What are you? A man or a mouse?

I've had this question posed to me on quite a few occasions, mostly when I was a child. Amusingly, I recall a little voice in my head that piped up every time, giving "squeak" as a private reply.

Identity has been on my mind of late. I don't consider my "identity" to be who/what I view myself as; I am a stream of consciousness contained within a corporeal shell, with various subconscious and/or glandular desires and emotions. I have the capacity to learn, reason and remember, and a greater capacity to forget. To define and categorise oneself is to impose limits on what you can be or achieve. It's similar to trying to describe God; every label you apply makes God less like God and more like your own (mis)conception of what a God should be.

When I think of my "identity", it is what others view me as. I have many, quite different identities, depending on who you ask; depending on what sort of situation people have experienced me in. When someone says they're afraid of me, I'm generally shocked (and I know a few people who would laugh at that). But that's the facet of "me" that they've seen.

I am rather fond of getting my own way; when I want something to happen, I'm not averse to doing whatever I have to in order to realise my wish. Appearance, how I present and comport myself, is one tool I have come to use a lot. It is something we are all judged on, and something we can have a lot of control over. I also find that my mental self image rarely lines up with my actual image; what is inside is rarely reflected on the outside.

This doesn't bother me much. For whatever reason, I am quite detached from what body I have, or what people call me/refer to me as. Those who ask me what name I want them to use, invariably get a hazy "whatever" in reply.

At face value, it seems most people see me as a heterosexual man in his mid-twenties, confident, neatly dressed, well-built, quiet and well-mannered. It is an image I have cultivated and encourage, for the simple reason that it helps me get what I want. In general, people afford me more respect as a result, for like it or not ours is a sexist, ageist (etc) society; if, for example, I were to look my age or younger, or look like a woman, certain things would become a lot more difficult.

Someone once commented to me, "You know, for such a macho guy, you sure do have some very feminine traits..." I just grinned.

We all judge books by their covers; it can't be avoided. But don't forget there's a myriad of pages contained within.