Female but with 25% male traits

[Shedbuilder]

What does this mean? Someone I know, someone who is intelligent and well-read and has raised daughters and granddaughters, has just blocked me after making the statement that she is a Cis woman but with 25% male traits: none of us, she says, is wholly male or female, we are all on a spectrum.

Is this Mermaids speaking? She works for the NHS and I am totally gutted that she would fall for it. Last person in the world I'd expect to be brainwashed, but she likes to think of herself as far left and progressive.

I don't know what I am. I'm not particularly good at parking and have a terrible sense of direction but not good at clearing either
I am good at relaxing, perhaps I'm 50% cat?

I think this is a good place to post (again!) Sophie Scott's excellent talk on brain sex. Well worth a listen.

vimeo.com/414833798

mobile.twitter.com/WomenReadWomen/status/1402543660554616835?s=20

I thought you said she was intelligent. 🤷🏻‍♀️ You’re well rid of her.

I think I have lots of “male traits” too. Depends which country I am in though because progamming is thought to be a good career for the teen daughters of Bangalore middle class dads, but isn’t in some parts of Hampshire.

What use is knowing this though? Do we need separate sporting categories for people 20-30% male?

I lift weights and am visibly muscular. I prefer men's underwear as I like an in-seam. I wear men's deodorant because the cheaper stuff works better than the cheaper women's one I used to use. I love sci-fi and fantasy. Understand the off-side rule. I participate in a male dominate sport. Do DIY, including basic car and electrical maintenance and repairs. I wear make-up roughly twice every 1000 days or so, and even then usually for fancy dress not to look fancy. I mainly wear trousers. I feel slightly uncomfortable in sleeveless dresses because I think it looks incongruous with my muscular arms and shoulders. I can parallel park, read maps, am good at maths and scored in the top 2 percentile for mechanical reasoning and spatial awareness.

I'm a woman. No part of me is male.

Is it still anthropomorphism if you are attributing human traits, emotions or characteristics to a...human?

I'm intrigued. So if you gather enough 'male' traits, does that make you male?

Or have you just done too many facebook quizzes 🤔

This sounds like a survey result from the various gender identity/gender/masculinity vs femininity tests.

I typically score in the high 90% for "male traits" aka masculinity aka male/masculine gender identity aka male (without anything else added on).

Every single one of these surveys, even the one created by academics measuring something like a 100 traits or so, are not only extremely focused on sex stereotypes and sex role stereotypes, but also left me with the strong impression that the creators of the surveys accept the hierarchy that casts feminine-coded stereotypes as inferior to masculine-coded ones.

I would question the critical thinking skills of anyone who does these surveys and believes they disprove the sex binary or the immutability of sex or the existence of gender identity.

I am sorry though that someone you know so well has fallen for this nonsense and blocked you Shedbuilder.

It's always such a disappointment when intelligent people respond to disagreement with this metaphorical fingers stuffed in ears I can't hear you reaction. Obviously no one has to debate anything with anybody, But when it's people who have previously been happy to discuss and agree to disagree on all sorts of other contentious topics, I always find this the hardest to process.

@Melroses

I'm intrigued. So if you gather enough 'male' traits, does that make you male?

Or have you just done too many facebook quizzes 🤔

If you go too far on the spectrum you get sent to women's training camp where you're issued with a frock and make-up, do remedial ironing and baking and learn to tilt your head attractively and say 'Silly me' while batting your eyelids. It takes around six weeks to make a Stepford wife of you.

I think one of the worst aspects about all this kind of thing is my loss of respect for women I would once never have doubted. She isn't the first woman I've admired and respected and whom I've thought of as a role model who has revealed themselves to be utterly gullible. And not just gullible but then following through with unconsciously sexist and homophobic arguments. It's as if all self-awareness has vanished.

I still don't understand how something be a male trait if there are men who don't have it and women who do

Can’t stand that kind of thinking.
It’s the exact kind of black and white (or rather blue and pink) thinking that caused me so much stress earlier in life because I essentially thought I wasn’t feminine enough. Luckily I realised it was bollocks.

It horrifies me when I read these threads to see how many people genuinely believe all this stuff.

I honestly thought that people who chant 'TWAW' do so as a 'be kind' message without really meaning it, showing that they are inclusive, or are happy to change the definition of the word woman.. but so many people seem to genuinely believe that you can change sex, or sex is on a spectrum. It's so depressing. It's no better than flat earthers.

I know.

It's very worrying.

I will eat my words of course the day a news report comes out that says Brian, 33, father of 6, realised he was a biological woman and transitioned to Barbara last year. Barbara gave birth to a healthy baby girl last week. Mother and daughter are both doing well.

Until that happens, I'm going to go ahead and maintain that the configuration you are born with is the one you'll die with (cosmetic alterations aside) and gender is the part you change, not sex.

Male pattern baldness and significant facial and chest hair, larger bones and joints, small pelvis, large lung capacity, ability to build skeletal muscle mass more easily than typical women/ higher untrained skeletal muscle mass and lower body fat than a woman would typically have with the same routine... Tall, large feet... Paid 25% more than similarly qualified and able female colleagues.

@MedusasBadHairDay

Do you reckon she's taken one of those stupid online quizzes that tell you if you have a "male brain" or a "female brain"? I always get 50/50 on those, because how dare I be a woman who likes computers and isn't a nurturing type. 😒

Was just going to say this must be a result of those daft Facebook quizzes.

Is she getting mixed up with "masculine" and "feminine" traits. I seem to remember some buzzfeed type quiz on that.
In my simple understanding
Masculine means typical of males/traditionally associated with men
Male means biologically male.

She isn’t intelligent. She’s self absorbed to say such a piece of arrant nonsense.

@midgedude

She has 1/2 a ball and a small dick?

🤣

making the statement that she is a Cis woman but with 25% male traits

Before the mens rights movement started, you and your friend could have had a discussion about stereotypes. Now she uses Gender theory 'Cis' and the MRAs are right there in female conversations ruining friendships and families

If you go too far on the spectrum you get sent to women's training camp where you're issued with a frock and make-up, do remedial ironing and baking and learn to tilt your head attractively and say 'Silly me' while batting your eyelids. It takes around six weeks to make a Stepford wife of you.

Hmm - I'm thinking life and banging my head on the wall to get noticed have probably done this work for you.

none of us, she says, is wholly male or female, we are all on a spectrum.

She's an idiot who doesn't know the difference between sex and 'gender'. She means masculine and feminine. And the so-called 'masculine traits' are just culturally variable stereotypes.

I write scientific software, which I guess would be lazily classified by some as a 'masculine' occupation. This afternoon I'll be having a meeting with a couple of French colleagues and a couple in America who hail from India and China to discuss some aspects of this software.

I wonder what mental image the OPs acquaintance might summon up for this group of people?

... 25% male traits ...

Perhaps she means she was a quarter of the way through assembling an Ikea book case when she stabbed her hand with a screwdriver, lost her temper, threw all the bits into the garden, screwed up the instructions and sat down and put the telly on?

Agree with asking her which traits.