Born Under A Man’s Sign
Bury me with my birthstone so archaeologists know I’m a girl.
The Question is asked when I hang out with a new group of girls. The Question drops one hour or three beers in, whichever comes first, less an icebreaker and more a sign of growing interest. I have taken that as a compliment before. Crude mistake.
What’s your sign?
Overexposure to The Question has been somewhat liberating. Adult autist self-doubt says socialization is a game whose rules everyone but you was born familiar with. In truth, some of the many rules of socialization are varyingly instinctive to different people. The popularity of astrology makes this clear: no one is born knowing that Gemini are duplicitous bitches who give great head.
So I memorized what my sign means. When I got bored of nodding along, I developed my own versions of the game: I started lying to people about my sign. This variant is most rewarding with friendly but occasional acquaintances who have forgotten your answer. With merciless confidence, someone that thought you Leo a month ago will build you a new person-suit in the shape of Aquarius, and decide yes, your skin has always looked like this. Both players in this variant relish sadism. If you’re lazy, variant two is to tell them to guess.
But The Question takes more than it gives. I’m an apostate Catholic, an abortive Buddhist. It’s taken years of introspection, plus panic attacks contemplating my inevitable erasure, to settle on disquiet atheism. I can play other social games without compromising myself, but never will I believe that I am me because I was born on the 37th of Phlogiston. For us enlightened queers, it would be unthinkable to lead strangers, even with casual asks, into squaring with your religion. But it’s fine with astrology, because astrology’s for girls.
Now try googling “woman disliking astrology”, even variants thereof. I managed to pluck out a Them article and a LesbianActually thread, and no more. I’m already on probation from Man Jail on account of my tiny tits and huge shoulders. Disliking astrology is how I’m thrown back in.
Gender’s, as any cultural dependence, the subject of religious interpretation. I knew this coming out in Mexico, 78% Catholic. Women are the Mary, Virgin or Magdalene. Women don’t like heavy metal. (Really, no one in the Americans is supposed to like heavy metal, but men get by.) I would always be outré. That was an adjustment, but no shocker. What continues to get me is the proliferation of the inverse dyamic: the giant slice of womanhood, even lesbianism, acting as defenders of holy prescriptivism.
So don’t make a fuss. Be cool, strategic. Yes, I should like to quietly watch my presence become a blind spot. This is why I signed up for womanhood. To become small. To decide which parts of the woman-suit I will sew shut today. If I’m silent, they might not even ask me The Question. A woman-suit is nothing but a person-suit with a ‘kick me’ sign. God, I thought Libras were supposed to be charming.
And that’s in the flesh, where people are writ large civic, if only as not to pick a fight. Online? Here:
Astrology advertising and merchandise, from mystical stationary to zodiac makeup palettes, are undeniably directed towards women and femmes, playing into gendered stereotypes. (…) As a result, many men don’t feel welcome in the community and react by guarding their masculinity and undermining astrology. “To most men, astrology is too girly or immature, which explains why they disagree with it or deny its validity,” [psychologist Barbara] Santini says. “This creates a negative perception of astrology and the women who like it. For some men, the refusal of astrology is linked to toxic masculinity, which does not allow them to enjoy the same things as women.”
Here is an industry dedicated to convincing women and femmes (I should just once like to hear that phrase defined in structurally consistent terms, please, I’m oozing discursive goodwill) that we all have the gift of scrying. All we need is colorful paper and eyeshadow, which is granted like manna by the divine Miranda. Pointing out birth charts are rather printed by Ontarians with something to sell makes you a toxic man. Or butch, I guess. (Butches that don’t like astrology: my DMs are open and my sexual accessibility is negotiable, as is apparently my gender expression.)
My religion is promiscuous, but not for enthusiasm in fucking around. It’s so because of endless discussion, with friends of all beliefs, on what it means to live, what one can do about it, what it is to be and how such a notion is even possible. It’s crucial for me to exercise rigorous philosophy, even accounting for the inexpressible mystical. Astrology has never said no. Girls of any denomation can and should believe, because the stars are there. The only thing it must refuse, such that it can fit into the spiritual aftermarket, is its own ontology. I have learned time and again that Taurus makes one stubborn, but what is Taurus? When Pedialyte is in laudanum, do their divine natures coexist or combine? If I can’t approach these answers, The Question is just a flaying. I may as well be on the therapist’s couch.
Women are more spiritual. I should just get it, shouldn’t have to think that much. The rapture I sometimes grasped when I was a more dedicated student of Buddhist meditation, which you could not pay me to thank the stars for? Must be stuffy man-logic, same reason I measure my life in numbers: testosterone levels, monthly hormone budgets. Capitalism has recaptured X-wave feminism and put up Girl Traits for sale, the best-selling of which is just not questioning how all of this works. Weird queries are the purview of the worst macho men, the podcasters and Youtube commenters to whom the other Big Gender sells. The point is to not be one of those. Oppositional sexism is the idea that male and female are mutually exclusive, cisnormativity is the idea that everyone experiences gender the same, and internalization is what every idea in this dumb lonely world will do to you, if you let it.
