sarahmichigan | Entries tagged with gender

I should know better than to read some damn essay in Esquire about what makes a man (the "real" is sort of implied). There was a line that a man doesn't cringe at the thought of dancing, but it is to be avoided.

I call B.S. There are tons of cultures, here in the U.S. and abroad where it's perfectly normal and expected that men should dance and enjoy it, not to mention that the essay tended to imply that gay men aren't really men.

And, last night, I went to City Club with a couple of women and four men who are pretty secure in their gender identity who didn't seem to get the memo that dancing is "to be avoided."

I often think about the idea that people who are gender-queer or androgynous or in some other way have a non-standard gender presentation sometimes feel they are "impostors" or failures when they try to be very girly or very manly. I probably seem pretty girly to many androgynous or butch women with my long hair and my dark eye-liner, but I still often feel I'm a little girl playing "dress-up" when I present myself as particularly "girly". I especially feel this way when my hair gets out of my control and I can't make it do what I want to with it and see some other woman with smooth upswept hair, or when I think I've picked a flattering shade of lipstick/eyeshadow/what-have-you and then I see myself in the mirror and realize it doesn't really look that good on me.

Somehow, it's comforting to know that I'm not the only one who struggles with that sort of thing.

From this "Weddings, Marriages, and Musings" blog entry, Debbie says:

The big issue was that I decided at a very early age not to learn anything about being a "girl," and I've stuck to it stubbornly, and yet part of me believes that the skills were supposed to be issued with my chromosomes and I'm somehow a failure for not knowing what I'm doing.

http://syndicated.livejournal.com/body_impolitic/100895.html?mode=reply

Did you know that there's a whole community on LJ dedicated to asking the maintainers of LJ to add options other than Male, Female, and Unspecified to the Gender pull-down menu on your user info?

http://www.livejournal.com/userinfo.bml?user=gender_petition

Apparently, a request for more options was made in 2001, the petition community was started in 2003, but the three options are still the only ones on LJ.

What do you think? I didn't join because the user info page says that by joining you're signing the petition in favor of either a. eliminating gender on the profile or b. adding more options (genderless, MTF, FTM, androgynous, etc.). It's not that I'm not supportive of trans issues generally, it's just that I'm sorting out what I think about the petition, specifically.

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Killing Your Sacred Cows since 1992

Entries tagged with gender

Real men do dance?

Weren't girly skills issued along with the proper chromosomes?

Gender on LJ

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May 2023

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