(no subject)

[rivka]

Man, I blink, and suddenly it's been a week since I posted to LJ. I'm sorry. I know that in my current state of craziness there are people who worry if I don't post.

The Wild Women gathered again this weekend. This time was mellower - we all met at one person's house in the DC suburbs, went out for Indian food and then ice cream, stayed overnight, and decamped before church the next day. We drank prosecco and beer and wine and ate hummus and pretzels and raw veggies and bagels and hazelnut chocolates. And we talked and talked and talked.

Colin came along, which just shows how awesome my friends are. I knew this group of women would never pressure me to leave an infant, but I did figure that I'd be missing out on gatherings until Colin was old enough to be left with Michael overnight. It turns out that I seem to have been the only one with that expectation. Colin flirted happily with the Wild Women, who passed him around and got drooled on and speculated about whether they were really 100% done having babies.

When I was younger, I was almost exclusively friends with men. (Or, if we go back as far as high school, boys.) I always seemed to fit in better among men, and their ways seemed easier to understand. Honestly, the performance of femininity kind of scared me - I knew I was lousy at it, and I expected other women to judge me and find me wanting. I gradually started to have more female friends when I became involved in fandom and usenet, and in recent years I've been fortunate enough to have lots of great women in my life. But I never imagined that I'd have a group of girlfriends like this. I would've predicted that I would feel awkward, say the wrong thing, not be understood, miss signals, be rejected. Instead, being with the Wild Women feels like coming home.

I am really lucky.

Comments

[baratron.livejournal.com]

I never got on with mainstream/culturally normal girls either. I was happy enough only having male friends and never really missed female company. But then I discovered that geek grrls existed and made friends with a bunch of them on the internet. (Thank you alt.poly and livejournal). And now I'm grateful to have people around that I can talk to about period pain and other such women-only experience, without having to try (and fail) to conform to mainstream gender expectations :)

[jenett]

My standard line about this is "I tend to get on well with women who tend not to get along with many other women." - in other words, most of my friends have relatively little tolerance (when it comes to their own 'where do I spend my precious social time" for particular clusters of behavior. We do, however, do great when you put us in context that ignore the shopping/decorating/all babies all the time modes.

(Rivka, before you fret: you are not all babies all the time. You are a devoted parent, as you should be, but you're also doing all sorts of other cool things, and will do more of them as your kids get more self-propelled again.)

Huh. On writing that, I discover there's a difference for me between 'all babies all the time' (children as beings without a lot of individual personality conveyed to the people hearing about them.) and "These are my kids, and I spend bunches of time talking about them, but they're individual people in my life, just like I talk about my adult partner(s), friends, etc." The latter I'm great with. The former drives me batty.

[laurarey.livejournal.com]

I was glad to read this entry in your journal. I have always struggled with female relationships. I could have a romantic relationship with a woman, but have never been great at the women-as-friends thing. I'm not at all sure why, except..and no laughing please....women make me nervous.

I find it hard to relax and am afraid my straight-fowardness will put them off. Then, my nervousness DOES put them off.

So, thanks for posting what you did. Perhaps I too shall expand my circle of female friends.