Ye Goblyn Queenne
Check out Ye Goblyn Queenne. Her post, Interview With a Greek MtF Transsexual, discusses some interesting stuff about how people are gendered, and how they (specifically, Stassa) reacts to that.
I think she raises some interesting points about the idea of “passing” (and I hate that word, so don’t read too much into me using it there, or into what she wrote).
December 3, 2007 at 3:57 pm
Funny interview, I do like this quote: “unless of course you’re a genetic female, because they’ll just make out with anyone indiscriminately, they filthy whores” hahaha! Yeah, only guys have sexual orientation, everyone knows that girls just need a few drinks and a bit of music - hahaha!
Okay, “passing” I went into this with what I know about the term “passing” which is that it is a historic american term for light coloured blacks to pass as white and thus avoid the discrimination from the “majority” by being seen as part of it. For some reason, I am not sure if this is true or just that my reading had more examples, that “passing” was done more by black females than black males. So, because I went in with that, what she had to say made sense; mimicing societal markers of value of the larger group (in this case ‘traditional female spectrum’)in order to avoid the mental discrimination from that an other groups.
Now, I can and have argued that what woman does is feminine, whether that happens to be doing bench presses or being princes riding to the rescue of princesses, and whatever a guy does is masculine. But, if you live in a small town or an environment where you are view in a very limited way, saying, “I’ll trade this for this benifit” seems, no not a wonderful world, but a realistic one.
I guess I am curious why you hate the word “passing” and what the word means to you (since probably not as minority groups living and being viewed as one of the majority?)
December 3, 2007 at 4:34 pm
“Now, I can and have argued that what woman does is feminine, whether that happens to be doing bench presses or being princes riding to the rescue of princesses, and whatever a guy does is masculine.”
That makes me pretty uncomfortable. There are women in the world who fight hard for their masculinity to be accepted and honored, and men their femininity. I don’t like the idea that we slot everything into “this person did it, and so.” Heaven knows I’ve been told whatever I do is feminine, and it feels like totally denying my reality so people can keep me in their tidy little woman-box to me. I think we should listen to people, not put them in boxes if we don’t know how they see what they do.
December 3, 2007 at 4:46 pm
“That makes me pretty uncomfortable. There are women in the world who fight hard for their masculinity to be accepted and honored, and men their femininity?” -
So who or what decides? The action? Social norms? My understanding is that ‘masculinity” is either a) the properties characteristic of the male sex or b) the trait of behaving in ways considered typical for men. And femininity the same (My only issue would be with the word “typical”).
In my limited experience, I have met more males and females who were denied their gender identity because it was not considered “typical” - to me, guys who love guys are “masculine” - to me girls who love girls are feminine. They aren’t ” masculine” or wanting to be men. Women who do non traditional sports aren’t “masculine” there are women who are being women doing non traditional sports (or careers).
I can see wtih the degraded use of the word feminine that it might not be seen as a positive word anymore. I am not sure what you refer to as the women who fight for their masculinity to be accepted. Boi’s? Genderqueer? I guess to me a woman who says, “yeah, I’m a woman” even if she has a crew cut, is the only woman on an oil rig and walks with a swagger isn’t masculine, she’s simply redefining what is feminine, or “the activities and characterics of a woman’.
December 3, 2007 at 6:16 pm
I don’t see why you’re thinking I’m saying I don’t like the word feminine used to describe me only because I’m femmephobic. I don’t think I’m saying anything like that. I think I am saying that I feel demeaned and devalued when other people call me feminine against my wishes so as to fit me into their own views of what masculinity and femininity should be.
I suppose I’ll just say please don’t use words like feminine to describe me within my earshot, and bow out of this discussion. But I would ask you to think about whether the way you’re using words is putting theory over people.
December 3, 2007 at 6:57 pm
Elizabeth, lots of women like Trin do define themselves as masculine, and embrace that definition as properly applicable to them. It’s not femmephobia, and Trin also doesn’t see femininity as negative, just not as something applicable to her. Also, lots of men are feminine and are proud or at least accepting of that. That doesn’t deny their maleness.
I think I see where you’re going with anything a woman does is feminine, but I’d say “anything a woman does is acceptable for a woman to do,” because the gendering of actions as well as people is still there.
As for passing, it’s used among transsexual people to talk about being taken as a member of the sex you’re presenting as, but it’s just as often used against us when used that way, implying that we see our transition as a sham or an illusion. I don’t have a better word for it, but I don’t like that one for that reason. I’m not saying anyone else shouldn’t use it, though.
December 3, 2007 at 8:02 pm
well, I guess my first question is: What is femmephobia?
And my second question is still: I am not sure what you refer to as the women who fight for their masculinity to be accepted.
Who are these women? Is the answer only: The women who fight for thier masculinity to be accepted?
What fight for masculinity?
Is the problem here with the actual definitions of the words or just the social use of the words?
“But I would ask you to think about whether the way you’re using words is putting theory over people.” - it is interesting because that is usually what I don’t want to do but on the other hand, I do need words, I need words very very badly. And indeed it often seems the greatest pain is over the use of words; but I don’t understand these particular uses and threatening or warning me not to use words or some words or these words around some or unknown people without an explanation at all is………..unreasonable. I don’t know Trin in day to day life, so do I now always call women masculine just in case Trin is in earshot? Should I call all men feminine unless told otherwise?
Anything a woman does IS what a woman does. And the word in the dictionary for what is the scope of what a woman does is “feminine” If you don’t like that word, tell me another word.
Do I think I am unaware that traits and even physical features are often used to label people? That say….height; the words often used for tall tall women is masculine, mannish indeed the UK study on correlation between hieght and number of children explained the reason why women over 6 feet tall have fewer children is because they are ‘by nature’ more masculine, more career driven, less likely to have the traits of a ‘normal woman.’ When simple logic would dictate that in a society where men do NOT date women taller than them, less tall women are going to get married. So, a woman who is tall, a woman who has a strong chin, a woman with broad shoulder, a woman with facial hair - all traits they were born with; all described the same way - masculine, mannish.
Is that fair? Is that putting the theory in front of the person?
December 3, 2007 at 11:47 pm
Basically, Trin’s sense of self and identity is that she’s masculine. She’s uncomfortable being labeled feminine on the basis of just being a woman. Her sense of masculinity comes from herself.
Height and facial hair (or, for that matter, being outspoken or assertive) lead to people imposing definitions of masculinity on women. These are two different things. Trin’s saying that masculinity doesn’t deny womanhood, and you’re saying that everything women do is appropriate for women to do - in other words, I think you might be talking past each other, and I talked past you above.
December 4, 2007 at 12:02 am
What is femmephobia?
Femmephobia usually refers to the hatred and distrust of femmes in queer women’s communities, and also the hatred that non-traditionally feminine people suffer in the world. It ties into the valuation of femininity as less than masculinity, and in queer women’s communities, it’s part of transphobia - as both butches and femmes are transgressively gendered (and thus could consider themselves transgender) in lesbian communities. It’s most commonly used in reference to queer communities, where it is a massive, massive problem.
I am not sure what you refer to as the women who fight for their masculinity to be accepted.
Who are these women? Is the answer only: The women who fight for thier masculinity to be accepted?
What fight for masculinity?
Is the problem here with the actual definitions of the words or just the social use of the words?
Woman-ID’d butches would be a good example of women who fight for their masculinity to be accepted - butches are outcasts in most mainstream lesbian communities, and their identities and expression are viewed as fake by mainstream society - and it all comes down to them defining themselves as masculine and expressing that in what are generally very visible ways. I think part of the problem is the actual definitions of the words - I’m not speaking for anyone else, but I see masculine as a set of traits, grouped by society, that is generally associated with men, but not exclusive to them (and similarly with feminine and women). Part of deconstructing gender stereotypes is allowing people to define what is masculine and feminine for themselves, and part of it is acknowledging that men can be feminine and women can be masculine.
I think it’s best to not label an individual person’s traits or the way they express themselves as masculine or feminine without their consent - just state the particular trait they’re expressing. Because a woman with a crew cut who works on an oil rig could see herself as redefining femininity, or could see herself as being a masculine woman - and it’s up to her (though I think we both agree that she’s redefining what it means in the eyes of society to be a woman).
December 4, 2007 at 12:15 am
>>>don’t know Trin in day to day life, so do I now always call women masculine just in case Trin is in earshot? Should I call all men feminine unless told otherwise?
That seems a little disingenuous Elizabeth.
I consider “feminine” and “masculine” to be two sets of aesthetic styles, behaviours etc generally but not solely held to be the property of one gender and not the other. There’s nothing particular innate about them, just a culturally conditioned mode of reading that assigns abstract signs (ooh pink) to concrete gendered people. We *all* know those codes, and more to the point, we know that in practice people make far greater distinctions between simply masculine man/feminine woman (even as they often suggest them to be innate). There’s a cultural logic that links them, but they’re just not the same.
So sure, we could decide on here to rename every thing women do as feminine, but it wouldn’t really work in the greater world. Trin describing herself as a masculine woman makes perfect sense to me. I consider myself a feminine woman, but those two things are most certainly not one and the same.
December 4, 2007 at 1:20 am
“That seems a little disingenuous Elizabeth.” - no more than requesting I refrain from speaking about someone I know as an anonymous name or implying I resisting the fight of men to be feminine (which currently is linquisticly impossible).
For example, oh pink to mean means, pink like petticoats; both something that was the male perogative, or rather the “infant” perogative since children didn’t have a gender until a certain age (only WWII changed that colour).
I am glad to get a defintion of femmephobia even though as I read it, it means the hatred of both femme AND non femme - which confuses me.
I do think this is a viewpoint of language, which I have a problem understand becuase I haven’t been given an alternate one. From my linquistic understanding women exist along a spectrum of expression which collectively is known as female, woman, feminine. Males exist upon a spectrum of expression which is collectively known as male, masculine. I fail to understand why expanding the understand of what it is to be masculine is bad but labelling someone identifying as male as feminine is good?
I guess I simply cannot understand linquistically how someone can say, I am a woman, I am masculine. You can label whatever bias you see on my brain but that statement to me that is akin to saying “I am a living dead” Masculine means that which male, woman means, you know, the other gender. Reading around in the last hour that these is a butch representation which has masculinity which where I was is called “appropriating” or something similar. I also read butch as a gender, which honestly I don’t understand. The butches I know, not in this country, are female, are “Don’t knock me, I am a female just as much as you are female and just because I act this way and look this way so what?”
I don’t know, I really want to give up and say, yes, you’re correct, the entire year I spent blogging about this when no one gave a damn as an athlete was obviously hitting the straight world and what the heck, lets do the 80’s again and call people twice, “manly men” because obviously once isn’t enough. If you can come up with a word which encompasses the “set” as we call it in math which all women engage, which isn’t feminine - then good. The same with masculine. But if 15% of more of men dress in traditional women’s clothing (as studies have shown) then how can I not see that as a masculine activity (an activity which pertains and is done by males) - they do it.
Someone who describes themselves as feminine I understand (I think) is that they are more comfortable in the traditional society aspects of the feminine. I understand that anyone could say, Geez Elizabeth live in the real world. Well the real world is full of saying like “polticial trust” and other oxymorons and redundancies. If a language set can be provided, I will use it - but people don’t get upset because I am am not in the same linguistic drift others might be in (the creation and application of language in alterative ways) - I still am trying to figure out what cis means half the time.
December 4, 2007 at 1:27 am
“So sure, we could decide on here to rename every thing women do as feminine, but it wouldn’t really work in the greater world.” - This IS the defintion as it has been defined for many decades? Is there another word?
December 4, 2007 at 5:00 am
I think perhaps the confusion here is about the words “feminine” and “masculine” versus “female” and “male” versus “woman” and “man.” It’s a distinction that doesn’t come naturally unless you’ve had reason to think about it before (or unless you’re a gender studies major).
So, let’s start with me, for example, because I’m a pretty easy case.
- I’m feminine: my gender presentation (aesthetics and mannerisms) is composed almost entirely of traits that (in our historical moment and our cultural space) are stereotypically associated with womanhood. To trot out the same old example, yes, I wear a ton of pink. If I were a Victorian-era baby, this would not be automatically feminine, because the same cultural association wouldn’t necessarily be there. But as it is, the way I present myself in the world conforms to what my culture expects to see from women. (Mostly. *grin*)
- I’m female: I have all the bits and pieces that biologically make up the female of the species. (As far as I know, that is; I’ve never checked.) In my case, I was born that way, and that’s worked out conveniently for me. But in any event, it doesn’t actually mean a whole lot about who I am, except if I’m trying to give birth, or going to the doctor’s office. It’s just my biological sex.
- I’m a woman: at the risk of sounding all Bible-camp, “this I know, for my gender identity tells me so.” (I mean, actually, my gender identity is a little more complicated than “woman,” but it’s a good start.) My internal sense of myself is as a woman - if someone says “she,” for example, I know instinctively that the group of people they might be talking about should include me in it. It’s hard to describe, it’s just that gut-level. But most importantly, it’s independent of the two previous categories.
So that was an easy case. My former roommate (and fellow Quench blogger) Emily0 is:
- masculine/butch
- (biologically) male, but post-transition MTF, so her body is essentially female except during a blood test
- a woman
Trin (as far as I know, and oh-please-correct-me if I’m wrong!!) is, I think:
- masculine/butch
- biologically female
- a woman
My friend A., a self-described “femmefag bi-boy” is:
- feminine
- biologically male
- a man
. . . and the list goes on from there. The point being that not everything someone who identifies as a woman does is necessarily feminine, because womanhood and femininity are terms from two different realms of analysis (psychological and cultural, respectively). Not everyone who is female is a woman, because those are two different realms (biological and psychological). Et cetera.
Your original point, Elizabeth, was a good one: women can (or at least, should be able to) do anything we want without it being a threat to our identity. Anything I do, or Trin does, or Lisa does, or you do . . . any of that is “what a woman does,” because we are women and we are doing it. But it’s not feminine, necessarily, because femininity/masculinity is more about a match with expected behavior than about an accurate description of actual behavior by actual people.
As I say, though, your original point was excellent, and one worth remembering; it just got mired up in terminological confusion … which I may or may not have just helped with, who knows. ;c)
December 4, 2007 at 8:56 am
I am:
genderqueer (to the extent that calling me either ‘masculine’ or ‘feminine’ or most any other gendering word puts me on guard until I figure out which sort of othered I’m being)
biologically female
a woman
I have no idea how my primary partners would consider their gender expression; I would describe them as ‘masculine geek’ if I wanted to convey the right idea. Both are biologically male and men.
My other partner is genderfuck-masculine, biologically female (in transition somewhere), and a man. His primary partner is, I believe, genderfuck-feminine, biologically female (not sure where he is in transition), and also a man.
I wrote about sex and gender a couple of days ago at my place.
December 4, 2007 at 11:07 am
I apologize for my last two posts on this thread because a) they distract from the purpose of the original post by Lisa and b) their only purpose was to further my own P.O.V. which at the end of the day is but “sounding brass and tinkling symbols.” Again apologies.
December 5, 2007 at 7:14 am
Elizabeth: The part you quote was a reference to the crap in J. Michael Bailey’s “The man who would be queen”. He insists his research has never found a man with “bisexual patterns of arousal” while the women he tested were found to be mildly bisexual… all of them. I feel that does reflect a certain gender stereotype, of women as erotic creatures and so on. It’s not necessarily a negative stereotype, but it’s still a stereotype. And they’re all used in a negative way eventually. For example, I know many transexuals who are not accepted as women because they don’t “exude femininty”, always taken to mean sensuality. So because the stereotype expects women to be “sexy”, transexual women who don’t embrace it are rejected. And in quite rude terms too.
Oooh, I see the conversation is on sexual dimorphism in human beings, albeit in a social context. Interesting stuff. I always wondered wheteher identified -as- masculine and identified-as-feminine anatomical features can be selected by the evolutionary process. That is, as in the example from Elizabeth above, men will prefer to mate with feminine-typefied rather than masculine-typefied women and so the majority of women will eventually look “feminine”. The reverse would be true for men of course.
That’s a bit of a chicken-and-egg question. As in, did males first select females for their “feminine” features, or did they find the women with feminine features to be predominant first? The truth is that erotic attraction towards certain anatomical characteristics seems to be innate (”hardwired”) as in the case of separated twins sharing sexual orientation. At some point down the line, there *must* have been some sort of differentiation process though, even if we’re talking the age of amoebas here!
SInce I think this way, I also tend to think that gender stereotypes are a result, rather than the root cause of sexual dimorphism. I’m saying that people react to what they see and form views and opinions based on that. Which can simply mean that we develop gender stereotypes because they’re convenient and we can’t be arsed to make exceptions for the few people whose life would be so much easier if we did. I think that’s been said before.
December 5, 2007 at 9:06 am
Stassa - my favorite part about that female bisexuality study was that Bailey found indiscriminate patterns of arousal in women who had probes stuck into their vaginas. Observer’s paradox, much?
December 5, 2007 at 11:12 am
Stassa, there is no chicken/egg. Awareness, behavior and morphology co-evolve.
And there is some evidence for what you describe, in studies of erotic attraction. Certainly, there is a great deal of social construction in what qualifies as “good reproductive material” (consider, for instance, the ideal of the “paleolithic Venus” vs. modern images), but there are fundamental features that seem to persist.
December 5, 2007 at 12:24 pm
“The part you quote was a reference to the crap in J. Michael Bailey’s “The man who would be queen”. ” - Uh, yeah, I knew you were referencing Michael Bailey, I just thought it was his “bixsexual” study where he tried to prove there are no bisexual men but women are “fluid.” The academic horror that is Michael Bailey is that he seems obsessed with trying to everything is “gay male” so that it can be “corrected in the womb” - I really, really don’t know how he continues to get funding since a) most of his studies can’t be replicated and b) he frequently involves in the type of outlawed ethical behavoir in his study from say….70 years ago. That’s why I thought it was such a funny quote. Because for some reason Michael Bailey can say, “women have a fluid sexuality” and the New York Times will print it, when in reality, for example, many straight aren’t just straight but are only attracted to a very specific “type” (so much for fluid).
December 5, 2007 at 3:28 pm
Personally, i think the terms “masculine” and “feminine” ought to be abandoned altogether. Liking contact sports and fast cars is liking contact sports and fast cars, liking baby dolls and pink dresses is liking baby dolls and pink dresses… i don’t see why there should be anything gendered about any of those things, or why someone shouldn’t like all of them (i, personally, don’t like any of them).
Of course, those things do get gender attached to them in this ridiculously sexist and binary-opposition-obsessed society, and so terms to describe how they get gender (falsely) attached to them are necessary and useful, but, y’know, they are also something we should be working towards the obsolescence and eventual abolition of…
I’m genderqueer in about the same way that Dw3t-Hthr is. I’m biologically male, but TBH i’m not sure if i’m “a man”. Man means adult, male and human, and while i technically am all those things, i’m not sure if i feel any of those things… for all practical intents and purposes, however, i am always going to be percieved as a man (i’m 5′11″, with no body fat whatsoever, lots of facial hair and size 10 feet), so i might as well be one…
“Passing” is a big thing in the disability community as well - there are both advantages and disadvantages to those of us whose impairments are “invisible” enough to pass (more or less) as non-disabled. I kind of semi-pass - my facial expressions, mannerisms, ways of moving etc are unusual enough to be percieved as “odd” or “not quite right”, but not stereotypically-autistic enough for me to be instantly or obviously seen as “autistic” (instead, i tend to fit people’s “alcoholic”, “schizophrenic” or “drug addict” stereotypes… until they hear me sounding like a stereotypical middle-class academic, at which point i just confuse people).
A lot of the time i actually wish i didn’t “pass” (either as neurotypical/non-disabled or as normatively-gendered male) - then it would be obvious to people that i’m something different from a “normal” person, and they’d be more likely to show their prejudices openly if they were disablist bigots, or to accept my unusual behaviour if they weren’t (for example, at least one autistic blogger i read has described being much more “accepted” by “normal” people when using a wheelchair, because then her other “oddities” were “clearly” due to a disability, rather than to her possibly disliking them or whatever)…
December 5, 2007 at 8:44 pm
Kiya, can I borrow that one? I’m not so genderfucked as to be a he, but that’s pretty bang on, actually. There’s something I don’t like about “genderqueer” but “genderfuck-masculine” makes sense to me. :)
As far as the others commenting in here: I’m complicated. I don’t actually know how I feel about all this stuff, or what feminism should and shouldn’t lobby for in utopia. I just know that when I try to be proud of the more masculine (I’m trying to use this term as neutrally as I can) features of my body, my presentation, my way of moving, I’m often told that I need to reframe this as “strong and feminine” and that puzzles me greatly. And feels like an attack, because people don’t just *say* this, but *insist* on it, as if their gender or their worth or their something were based on putting their label on me, a label I really don’t have use for.
I know what “strong and feminine” looks like to me, and I’m not it. Not because, say, I have muscles and someone else doesn’t, or something reductive like that, just because strong and feminine, well, makes me think of something like this or this… and those are not me.
How to describe what is me? That’s a bit more complicated. I was going to try, but I’d really have to do a deeply personal post in my own spot to get at it I think, where I could get poetic and interesting.
December 5, 2007 at 11:47 pm
Steal away. Always happy to cause people to find useful words.
December 6, 2007 at 5:34 am
Elizabeth. Sorry for explaining the joke. Didn’t mean to be snotty :o