Is it possible to be feminine and gender critical at the same time?

There are clearly some sex differences between men and women. The exact extent is still not really well understood since we insist of bringing gender inappropriately into children’s experiences at such a young age.

I am ‘feminine’. So was my brother as a child. He is an artsy heterosexual male married for 15years to a woman.
I think it’s a mistake to attach feminine or masculine stereotypes to the male and female sex. It doesn’t really have much to do with it. I’m happily feminine but I have no problem with my son being so as well. He is and will always be male regardless. Femininity and masculinity are so so so societally made up as to be almost irrelevant.

www.nytimes.com/2017/06/15/well/family/talking-to-boys-the-way-we-talk-to-girls.html

Good article on men being more laconic.

"Some researchers believe the difference in language development is innate, but this study suggests that adults may treat infant girls differently than infant boys at a very young age, which may help explain the difference, she said."

www.reuters.com/article/us-parent-baby-communication/parent-infant-communication-differs-by-gender-shortly-after-birth-idUSKBN0IO1KU20141104

I'm sure I've seen more studies on this too but can't find them right now.

If you want to look at biologically based stereotypes about men and women, men as being more aggressive is probably a good one. It's quite common across cultures, and also quite common across mammal species.

How much of this is social conditioning though? When young boys play fight they are encouraged when girls do the same they are stopped. Same with nurturing, how many boys are given baby dolls? Or mini cleaning sets?

There are mammals species in which the females are definitely in charge and use aggression so it's not inevitable; spotted hyenas, African elephants, orcas, limas, bonobos.....

Lass you still haven't said what you find contradictory. I suspect there's no actual substance to your hectoring, it's just your 'way'. Your replies are needlessly confrontational and don't engage with the issues at stake.

In terms of talking about feminine or masculine social conventions that might be rooted in biology, I think clothing is about the least likely of things to be a candidate for that. So much about clothing is arbitrary or a social accident, totally apart from male and female conventions. Why are stonewashed jeans popular again? Not really for any good, logical reason.

Social conventions attaching sex to clothing styles is mainly about a way for men and women to communicate or highlight sex differences. In some cases of course there are no differences in the clothing, men and women signal their differences in other ways. What you won't find, though, is a society where men and women are uninterested in those differences.
If you want to look at biologically based stereotypes about men and women, men as being more aggressive is probably a good one. It's quite common across cultures, and also quite common across mammal species. Or the sterotype that women are more nurturing. Of course this varies a lot, but it probably comes out of the mothering instinct, which includes nursing the infant. In all mammals, if the mother doesn't do this, there is a really high chance of the infant not surviving, so you would expect that human mothers would also have instincts to that end, and they might well effect behaviour in other social contexts as well.
Something else that might be considered is the different developmental arc of boys and girls with language. This seems to be biologically based, and could relate to associations of femininity with language and talking, as opposed to men being more laconic.

No,Floisme. You don't know the first thing about me or my grandmother

It was quite obvious Flo was using "your gran" in the same generic way you did. Your reply to Flo was rude and a bit dim.

There was absolutely nothing 'sneering' or 'condescending' in anything I've written

I'm not the only person who thought your post was condescending.

RuffleCrow

Er, no, it isn't,lass. You seem muddled

Er no, the person who is muddled is you. You were called out on your post and are now backtracking. Your reply to Floisme was a complete rewrite of what you said in your first post.

Many of our ideas about masculinity and femininity only date back to the Victorian period, most notably:

• The idea that women are chaste and men are promiscuous. In the 18th century, women were considered the more lustful and promiscuous sex. The 19th century reinvented us as either the sexless angel in the house, or a fallen woman.

• Men wearing plainer clothes. The Victorian period saw the invention of a variety of uniforms for men, mostly in dark colours, while women were resplendent in enormous crinolines and bright newly invented dyes. As PP have said, other periods in history looked quite different. At the court of Louis XIV, men wore high heels, big curly hair/wigs, richly embroidered clothes, and Louis himself favoured "petticoat breeches" which were like voluminous frilly culottes.

• The idea that it is mainly women and gay men who are interested in interior design. This notion emerged in the 1890s around the time of Oscar Wilde and the Aesthetic Movement. Later the suffragettes would claim interior decoration as a woman's domain. Prior to all of this, men expected to take responsibility for decorating their houses as they were usually paying for it.

Other ideas are even newer and only emerged in the 20th century:

• Blue being for boys and pink for girls. Originally pink was considered a masculine colour because it was a lighter version of red, while blue had feminine associations because it was the colour of the Virgin Mary. There was a switch in the early 20th century.

• Crazy cat ladies. The Victorians criticised women for being obsessed with their pets, but associated them with dogs, not cats.

It's fine. I absolutely bloody love clothes (although not necessarily feminine ones) but that's not the reason I'm a woman.

I think that clothes( and home making and furnishing )are the main avenues of creative expression for many women - still. Interestingly many gay men are also really into clothes and interior design - and can be very stylish.

I do wonder if some deep embedded gendered behaviours are almost more evolutionary psychology than cultural. E.g. makeup , maybe women in prehistoric times who accentuated their features using whatever materials they could find attracted a mate more easily etc. Humans have been going for millennia so plenty of time for these things to become ingrained

Generally it is the males who are more colourful and showy, and who have to work hard to attract a mate. However, in human society female subordination and lack of economic and cultural power has meant that it is women who have had to preen and display in order to attract male attention and protection, or to 'keep a man'.

I'm not sure that wearing make up and high heels is 'feminine', anyway. I'd say that masculine & feminine relates more to certain kinds of personality traits and learned behaviours than to clothing. We are all our own unique combination of traits.

Some behaviours or ways of expressing certain personality traits do have a socially conditioned or sanctioned aspect, though. So when we saw the video of the trans-woman smashing up a shop in the U.S when the assistant ( politely) mis-gendered them - we saw socially sanctioned male aggression on display - even as they were wearing pink and carrying a handbag.

And we also see some women being overly solicitous in certain situations - as they have learned not to be too 'pushy' or 'selfish', and to be kind etc.

The expression of similar personality traits can often be received and judged very differently, depending on whether they are expressed by a man or a woman.

There was absolutely nothing 'sneering' or 'condescending' in anything I've written. You seem to be taking the idea of femininity being outmoded extremely personally. Why do you think that is?

Er, no, it isn't, lass. You seem muddled.

Certain things are coded feminine or masculine in a culture. This is only a problem when a) one is seen as better than the other, b) it is assumed that all men will have all of the masculine traits and interests and all women will have all the feminine ones as innate properties, c) people are shamed and shunned for how they conform or do not conform to these coded things and no variations are permitted.

There are people on this thread who are very into coded feminine things, and people who are into masculine coded things. Pretty much everyone will embrace a mixture of traits and likes because that is how individuals have personalities.

I don't care about masculine or feminine in the context of women's rights because they aren't relevant. Our sex is the immutable fundamental. Victory rolls or dirt under the fingernails from engine grease are neutral when it comes to our sex. Either is fine.

Regarding women as inherently feminine is regressive, outmoded repressive and unneccesary. All character traits and modes of dress are open to both sexes. There's really nothing more to it

That is a complete re-write of your original, sneering, condescending post.

I don't think anyone on the GC side will be telling you what you can and can't wear or how to present. You are Female or Male regardless. John Inman was every bit as male as Clint Eastwood and Marilyn Monroe every bit as female as Lea DeLaria.

YANBU. The question is do you think you like make up because you're a woman, or do you think you like make up because the patriarchy has conditioned girls and women to have low self esteem which can then be raised again by buying products to make us look 'better.'

Sometimes it's just easy to go along with social norms. And you can't spend every second of the day fighting the patriarchy. Gender expectations are ingrained in us all, at a level that it's not really possible to reach and undo.

Isn't the issue with the question that if you are gender-critical then you wouldn't believe that certain things are feminine or masculine in the first place?

'The sissy effect'' is when boys are shamed for taking part in an activity usually dominated by girls, such as ballet.
Then more men or boys should learn not to give a s*. I never did, being quite keen on needle and thread and it made me good pocket money at the time, they all came to me to take their jeans in.

As far as the original question surely we are beyond what someone wears or how they dress matters. It should not matter if its some long floral dress or 20 hole DM's and a Motorhead shirt. It is what they say that matters and how they act.

''The sissy effect'' is when boys are shamed for taking part in an activity usually dominated by girls, such as ballet.

I have to disagree on the sissy effect though. Gender stereotypes mean that girls are raised to form personalities that are eager to please and fragile self esteem in need of regular reinforcement. It’s true that there is less of a taboo on women doing masculine things but the effects that gender stereotyping has on early childhood development is that it permenantly disabled women by teaching them personality traits that make it easy to tell them what to do and to manipulate them. Boys are encourage to be strong and brave and other overcome. Girls are encouraged to be pleasant, compromising and, submissive.

There is a difference between being feminine and conforming to stereotypes. I do things that are both masculine and feminine (more feminine though to be honest) because that’s just who I am. I can’t deny that part of that is down to feeling a greater affinity with my sex and seeing them do more feminine things than masculine and adopting the same. But it’s not born out of a desire o please or conform.