Ah, the gender binary system. This one may get some nasty responses, but I don't care. Scientifically we are all comprised of both "female" and "male" dna. We're all genetic hybrids all the way down from the first children, assuming that there ever was "pure male" and "pure female" DNA. You're a splice of your mother and father, who are a splice of their mother and father, etc. When you're born, your body is a bizarre thing that for some reason grows to maturity into a recognizable shape to everyone else. Somehow your cells know how to build themselves.. That doesn't mean that it matches how you feel, or how you think, etc.
We are not inherantly male or female. The mind is a magnificent, complex thing. So are human emotions. You can't expect someone who was born into a physically female or physically male body to automatically feel what society thinks you should feel like- what society believes male and female to mean. There are not just two genders, a plus and a minus. There are many ways of viewing it, and putting names on it only shrinks the importance of how other people feel.
It can happen many ways, it's not necessarily a chemical thing in the brain, though it could be. It could be anything from the internal war of nature vs nurture, of their personality vs their past, of them fighting something that happened or was said to them so many times that it just caused a reaction, or it could simply be who they are.
Take me for example. I don't know when I started to feel as I do now, but I know that when I was 12 to 18 I lived with my father, who I love very much to this day, who was a sexist prick when he was drunk. The amount of filth I heard about women was astronomical, and mixed with what I was learning about in school and finding out from books, it caused a reverse reaction in me. For years when I masturbated (Yes, I admit I masturbate. It happens :P) I envisioned myself only in the male side because for so many years my father had unwittingly trained me to believe men are stronger and better than women. It led to an internal war that has lasted even to this day, over 7 years from when I first remember feeling the war, and still wages on inside my mind. I don't know what is winning, but I do hope it's me.
My mind has felt like a battlefield since I was 14 years old. My father's unwitting "training" vs my belief that men are the scum of the earth ((Which was a response to attempt to balance it out)) shifted to a disgust for all things sexual that lasted for a few years. Now, I don't even know. I still have times when just hearing certain things about sex, I can't even tell you what, but primarily people telling me too much information about their personal lives is like someone lighting my hair on fire. I suddenly get filled with an extreme amount of rage and have to walk away.
On the other hand, I have a relationship now, and while we haven't had sex, I think he is the only person I will ever enjoy having it with.
But to get back to the gender binary system that this blog was originally about... I don't feel feminine all the time. I have my moments where I like skirts and dresses and dressing female, and my times where I'd rather not have breasts and a vagina and would rather wear a suit, cut my hair even shorter, and dress like a "man".
I tend to sit sprawled out as most males do, because it is more comfortable to me. I'm more blunt than most people I meet, and I don't mind it. I find both males and females attractive, but have never met a female I'd consider worth dating. Who we like and what we like and how wel ike to dress and what we like to do has nothing to do with our plumbing- That could have been miswired when the cells were expanding from the egg and the sperm. Having a vagina doesn't make you all female any more than having a penis makes you a man. The person within this shell of a body is what matters, not the shell itself.
YOU matter. Not your weird bits and pieces.
Sex (the pair of sex chromosomes and corresponding genitalia that an individual possesses) is a matter of the body, at least in its determination, and it is pretty rigid with its options: the alternatives occur rarely in the population and typically pose severe physiological problems, so much that they're considered abnormal/harmful variations. Gender, however, is a matter of the mind. Gender is a self-determined thing, that happens to have a series of socially accepted behaviors that correspond to it in the outside world. In my research and experience, I've come to understand gender as a spectrum, not unlike sexual orientation. Some girls are extremely feminine, some are extremely masculine acting, and the average woman nowadays is somewhere in the middle I think, at least in certain aspects of modern American culture. And the same to a degree also applies to men.
ReplyDeleteI originally had a lot more to say, but I'm tired, so perhaps another time. All I'll say is that because gender occurs along a spectrum, and its determinants being basically arbitrary, it isn't a even a FIXED psychosocial construct, but rather an extremely mutable one. So yeah, it doesn't really matter, as what's considered gender-acceptable or gender-typical behavior is constantly shifting.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you: constantly shifting, but unfortunately, not enough. There are still fairly rigid gender roles, and trans people often pay with their lives for violating these unmentioned standards. Cis men and women may also feel constricted by their gender roles (and let me immediately note that more women have complained about this than men in my experience).
ReplyDeleteI am not really sure what I think of my gender. I am in the weird place of feeling like it's okay that I am male, but I really rather I were female. Not enough to want to pass or to get reassignment, but just kind of thinking that gender play is really cool.
But ya, like I said, there are some people who are all "fuck gender. My gender is vegan."
Forgive me, I am actually new to the lgbtq community, so some phrases/shortenings I don't understand. What is cis?
ReplyDeleteI myself am just comfortable as I am, I don't like to pick male or female. Sometimes I feel like having a female body is annoying and in the way, other times I can be happy in it. Generally I like wearing androgynous clothes because I simply feel comfortable, and powerful in some way. I reallllly love pinstripes.
Yeah. I don't tend to think of my gender at all. Sure, physically I'm female. Mentally? Shifty shifty shift. I don't want a penis enough to go to the trouble of a surgery, but I don't feel female any more than I feel male. I just feel... me. I have the capability to fall in love with males OR females, but I've met more males that I'd fall in love with than females.
I am attracted to both aesthetically. Emotionally, it depends on the person. I'm very, very picky.
"I don't feel female any more than I feel male. I just feel... me."
ReplyDeleteThere is a subculture in Japan that emphasizes that very idea. Members of it purposefully make themselves androgynous, forcing the remainder of society to know and refer to them by their names solely, and not by any gender. I believe it's known as "Ke" or "Kei", but I could be mistaken on that.
And Nick, yes, there is a degree of rigidity in gender roles, at least while the roles themselves are still reinforced within mainstream culture. And for some reason, when people dare to deviate, at least in American culture, I can't speak for other cultures, those acting within the norm just freak out. Or at least that's my opinion on the matter, based on my own experience and research. And I think the roles imposed upon men are just as constricting. However, I think we will tend to hear of it less, because at present there is a rule within modern American masculinity that discourages complaining of the difficulties of manhood, or rather, complaining in general. But, perhaps I'm incorrect with this line of thinking.
Personally, I don't really understand the logic behind many of the norms imposed upon either gender, my own especially. I feel comfortable being male, and comfortable being straight, but well, I see the aesthetic value on both sides of the human equation.