Gender Fluidity?

[TwiceRemoved]

Looks like I posted this in the wrong initially (either that or it REALLY is that boring!) but we'll try again here....

Looking at the image for the "Life & Style" section reminded me of a recent conversation over dinner with a group of friends from various backgrounds and with various ideas and conceptions (most of which we all seem to disagree on to some extent) where the subject of gender fluidity was raised.

Being generally biased (all of us) and some of us possibly a tiny bit worse for wear due to the alcohol intake, we seemed unable to find any middle ground - it was either 100% there is room (and possibly a need) for gender fluidity in today's society (the western bit anyway...) or 100% there is absolutely no place for gender fluidity - one is either male with all the 'manly' tracts associated with said gender, or 100% female with similar feminine ways, dress codes, etc.

I am definitely biased towards the "yes, there is a place for it" vote, but then I do paint my nails, wear the odd bit of 'cosmetic refinement' (yeah, OK, call it slap) and am happy to tentatively float between M and F as circumstances dictate or as my fancy takes me when no other overriding circumstances prevail.

One of our female friends is also in the "yes" camp and got quite annoyed with her DP who would only laugh at or derogate comments or arguments rather than come up with anything sensible. I think this made her harden even more towards the "yes" vote rather than settle where she actually meant to be...

Possibly unsurprisingly the split was about 50/50 although with more females in the "yes" camp, and more males in the "no" camp. No-one appeared to be in the nether regions of "don't know, not sure, don't care, etc."

So - gender fluidity - is there a place for it? Is there a time/place when there is absolutely no place for it (perhaps using the public loos in Debenhams?) Can it help or only hinder? Are men frightened of it? Could it close the gender divide or just do even more damage (i.e. to relationships, etc?) Do we all need to be so hung up on gender definitions and stick rigidly to the "real men don't do that" brigade, or can we introduce a 'third' gender. I like the third gender idea, and I'd call it a 'person' (but then like I said, I'm biased).

OxfordBags I totally disagree. My child is autistic, he is 3 and nonverbal and knows nothing of gender identity, however, autism is diagnosed much much earlier in males because they are different and can't hide it with their language and social skills (on average, of course). Girls get diagnoes on average when they are teenagers. Men and women just aren't the same. I just think that we should have equal rights and not be tied to a gender identity.

"Cogito, gender is not fixed"

I see gender and sex as synonymous words and biologically fixed therefore, except in a very few extraordinary cases. What is fluid is not the definition of male and female or even gender or sex. It's a far more all-encompassing, unwritten, time/society-specific and constantly changing code of conduct and it surrounds acceptable standards of behaviour on all kinds of levels and in all kinds of contexts.

Interesting you mention 'masculine uniform' as I just a had a conversation with a male colleague about dress code. We are about the same age (50) and our 'acceptable standard' of dress for a business meeting is rather more formal than the 20 and 30-somethings also at the meeting. We concluded it was a generational thing. What's to say that, in twenty years time, those 20 and 30 something aren't turning up at meetings in their casual clothes and looking slightly old-fashioned next to a future generation who turn up all looking roughly the same, regardless of whether they are male or female.

I think the fact that it's ok for a woman to wear 'masculine' clothing is pretty simple - there is a general feeling that men are 'the norm' and women are 'other'. So for a woman to not label herself particularly as other is seen as a perfectly ordinary thing to do, unless she takes it to a level where it's hard to be sure she actually is female in which case she is seen to be 'pretending' to be a man and frowned on for that.

But for a man to deliberately choose to look 'other' is fundamentally unsettling. Why would he not be happy with being 'normal'? Men dislike it because it questions their own views of normality. Women dislike it because it 'hijacks' the things they have that are 'theirs'. There's a general feeling that it is turning things on their head.

The same goes for personality traits - as BiggerYellowTaxi points out, two men on here are finding it difficult to accept traits that are labelled as 'feminine' because they are 'other' and 'not normal' for a man. So they have to split off those parts of themselves as if they were just not part of being male.

Whereas I can be happy to say "I am a woman who likes trains" without feeling any need to segregate that aspect of myself into a box labelled "Actually this side of me is male", because all I am doing is accepting something that is 'normal' not something deemed 'other'. Women wanting to be more like men is considered far more understandabole than the opposite.

AMumInScotland Yes, I agree with your analysis. Most interesting! Explains why I feel I have to explain myself to people.

Aren't men and women on average different

People are on average different. There are some women I share a lot of traits with. There are some men I share a lot of traits with. I am more like some men than I am like some women. I am more like some women than I am like some men. This is the same as most other people.

Nearly anyone can learn to sew or do DIY or cook or maintain the car or do electrical wiring or fix a leaking pipe or crochet or read a map or whatever else - there may be a few exceptions, if someone is exceptionally dyspraxic, or too sight-impaired to see when sewing, for example, but it's nothing to do with gender. It's social convention which tends to stop men from wearing dresses/skirts other than kilts, not anything inherent to having something dangling between their legs.

We may be socialised to act in particular ways that are more associated with men or with women, and to associate some activities more with men or with women, but pretty much everyone is capable of being kind or being mean, or sociable or solitary, or...

Men dislike it, not because it questions their view of normality, but because of a long patriarchal tradition of 'different' being 'bad'. In a tribal/territorial set-up, uniformity of appearance and ease of identification is security. The exotic is charming in isolation and a threat in large numbers.

Women IME are much less possessive. They're more likely to laugh at someone in a funny outfit than beat them up.

CogitoErgoSometimes This might be an example: Men sometimes seem to be worried with my being a SAHD, maybe it threatens them. maybe they think I am shirking my societal responsibility somehow. Women seem to have no bad reaction. I don't need to explain it.

I'm sure they do think you're shirking but that's not exclusively a male opinion of other men, it's an occupational hazard of the whole 'SAH' option. Opting out of the world of paid employment is something a lot of people would love to try but financial/practical necessity dictates that they keep clocking on every morning. I just bid farewell to a business contact who is taking a year off to do an MBA and combining it with SAHD duties. The most common thing he's heard so far is 'you jammy bastard, sitting on your arse all day....' And that's from women as well as men

CogitoErgoSometimes Full-time parenting, esp. of a SN child, esp without family support, is not an easy gig. he's trying to type for me now. It's easier than my most recent really abusive computer programming job, but not so easy as some others programming jobs I have had. I expect you understand this, but other colleagues might not.

I think a lot of people find it worrying when someone makes a decision that they hadn't considered, or only very briefly to throw it aside as 'silly', because it makes them question themselves.

Not really related, but I decided when DS was very small that he was going to stay an only child. Some people reacted as though they were deeply affronted by that choice, but couldn't explain why. I reached the conclusion after a while that they wished they had seriously considered stopping at one, but had carried on and had a second without it ever being a real 'choice', just because it was what society expected of them. And they were more than a little miffed that I had rebelled against something they had just gone along with without thinking about all that much.

I suspect some men's feelings about others being a SAHD are connected - they maybe wish they'd had the imagination/nerve to do it themselves.

Or, in some cases, they know their female partners wish it had been considered as a possibility and you are 'letting the side down' by not going along with the 'Of course that's a silly idea' line.

AMumInScotland Regarding the brave choice showing people up. You might be right there. Incidentally me and DW have had debates about one vs two children, but it was about the children, not what others might think. People can be very judgemental about children choice. (On another thread I was judgemental about no. of children for green reasons.)

I have always gone my own way in lots of ways. It definitely makes some others uncomfortable. Other men who feel I am letting the side down can go and jolly well fight their own battles.

Cogito, YOU might see sex and gender as synonymous, but you are incorrect, scientifically and theoretically. Sex is biology, gender is behaviour and expression. Although sex can be fluid or incongruent for hermaphrodites, omtersex individuals or transsexuals, it is a physical fact for the rest of us. Gender is a construct.

Dadwood, the example of autism presenting in males and females does not prove my point wrong. The reason why females with ASd are diagnosed later because of better communication is because that as females, they are trained to communicate better, and do so even with ASD. Not because they innately do so as females, but because they are trained to. Females with a higher severity of ASD present as obviously and indentically, and nearly always as early as males with more severe ASD.

Biggeryellowtaxi - YESYESYES! That's cognitive dissonance, that is.

Omtersex? Fucking phone. INTERsex.

"Full-time parenting... is not an easy gig."

Fair enough but, for everyone who subscribes to that view, there are others who see it as 'sitting on your arse'.... whether the arse happens to be male or female. I have a female friend with two DCs plenty old enough to look after themselves and who chooses to be a SAHM because they can afford it. I love her dearly but I find it a constant puzzle how someone with her intelligence and talent (we met when we worked together) can be satisfied spending all day doing.... what exactly?

OxfordBags To use my example again. Do you not think parents of nonverbal young children do not do their utmost to help them to communicate whether they are girls or boys? Of course we do. So do the speech therapists, doctors etc. There is just a cluster of dxs for boys at 2-4 and a cluster for girls at teenage. The girls are only just being picked up at all these days. I really think females and males are on average biologically different on more than just their genitalia. That's how you can tell them apart. You can't say the average height difference or pelvic shape is a social construct. Why would the brain or mind be an exception? Certainly females have better bi-lateral connections in their brains on average. On average, just to belabour my point.

I don't mind your opinion from a societal point of view, I just think you might be wrong from a biological point of view.

CogitoErgoSometimes Yes, Not all parenting gigs are equal.

Oxford bags
I'm really interested in what you say and agree with you. What's your position on gender reassignment surgery. For me it's a very conservative response to gender dysphoria. And in fact would gender dysphoria even exist in a non patriarchal society. It seems to assume a rigid binary idea of gender and I don't understand it.

And I've forgotten how to use question marks

"It seems to assume a rigid binary idea of gender "

IME the 'rigid binary idea' is often in the mind of the sufferer and the final outcome can therefore be an exaggerated and unreal stereotype.

Yes cogito that's exactly what I mean. So male to female seem to go for an almost cartoonish 1950's stereotype of femaleness Betty boop look, and the female to male have quiffs and tattoos and wear muscle shirts, also a clichéd stereotype, of masculinity. I think that the increase in people presenting with gender dysphoria is a result of increasingly narrow gender stereotypes eg I don't like having long hair and wearing makeup so I must be a boy/I do like having long hair and wearing makeup so I must be a girl. In the 70's and 80's there was a lot more playfulness and deliberate gender bending (David Bowie) to fuck with those rigid societal norms but now it's so conformist and conservative and people are having unnecessary and mutilating surgery to fit in. Iran is where they perform highest nos of MtF surgery. Not a country known for its liberalism. Is it because you can't be gay or they'll chop your head off so people choose to represent as female because only females fancy males or something?

I don't know what you are on about OP

First I thought you meant transexuals or transgender- people who had both male and female anatomy.

we are all born with a set of chromosomes which make us male or female. Some of our behaviour may be more one than the other, but biologically we are on one side of the fence or the other, unless we are transgender and then usually people who are choose to live their lives as a man or woman and may have surgery.

Some behaviour may be 'typically' male- or female- but we all have a mixture of traits.

Oxfordbags

would you like to link to some research or a paper etc which proves what you say about sex and gender?

They are usually used as synonyms except when sex is used as a verb, meaning to 'have' sex.

I have never, ever, heard of gender being something one chooses- unless you are a scientist or whatever who knows something the rest of us don't.

On the one hand, a conformist and conservative society might mean someone believes they are forced to pick A or B - the rigid binary you mentioned earlier. On the other hand someone in an ultra liberal society might take advantage of the permission to self-determine, albeit in an extreme way involving surgery.

Yes that's true but it doesn't ring true as self-determining when the choice is so conformist. I'm probably expressing myself badly but I don't believe it is a free choice even in somewhere like the uk to want gender reassignment. I believe it is self loathing struggling individuals who feel massive pressure to conform to the v limited options available. So if you are a teen girl who has no interest or identification with Cheryl Cole or whoever you feel gender dysphoric. When I was growing up in the 80's there were more options eg Annie Lennox or sinead o Connor. In my daughters school the girls are absolutely cookie cutter identical long hair tanned legs etc. where are the misfits and the freaks and weirdos? It's so depressingly conformist for kids now that you can't be a boy in a dress or a girl with a skinhead. That's been medicalised and means you are transgender and can be sorted with hormones and surgery.

oh really, this is lala land.

Some women are girly girls and some men are alpha males. And in between are lots of people -women and men- who aren't so girly or so alpha.

It's nothing about 'gender fluidity'- it's about a range of behaviour and personality.