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On the reinforcement of gender roles.
Went to worldcon! It was awesome! Hopefully I shall post more details presently!
At the moment, though, inspired by a recent post by a friend (friends-locked, or I'd link), I'd like to post the results of an experiment. See, my mother raised me feminist, and did a damn fine job of it-- I think I'm more comfortable with being female, and yet confident to do what I want with my life, than most other women I know. A large part of this was my unconscious construction of blinders that keep me from noticing and reacting to the tremendous number of signals I receive, all the time, telling me that:
1) because I'm female, I should act in certain ways
2) because I'm female, I should not act in certain ways, and in fact would not be physically/mentally/emotionally able to do so
3) because I'm female, I have certain qualities (usually negative, but also positive)
4) because I'm female, my purpose is to serve, care for, and please others, especially males
5) all other females and males should also act accordingly.
So I decided to try taking the blinders off. For exactly one twenty-four hour period last week, I would make a note of every single thing I noticed which reminded me of these messages.
4:15pm — On the street, a passing couple arrives at the corner just as the light turns; he says he’s sad they missed it. She pokes him in the arm — “Oh, be a man!” — and walks across the street against the light.
4:20pm — I start reading In the House of Brede, which I suspect of being feminist eventually, and starts off with a description of a woman who’s unusually powerful and accomplished:
“She has women and men working for her.”
“That must be hard on the men.”
5:20pm — I arrive at a party with my colleagues from my fellowship program. Can’t help but notice that, for the first fifteen minutes, the person holding the floor conversationally is a (admittedly awesome, friendly, sensitive, supportive, etc.) white guy.
6:15pm — One of my colleagues, showing off her two-month-old baby, talks about how she thinks there’s something about being a mother that makes her more willing/delighted to spend hours just staring at the baby, which “men just don’t seem to have.” The rest of the room start telling the father how he must be looking forward to starting to teach the baby sports in a few years.
7:48pm — My colleague with the baby talks about sending the baby to day care when she’s ready to go back to work. There is no discussion of her husband taking time off to split taking care of the baby.
8:55pm — Dinner over, my male colleague offers to help clean up, as a prelude to leaving. Our host(ess) tells him not to bother. Immediately, the four women (and my other male colleague’s boyfriend) in the room start cleaning up, while my two male colleagues sit on the couch and chat. They are joined by me (when I notice this), my male colleague’s boyfriend, and the other lesbian in the group, while all the straight women continue to clean.
9:05pm — Coming home, I go online to read Not Always Right, a blog of ever-so-wrong things customers do/say. Find an entry about a man who bought a flat-screen tv and then infuriated his wife by always having friends over for sports and irresponsibility… so the salesclerk recommended she call her “girlfriends” over for chick flicks, and concludes “Her husbands’ beer buddies never stood a chance.”
9:12pm — I start writing this list. Lila says, “Just include ‘6:15pm — Lila watches a compilation of the best of MGM musicals,’ and you’ve got it right there.”
9:25pm — I read a story about a female clerk who had a male client stare at her chest, lean over the counter, and tear off her name badge.
9:28pm — I can’t tell any more which of these stories have gender in them… I decide, for the sake of my wrists, only to include things I’m sure about, not things that just have shades of “this woman is portrayed as being dumb,” “this woman is portrayed as being entitled,” “this story is about a woman’s breasts, or a man’s penis,” ”this is a story about a woman prioritizing her appearance over her kids’ health” (two of those so far) “this woman seems to be sexually active,” or “this story about a man threatening to shoot a woman is portrayed as funny.”
9:33pm — Can I count a male customer being an idiot, then criticizing the clerk, rolling his eyes, and saying, “I can’t believe they hired you. I bet it’s only because you’re pretty!”? here. I rather think I can.
9:35pm — How about a customer thinking that Moby Dick sounds “ew!” and asking for a copy with a “manlier title”? I will admit this one sounds like a joke-- but the point is not that these be serious assertions of gender roles-- just reminders that they exist, and how constant these reminders can be.
9:58pm — What about one entitled “Be Prepared… for Some Womanly Advice,” where the point is that the clerk gave the (male) customer advice about his love-life, which proved successful?
10:01pm — Oh, fuck everything: Blargh.
10:13pm — Customer screams in anger that the whipped cream on his mocha is “too girly.” I go to bed.
8:36am — Get up, go into the bathroom, read The Funny Times on the toilet, mostly a column by Bruce Cameron about getting a flat tire. I’m not sure whether to include the lines “When my daughters were learning to drive, I painstakingly walked them through the steps for changing a tire, which they dutifully recorded in their notes as, “Step 1: Call Dad.”” Since he goes on to talk about how his father is very far away in a nursing home, maybe that has nothing to do with gender, and is just about kids.
But then we get to the line, “Luckily, I’m a man, so I don’t need to read no stinkin’ instructions.” He attempts something which has no effect whatsoever: “I’m a man, so I kept at it for about five minutes.”
In the end, he calls road service: “The driver very efficiently changed the tire while I stood around and talked hunting and sports to prove I was as manly as she was.”
Again, that's funny and kinda feminist-- but the purpose of this experiment is not to argue that the whole world is sexist so much as to point out the fucking omnipresence of gender roles and expectations. Of which, dude, lots.
10:05am - Go onto lj. Read![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kmd’s thoughtful IBARW entry about the intersection of feminism and racism.
10:45am — Talking on the phone with a friend, we both mention in passing a mutual friend’s household in which they eat out a lot—because the female member of the household has health problems which make it very difficult, and the two (healthy) male members “don’t cook.”
11:05am — Walking by a copy of the Metro on the street, I notice that one of their stories seems to be about the fact that you really can have a relationship in which the woman is taller than the man. No, really! Sure, it’s funny, but these people have done it!
11:40am — Readrosalarian’s entry about how in the professional American release of CLAMP’s series Wish, one of the characters who had been translated as male in other translations is now translated as female. (People who know more CLAMP than I, what’s the deal with this?)
11:50am — Miss Manners points out 1920s hat etiquette for gentlemen.
12:03pm — Reading The Comics Curmudgeon, run across a strip of “Blondie.” And a strip of “Hagar the Horrible,” where Helga berates Hagar for going to France, home of “scantily clad dancing girls.” And one of “Curtis,” in which the mother is portrayed as primarily there to tend to her son and husband, ending with the line, “A mother should love her child more than her husband!” And why are the ants in “Family Circus” called “he” when most ants you see are female? Oh, and a “Beetle Bailey” where one of the soldiers offers the Sexy Secretary tm a small box which she thinks will contain an engagement ring, but turns out to have a tiny, tiny thong! Ha, ha! And a “Crock” where a male character asks a librarian for the book “Pickup Lines to Get Women,” leading to the librarian saying, “Great choice! That’s what I used to catch this beauty,” pulling out (from behind his desk) a young woman who seems somewhat cross-eyed and possibly buck-toothed, though it’s hard to tell with the art in Crock. The guy leaves without the book, anyway. And a “Mary Worth” whole series about how horrified the female character is that the guy she’s been flirting with seems interested in sex. And...and...and...
...and I don't last 24 hours. Because now I'm avoiding the internet, or books, or anything else, because I know I'll see something else I need to write down. And I don't want to think about it anymore. So I give up, and go to co-lead my therapy group: "Coping Skills for Women Trauma Survivors."
...
Note that this is just things that jumped out at me. I didn't analyze clothing and hairstyle, or the fact that I was doing the laundry, or anything else under the surface. That's 1200 words of nothing but in-your-face gender-role reinscriptions.
And I try to ignore these, most of the time. Try to say that I am simply myself, try to be guided by my own beliefs, opinions and desires on this subject, not those which are all around me, constantly, insisting that I am something else. And I'm amazed at how often I succeed.
But doing this experiment makes me wonder. If I didn't have to spend all this effort insisting against all odds on being myself-- if I could just live in a world where people like me were the norm, or at very least widely accepted-- what could I do with all that energy? What could I be?
--R
Reading: C.S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength. Elizabeth Enright, Thimble Summer. Rumer Godden, In this House of Brede.
At the moment, though, inspired by a recent post by a friend (friends-locked, or I'd link), I'd like to post the results of an experiment. See, my mother raised me feminist, and did a damn fine job of it-- I think I'm more comfortable with being female, and yet confident to do what I want with my life, than most other women I know. A large part of this was my unconscious construction of blinders that keep me from noticing and reacting to the tremendous number of signals I receive, all the time, telling me that:
1) because I'm female, I should act in certain ways
2) because I'm female, I should not act in certain ways, and in fact would not be physically/mentally/emotionally able to do so
3) because I'm female, I have certain qualities (usually negative, but also positive)
4) because I'm female, my purpose is to serve, care for, and please others, especially males
5) all other females and males should also act accordingly.
So I decided to try taking the blinders off. For exactly one twenty-four hour period last week, I would make a note of every single thing I noticed which reminded me of these messages.
4:15pm — On the street, a passing couple arrives at the corner just as the light turns; he says he’s sad they missed it. She pokes him in the arm — “Oh, be a man!” — and walks across the street against the light.
4:20pm — I start reading In the House of Brede, which I suspect of being feminist eventually, and starts off with a description of a woman who’s unusually powerful and accomplished:
“She has women and men working for her.”
“That must be hard on the men.”
5:20pm — I arrive at a party with my colleagues from my fellowship program. Can’t help but notice that, for the first fifteen minutes, the person holding the floor conversationally is a (admittedly awesome, friendly, sensitive, supportive, etc.) white guy.
6:15pm — One of my colleagues, showing off her two-month-old baby, talks about how she thinks there’s something about being a mother that makes her more willing/delighted to spend hours just staring at the baby, which “men just don’t seem to have.” The rest of the room start telling the father how he must be looking forward to starting to teach the baby sports in a few years.
7:48pm — My colleague with the baby talks about sending the baby to day care when she’s ready to go back to work. There is no discussion of her husband taking time off to split taking care of the baby.
8:55pm — Dinner over, my male colleague offers to help clean up, as a prelude to leaving. Our host(ess) tells him not to bother. Immediately, the four women (and my other male colleague’s boyfriend) in the room start cleaning up, while my two male colleagues sit on the couch and chat. They are joined by me (when I notice this), my male colleague’s boyfriend, and the other lesbian in the group, while all the straight women continue to clean.
9:05pm — Coming home, I go online to read Not Always Right, a blog of ever-so-wrong things customers do/say. Find an entry about a man who bought a flat-screen tv and then infuriated his wife by always having friends over for sports and irresponsibility… so the salesclerk recommended she call her “girlfriends” over for chick flicks, and concludes “Her husbands’ beer buddies never stood a chance.”
9:12pm — I start writing this list. Lila says, “Just include ‘6:15pm — Lila watches a compilation of the best of MGM musicals,’ and you’ve got it right there.”
9:25pm — I read a story about a female clerk who had a male client stare at her chest, lean over the counter, and tear off her name badge.
9:28pm — I can’t tell any more which of these stories have gender in them… I decide, for the sake of my wrists, only to include things I’m sure about, not things that just have shades of “this woman is portrayed as being dumb,” “this woman is portrayed as being entitled,” “this story is about a woman’s breasts, or a man’s penis,” ”this is a story about a woman prioritizing her appearance over her kids’ health” (two of those so far) “this woman seems to be sexually active,” or “this story about a man threatening to shoot a woman is portrayed as funny.”
9:33pm — Can I count a male customer being an idiot, then criticizing the clerk, rolling his eyes, and saying, “I can’t believe they hired you. I bet it’s only because you’re pretty!”? here. I rather think I can.
9:35pm — How about a customer thinking that Moby Dick sounds “ew!” and asking for a copy with a “manlier title”? I will admit this one sounds like a joke-- but the point is not that these be serious assertions of gender roles-- just reminders that they exist, and how constant these reminders can be.
9:58pm — What about one entitled “Be Prepared… for Some Womanly Advice,” where the point is that the clerk gave the (male) customer advice about his love-life, which proved successful?
10:01pm — Oh, fuck everything: Blargh.
10:13pm — Customer screams in anger that the whipped cream on his mocha is “too girly.” I go to bed.
8:36am — Get up, go into the bathroom, read The Funny Times on the toilet, mostly a column by Bruce Cameron about getting a flat tire. I’m not sure whether to include the lines “When my daughters were learning to drive, I painstakingly walked them through the steps for changing a tire, which they dutifully recorded in their notes as, “Step 1: Call Dad.”” Since he goes on to talk about how his father is very far away in a nursing home, maybe that has nothing to do with gender, and is just about kids.
But then we get to the line, “Luckily, I’m a man, so I don’t need to read no stinkin’ instructions.” He attempts something which has no effect whatsoever: “I’m a man, so I kept at it for about five minutes.”
In the end, he calls road service: “The driver very efficiently changed the tire while I stood around and talked hunting and sports to prove I was as manly as she was.”
Again, that's funny and kinda feminist-- but the purpose of this experiment is not to argue that the whole world is sexist so much as to point out the fucking omnipresence of gender roles and expectations. Of which, dude, lots.
10:05am - Go onto lj. Read
kmd’s thoughtful IBARW entry about the intersection of feminism and racism.10:45am — Talking on the phone with a friend, we both mention in passing a mutual friend’s household in which they eat out a lot—because the female member of the household has health problems which make it very difficult, and the two (healthy) male members “don’t cook.”
11:05am — Walking by a copy of the Metro on the street, I notice that one of their stories seems to be about the fact that you really can have a relationship in which the woman is taller than the man. No, really! Sure, it’s funny, but these people have done it!
11:40am — Read
rosalarian’s entry about how in the professional American release of CLAMP’s series Wish, one of the characters who had been translated as male in other translations is now translated as female. (People who know more CLAMP than I, what’s the deal with this?)11:50am — Miss Manners points out 1920s hat etiquette for gentlemen.
12:03pm — Reading The Comics Curmudgeon, run across a strip of “Blondie.” And a strip of “Hagar the Horrible,” where Helga berates Hagar for going to France, home of “scantily clad dancing girls.” And one of “Curtis,” in which the mother is portrayed as primarily there to tend to her son and husband, ending with the line, “A mother should love her child more than her husband!” And why are the ants in “Family Circus” called “he” when most ants you see are female? Oh, and a “Beetle Bailey” where one of the soldiers offers the Sexy Secretary tm a small box which she thinks will contain an engagement ring, but turns out to have a tiny, tiny thong! Ha, ha! And a “Crock” where a male character asks a librarian for the book “Pickup Lines to Get Women,” leading to the librarian saying, “Great choice! That’s what I used to catch this beauty,” pulling out (from behind his desk) a young woman who seems somewhat cross-eyed and possibly buck-toothed, though it’s hard to tell with the art in Crock. The guy leaves without the book, anyway. And a “Mary Worth” whole series about how horrified the female character is that the guy she’s been flirting with seems interested in sex. And...and...and...
...and I don't last 24 hours. Because now I'm avoiding the internet, or books, or anything else, because I know I'll see something else I need to write down. And I don't want to think about it anymore. So I give up, and go to co-lead my therapy group: "Coping Skills for Women Trauma Survivors."
...
Note that this is just things that jumped out at me. I didn't analyze clothing and hairstyle, or the fact that I was doing the laundry, or anything else under the surface. That's 1200 words of nothing but in-your-face gender-role reinscriptions.
And I try to ignore these, most of the time. Try to say that I am simply myself, try to be guided by my own beliefs, opinions and desires on this subject, not those which are all around me, constantly, insisting that I am something else. And I'm amazed at how often I succeed.
But doing this experiment makes me wonder. If I didn't have to spend all this effort insisting against all odds on being myself-- if I could just live in a world where people like me were the norm, or at very least widely accepted-- what could I do with all that energy? What could I be?
--R
Reading: C.S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength. Elizabeth Enright, Thimble Summer. Rumer Godden, In this House of Brede.
no subject
no subject
Another thing you have posted about is people in non-mainstream subcultures (I remember a post about how being non-mainstream relates to therapy, for example). And I think that topic is the beginning of the answer to your question,
As a short man with physical disabilities, dating and romantic relationships have been really, really hard for me. I have always felt that a lot of this had to do with the fact that there are a number of gender role expectation type things I simply can't fulfill. As I have been able to find romantic partners who don't care about those things, my unhappiness with how I fall outside of gender norms has begun to abate, although my awareness of it remains.
Matt
no subject
I agree with this. I think gender roles were constructed to work more-or-less well-enough for most people... otherwise, they wouldn't be so damn persistent. And so it's definitely the people for whom they don't fit that gender roles cause the most problems-- and I think for whom those problems most often become conscious.
I think that the ways in which gender roles are problematic for people who do fall into the mainstream are often either not-seen, or seen but not connected to gender roles. Almost all women in America are to some degree nervous about going out alone at night, especially in urban areas; many people see this not as a problem with our expectation of male violence and entitlement, but rather, as a simple fact of the universe and "the way things are."
no subject
Funny. I am very guilty of this, and not just at night; these days, i don't leave the house on foot without a dog or a friend or three. I don't think of it as male-specific violence, though. The part where i usually get the sideways stare from middle-aged women, and harassed by people who appear both gender-variant and seriously mentally ill only reinforces it.
I am aware that i have a somewhat skewed understanding of the world.
no subject
And I wonder how much being nervous about going out is something we're taught as kids, and doesn't change even when our genders do. (Or how much it's because, as far as I can tell, you actually do live in a neighborhood with more crime and likelihood of being attacked than I do.)
no subject
7:48pm — My colleague with the baby talks about sending the baby to day care when she’s ready to go back to work. There is no discussion of her husband taking time off to split taking care of the baby.
This is often true not because of gender roles in the family, but because of gender roles in the work place (which are just as, if not more, pervasive); there are many companies which offer maternity leave but not paternity leave. Even if both parents would prefer to have the man take time off to take care of the baby, it's frequently just not possible.
11:40am — Read [info]rosalarian’s entry about how in the professional American release of CLAMP’s series Wish, one of the characters who had been translated as male in other translations is now translated as female. (People who know more CLAMP than I, what’s the deal with this?)
Okay. The character whose gender was changed, Kohaku, is one of the main characters. Kohaku was translated as male in fan translations. In the French translation, which was actually my first exposure to the series, Kohaku was translated both ways, carefully alternating; I suspect this may have been the way the original was, but I'm not sure.
Either way, Kohaku is clearly meant to be of ambiguous gender, and is extremely girly in all the traditional ways. Frankly, I can understand translators who are told "pick one" picking female. Kohaku looks female, acts girly and housewife-ish, dresses in women's clothing, is wider at the hips than at the shoulders, and talks about being someone's wife (the only gendered term Kohaku ever uses about him/her/itself, I believe - but it's been a long time since I read it, so I could be wrong).
I personally find Wish much more problematic in that the main message of the series is that horrible things happen to people for no reason, but that's okay, because it's all part of God's Plan, and the fact that there is a plan should be enough to make us accept both the horrible things and the fact that we will never understand any of said Plan, and we should all just submit to the will and Plan of God if we want to be happy and serene.
*snarl* I hate that series.
Anyway. I can see why the translators did what they did; the fan translators were shounen-ai fans, so they picked male. The Tokyopop translators weren't, so they went with what Kohaku "looked like." I like what the French translators did, and at some point, if I can stand to read it again, I'd like to take a look at the Japanese.
no subject
Indeed. The gender role expectations of work-places are very problematic, and worth questioning and arguing against; men who want to take full part in parenting have a challenge in front of them to argue their companies out of preventing them from doing so.
Thank you for the explanation of what's going on in Wish! What the French translators did sounds to me like it's truest to what the creators had in mind.
(Also, I now have a better understanding of why we refer to that series as "Unspeakable CLAMP." Grin.)
no subject
11:05am — Walking by a copy of the Metro on the street, I notice that one of their stories seems to be about the fact that you really can have a relationship in which the woman is taller than the man. No, really! Sure, it’s funny, but these people have done it!
Sigh... stuff like this gets me down. The longest-term relationship I have ever had was with a guy seven inches shorter than I am. He was extremely handsome and charming; the nice thing was that neither of us felt particularly insecure about the height differential. (At least, I didn't, and as far as I could tell he rarely did.) It was when I was younger and much more insecure, however, and I recall with loathing the way a so-called friend of mine snickered at me. The world is full of people who use that excuse, or any of the "reasons" on this list, really, to insult other people. I don't have any solutions, just the observation that there are a lot of people who love to be casually cruel, and sexism serves their purpose very well.
no subject
Yeah, very good point. I think one of the worst part of gender-expectations is that it means that when people are insulting that way, they're supported by a great deal of popular opinion, in a way that they wouldn't be so much if they were cruel in a more individual way. It's seen as just a slightly harsher version of the norm, rather than an outlier. It's sucky.
Your Mileage May Vary(tm)
Having sufficiently disclaimed any credentials, let me proceed in that great American tradition: truckin' right along anyway. :)
The Taoist in me cringes a little when I hear people talking about the energy they spend being themselves. Stable states of being, my belief goes, shouldn't require energy to maintain, and your Self should always be the most stable of states. What this suggests, to me, is that you spend energy dwelling on the matter or the state of the world around you, and certainly it is understandable that these things upset you. My concern is that the dwelling is negatively impacting you. Your statements definitely suggest that you feel held back by the expenditure. Insofar as the expenditure is on the dwelling, however, you have the means to answer your own question by changing how you spend your energy. Keep in mind, always, that no matter what the world around you - you are no more or less you than at any other point. Learning to let these influences slick off of you reduces any need to spend energy resisting them. You can become impervious to them.
I believe your statement speaks less to your inner self, however, and more addresses resistance you face to your professional and social activities. This isn't so easily defeated, of course, but that's where I cringe again. Energy spent railing ineffectually against a societal condition is energy wasted. Consider how long it has taken to move from your favorite point in the history of feminism to today. Consider how many people gave of themselves to make all that happen. Some of them became Feminists (tm) to do it. Your statement suggests that you want to be something else - my advice under those circumstances would be: go be that something else.
This isn't so much a 'forget about the movement' thing, it's a 'healer heal thyself' thing. Well timed, well considered actions buy you more bang for your buck than constant effort across inopportune moments. Shop around for 'good buys' and save your energy for yourself, your growth, and your own enjoyment. Even if you spend all that energy pushing the world closer to where you want it, if you make all that energy well spent, you'll be satisfied with who you are (or so I suspect).
Again, YMMV. :)
(For what it's worth I think you're pretty awesome and amazing.)
Re: Your Mileage May Vary(tm)
In terms of my spending energy "railing ineffectively" or "being upset" by the state of the world around me-- well, I agree that it's important to pick your battles when it comes to action. I think that a certain amount of time "railing" against social conditions is a necessary part of becoming conscious and aware of them so that change can happen-- if you got to the point where you were fully aware of them and they were old hat, I imagine the amount of fire and anger would bank down to a low burn.
But the point I was trying to make in talking about the blinders, and in the experiment overall, was that I believe I spend very little conscious energy on either of those things. While I have been noticing and thinking about feminism more actively lately, and I do get pretty pissed off about some things (like the fact that all of my female clients have been raped at some point, where none of the male ones have*), I try to focus that anger into productive work (writing fiction and counseling my clients with an eye towards helping them question and break through ways gender is limiting them).
So (and I realize my phrasing may not have made this clear), when I speak about spending energy on insisting on being myself, it's a relatively unconscious and automatic insistence. It's a matter of the near-unnoticed mental caveat-- "This author just said 'woman is made for man,' and that doesn't fit my truth, and that feels like a rejection of me and a denial of my reality, but I will just put that fact aside for the moment in order to enjoy the book." "This person just refused to walk through the door I was holding open for him, and I feel rebuffed, but I will ignore that feeling because I know it's not worth my time and he might have meant it well." It takes work to "let things slip off," because it means repressing my first reaction. And if that first reaction weren't there, it would mean I wasn't connected with other people or the world at all, and that doesn't seem worthwhile.
The other way that things don't slip off is that the mental images formed by the world around me create my mental schema for how things "should be." Take kissing. I have a thousand images from books, movies, TV, comics, news, and watching other people of how to kiss, how it should look. When I go to kiss someone, all of those images are present in my mind, and (unless I very consciously try not to) they influence how I hold my body, whether I close my eyes or open them, where I feel comfortable kissing someone, etc, etc, etc. And almost all of those images are very, very, very gendered. I can consciously question them-- but unless I do (and even if I do), they're going to be in my unconscious, telling me "UR DOIN IT WRONG." That's what I mean by it taking energy.
*Note to the Universe: I do not want my male clients to be raped, thank you very much, they have enough to deal with as it is. I just wish that some of my female clients could share the not-being-raped experience.
Re: Your Mileage May Vary(tm)
That makes sense to me (thank you!), and furthermore at least partially explains why you find such things more tiring than I do. You have that first reaction of feeling rejected and denied, which requires effort to repress; I don't have that reaction in the first place so repressing it doesn't take effort. (When other people react differently than I do, I like understanding why. I'm also very glad that the answer doesn't in any way boil down to "because you're female and I'm not.")
I wonder whether I used to have that reaction? I mean, there are certainly lots of ways in which I don't live up to popular stereotypes of what men are supposed to be like, and there was a time when that bothered me more than it does now.
And if that first reaction weren't there, it would mean I wasn't connected with other people or the world at all...
I wonder whether that is necessary. I'll grant that I am frequently less connected with other people than you might wish to be, but I think I do okay, despite not having that first reaction much.
When I go to kiss someone, all of those images are present in my mind... telling me "UR DOIN IT WRONG."
Yeah, I do that too.
Try kissing someone on stage, for an audience. It's... well, it's an experience.
Also, I think my experience of dating (and kissing) women taller than me did a fair bit to burn this reaction out of me. Because, really, there is no possible way I can look like those images, when I'm kissing a woman who'd be 3-4 inches taller than me even if she weren't wearing heels that make her even taller. And I find it a lot easier to not be bothered by what I can't possibly help, than by what I maybe theoretically somehow could even though really I can't and have no good reason to even try anyway.
Re: Your Mileage May Vary(tm)
I wonder whether that is necessary. I'll grant that I am frequently less connected with other people than you might wish to be, but I think I do okay, despite not having that first reaction much.
I'm not sure, either. I've trained myself over the last several years to be very aware of my emotional reactions to things, because they often give me useful clues to what's going on with me or others. So it's possible I'm just picking up on subtler things?
But I'd love to hear more about how you've had less reaction than you used to, because that sounds like it might be really useful and cool.
Re: Your Mileage May Vary(tm)
It seems plausible that, under those circumstances, being presented with models of more typical masculinity (or humanity, or Americanism), would have felt more prescriptive. I don't remember it feeling that way, but it seems like it might have, and I was sufficiently out of touch with my feelings that I might not have been aware of feeling that way. I know I don't feel that way now.
Over the years I have gradually become much more comfortable with who I am overall. And so no particular aspect of myself really bothers me much in that way. I am myself, and for the most part the degree to which that correlates to any particular standard is somewhere between "interesting data" and "irrelevant." There are still things about myself that I'd like to change, but for my own reasons, not to better meet anyone else's standards.
Re: Your Mileage May Vary(tm)
Stupid brains with rewriteable memory.
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If I didn't have to spend all this effort insisting against all odds on being myself-- if I could just live in a world where people like me were the norm, or at very least widely accepted...
Why do you feel the latter is required for the former?
Is it not possible to simply be yourself, without spending effort insisting on it, even if people like you aren't the norm?
Personally I think people who are the norm are generally somewhere between boring and annoying, so I for one am glad you're not like that. But then, I'm pretty abnorm myself.
(There are other elements of this post to which I am inclined to reply, but I need to take more time thinking about how and whether to say what I want to say, before doing so here.)
(Oh, except, regarding "you really can have a relationship in which the woman is taller than the man" -- well, duh, says the short guy. Of all the things that have prevented me from having relationships, or that I thought might prevent me from having relationships, I don't think that's ever been one of them.)
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Personally I think people who are the norm are generally somewhere between boring and annoying, so I for one am glad you're not like that. But then, I'm pretty abnorm myself.
Grin, and right back atcha.
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No. One of many examples: If you're trans, and you don't put effort during the transition process into convincing other people of who you are, then no one will treat you as you wish to be treated. If you have total confidence in your gender identity, you can ignore them, I guess, though who has that? Plus, if you don't spend effort not only insisting on a gendered identity but insisting on it in a way that people around you are comfortable with, you put yourself at risk for everything from people being a little less friendly to outright violence.
Being able to simply be yourself without spending effort insisting on it is the privilege of those whose identity slides neatly, or at least without too many rough edges, into society. This isn't your fault or anything; it's not like you signed up for the box "Don't have huge gender issues" when you shipped from the factory. :) But no, it is not possible to simply be yourself without spending effort insisting on it, if those around you are insisting you are something else, at least not if you want to be part of society. I've used this example because it's the one I'm most fluent in; while other differences operate differently, a lot of the general arc is the same.
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Grin prrr fond of you.
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I can believe there may be specific other cases that are similar, although none are leaping to mind. (Thinking further I suppose race, in some cases... H.L.Gates now comes to mind.) But I'm pretty sure
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Ah. But I don't want to be treated like a woman-as-our-culture-sees-them. I don't want to have people assume I'm not capable with power tools or my fists; I don't want to be seen as being here to take care of and please men; I don't want to be hit on (or hassled, or raped) because someone's trying to prove his power; I don't want people to value my breasts over my abilities; I don't want people to assume I don't need a steady paycheck because my father/husband will take care of me, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc. I don't want to sit with my legs crossed. I don't want to be seen as weird or unkempt for not wearing make-up. With some exceptions, I don't like being treated like a girl.
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I don't deny that there are typical ways in which women get treated differently from men, or even ways in which I tend to treat women differently than I treat men (at least until I learn how a particular individual seems to want to be treated), but I don't think either set includes most of the items you mention.
Of all the items you listed in your original post, I see exactly one that I can interpret as you being treated in the stereotypical Ways Women Get Treated (8:55pm), if I assume that there was some unstated pressure being applied to you to join in the cleaning (which wouldn't surprise me). Yet it's clear each of them caused you to feel the need to exert some effort to combat the underlying assumptions, and that need was what I didn't understand (but now think that I do, thanks to your response to rustycoon).
I don't mean to the personal experiences of you or anyone else, but I do question the correlation between the stereotypical stories and your personal experience.
Do you actually find that you personally get treated in the stereotypical Ways Women Get Treated, to a significant extent?
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I don't mean to deny the personal experiences of you or anyone else, but I do question the correlation between the stereotypical stories and your personal experience.
...(continue with making the question explicit.)
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Interesting question. Lessee...
people assume I'm not capable with power tools
I've definitely had that one-- a guy who doesn't know me being surprised that I have power tools, or make it clear that he didn't think I could be useful with them.
or my fists
I'm pretty sure this is what was going on when I've had guys warn me that I shouldn't walk a certain stretch of road alone because there were "tough characters" there and I might get hurt-- at least, they seemed to see no reason they shouldn't be there. The implication I got was definitely "you shouldn't be there alone because you couldn't defend yourself."
be seen as being here to take care of and please men
I think that's what's going on when everyone assumes the women will clear and clean up after a dinner party. Or when (and this happens to me a lot) guys come up to me on the street when I'm feeling bad and say "Smile! I want to see you smiling!"
be hit on (or hassled, or raped) because someone's trying to prove his power
I have never (thank the gods) been raped. I have had people "hit on" me in contexts where it clearly was not that he genuinely wanted a date (e.g., shouting at me from car windows, shouting "dykes!" at me and my wife/girlfriend, etc).
people to value my breasts over my abilities
I have no direct evidence for this one.
people to assume I don't need a steady paycheck because my father/husband will take care of me
Again, no direct evidence. I note that in the clinic where I work, most of the clinicians are female, and we don't make enough money to actually support a family. But I'm not sure whether, in a setting where most of the employees were male and similarly entry-level, the pay would be better.
sit with my legs crossed
I've had a supervisor criticize me for not being "lady-like" when I sat with my legs comfortably apart.
be seen as weird or unkempt for not wearing make-up
This was more a problem in high school than now. On the other hand, when I was interviewing for internships in grad school, I always had a hard time, despite the fact that I'm really competent, and everyone I've ever actually worked with praises me highly. But again, this one is uncertain-- there could be other explanations besides this (and I've always assumed it was because I came across as nervous).
So... yes, I have directly experienced a lot of these. But it's also true that it's sometimes subtle, or unclear.
I dunno... shall I make a poll, and see what other people's experience is?