Friendship Circles: Gender Differences in How We Do It?

[Gemme]

Originally Posted by honeybarbara

Gemme, I'm not saying you shouldn't feel that way, if you do, you do. I love my girly shit and I like have mates to dig my girly shit with me but here's the superise - sometimes that's a cis het bloke or even a butch. yep. I can sit down and go through an asian fashion magazine and talk about the photographs and styles with any number of my friends, regardless of gender. cause my friends are mostly pretty urban, artsy, alternative and metrosexual. all of us, regardless of out gender, if we need something fixed, call Ken or Y. Mainly cause he has a job that fixes shit. Or Y cause she's inclined like that. Y is girly (no ID) btw. Ken isn't girly, but he has some great fashion style.

I think it's who your friends with. I don't have friends who really play any sports. a few who watch them. Sonja (pansexual girly girl) is probably the biggest hockey fan. She goes to a cafe to watch the game and flirt with the italian barista cause when she asks if any of us want to watch is usually no.

Unca ted paints, sings in a band, Jess plays drums and fixes bikes and helps out at the boozecan (illegal drinking establishment that features new bands etc) and designs new stage set ups and room decor. Ken makes habitats for the vancouver aquarium and paints and is probably the biggest lesbian I know when it comes to girls (falls in love in four seconds, writes dedicational poetry, wants them to move in after three months, and gets deeply upset howl at the moon heart broken when it ends. he does my head in sometimes), Y works for people who do animal counts in the wild, she's often off on horseback for a couple of weeks. Em is a martha stewart clone that wears nothing but flannel and is an office manager. I could go on.
I miss my London friends for certain things but not because they got me more as a girl. they got certain things like... my exwife was *the* person to take shopping - she was a butch version of Gok Wan (English fashion consultant). although my freinds here are fashionable, they aren't as uber fashion minded as the ones in London and I miss that.
except I was the only one that didn't watch soccer and I bloody hated world cup years. Plus I miss the use of irony (sarcasm), vular humour and insults. I miss the peacocking.

yes I like having "girls night" cocktails and poker. but "girls night" is anyone female. I sometimes just want a penis free room. We swap stories of the biggest bruise we ever got, how many people with a bent dick did you see, have you ever tried X kind of sex, kerri usually bitches about her job (she's a grip for movies - cis straight girl) till we slip into a coma. JJ talks about their latest baking experiment (tgbutch) and we pretend to be interested.

that's kinda how my life is. I know people have really different lives from me. I'm well aware of that by now lol. But I'm also saying that it's not abnormal for plenty of us to just not see things that way. And I only describe people's gender trait "femme" as I would "blonde" if it was *relevant* to the conversation. But lots of people, I notice here, without relevance say "me and my femme friend went out for coffee ans talked about the movie we saw"

It's that I don't get. why is it relevant? I used descriptors here for point making. Otherwise I wouldn't have botherd. Why would I say "my tgbutch mate JJ talks about baking bread till they bore everyone" just generally? it just seems odd to me when I don't see the relevance. And sticks out like someone saying "big tit barb came over for coffee yesterday, we played monopoly" ???? y'know?

I don't get it. and it's not something I'm personally comfy with. But I get that a lot of you enjoy it. I just don't. that's all.

No worries. Didn't think you were. I was just seeing a clearer vision of what you and Martina were referencing. It does feel awkward when stated like what you said in this post and what I said above.

Common interests versus self-identification are what bonds you to your friends. I get that and I have some friends like that as well. I just feel a little something more....something more like 'home'....with others who I bond with more through identity and that relationship and connection than through common interests. Neither is better or worse than the other.

Then I started talking about ties and got off on a tangent.



*shrug*