universally recommended.
The first occurred in one of those tedious conversations with a cis agenda that runs along the lines that you can’t be a real/full woman because you don’t share such near universal female experiences like periods. After granting the point, I asked the last speaker about how she assessed different slip liners in terms of absorbency. Receiving a puzzled look, I explained that blood coagulation problems meant that I had haemorrhoidal bleeding every day and therefore always wore always. I don’t really know how this came across, but the ensuing silence was satisfying.
The second is more to do with male conversation privilege. Whilst I’ve usually got no problems in modifying my conversational role to normal female, it’s a little different if you’re running your own sort of salon. And I am something of a femme queen ( in terms of strength and style, definitely not looks ). So one evening when I was being particularly marginalized I made a point of loudly thanking one longstanding friend for his growing acceptance of me as a woman. At his nonplussed look, I explained that by talking past me and ignoring my efforts to join the conversation he’d helped me a bit more in understanding how a true woman should be. Things got easier after that.

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