AIBU to wonder how close Mums Netters are to the 'gender norm' ?

[Mellowautumn]

Do you conform to the western 'gender norm' for women? I can do maths, have short hair, never wear a dress and like cars. I am however a Mother and love make up and shopping. I am pretty average among my friends and just cannot connect with the idea that anything apart from my biological woman bits makes me a woman. How do you measure up and is their anything that makes you a woman apart from your biology ?

I remember short hair being normal for girls because "it was easier", both sexes were chucked out to play in the fields, so all wore trousers so as not to ruin their "best" clothes.

I was born in 1959 and I don't remember it like this. I don't mean the not playing outdoors bit , I did, but I had long hair and so did most of my friends. I wore cotton dreses and skirts in summer and thicker dresses and skirts, boots and thick tights in winter. I cycled etc etc but I didn't own trousers until I was 16 when I went through a brief phrase of wearing jeans. A lot of the time in my teens I was in Laura Ashey and floor length hippy skirts.

I'm not sure what the gender norm is. I see women of all types and ways of dressing so would be confused as to what would be seen as norm. I'm probably not it as alternative, so tats, dyed hair and piercings etc, so I'm not the norm. I'm happy not to be the norm however.

I mentioned politics as being neutral because I was answering having giving thought to the things I do which fall in to stereotypical female/male norms. I don't subscribe to gender being anything more than a social construct, personally.

If the magazine sections in supermarkets are anything to go by, politics (and history, travel and music) are all "male" interests