Femininity & Masculinity
After posting a pondering on a possible way to model gender and sex (and gender roles, expression, etc), Mostlyfoo tried to expand more on what 'masculine' and 'feminine' mean anyway. She ended with a suggestion that people contribute their own tales of how they relate to masculinity and femininity. I tried to comment...and got a bit wordy. So here is a musing on how I have related to femininity.
Well. Masculine and feminine. Huh. Actually, from a skim read, I think the wikipedia articles do pretty well at giving a suggestion of some of the ways these can be thought of. Culturally contingent, reproduced and policed, and at times arbitrary and unstable.
On the other hand, I broke my brain pretty thoroughly a few years back trying to figure out my own identity, which means I seem to come at these issues from a slightly different perspective from a lot of people.
As a teenager, I remember femininity being at the same time appealing and utterly confounding. Clarisse Thorne wrote about knowing how to look while having sex before she ever did, and I had a similar problem with feminine behaviours. It's very easy to look around and absorb all sorts of ideas about what femininity entails in the way of looks and mannerisms. Being in an all-girls secondary school certainly didn't help, but it's a strange thing to put on feminine performances and then be left wondering how it was supposed to make you feel - and how on earth people managed to keep it up every day. And thus came about my early feminist leanings.
I did eventually discover a kind of femininity that worked for me I know there are some people in Lancaster who remember waist-length hair, long skirts and hippy tops. Jewellery-making, embroidering, bright colours, hugging everyone. Now that was a form of feminine expression I really liked - I have a thing for prettiness and tie-dye. And hugs. It was unsustainable though - it got to the point that I knew how I wanted to look and act, but couldn't bear to actually go ahead and do it. I remember a friend's wedding in my third year - I was told in no uncertain terms that formal wear necessitated a dress and make-up, and I ended up sitting there wondering why I felt like a painted monkey. After I graduated, I became fairly surely that I would by a chest binder (just to see what it was like! Honest!) and I gave myself 'one last summer' to wear pretty skirts and fun things. I never managed to take advantage of that.
The thing is, to transition in public, to ask people to start thinking of you as a guy, they really expect you to put some effort into it. Bright colours - feminising. Smiling - feminising. Lots of physical contact - feminising again. And don't get me started on the craftwork or baking. This isn't to say that people gave me a hard time, or that I expected them to (though trans paranoia is a terrifying and overwhelming thing), but gender expression gives people clues about how you wanted to be treated, and at that point, any and all hints of masculinity I could provide were precious. (It's also a scrutiny thing - people evaluating you, looking for the truth of your identity...best to present as coherent a picture as possible. After all, one of the most frustrating lines of enquiry is, "But you don't act like an x / Why are you asking people to treat you differently when you aren't acting differently?")
Gendered expression is helpful for people - it lets them know what social category to put you in. I'll refrain from an analysis here of oppositional sexism and the devaluing of femininity, except to say that dealing with social situations and other people's reactions to the way I speak and act continues to be a strange adventure.
A couple of people have asked if I plan to grow facial hair when I can. My standard response now is to enthuse that of course I will - because then I'll be able to grow my hair long again and wear skirts. Aside from a suggestion that I would then be fit to join a circus, the reaction has mostly been surprised amusement. But this is the calculation I make between the gender cues I give and my gender expression (which, lets face it, is not particularly masculine. Only now it gets called flaming instead of feminine). As it happens, I'm not waiting for a beard before growing my hair. And colour is slowly creeping back into my wardrobe, on the days I feel comfortable enough to relax. I'm not sure that the styles, colours and mannerisms I enjoy have changed that much...but they are perceived as being much more feminine on somebody who uses male pronouns than they were on a person assumed to be a girl. They're much more fun now that I know how they should feel, rather than just how they should look.
(And anyone who reads this and then asks why the hell I transitioned if I plan to go back to acting like I used to...will get soundly thwapped. Or sat down and treated to a very long chat about gender theory. I'm not sure which is worse...)
I realise that this is just about femininity, but that's enough navel gazing for today. I may tackle the rest of it at a later point.
Well. Masculine and feminine. Huh. Actually, from a skim read, I think the wikipedia articles do pretty well at giving a suggestion of some of the ways these can be thought of. Culturally contingent, reproduced and policed, and at times arbitrary and unstable.
On the other hand, I broke my brain pretty thoroughly a few years back trying to figure out my own identity, which means I seem to come at these issues from a slightly different perspective from a lot of people.
As a teenager, I remember femininity being at the same time appealing and utterly confounding. Clarisse Thorne wrote about knowing how to look while having sex before she ever did, and I had a similar problem with feminine behaviours. It's very easy to look around and absorb all sorts of ideas about what femininity entails in the way of looks and mannerisms. Being in an all-girls secondary school certainly didn't help, but it's a strange thing to put on feminine performances and then be left wondering how it was supposed to make you feel - and how on earth people managed to keep it up every day. And thus came about my early feminist leanings.
I did eventually discover a kind of femininity that worked for me I know there are some people in Lancaster who remember waist-length hair, long skirts and hippy tops. Jewellery-making, embroidering, bright colours, hugging everyone. Now that was a form of feminine expression I really liked - I have a thing for prettiness and tie-dye. And hugs. It was unsustainable though - it got to the point that I knew how I wanted to look and act, but couldn't bear to actually go ahead and do it. I remember a friend's wedding in my third year - I was told in no uncertain terms that formal wear necessitated a dress and make-up, and I ended up sitting there wondering why I felt like a painted monkey. After I graduated, I became fairly surely that I would by a chest binder (just to see what it was like! Honest!) and I gave myself 'one last summer' to wear pretty skirts and fun things. I never managed to take advantage of that.
The thing is, to transition in public, to ask people to start thinking of you as a guy, they really expect you to put some effort into it. Bright colours - feminising. Smiling - feminising. Lots of physical contact - feminising again. And don't get me started on the craftwork or baking. This isn't to say that people gave me a hard time, or that I expected them to (though trans paranoia is a terrifying and overwhelming thing), but gender expression gives people clues about how you wanted to be treated, and at that point, any and all hints of masculinity I could provide were precious. (It's also a scrutiny thing - people evaluating you, looking for the truth of your identity...best to present as coherent a picture as possible. After all, one of the most frustrating lines of enquiry is, "But you don't act like an x / Why are you asking people to treat you differently when you aren't acting differently?")
Gendered expression is helpful for people - it lets them know what social category to put you in. I'll refrain from an analysis here of oppositional sexism and the devaluing of femininity, except to say that dealing with social situations and other people's reactions to the way I speak and act continues to be a strange adventure.
A couple of people have asked if I plan to grow facial hair when I can. My standard response now is to enthuse that of course I will - because then I'll be able to grow my hair long again and wear skirts. Aside from a suggestion that I would then be fit to join a circus, the reaction has mostly been surprised amusement. But this is the calculation I make between the gender cues I give and my gender expression (which, lets face it, is not particularly masculine. Only now it gets called flaming instead of feminine). As it happens, I'm not waiting for a beard before growing my hair. And colour is slowly creeping back into my wardrobe, on the days I feel comfortable enough to relax. I'm not sure that the styles, colours and mannerisms I enjoy have changed that much...but they are perceived as being much more feminine on somebody who uses male pronouns than they were on a person assumed to be a girl. They're much more fun now that I know how they should feel, rather than just how they should look.
(And anyone who reads this and then asks why the hell I transitioned if I plan to go back to acting like I used to...will get soundly thwapped. Or sat down and treated to a very long chat about gender theory. I'm not sure which is worse...)
I realise that this is just about femininity, but that's enough navel gazing for today. I may tackle the rest of it at a later point.