One of the things I love about my relationship with Alan (and there are increasingly many, and most of them are disgustingly soppy things like "his cute widdle nose") is that he has never once tried to justify or explain anything--sex, cooking, personal habits, apartment cleanliness, sports watching, politics--based on gender. I don't think he's ever said "well, of course I'm messy, I'm a guy;" he admits that he's a messy slob, and... that's pretty cool.
Moreso when it comes to sex. I've had a lot of people tell me I'm horny for a girl; Alan only ever says I'm horny. I guess it's a small and maybe even accidental semantic thing but it matters to me. That instead of being a representative of the archetype "girl" which is clean and bored by football and likes cute things and a little reluctant about sex, I'm just Holly. There are no preformed expectations of what a Holly does, and when a Holly drinks strong unfruity things or fixes her own car or wrestles a boy into bed, it's not a deviation from a norm. I'm not a weird girl, I'm a perfectly normal Holly.
(Really, I'm not that unfeminine--I do like cute things and clean floors and I don't understand football--but that's beside the point; I don't want to be a man, I want to be whatever damn person I am and not be subject to arbitrary standards even when I fit them.)
I don't know if it's even intentional; he's never flat out said "I don't judge you as a girl" and I haven't really discussed it with him. He's just never, ever told me how I'm girly and ungirly (or how he's manly/unmanly), and he's the only guy I've been close to who hasn't.
Alan is cool.
He was a boy, she was a girl, could it be any less relevant?
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