By the time I was a teenager, I strongly resented being “a girl.”

To me, being a girl was a symbol of no and you have-to.

No, you can’t do that thing you want to do because you’re a girl.

For example:

No, you can’t play Nintendo with us. 

No, girls don’t have short hair.

You have to do this thing you don’t want to do because that’s what girls do.

You have to wear a dress.

You have to be ladylike.

You have to be on the girls softball team after age 12. You can’t be on the baseball team with the boys after you start developing breasts. 

(And I  grew up in Southern WV,so...)You have to learn to bake biscuits so you can find you a husband. 

Being a girl was also a symbol of being lesser than.

My parents were very involved in a Christian organization with conservative gender roles.

The women’s committee in the organization is called “The Auxiliary”, and women can only join if they are the wife of a man who is a member.

If you look up the word Auxiliary in the dictionary, it means additional, extra, spare, reserve, backup. In other words: lesser than. 

No, you can’t attend a meeting.

You have to bring cookies though.

I thought all these rules were silly. And they didn’t seem relevant to me. But I was a good kid who didn’t want to rock the boat so I played along with them for the most part. I did cut my hair. And it looked awesome.

Then I graduated high school and, like a crazy person, took the advice of my high school boyfriend’s dad, who was also my youth pastor. He convinced me to go to a conservative Christian college.

There I encountered even more no.

No dancing.

No two-piece swimsuits.

No holding hands in public until marriage. 

No, girls still don’t have short hair. (So I shaved my head. And it also looked awesome.)

No, girls definitely don’t have armpit hair. GROSS! 

No questioning your gender. No questioning anything for that matter. 

No, you’re probably not in a secure relationship with God if you disagree. 

And have-to.

You need to focus on having kids instead of a career. 

You have to find a wealthy husband to support you if you want to be an artist (said my art professor).

You literally have to wear a skirt to class every day. No pants until after 5pm.

And lesser than.

I did not resemble the “girls” there in a lot of different ways. They all had similar life experiences, wanted the same things, and naturally agreed with each other. I felt isolated when I was around them, and it was more safe to be alone. 

I thought that if that’s what a girl is, I’m clearly not one of them.

Back then I hadn’t heard words like non binary or genderqueer. And there were no colorful flags to identity yourself and find your team. So I called myself androgynous, and assumed that I was on a team of one. 

I left that college after two years to go to art school, married a wonderful man who buys his own biscuits, and got on with my life. I thought I had left the no, the have-to, and the lesser than behind.

In about 2010, I took the leap to self-publish comics and present at art shows.

I still resented being a girl, more strongly than ever. 

I went so far as to publish under my first initial M instead of Mariana to be gender-neutral.

I received letters and emails assuming that my first name was Matt or Michael. 

I started to attract an audience, I won a pretty important publishing grant in 2012, and then God gave me the gift of crossing my path with a spectacularly-terrible group of assholes. 

This group of artists reached out to me to encourage my work and help me break into the comics industry. Or so they said. Some of the people in this group were very successful, so when they told me that my marriage and my relationship with conservative family members was holding me back, and I HAVE-TO leave them to be a successful artist, I believed them. 

So I told my mom and my wonderful husband of 5 years goodbye and I moved into a gritty punk house in Pittsburgh with a bunch of strangers who I thought were friends. 

It didn’t take me long to realize that they were not friends, when they

• Posted sexually inappropriate comments on my family facebook photos to cause drama for me

• Sent me increasingly aggressive sexual questions, comments, and images

• Tried to manipulate me into doing things I wasn’t comfortable with

• Especially when I saw them systematically do this to a number of other women, targeting ones who were hungry for success and lacking confidence. Gaslighting them into thinking that their loved ones were the problem, and then manipulating them to compromise themselves until they were emotionally broken. For sport. 

The no, and have-to, and lesser-than continued. 

You have to act like one of the guys if you want serious artists to take you seriously.

There’s not room on the Comics bookshelf, but you can put your book in the Women’s Comics section.

No, I haven’t read your book, but I did draw you into mine. And I made you taller and your breasts larger. To flatter you. 

Fortunately I realized that they were not my friends. They were not looking at my art, they were looking at me, and devising how to use me to their ends. 

I called my husband and asked him if I could come home. He said he’d been waiting for me. Because he’s wonderful like that. 

When I got home, I had a huge emotional breakdown. I was having multiple panic attacks every day, couldn’t eat, and couldn’t draw for over a year. I literally didn’t know my own name - if I was M or Mariana. I forgot why I started making art - which is not just some cool hobby I decided to do - it’s how I process my emotions and communicate with the world.

Making art was this thing I loved so much, worked so hard for, was my dream my whole life, and it had led me to hurt the people I loved most in the world. 

I realized that I had bought into those no, have-to, and lesser than messages when I heard myself saying them: 

No, sharing my art was a mistake.

I have to give it up if I want to be a good person.

I should have known that nobody wants to hear what I have to say.

It took me several years to recover, regain my sense of self, and eventually start drawing again. 

I’ve  learned a lot about myself in that time. 

I’ve always know what I don’t want to be - pigeonholed into a role that doesn’t fit.

But I didn’t have a clear picture of who I am. 

And an identity built out of resentment is not a stable one.

I still grumble when a form only gives me two choices between Male and Female. 

If there was a box labeled “Gender is dumb but yay to feminism and strappy sandals”, that would be the box that I would check.

I’m comfortable saying that one of many things that I am is a woman.

Because what does that mean? 

Whatever the hell I say it means. 

And there’s power in that.

Owning whatever you are is yes. 

I can. 

Equal to. 

A yes that renders the no, the have-to, and the lesser-than powerless. 

_____

Last year I drew a short comic that helped me process all this junk.

I call this story Creation of Woman because those experiences led me to truly own the power in who I am.