for further cogitation

[redbird]

I wrote this in response to something in 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.

Comments

[purpletigron.livejournal.com]

Your sex is female, and so people assume that you have feminine gender whenever they know that. Yup, that's why we have the word 'stereotyping' :-)

I'm poor at subordinate and submissive roles*, too. There are some kinds of circumstances where I am happy to say 'what ever you want, within limits' - these are usually social occasions, where another person in the group is choosing what to do. Mostly, as soon as I perceive a potential problem or weakness, I start to rebel...

* Actually, I prefer to be second in command, because I'm irresponsible I think :-)

[angeyja.livejournal.com]

I don't exactly perform gender, in a deliberate sense.

Mainly an issue for me at work, which is middle management.

[liv]

This piece really resonates with me; thank you for posting it.

I haven't taken gender seriously in a long time; as a kid I was always getting mistaken for a boy (short hair, no other obvious sexual characteristics) and it used to make me furious. My response to that was to grow my hair as soon as I was bat mitzvah (and thus considered 'old enough to decide for myself'). But by that time, I'd realized that I really don't care what gender people take me for. I'm lucky enough that being female has never, even in the smallest way, prevented me from doing anything I wanted to do. It's perhaps a consequence of this good luck that gender doesn't really mean very much to me.

Now that I have long hair (and breasts), nobody thinks of me as other than feminine; again, I'm lucky that I've never had problems with this. I've always got away with being outspoken, extrovert, anything but subordinate (what's the opposite of subordinate? insubordinate? dominating?) etc; except when I'm specifically considering the question, it doesn't normally occur to me to regard this as 'unfeminine'. Also I seem not to fall very often into situations which require otherwise, though I know such situations exist.

As for remembering that my gender excludes me from certain rôles, the concept even fazes me when said rôles are obviously gendered, like father, bachelor, brother and so on.

[headgardener.livejournal.com]

Yes, an interesting line to open up. I've never had any particular problems about being female - largely I think because my mother never suggested by word or deed any expectation that any of her children should refrain from questioning what did not make sense, bow to authority just because it pulled rank, or indeed obey rules unless there was a clear and fair reason for them.

Generally, I've just tended to quietly ifnore the rules that didn't suit me, rather than making any particular anti-authoritarian display. But from time to time, you do realise that actually questioning why something is expected or the norm is seen as err, dangerous, tantamount to challenging authority.

So now, I've actually made something of a point: my job is as a policy adviser, this involves questioning policies - internal organisational as well as external.

But I can't see anything incompatible with knitting, or dressing up, in being err, clever.