#gender constructs

[defire]

For writers in general here are some

Antiquated gender expectations

Men:

Stoic

Gravel voice

Loud

Humor

Unfriendly to women

Strong

Leader

Secretive

Protective

Unhappy/grumpy

Gentle to women

Respectful to men

Brave

Sex addict

Control issues

Women

Quiet

Gentle

Weak

Timid

Charismatic

Coward

Graceful

Ashamed

Beautiful

One-note or zero-note character

Only ever honest with women

Surface-level

Foolish

Complacent

Musical

Homemaker

Servant

Intuitive

Compensating

Codependent

Thoughts and add-ons welcome!

[idkeither223]

As an autistic individual; once you debunk and deconstruct the notions of gender to little smoking smithereens, and are generally nonchalant that it’s all a pile of poo, then eventually you have to accept that’s not the weird allistic cis allo heteronormative world we live in. So you happily settle for identifying as nonbinary as that’s the best fit, notions of boy and girl are alien to you. “How is gender meant to even feel?” you cry into the echoing cavern, no response. Little creeping mind demons whisper to you that you’re wrong and just a cis autistic overthinker. But you’ve come so far in societal revelations that that is unacceptable. Not true. Still, the tiny demons find you. Who cares, at the end of the day. When a student a century away reads your non existent diary, their opinion is only for their essay. More important is the loud bubble of emotion, swirling inside you as wrong pronouns cause internal commotion. People you love but don’t have the courage to correct. Forever feeling socially inept. Embrace their hugs but listen deep to your moment’s soul. How you approach, perceive, and process yourself, it really is only your call.

[voidoffline]

Your gender is whatever you want forever. It is to you what it is. Clothes mean whatever gender on you that you want them to mean, or if they hold no gender at all to you then they hold no gender. Makeup is whatever gender you want it to be, or none at all. All of gender as a construct is based on just simple opinions, so it can be whatever you want it to be.

This is the same for every person in the world. If you are a cis man, and to you makeup holds no gender, and pink is masculine to you, and you like fishing and sports as both something masculine and not at the same time. Good! Good for you man.

At the same time, a woman may like all of those same things, but see them all as feminine instead. That’s also good! Good for her

My point is, it’s good to understand that while one thing could be masculine to you, it may be feminine to another. And you have to learn to understand that a dress may be feminine on you (in a way you see as positive) but if your bestie, let’s say in this example, who’s a trans man who sees things on them as masculine, puts it on? It’s changed. The ‘gender’ of the dress has changed, because the person wearing it is different.

I write this post with no tone in mind. This isn’t a post yelling at people to try and understand, or pleading, just a statement. Some days I feel more strongly about this topic, I’ll see some post and sigh and feel frustrated that someone can’t understand that gender is in the eye of the beholder just as much as beauty is. But right now I’m not feeling too strongly on this. I just wanted kinda get my thoughts out you know? Like having a shower thought and rambling to a friend about it afterwards. In casual conversation shared either side by side on a couch, or online both sitting comfy at a desk with a computer or laptop open

I don’t believe that this is one of those things that every single person is made to believe because of their environment, because it really is in a way like beauty. And despite how many people grow up with beauty standards in their mind like a thorn, and have to slowly pull it out while fixing the parts of themselves that were pricked so they can stop hurting themselves and others through bad beauty standards - other people will always be born not understanding or liking beauty standards from the get-go. However uncommon it is that someone doesn’t get poked in the mind by those standards

I’m agender so it’s always been pretty easy for me to understand this; that gender is just what you make it. Of course when I was like, a toddler, I had no sense of this. Or at least a much looser sense - knowing some things were for girls, others for boys, but that it was okay to like something for the opposite gender. So, nowhere near as deep as I know things to be now, but that’s just kinda how it is being a toddler lmao. Y’know? We never think much about things when we’re that young. Often times we may have a subconscious understanding but we don’t realize or think about it at that age

There’s not too much point to the post now besides me rambling so I’ll probably stop it here. There’s a low chance a lot of people will actually read this since it’s a long post, but if you have, hi there :] nice ta’ read ya’. I mean meet ya’

[faith-and-extracheese]

The Sacred Union: Balancing Masculine and Feminine Energies for a Wholesome Life

We're made of both masculine and feminine energies. Our feminine experiences support masculine direction, and our masculine structure supports feminine flow. These energies are oppositional yet complementary. Working with both allows us to express ourselves fully.

The Qualities of Our Femininity

Our feminine qualities are intangible representing the source of insight, emotional depth, and intuitive understanding. These qualities reside in our internal world - the nuances and experiences only known to us. How we feel internally is the foundation with which we lead in our external world.

These qualities include our beliefs, thought processes, awareness, range of preferences, assumptions, and the unique ways we perceive our external world.

The Qualities of Our Masculinity

Our masculine qualities are tangible and emerge from feminine insights. These qualities help us navigate our external world. Feminine qualities provide us necessary information which guides masculine action.

Masculine qualities include intentional actions, behaviours, and responses. Our masculine energy drives us toward our vision, taking concrete steps to bring our purpose to fruition.

Sacred Union

When our masculine and feminine energies work harmoniously, they create a sacred union. This balance of internal and external energies makes us whole—an individual. The deeper we explore our feminine depths, the higher we can ascend through our masculine heights.

Feminine energy is also a force of destruction. To achieve a masculine goal we must confront and dismantle our limiting beliefs. Addressing these limitations frees us to move toward our envisioned purpose.

Masculine energy, resourceful and structured, leads with the insights provided by feminine devotion. Together, these energies create the essence of our wholeness.

Masculine and Feminine Energies as Social Constructs

Society has wrongly attributed masculine and feminine energies exclusively to cis-males and cis-females, respectively. These beliefs have imposed strictly defined roles on genders, ousting those who do not meet these societal parameters.

However, these energies are devoid of gender. We carry both the energy of creation and destruction, irrespective of our genders. The interplay of these energies varies in individuals, shaping the diversity of human sexuality and defying binary constructs.

Final Thoughts

Throughout life, we draw on the insights and tenacity of these energies. When we surrender to our purpose, we allow the wisdom from these energies to guide our creations.

Our life's journey is itself a creation. It moulds us into the person we need to become to fulfill our purpose. Ancient texts and philosophies have often emphasized this truth—it is always about the journey and the transformation it brings, not the destination.

[whysojiminimnida]

I might have misunderstood and in that case I’m sorry but..how does jm or jk liking feminine stuff regarding their appearance or interests or else have anything to do with gender? I guess it’s probably me watching all those debates (I’ve seen this discussed on twitter multiples times) from a non-westerner and old-school lesbian perspective if I may say but this western genderqueer thing doesn’t make very much sense to me. You can be a guy and like so-called feminine stuff, or like to play with both masculinity and femininity. It doesn’t you any less of a guy, doesn’t make you a woman or an in-between, it just makes you an androgynous guy or a fem guy and there’s nothing wrong with that. Same goes the other way around. I’m quite masculine in my appearance, also always like more "guy stuff", it doesn’t make me any less of a women. I’m sorry I just don’t get this bigender label. Watching this from afar it seems like what it mean or look like to be a man or woman is becoming very restricted again and you have to fit this and this criteria or else you re queer something ( I know this is also very much debated in the lgbt community nowadays but I just hate that word, it was used as an insult and I personally don’t want to associate myself with it). Now I do think jm and jk gender nonconformity is an indication of them possibly being gay/pi (there’s a link between gender non-conformity and homosexuality/bisexuality) but that tattoo was probably more used an an indication of bisexuality in my humble opinion(I have a bi friend who actually have that sign tattooed, some ppl use it for bisexuality indeed). Sorry if I was a rude or anything (English not being my first language also) but I just see all those new labels in the western lgbt world and it just confuses the hell of me cause it seems sometimes pretty regressive, I just wanted to share my perspective.

Hi anon, Thank you for sharing your perspective with us. As a cis bi/pan woman of a certain age, I feel what you're saying - pretty keenly, actually. Because sometimes I just sit here like "I DO NOT GET WHAT THESE KIDS ARE TALKING ABOUT".

THIS IS GONNA GET LONG AND NOT HAVE PICTURES KIDS SO CLICK IF YOU WANNA.

Still here? Cool. It's not that we didn't HAVE a whole ass Kinsey scale but it only goes 1-6. Straight. Heteroflexible or Will Experiment At Parties. Bi. Homoflexible or Gay For Play. Gay. Supergay. That's ... what we had, in the day. I'm actually a 2.5 probably. And for years we did, we used numbers if we were smart enough to read the whole damn thing. And gender identity was like, you're cis or you're trans. That was it. And yes. "Queer" was a pejorative. A slur. A word we saw spray-painted on underpasses and sometimes school lockers. "Gay" implied pederasty, practically, but "queer" would get your ass beat in public and not an adult would stop it. And with the advent of the HIV Plague, to which I lost every damn one of the drag queens who raised me, we got even more hate. Girls less than guys, I think, but the history is not a pretty one. You know this. We of Gen X and older are all too aware. For those who have seen "Paris Is Burning" that was kinda my life for awhile, add intensive ballet. And most of those people are dead. What we have now, in the West particularly, is a smorgasbord of options. Literally if we can dream it up someone else already has and there's probably a flag. Like, it makes me feel old and out of touch. I don't even know how to call myself half the time. Am I bi? Pan? Sapiosexual? Demisexual because I don't put out on the first date? There are TOO MANY OPTIONS FOR MY SMALL ASS. I NEED A BETTER ASS TO HANDLE MY DECISIONS. And I see why too many options and too many classifications might almost feel regressive. Like, cis men are not always traditionally masculine beefy guys who like auto racing and American football. Many cis men like pretty things too. Most drag queens are cis men, actually. But femme guys are often seen, now, as other-gendered and not just other-oriented, because that's AN OPTION NOW. And the opposite is true. My cis lesbian BFF looks and acts like a guy. I have had people tell me she seems trans to them. SHE ISN'T. G-Money loves being a woman. She also loves auto racing and weightlifting and American football and her mohawk, let her live, right? Even I really waited for her to come out as trans or at least NB and IT AIN'T HAPPENED YET. She's 47.

I understand the issue of people feeling triggered by the Q word. I do. I get it. And I respect your choice not to use it or have it used at you - if I knew your user name I'd make a note :) And I get how just seeing it feels weird and wrong. I'm getting more used to it, it doesn't bother me as much as it did a few years ago. We used to call it genderfuck and honestly that makes as much sense. Now, to the guys (we're gonna go ahead and call them guys): my reasoning for thinking Jimin might be bigender is because he has all but told us that gender is a fluid construct for him. Yes, he identifies publicly as male, but even in interviews has openly said he feels more comfortable with the feminine parts of his personality in the last few years. That doesn't mean he isn't a man. And he may well be coding bisexuality - the issue there is that he so rarely has even appeared to show any interest in women, and he has openly coded for both sexes as gender (Illecebra and Arcanus). As to Jungkook, I think he's a gay cis male who also likes to feel pretty sometimes. Hell, he and Jimin both could easily fit that descriptor. And that's basically what they've said in public if you leave Filter out of it. But to be fair, these are men who have yet to come out. We forget that sometimes. THEY HAVE NOT COME OUT. Either of them. As far as we can prove they are cis straight men who like to sleep together and stay up all night and go on dates and give each other hickeys and kiss each other and hold hands and have inside jokes about "you are me I am you" and "we don't know what we do but we do stuff" and and and. I mean okay, we're not blind and my Korean source is telling me they are pretty damn open, just nobody talks about it, in Korea. But we have to remember that until they SAY something we can't PROVE anything. I mean until the sex tape leaks. ANYWAY I have blabbered on long enough, but thank you for your words and the transparency you had to share them with me.

[profeminist]

“Most of our assumptions have outlived their usefulness.”

- Marshall McLuhan

It’s time for humanity 2.0 y’all. 

See: gender, race, and other constructs that are based in social oppression not god, destiny, or science. Oppression masked as nature.

Language is a key part of this. Changing pronouns and new identities may take getting used to, but they are 2.0. The binary is version 1.0 and it’s OUTMODED.

[kurushimi-hime-hoshi]

Sometimes I'm so demigirl it hurts.

[palpablenotion]

"So does your baby have a penis or vagina?"

It's typically one of the first questions asked when announcing a soon to be born or just born babe. Because that's what the general public means when they coo and go, "Is it a bit or a girl?"

If you point this out, most people will get uncomfortable. They'll argue that it's different. But is it?

Science suggests now that babes come into the world with a "gender" neutral brain. That even when there's no difference between a baby girl and boy, parents approach them differently. They tend to protect the girls and push the boys. They buy the girls imagination expanding toys and the boys are encouraged towards more physical activities. They even speak to them differently, resulting in the disparity of age where a girl or boy will start talking (talking to boys less often results, usually, in the boys not speaking as soon).

But gender is a construct. Are there physical differences between infants? Of course. Some are born with a visible penis, some are born with a vagina, some have a mixture or even hidden genitals.

Why are we so focused on the genitals of infants?

My mother, fully accepting of any trans person she meets in real life and attempts to combat her taught bigotry, got mad when I said a friend was raising their child gender neutral.

"That's stupid, is it a bit or a girl?"

And that's when it hit me. That question doesn't care how the child feels or presents or their identity (too young to know or communicate yet). It wants to know about what's in that diaper. And that's disturbing.

We all know gender is a concept as much as it's anything. There are "physical qualifiers" according to many but those that don't fit in one of two categories are ignored. Cultures going back millennia with more complex ideas of gender are ignored. Anything more than "woman = vagina, man = penis" is ignored (today in America, presumably other countries but I won't speak for them).

Even with the slow, slow moves towards a country that's more accepting of trans people, we're still obsessed with what's in the pants. "We get that you're a woman but *wink wink nudge nudge* are you a woman?"

It's an ingrained, established idea that others are entitled to your body, even if it's just knowledge of it. I've seen it, in afabs, present as not being able to or knowing how to set up bodily boundaries. People touch and invade space from literal infancy. In amabs, specifically cis men, it can present as forcefully sharing their body, thinking it's appropriate to not have those bodily boundaries. Think unwanted sexts. Talking about erections or erotic dreams. Etc.

This post is going to generate some tension, and nothing I've said is black and white how it is for everyone. But I put more thought into a question like "boy or girl" now. It really isn't any of my business.