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and this is where i'm reminded of an unrelated conversation i had a while back, in which i was expressing a desire for better data on things like the actual correlation of pelvic width to assigned gender (coming as i do from a narrow-hipped mother and wide-hipped father), and the friend i was talking to was like, why even cede that ground, though? like, even if wide hips are generally a Woman Thing, well, (a) there's nothing wrong with Woman Things and (b) i thought we'd established that gender isn't sited in the body? and at the time i was like, fair enough! and let it go, because i agree with both those points—but i was never entirely satisfied with how the conversation had gone, and my thought process today helped clarify for me why: because wanting better data about actual quantifiable things that we tend to just handwave with (cis)gendered assumptions isn't, actually, about wanting to validate my gender by establishing that i got my hips from my dad or whatever; it's about the fact that letting gendered stereotypes gaslight you about the actual reality of the world we inhabit makes you—me—a sloppy, stupid thinker!! and like. i aspire to be compassionate. i aspire to be consistent. but—by the god i don't believe in—i aspire, maybe above all else, to be precise.
so i’m friends on strava with Baby Sister’s extremely sweet, extremely earnest nerd-jock boyfriend, right, because i’m trying to Behave Welcomingly towards the partners of important women in my life despite being, if we’re being honest, the world’s most defensively shriveled social prune, and today that normally-very-incidental fact rubbed my nose hard in how much sexism i still gotta unlearn—
so i went for my stupid dinky little run, right, and dutifully logged it, and found myself looking at my dash or activity feed or whatever they call it over there, and realized Baby Sister’s bf had also just been for a run, which had taken him about the same amount of time; but the thing was, i’d actually run, like, 15% longer than he had, it was just that my pace per mile had also been, like, a minute and a half faster than his. which was really startling to me, because i absolutely reflexively assumed that a tall mid-twenties cis guy, who i know for a fact cycles and rock-climbs on the reg, was going to be a faster runner than me, a medium-height estrogenized couch potato!
and like, obviously i have no idea what relationship this kid's pace today had to his actual capacity, and also quite frankly in my experience running is a sport where, sure, your fitness matters or whatever, but it’s also just radically easier the less you weigh?? so i’m not particularly priding myself on a (decidedly non-elite) pace that has a lot less to do with my current fitness level (rusty) and a lot more to do with currently being underweight bc i’m bad at feeding myself bc adhd. but it just feels like. pretty fuckin telling that i was so taken aback!!