Am I gender non-conforming?

[literalviolence]

Gender non-conforming is bandied around as if it's a meaningful statement. But what does it actually mean? I am not trans. I believe in biology. I don't think there is any value in trying to divide society according to an increasing number of gender identities. I don't believe that many people actually have a gender identity. I do get very angry when people term themselves gender non-conforming as if everyone else is gender conforming. But I thought it might help to ask people who say such things to explain what gender conforming actually means and to tell me how many non-conforming characteristics someone needs before they are non-conforming.

Oops! Sounds like other people also think 'well yes, so what and please don't suggest anyone here is gender conforming' when people feel the need to pronounce that they're gender non conforming. Another poorly defined and useless statement, the use of which just suggests an inability to look up from one's own navel. Next time someone announces it I'm going to say 'me too. Aren't most people?'.

@literalviolence " 'me too. Aren't most people?'."

yes that's pretty much perfect

I’ve been wondering for a while why Stonewall’s glossary doesn’t include the term “gender non-conforming”. I assumed it was because to do so would expose most of their other definitions as built on sand.

@WaterThyme is it because under Stone wall if you are gender non-conforming then you don't have a gender and are therefore non-binary? I don't want to click on the Stonewall website to check as I've only just stopped getting Facebook adverts for binders etc - and I'm fairly sure that's because I've been researching autism for my recently diagnosed DD.

My DD didn't like it when I pointed out only young, very slender people could pass as non-binary because as soon as there is some meat on your bones it is very easy to see which sex you fit into from your curves both as slim people and then overweight, the two sexes carry extra weight very differently.

Gender stereotypes in this context are steeped in consumerism.

We really need to talk more about the impact of consumerism and stereotypes as it's not only an issue for children navigating ideas around sex and gender, consumerism generally is ecologically damaging. Consumerism also impacts mental health in some - keeping up with the Joneses.

Gender non conformity basically means you resist the narratives linked to sex/ gender fed to you via consumerist messages in the media and any form of consumer environment. It can also then translate to careers, hobbies and relationships etc

Highly Gender stereotyped toys have been demonstrated to limit access to boys and girls' development and learning in some areas which impacts for life.

Re impacting mental health - of course this is where children who are told off for wanting to play with toys/ wear clothes deemed for the opposite sex are impacted and may believe theyre trans.

Messages on clothing - boys are fierce, girls must be kind also feeds into relationships and mental health.

The gender ideology movement is very much about encouraging consumerism to perpetuate stereotypes, including non binary, as this still requires a certain look, flags, pronoun badges etc.

It's also obviously linked to the plastic surgery industry which includes taking hormones for aesthetic reasons.

To me, it's not an identity, just a useful way of saying that someone can present themselves however they like, and be interested in whatever they like, even if those things are culturally regarded as "boy" things or "girl" things, but doesn't mean they are trans.

Gender nonconforming isn’t poorly defined at all. Yes what is gender nonconforming depends on culture, age and time period but so does every other social construct built on sex differences.

That just means it’s got a bit of complexity and depth to it. And no, most people are not gender nonconforming. Go ahead and say it, it just shows you don’t understand it.

btw, it has nothing to do with gender ideology or transgender.

I’m well over 24 and that sounds very similar to the way we used to dress back in the 80s - and no-one batted an eyelid.

Is that what gender non-conforming is - short hair and comfy, baggy clothes?

Should also add, without getting hung up about the "gender binary", your pronouns or how you "identify"! And realising your outward presentation doesn't change your sex.

I'd say almost all
Women are gender non conforming.

Barely any men are.

True, but here's a good example in a male:

https://mobile.twitter.com/MrMennoTweets/status/1647215925354020865

So bored with this bullshit. It seems that if I like blue, have short hair and am a CEO I must be a transman. Clearly no mere biological woman would be straying from the long hair, pink sparkles and my little pony playbook.

As Ricky Gervais pointed out its all about the 'proper women' these days, the ones with false breasts, male DNA and penises.

No such thing as gender non conforming. It's just a phrase used about young children who don't meet sex class stereotypes and used to mask homophobia.

I find this absurd. Why is there a need to label that?

I was at the toddlers park this morning and saw two separate sets of parents who each had a toddler boy and a toddler girl with them. In each case, the boy was in jogging bottoms and a t-shirt and the girl was in a (restrictive) dress. The girls, predictably, were finding it much harder to climb on things etc. as well as the boys. That’s parents gender conforming their children to the detriment of their daughters. Although both mums were wearing jeans themselves.

I have seen it in soft play as well. A little girl in a tight denim dress who couldn’t go on half of the apparatus because her clothing was too restricted. Not sure why they bothered to take her!

Gender non conforming based on whose expectations of what gender conforming actually is? What traits would be associated with either male or female “conforming”, is it clothes, job roles, interests and hobbies? I just don’t get it all. I suspect what people actually mean is “I’m not outdated stereotype conforming”.

@L3ThirtySeven you really need to look up the difference between “prescribed” and “proscribed”.

So most people are gender non conforming?

So why not tell me what it actually is? From what I'm reading here, I still can't think of anyone, bar one person, who is gender conforming. Most of my friends don't wear make up, shared childcare with OH, have a job, wear jeans. All gender non conforming attributes. So who isn't GNC? I'm guessing women who only wear dresses, defer to their OH, won't have sex before marriage, don't work once married, want kids. That kind of stuff.

And the whole idea of being “gender non-conforming” is something of an anachronism. I was a teenager in the 90s, and the idea of things that “align with your sex” would have been laughable. The vast majority of the women and girls I knew thought of things like dresses and makeup as occasional things for going out or special occasions. But not shaving, having a short haircut, wearing jeans and a hoodie (like a pp’s DD upthread) most of the time, then putting on a dress and makeup to go out and shaving for a special occasion, was totally normal. The vast majority of adult women I knew had short hair and wore trousers and didn’t shave, even if they had always been housewives. No-one was dressed up “in alignment with their gender” for most of the time!

How quickly we forget even recent history! When I grew up (80s/90s) I knew hardly any adult women who had long hair. Nearly all women over the age of about 20-25 had short haircuts. Women wore trousers, jumpers and unisex-looking jackets a great deal of the time. Experimenting with overly “feminine” hair and makeup was an occasional thing for teenagers and young people, not something you did every day. From listening to gender ideologists, you’d think every woman pre-2000 looked like Barbara Cartland or Jackie Collins!

And dresses, aside from formal dresses, were out of fashion as daywear for a LONG time until the 2000s (they came back in mid-2000s with a vengeance, but that’s still very recent!) In the 90s I owned one dress. We did wear skirts of course, but then the skirt-or-dress-over-jeans era came along… but I had far more combat trousers and DMs than any “girly” items. Lots of girls had short hair, including pixie crops. There was a whole range of different hairstyles that aren’t in fashion now, but that doesn’t mean they haven’t ever been in fashion. It hasn’t always been just “long hair, contouring and false eyelashes” vs “androgyny” by any means. This current obsession with “gender non-conforming” clothes is incredibly short-sighted and very oblivious to even very recent history.

Gender non conforming for a woman seems to mean having a personality, opinions and doing things as opposed to being a thing.

Isn’t that what the majority of us are like anyway? Is it a case of this needing to have a specific name now, in the same way so many other things seem to?

It’s a meaningless bullshit phrase because it applies to all of us to a greater or lesser extent. I’m straight, wear pretty standard feminine clothes including pink dresses, wear makeup, remove body hair- totally “gender conforming” on those levels. But I had no interest in motherhood, I insist on financial and practical autonomy, speak my mind, am not particularly a people pleaser… all of us these days are a mix of the old stereotypes and a rejection of them. To the point where when you do come across those properly stereotypical “men’s men”, I suspect most of us start wondering whether they’re hiding something!

It’s total bullshit and we need to keep saying that, loudly, every time it comes up.

The people pleaser point makes me think that every person who says TWANW and therefore refuses the 'be kind regardless of personal expense' demand is GNC.

I know women in their eighties who have always been housewives, don’t drive, cook, attend church, etc., but don’t have particularly “feminine” personalities…they’re blunt, they take no shit, they are far more commanding than most men are. That’s always been true! Why genderists think otherwise is beyond me.

Conversely I know trans teenagers who might dress in what are perceived as boys’ clothes, but who otherwise behave in ways indistinguishable from other female teenagers - interests, social personalities, etc. (Seriously, on an all-female Discord I’m on you can’t tell the TM/NB teenagers from the other girls in terms of anything they say or their personalities - you only know when they start talking about “trans” - they often claim to be gay trans men, but it’s clear that they don’t really have much of a sense of what men, gay men, or social masculinity really are: it’s all from fanfiction, social media and anime. Knowing many gay men, they aren’t anything like most gay men or straight men or men at all! They have indistinguishable interests, personalities and writing styles with the girls.)

I recently attended a community choir performance where the performers, all women in their 60s, 70s and 80s, to a women wore trousers and tops and had short hair. The conductor was a lesbian in her 60s who most genderists would call “gnc”. But her short hair, trousers and top were only marginally, infinitestinally different to the other women’s — coded that fraction more “masculine” in style. We clearly recognise when the short hair cut and the shirt is intended to be “masculine” rather than “feminine”. But these were TINY, near imperceptible, differences in style. So is “gnc” just a matter of teeny stylistic differences in the cut of a shirt or the exact line of a near-identical haircut? That differ from each other far less than lots of other stylistic choices? And if so, then what on Earth is it so important for? It’s just stylistic flourish in that case, isn’t it?

So what is “gnc”? Is it all just dress and style when it comes down to it? Is it not really connected to any of the deeper social stereotypes about women and what women are meant to be like that have been circulating for aeons?