A Journey Through Gender

Woman. Lesbian.

[radfleabag]

Someone got upset on an old post about radfems using fun, free, and public picrews so let's get another positivity train going (I didn't even make myself frown in this one)!

Anyways no need to tag, just hop on and have fun!!

[lesbianwhiptaillizard]

[thecrucifiedophelia]

radfem picrew chain, anyone?

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[walterfwhite]

[radacach]

I love doing picrews❤️

[fujogendered]

[radicallicious]

[misgenderer]

meeee😌

[demons-pubis]

[magnetictapedatastorage]

[battleczar]

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[lesbianwhiptaillizard]

[lesbianwhiptaillizard]

MYTH ABOUT GENDER #5: Gender as defined by the LGBTQ+ community isn't based on stereotypes.

For many people, physical sex dysphoria is what makes them believe they are trans. I will cover this in another post. But more and more, it is seen as gauche and even offensive to assume that trans people must have dysphoria. This leaves it down to that elusive definition of gender, one that doesn’t include sex characteristics. What is gender?

We already know what conservative/Patriarchy Christians believe about gender roles. I covered that in Myth #1. Their idea of gender is obviously based on generalizations, outdated ideals, and sexism. Now I would like to cover whether the idea of gender in more liberal LGBTQ+ dialogue is based on stereotypes, and if not, what they are based on.

Hear from transgender individuals on what gender means to them:

According to Michael, writing for Transgender Today, “I grew up thinking and behaving “like a boy”. I was given the usual girl stuff, but I wanted Tonka trucks, I played with the boys in my neighborhoods and did not get along with girls much. In my childhood/early teens I became very athletic… I excelled more in math and science – traditional “male” subjects. I was and continue to be very mechanically-inclined… I like to dress in men’s clothing (I even tie my own bowties) and when I did back then I was called “sir” many times as I am now.”

Let’s unpack this one a little bit. Tonka trucks, athletics, math, science, and mechanical-mindedness. Do those sound like facts about men, or do they sound like stereotypes to you? If they sound like facts, I ask you to consider reading such books as Delusions of Gender by Cordelia Fine, which details study after study of how socialization affects the (very plastic) minds of children, and The Gendered Brain by Gina Rippon, which dispels the very prevalent myth of “male” and “female” brains. Myths like these are the reasons why you find so many barriers to women in STEM, why women are often not taken seriously in STEM fields by their colleagues, and why to many, a female mechanic is laughable. Should we let things stay this way, just because, supposedly, women are just biologically worse at STEM? Or are these “facts” actually harmful stereotypes that dissuade many girls from choosing to study in those fields? Are women any less of women because they pursue science or engineering? I’m sure you know that to believe that would be a ridiculously outdated notion.

And finally, wearing “men’s clothes”. Men’s clothes are often comfortable and practical. They rarely sexualize the wearer, and some people just prefer the way they look over dresses. There is nothing wrong with wearing men’s clothes, even if you are a woman. Many of my clothes were raided from the men’s section. But this does not change my womanhood or my gender expectations. I am still seen as a woman (which I am), and I am still expected to conform to people’s ideas of gender, which, yes, are based on stereotypes.

Here is another account, this time from a nonbinary person:

Amber, writing for The Temper, says, “My gender expression is an androgynous, mostly masculine incarnation of this. I like to appear gentle, but not soft. I like to appear strong, but not intimidating.”

The implication here is that women as a gender are gentle and soft, while men as a gender are strong and intimidating. These are harmful stereotypes, just like those in the Christian Patriarchy movement. These are the kinds of stereotypes that make men push down their emotions and make women feel forced to take a caretaking role.

There are many who would stop me here and remind me that gender is much more than just stereotypical preferences and emotions, and that women (even trans women) don’t have to be “feminine” according to anyone’s definition in order to be trans. They would say men are not defined by “masculinity” either. I would agree with that to some extent. Gender (a.k.a. sex) is not about stereotypes. However, gender (a.k.a. harmful gender roles) is based on stereotypes, and there would be nothing left of it if we took them away. So if gender isn’t biological sex, and it isn’t stereotypes, according to some in the LGBTQ+ community, what is it? There is nothing left.

Bottom line: If gender according to the LGBTQ+ community doesn’t involve stereotypes, it ceases to have any meaning whatsoever.

[lesbianwhiptaillizard]

MYTH ABOUT GENDER #4: If you don’t identify with womanhood or manhood, you are agender or nonbinary.

For some people, and maybe you are one of them, their gender, sex, pronouns, etc. don’t feel “right”. But the opposite pronouns, gender, sex, etc. don’t feel right either. For some people, this feeling comes on suddenly, and for others, the discomfort seems to have always been there. Maybe it’s a little of both. In my case, it came on slowly from ages 14-19, peaking in college when I was 17-19.

Some people (let’s call them group A) don’t necessarily feel trapped by a role or dysphoric about their bodies, but rather they simply feel mislabeled. They see themselves as having both “masculine” and “feminine” traits, or as having many traits that seem to lie outside of the binary. Because of this mosaic of traits and preferences, they don’t feel it’s accurate to call themselves a “woman” or “man”.

Other people (let’s call them group B) are uncomfortable with the entire feminine or masculine gender. They are uncomfortable with hearing “she” or “he”, because of what those words mean to them. They can be distressed to the point of anxiety about the clothes they have to wear, the roles they are expected to perform, and the traits that get unfairly assumed of them.

And lastly, there are people (group C) who might have some or all of the above discomforts, but they also feel a deep physical dysphoria about their biological sex whenever they remember that they have sexed traits. There may be negative focus on their genitalia, breasts, general frame or shape, or other characteristics (such as periods). But instead of wanting the traits of the opposite sex, many (though not all) wish that they could forego sexual characteristics altogether.

I was part of group C, with characteristics of the other two groups. Every time I looked in the mirror, I was appalled by my female form. I didn’t necessarily want a penis, but I wished I didn’t have anything that reminded me I was a woman. I never outright started binding, but I did use tight sports bras to mitigate my curves. On top of this, I wished I could escape the confines of a word and group (“women”) that didn’t seem to describe me or be welcoming to the real me.

There’s so much I wish I could go back and tell myself.

But would I have believed my current self? Will you believe me now, especially you dear intrepid gender fugitives?

The truth is, as I’ve written about before, it is so incredibly normal to have many different traits, “masculine” as well as “feminine”, in one person. We are all highly complex human beings, and very few of us are naturally going to conform to what society believes women should be or men should be. I covered this in Myth #3. Masculine traits are not correlated to other masculine traits, and feminine traits are not correlated to other feminine traits. We are all mosaics.

Why should we have to change the words to describe our sex (“woman” or “man”) just because our mosaic is a little more rebellious than someone else’s? Is there no room in womanhood for “masculine” women? Is there no room in manhood for “feminine” men?

But what about people in group B? What if it’s more than a fear of being mislabeled? What if it’s a discomfort with the entire idea of “woman” (or “man”)? I would ask you to probe and explore that discomfort, just as I did. What I found when I probed mine was a misunderstanding of gender as a whole. If you have a visceral response to being called “she”, as I did, consider why that is. There is nothing inherent about that sound that causes discomfort. Could it be because “she” relates in the English language to your particular idea of what a woman is or should be?

I wrote in Myth #1 and Myth #2 about how gender is something forced upon us. We cannot actually identify out of it.This might be why you feel anger when thinking about your current gender (or, as is equally common for those considering if they are agender, you might feel nothing, confused why there is no experience of gender for you). No one is born with an innate sense of gender (as a role). We are reactive, choosing how we will relate to what is assigned to us based on our sex.

Imagine if someone gave you a box, full of stuff not based on what you liked, but what they thought you might like. You might like some of the stuff, or you might like all of it. You might hate what’s in the box, even though the person keeps trying to convince you that if you’re a real man/woman, you’ll like all of it. What’s the solution to this? Are more boxes the solution? What about saying, “Boxes are fine for most people, but I don’t want a box because I’m actually agender.”? Neither is the solution. If we believe in the equality of the sexes, we shouldn’t like gender or identify with the roles given to us at birth. As covered in Myth #1, they are unequal, unfair, and constricting. If boxes are unfair, we should question the entire existence of boxes.

As for those in group C, I will cover bodily dysphoria in another post. Since it is something I’ve experienced, and since it’s a very unpleasant, almost agonizing phenomenon, I would like to give it the time it deserves.

Bottom line: If I could have gone back and told my nonbinary/agender self one thing, I would have said: You can be a woman without all the fuss of gender. It’s totally allowed.

[lesbianwhiptaillizard]

MYTH ABOUT GENDER #3: “Feminine” traits are correlated with other “feminine” traits, and “masculine” traits are correlated with other “masculine” traits.

I used to believe that gender lay on a linear spectrum. Most men were masculine, most women were feminine, and some people lay somewhere in between. Being less masculine meant being more feminine, and visa-versa. I believed that if you had several “masculine” traits (such as liking action movies, being goal-oriented, or being a good leader), you would be likely to have another (such as being unemotional or a bad listener). But what if such a “masculine” person, instead of having another masculine trait, was a good listener, or was very in touch with his or her emotions?

I’m sure we all know people like this. A man who knits an incredible scarf but will go on and on talking about his motorcycle if you let him. A woman who boxes for fun but keeps a tidy house. Are these discordant traits just noise or irrelevant data? Or does it say something deeper about the “mosaic” nature of our brains?

https://psycnet.apa.org/buy/1993-25426-001

An above study by Janet T. Spence, done in 1993, showed that masculine and feminine traits were not on a single scale. As Cordelia Fine wrote about the study in her book Testosterone Rex, “Correlations among masculine traits and amongfeminine traits are often weak or nonexistent. Having one masculine trait doesn’t imply you have another, and likewise for feminine traits.”

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1111/j.1471-6402.1999.tb00377.x

The above study, done by Jean M. Twenge in 1999, found similarly that, while there was a correlation between occupations and leisure interests in both men and women, other gender-related attributes showed little coherence with each other. The only exception was the “male dominance factor”, connecting low expressiveness, sports interest, male friends, “manspreading”, and conservative attitudes toward feminism.

In other words, men and women have very little internal consistency among feminine-coded and masculine-coded traits, except for the men who have conservative views of gender, who are more likely to adhere to gender roles (most likely due to the pressure of being seen as un-masculine).

And here is yet another study:

https://www.pnas.org/content/112/50/15468#ref-4

Daphna Joel and colleagues analyzed scans of over 1,400 human brains from four different sources. The percentage of people with mostly “female-end” features or “male-end” features was rare, somewhere between 0.1% and 8%.

The study states:

“Our study demonstrates that although there are sex/gender differences in brain structure, brains do not fall into two classes, one typical of males and the other typical of females, nor are they aligned along a “male brain–female brain” continuum. Rather, even when considering only the small group of brain features that show the largest sex/gender differences, each brain is a unique mosaic of features, some of which may be more common in females compared with males, others may be more common in males compared with females, and still others may be common in both females and males.”

It also states:

“In accordance with the brain data, our analyses of gender-related data revealed extensive overlap between females and males in personality traits, attitudes, interests, and behaviors. Moreover, we found that substantial variability of gender characteristics is highly prevalent, whereas internal consistency is extremely rare, even for highly gender-stereotyped activities.”

Bottom line: Having a “masculine” trait does not mean you will have another, and same for femininity. Some traits may be more common in men than women, but it is well within normal for a woman to have many such traits, as everyone’s brains are a “mosaic”.

[lesbianwhiptaillizard]

MYTH ABOUT GENDER #2: The opposite gender is something you can identify into.

In my first post, I talked about how gender (the masculine and feminine roles in society) have a serious power imbalance.

I would also like to add that in most societies, there are only two genders, corresponding to the sexes. So I will leave non-binary identities out of the discussion at the moment. (I will write about them later.) With that in mind, let’s examine whether or not gender is something you can identify into.

“Identity” is a complex topic, and when people talk about it, they are usually talking about one of three things.

1. What they objectively are (“My identity as a Black woman makes me see the world differently.”)

2. What they relate to (“I identify with Leia in the movie Star Wars.”)

3. What they label themselves as, regardless of objective truth (“I identify as a Christian, even though I don’t believe in God.”)

When most transgender people or their supporters use the word “identity”, they often conflate these three things. They identify with something (#2), so that means they identify as that thing (#3), which means that they are that thing (#1).

Can you identify with a feminine gender role if you are a man? Certainly. A man might enjoy some of the things that femininity holds, or he might wish that the expectations of the masculine role weren’t upon him. This may come from a place of misunderstanding gender and believing it to be something divided into equal roles. Sometimes a man may in fact realize that a “woman’s role” is beneath a man’s, and still identify with it, either because he feels that it is easier (it’s not), or because it pleases him to imagine himself as submissive.

Can you identify as a woman if you are a man? You can label yourself as a woman, regardless of any evidence, but this doesn’t mean that it’s the objective truth. So yes, it’s something you can identify as, as long as you realize that identifying as something doesn’t make it so. Anyone can say, “I am a woman because I believe it in my heart.” Believing in your heart, as evidenced by the many religions in the world, does not make something true.

This can also be seen by looking at any other label or category. Every word, category, or label has specific boundaries that, if taken away, make it meaningless. Gender is the only category, at present, that it is believed one can simply identify as. For instance, you cannot be white just by identifying as white. You cannot be a tree just by believing it is so. Etc.

Lastly, can you be a different gender than is imposed on you from birth? My view is that this is impossible (except in rare cases where someone grows up hiding their true sex, such as in the case of Iphis in the myth of Iphis and Ianthe). Often this comes from a place of misunderstanding gender, and not realizing that it is prescribed instead of innate. It also misunderstands that gender is something you’re expected to do, not something you are inside.

Some people say that male and female are biological categories, while gender (man and woman) is what’s in your head, and is more importnat. To that, I say, why? Why is what’s in your head truer than your body? (I will write a post about this subject at a later time.) And most importantly, if you admit that gender is not sex, why would you want to give credence to either gender, when gender is a lopsided system created by men solely to keep themselves superior?

Bottom line: Gender comes from without, not within. If you try very hard to hide your sex, you might be treated as the opposite sex in regard to gender expectations. But gender is not something you should want to participate in, regardless if you prefer a masculine or feminine societal role.

[lesbianwhiptaillizard]

Myth About Gender #1: Femininity and Masculinity As Descriptors Have No Power Imbalance

I was told this as I was growing up in a conservative Christian environment. Women and men were different, I was told – complementary, even – but they were equal in value. Different but equal. However, it quickly became clear to me that something wasn’t quite right in the equation.

At one point, I read a bunch of books on femininity, especially books on “Biblical femininity”. The kind written by John Piper – who wrote that “At the heart of mature femininity is a freeing disposition to affirm, receive, and nurture strength and leadership from worthy men in ways appropriate to a woman’s differing relationships.” (If you didn’t catch that, in short, femininity is submission.)

I wrote down all of the traits of femininity described in these books. In short, femininity revolves around four nuclei: weakness, submission, servitude, and beauty.

Weakness involves traits such as vulnerability, delicateness, and sensitivity, while submission can be seen in traits like receptiveness, respectfulness, and deference. Servitude is evident by the traits of homemaking, selflessness, and having a relational mindset. Lastly, it is no surprise that many of the traits describing women relate to beauty (in the eyes of a male beholder).

All of these categories, weakness, submission, servitude, and beauty… does it look like they belong on equal footing with the categories of conservative masculinity – strength, leadership, providing, and protection? Does it look like these traits benefit women, or do they mostly benefit men? This is why I felt so gaslighted for the majority of my youth – I was being told two groups were equal, but in practice they were everything but equal.

You might think, well, that’s conservative femininity. Liberal femininity is something altogether different.

Is it?

Or is it a repackaged version of conservative femininity, simply appealing to a larger crowd? The only thing liberal femininity has that conservative femininity does not is the tendency to coerce women into acting/dressing/styling themselves as sex objects – to every man, and not just to their husbands. Think high heels, make up, cosmetic surgery, sexual openness, stripping, prostitution, and porn.

But… you may say… I like femininity! I like acting feminine! I would tell you to get out of the habit of using “femininity” to describe whatever aspects of traditional femininity you are interested in. Perhaps empathy stands out to you as a positive trait. Great! But call it empathy and not femininity.

Femininity is a collection of traits and prescriptions that, when you look closely at it, was obviously created by men, for men. Femininity as a whole cannot be reclaimed, as it was never ours to begin with.