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I wrote this in response to something in ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
nadinelet's journal, and the last bit is something I need to think about more, so I'm putting it here as a reminder and in case anyone has something to add:
I don't exactly perform gender, in a deliberate sense. But I don't take it as seriously as a lot of people do--I do a bunch of things, and somehow that combination of what I do and how I look is generally labeled "female" and people seem happy to use that label. I think a lot of that labeling is based on the physical (height, breast size, voice) and a lack of anything that conflicts with said physicality. I've passed for male online, without meaning to--back in the 1980s in contexts that were 80 or 90 percent male, using a non-gendered nickname--and assume I could do so again, were there a reason.
And now I'm thinking that this connects to performing certain family roles. I want to cogitate about this, which means I'm copying this comment into my own journal.
The roles I have trouble performing aren't, or aren't just, gender: they're anything that includes keeping quiet for reasons of status/power/relative position. I more or less know, by now, that people who ask for "any questions" don't always mean it--but I blurt them out anyway. That ties into cultural female roles, but in a hierarchical organization, most people are expected to perform subordinate at least part of the time.
Edited to add: Yes, what I'm describing is probably fairly close--certainly in actions and some aspects of appearance--to someone who really does believe strongly in gender. The differences range from the subtle and purely internal to a few practical things. For example, arguments that I should do/not do something because it's "unfeminine" or "what real women do" are almost certain to fail. Depending on how they're phrased, they will probably draw confusion, a blank stare, anger, or amusement.
nadinelet's journal, and the last bit is something I need to think about more, so I'm putting it here as a reminder and in case anyone has something to add:I don't exactly perform gender, in a deliberate sense. But I don't take it as seriously as a lot of people do--I do a bunch of things, and somehow that combination of what I do and how I look is generally labeled "female" and people seem happy to use that label. I think a lot of that labeling is based on the physical (height, breast size, voice) and a lack of anything that conflicts with said physicality. I've passed for male online, without meaning to--back in the 1980s in contexts that were 80 or 90 percent male, using a non-gendered nickname--and assume I could do so again, were there a reason.
And now I'm thinking that this connects to performing certain family roles. I want to cogitate about this, which means I'm copying this comment into my own journal.
The roles I have trouble performing aren't, or aren't just, gender: they're anything that includes keeping quiet for reasons of status/power/relative position. I more or less know, by now, that people who ask for "any questions" don't always mean it--but I blurt them out anyway. That ties into cultural female roles, but in a hierarchical organization, most people are expected to perform subordinate at least part of the time.
Edited to add: Yes, what I'm describing is probably fairly close--certainly in actions and some aspects of appearance--to someone who really does believe strongly in gender. The differences range from the subtle and purely internal to a few practical things. For example, arguments that I should do/not do something because it's "unfeminine" or "what real women do" are almost certain to fail. Depending on how they're phrased, they will probably draw confusion, a blank stare, anger, or amusement.