Moments of Permanence - this one isn't even about occupancy of my lawn, it's about gender saboteurs

From: deird1 Date: May 8th, 2018 09:32 pm (UTC) (Link)

Well said.

(Reply) (Thread)

From: sami Date: May 9th, 2018 12:45 am (UTC) (Link)

Thank you.

As may be obvious, this is a thing I've started to get genuinely angry about. Privileged people do so very much like to align themselves with victimhood, but this is such a platonic example of making the problem worse by doing so.

(Reply) (Parent)

From: sqbr Date: May 11th, 2018 10:15 am (UTC) (Link)

Hmm. I have seen people use these terms in crappy ways, especially about fictional characters they are trying to pretend are progressive ("this straight male character cries when his wife dies, men crying is gender non conforming, thus this show is super queer" etc)

But I have also seen them used in perfectly valid ways and think they have value. People who are visibly gender non-conforming (like men who wear dresses) have related experiences that it's useful to have a name for. And there is no clear line between gender non-conformity and being trans or non binary, especially when talking about people who lived before those concepts really existed. We generally don't know if any given afab person who lived as a man 100+ years ago saw themselves as a man, so we can't say if they were trans, but they were definitely gender non-conforming.

(I'm going to talk about "gnc"/"gender non conforming" because I don't encounter "gender variant" very often)

I have talked to a lot of cis women who experience something that sounds very like dysphoria when forced to wear dresses or makeup etc. I understand them wanting a word for it.

A violent transphobe can't tell the difference between a trans woman and a cis man in a dress and makeup, and those men need a word for the danger they're in.

And then there's gnc binary trans people, who constantly have their gender invalidated, and may even be refused the right to legally or medically transition. I mean the rules for that are sometimes so rigid that even your average cis person would fail to conform enough. But, for example, I know that trans men who present "too feminine" have an especially difficult time being recognised as men socially.

So, yeah, I think it's a useful thing to have terms for, even though the definitions are very fuzzy. I don't think being gnc is the same as being trans or even inherently queer (though all the gnc people I know are queer anyway), but not everyone who uses the term is claiming it is.

(Reply) (Thread)

From: sami Date: May 11th, 2018 11:41 am (UTC) (Link)

Regarding historical individuals: That actually tends to piss me off more than most things. Because we can't know much about their inner lives, there are a lot of social, cultural, political, historical situational factors we can't know.

We don't know that they were "gender non-conforming" in any internal sense or if it was just that this was the thing they wanted to do, and they could only do it if they did it like this, and it's entirely possible they would have been happier still doing it without assuming an identity.

I feel weird and not-me wearing makeup. I feel like I'm in a costume, at the least, wearing a dress.

I am fucking offended that people suggest that this, somehow, means I don't "conform" to womanhood. I am comfortable in my womanhood and I don't fucking need makeup to be a woman. I conform completely to my gender, because I am a woman.

Meanwhile, every man in TV and film wears makeup, and I think a lot of them would be offended at the suggestion that that means they're not proper men.

Yeah, there's a hazard for men who wear dresses and makeup, and the word that signifies this and thereby can note the danger they're in is "transvestite", and it already exists. There are problems sometimes for the people who don't fit in narrow little boxes, but maybe if we want terminology to address that we really shouldn't be building a linguistic structure that perpetuates it.

The problem isn't that the definitions are fuzzy, the problem is that the terminology is reinforcing the idea that there is a specific set of behaviours that equals Real Man and Real Woman and that there's something different and weird about people who don't fit.

The problem is that instead of recognising that narrowly-defined gender roles are bullshit, this framework assumes that narrowly-defined gender roles are normal and correct, but some people just can't take it so they need a special label.

It's worse than wrong; it's counter-productive. Especially because it's essentially defined by this means you're lesser. No-one's hailing Michael McIntyre as a gender-non-conforming hero because he's successful and also camp as hell. No-one declared that The Rock is gender-non-conforming because he can lipsynch flawlessly to Taylor Swift, even though he is, in fact, not like other men, and even though he does genuinely brave things that manly men don't do like talk openly about struggling with emotional problems.

DeMar DeRozan talked about his struggle with depression, too. Is that gender non-conforming? Because you know, traditionally, men don't talk about their problems. They just repress them until they kill themselves. Is it unmanly of him to talk about his mental health problems?

How about Kevin Love? He has panic attacks. That's not traditionally very manly. Is he gender non-conforming?

Or do those two get passes because they're All-Stars?

I am not comfortable in skirts. I am not comfortable in makeup. This makes me a woman who prefers trousers and not wearing makeup, which is still completely conforming to my gender identity, which is "woman".

This would probably annoy me if it didn't apply to me, because of how it's stupid and counter-productive and all. But as it does apply to me, as this is a thing that is out to contribute to making my life more difficult, it genuinely, actively offends me.

These people are building their whole system on the declaration that being who I am makes me something other than "a woman". These people are working hard to earn my scorn, contempt, and borderline hate.

(Reply) (Parent) (Thread)

From: sqbr Date: May 11th, 2018 12:09 pm (UTC) (Link)

Ohhhhh I see where you're coming from now!

I always read it as "gender expectation non-conforming". Not that someone is literally "not conforming to gender", because you're absolutely right, a man/woman in no way stops being a man/woman based on how they present or behave. But they are not conforming to gender as mainstream society defines it. I've seen it used to mean that for so long I stopped paying attention to the actual words, but you're right, it's a flawed term to describe that, because of the implication that these people are somehow failing at being their own gender.

Googling "gender non conforming" (for example the Wikipedia page for "gender variant" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_variance) it is used to describe anyone who doesn't fit gender norms for their assigned gender, including binary trans people.

Muddling the issue is people who use the term incorrectly, as well as the inherent problems around lumping together cis people who don't fit traditional gender norms but are still definitely cis, and trans people. But it's not saying what it looks like it's saying, at least not always.

(Reply) (Parent) (Thread)

From: sami Date: May 11th, 2018 12:22 pm (UTC) (Link)

I still have a problem with it as "not conforming to gender expectations", because that's still just reinforcing the expectations.

The expectations can bite me. People need to stop acting like having a problem with people not meeting their expectations is somehow a valid thing.

My gender presentation isn't wrong. Their expectations are wrong. I refuse to validate their expectations by saying I'm "gender non-conforming". Gender is not something to conform to. Gender just is. Or is not. There is no conform.

(Reply) (Parent)