#gendered expectations

Men are incredibly easy to show appreciation for, even if they don’t know how to accept the words.

A hot meal, a trinket from their favorite hobby, a cold bottle of their favorite drink, a genuine “thank you” for performing a task society expects of them.

Here is a comic about body spray. Thanks always to the beautiful people who support the comic. If you like these funny little picture stories and want to join them: https://www.patreon.com/tomorjudy

Here is the script for accessibility: Everything is Somewhat Repaired: Lynx CW: racist marketing, teenage boys

When I was a teenager most boys would wear Lynx (aka Axe) body spray, which was aggressively marketed at horny 13 year olds. It came in about 45 different flavors, as if it were culturally insensitive candy.

I remember my mum first asking me in the supermarket which deodorant I wanted. I picked a tall hairspray type can with a picture of a car on it. This was the 90s but it something Albert Finney would wear in 1960, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning. I hated using it.

My Mum and weirdly my dad both used her Soft and Gentle deodorant. It had a silhouette of a naked woman on the can and coated your armpits in a  layer of toxic antiperspirant aluminum. I don't remember it smelling of anything. I quickly switched.

I remember the changing rooms at school being full of these little black aerosol cans of Lynx and kids, with no sense of tasteful restraint, choking the air in manic desperation. Laying on these ungodly signs and signifiers like coats of dripping paint.

See my first strawberry jam attempt? Turns out, like the raspberry jam, it tastes far better than any jam I have ever had from the store in the last decade. I ended up making some gender based observations this weekend. My goal was to can up some raspberry and strawberry jam this weekend, and yesterday I went ahead and bought a stupid amount of raspberries and strawberries to do it. I am new at…

See my first strawberry jam attempt? Turns out, like the raspberry jam, it tastes far better than any jam I have ever had from the store in the last decade.

I ended up making some gender based observations this weekend. My goal was to can up some raspberry and strawberry jam this weekend, and yesterday I went ahead and bought a stupid amount of raspberries and strawberries to do it.

I am new at this, and wasn't sure what constituted 5 crushed cups of fruit, so this saw me in the check out line with six containers of strawberries and four of raspberries.

The cashier was a bit odd about it, and asked what I was doing with so much fruit, and I said I was canning.

I am a 51 year old, heavily tattooed man. I am also transgender, but she would not know that to look at me.

Instead she was completely bewildered that I was canning jam. She nosed around why, and I said becuase it tastes better than anything store bought, and you can't even buy some of the flavors.

Then she asked if I was doing it as a gift with someone, and I was nope. Just me, canning jam for the year for my wife and I.

I then stopped at a grocery store for sugar, and bought a single 10 pound bag. I was asked why I was buying so much sugar by the clerk and the bagger, and I said I was canning jam.

The bagger, a young man, was completely gobsmacked. He was like why? Did you pick a bunch of berries? I said it was too early in the season for that, but I was making a years worth this weekend.

Before I transitioned 11 years ago, I don't recall anyone caring at all what I bought for food, and being a weird quasi-foodie that does a lot of odd ball things from scratch? I have purchased some empirically odd food combinations in really large amounts before. Nobody has ever said a word.

Now that I am read as a man? It's like my very existence beyond buying beer and snacks, is read as odd, and worth further questioning.

It reminds me the first weekend of the pandemic. I was in the grocery store with my wife stocking up on things, and being the primary cooks I had the cart stocked. The lines were stupid, so I sent my wife with the cart to the line while I grabbed a loaf of bread and some beer.

A middle aged gal saw me walking back to the line juggling a loaf of bread and several IPA's, and just made eye contact and smirked at me. I knew instantly she thought we were in the middle of a national emergency, and this dumb dude was buying nothing more than bread and beer. She was laughing, and I am sure I presented a hilarious picture in the half panicked grocery store.

It's such a weird gendered construct that men can't cook or or take care of the home.

I find I also get questioned a lot more in fabric and craft stores. I still sew, and make clothing for my wife and I, and now I get questioned a lot in fabric stores. I think there is a social construct for the gay designer, so if I look competent they immediately shoot me into the expert category. It's like there is no middle ground in perception. I am a dumb man who is invading women's spaces or I am a gay expert. The truth is I am a confident middle of the road seamster, that is bi, and married to a woman.

Conversely, I am treated way better at Lowe's Hardware, and any of the other hardware stores I end up in. People just assume I can do the work I am asking about. They start from an assumption of competence first, then back up if I tell them I need more information.

This is in stark contrast from when I looked like a woman. I have literally had hardware store guys argue with me over basic information I was correct about, because they assumed anything that came out of my feminine mouth must be wrong.