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.

Yes, parents dressing their girls like this gives me the rage. (The inward seething kind, I wouldn’t know how to approach it).

My DD has comfy clothes that are easy to move in, always has (so she often was called a boys name that was similar to her very girly name by people who just could not fathom she was a girl wearing blue).

The motorskills of girl trussed up like that are often lacking, and they don’t Get to enjoy just moving freely!

Also, my DH, when we first met, insisted his young son was squeeling like a girl. I pointed out that he was a boy, squeeling as himself, thus it was impossible that he squeeled like a girl.
My DH had to think a bit there, but got the point after a while!

I am, apparently, gnc. But it is one of those phrases that means nothing, and implies all sorts of stereotypes which I don’t agree with, so I can’t be arsed with it.

@Singleandproud according to Stonewall, non-binary is “An umbrella term for people whose gender identity doesn’t sit comfortably with ‘man’ or ‘woman’. Non-binary identities are varied and can include people who identify with some aspects of binary identities, while others reject them entirely.”

It presumes people have gender identities.

As to what ‘man’ and ‘woman’ mean in Stonewall’s world, I see two possibilities. They could mean societal stereotypes. Or they could be circular so that ‘wo/man’ means people who identify as the same things as other people who identify as the same gender.

All that seems to be different for non-binary people according to the definition is that they don’t fit in either with enough of the stereotypes of one gender or they have too many conflicts of gender identity or (mysteriously) they reject [binary identities] entirely.

That third option is intriguing. If someone who rejects binary identity counts as non-binary, does that mean all us GC types are actually non-binary?

Or are Stonewall non-binary people privileged to be able to reject the binary for themselves while everyone else keeps it going so that trans people have something to identify with?

@myveryownelectrickitten
First of all, gender in the sociological context means the social performance of sex roles Gender in the sociological context includes gender/sex roles based on your sex, but that’s not all of social construct that is gender. There are also gender stereotypes and associations.

no sociologist would suggest that the majority of people “are conforming”, because gender is something that is socially produced and not something that you “are”. You have fundamentally misunderstood the concept of gender conformance/nonconformance. Gender nonconforming isn’t an identity. By definition, most people are gender conforming, as in most people exhibit behavioural, cultural, or psychological traits typically associated with their sex.

The idea that “gender nonconforming people were historically persecuted and even today can be socially excluded and shamed” is extremely reductive and, largely, just not true. What’s your historical evidence for this? It is true and history is full of examples. As recently as two hundred years ago women were committed to insane asylums for merely wishing to be professional scholars instead of wife and mother- they were deemed to have driven themselves insane by overworking their fragile female brains. There was even a “green sickness” invented regarding rebellious teen girls behaviours for which the cure was marriage and motherhood. I don’t have the energy to go on and on and on, but it’s rather shocking that you don’t understand that gender nonconformance leads to social pressure, exclusion and in extreme cases certain aspects can be outlawed and punished.

Because it’s socially produced, “gender roles” varied constantly, across even contiguous eras, and is always highly inflected by class, race, locality, and even within the same person, may be performed in different ways from day to day.. The first part is true the second is not. And the fact that gender being a social construct is different in different social, cultural or historic contexts in no way diminishes its existence. Your argument is rather like arguing there is no such thing as ethical or moral behaviour, and that we cannot study how ethical/moral people are in certain social, cultural or historic settings bevayse ethics/morals are fluid. You can. You can study gender or ethics/morals in infinite contexts.

Imagine saying that “the vast majority of people throughout history conformed to their national identity” This is a bad analogy because gender conforming/nonconforming has nothing to do with gender identity at all. They are entirely different concepts. There is no overlap whatsoever.

Happily I can wear purple, white and green all at the same time.

😍

Are you an undergraduate student? This is all really reductive simplistic stuff, I’m afraid - and some of it is just plain wrong. You really need to familiarise yourself with much more of the history of sociology and gender studies — I’m a historian in this field and women really were not committed to insane asylums merely for wanting to be scholars. That’s some Tiktok/Wikipedia level of historical knowledge right there, and it’s just plain wrong if you know anything about the history of psychiatry and medicine. There are women scholars who made serious contributions across all major fields from the medieval period onwards — much fewer than men, it’s true, but wanting to be a scholar was not going to land you in Bedlam! Many women and families - in the middle classes in particular, but across the social spectrum - prized literacy because of its potential for moral education, particularly the education of children.

The first part is true the second is not.
Your argument about this point and about ethics is very confused. You don’t think that if gender is a social construct, that individuals’ performance of it varies, even for the same individual? What on Earth am I doing, then, if one week I drink pints and go to a football match, and the next put on a dress, simper at kittens and go to the ballet? Or when at work I complain I don’t want to be asked to make the tea, but at home I ask my husband to put the bins out because they’re too heavy for me? If I’m my twenties I have a short haircut and a girlfriend and go motor biking at the weekends, and in my thirties have a baby with a man and drink prosecco in bars wearing high heels? You don’t think individual people have a degree of agency over how they perform their gender? This has been the case throughout history. People have always experienced and performed gender roles as both naturalised and within their conscious control — in a variety of different ways over time, and women of course have had greater or lesser degrees of freedom to do so for all sorts of reasons — but people have always been to a degree conscious of them as roles. There are texts from the thirteenth or fourteenth century discussing gender roles — especially, how women are supposed to behave, and how they don’t do what they are supposed to.

All of these different ideas about gender are both more flexible and also more historically contingent than you are claiming. They are also not as nearly separable into definitions as you seem to think. For example “gender” (and, in fact, “identity”) only take on their current meanings in the early-mid (and even the late) twentieth century. Previous eras did not conceptualise anything like the idea of “gender” (or “identity”) that we have right now. But they certainly were able to understand — and write about — what it meant to act the role of, or perform, or be, or live up to, idealised social versions of what a woman or man is or does.

@myveryownelectrickitten
If you are a historian in the field, then you would not be saying what you are saying: You really need to familiarise yourself with much more of the history of sociology and gender studies — I’m a historian in this field and women really were not committed to insane asylums merely for wanting to be scholars.

I would kindly suggest that you read the autobiographical books by Elizabeth Packard, The Female Malady by Elaine Showalter, and Mad, Bad and Sad by Lisa Apignanesi as it was indeed the case that thousands of women were diagnosed as insane and committed to asylums for wanting to be scholars in any subject. Im also surprised as a working historian in this field you have never heard of doctors like James Cowles Prichard who invented the mental illness of “moral insanity” which was then applied to thousands of women who preferred to study or read over marriage/motherhood.

There are women scholars who made serious contributions across all major fields from the medieval period onwards — much fewer than men, it’s true, but wanting to be a scholar was not going to land you in Bedlam! I don’t know why you are even posing this as proof of anything when we have already discussed the fact that gender conforming is fluid over time and culture. The fact that in some periods women could do x and it not be seen as gender nonconforming doesn’t mean x was never gender nonconforming in all periods of history for all women. You forget too how ones class affects how much woman could get away with being gender nonconforming in certain times and places.

You don’t think that if gender is a social construct, that individuals’ performance of it varies, even for the same individual? What on Earth am I doing, then, if one week I drink pints and go to a football match, and the next put on a dress, simper at kittens and go to the ballet? No, I’m saying that as a concept applied to a person gender conforming/nonconforming is the sum of all their behavioural, cultural and psychological traits measured over long term. It isn’t something that is a daily performance or assessment done on the basis of a single action.

You don’t think individual people have a degree of agency over how they perform their gender? Not at all, but then gender conforming/nonconforming is an entirely separate concept from “performing gender.” As before, you are confusing the concept of gender conforming/nonconforming with the concepts of gender identity and performing gender.

There are texts from the thirteenth or fourteenth century discussing gender roles — especially, how women are supposed to behave, and how they don’t do what they are supposed to. Yes history is littered with evidence regarding some women not being gender conforming to their expected gender roles. You can’t seriously be saying these texts are referring to all women? Because I assure you they are not. They are referring to a minority of women.

All of these different ideas about gender are both more flexible and also more historically contingent than you are claiming. I have claimed nothing of the sort. You are the one who just attempted to disprove real historic Victorian incidents of women being punished for being gender nonconforming with examples of medieval women- that was you in correcting asserting that gender conformance is measured against some timeless absolute standard when it is not at all.

For example “gender” (and, in fact, “identity”) only take on their current meanings in the early-mid (and even the late) twentieth century. Previous eras did not conceptualise anything like the idea of “gender” (or “identity”) that we have right now. Ah, I see despite being a historian you’ve not read very far back then. I know for a fact that the Ancient Greeks, Persians and Romans did in fact have gender and identity as concepts. For example, the play by Aristophanes, Woman at the Thesmophoria is a comedy based entirely on playing with gender and not only what behaviour is gender nonconforming, but even what psychological thought/reactions are gender nonconforming. In addition, there are numerous texts written by the ancients discussing conflicting dual identities in terms of identity of the people of the culture that was colonised conflicting with their identity as citizens of a larger empire within the Roman and Persian empires. We see this repeating down through history in every empire- Kievan Rus under the Mongols, Iberians under the Islamic empire, Native Americans under the Spanish empire, and of course everyone who was under the British empire. Gender comes into play as a concept too because often what was gender conforming was imposed on colonised by coloniser causing cultural rifts and trauma. And yes, contemporaries in these historical periods wrote about it. The ideas and concepts absolutely were there.

What they did not have was the concept of “gender identity”- the two together but this is again you thinking gender conforming/nonconforming is about how much a person confirms to their gender identity. You have the concept all wrong. You are portraying it in the gender woo misappropriation of gender nonconforming, not its actual sociological/anthropological context and definition.

*sorry for spelling errors, I have severe dyslexia.

You’re really misreading those texts if you think that women got sent to asylums merely for wanting to be scholars. It was a great deal more complex than that, and the diagnosis of mental illness was itself very fraught and contested over that period. But it was not the norm to be sent to an asylum merely for “being gender nonconforming”. That’s imposing an anachronistic and reductive framework on what was a much more complex idea. The women were often suffering from a range of different conditions, some of which were pathologised and some social - but the idea that just wanting to be a scholar would land you in an asylum is a dramatic misrepresentation of what is a hugely complex (and very interesting) history.

Re the Greeks - that’s the entire point! Greek does not have the word “gender” or “identity” (obviously). The Greek terms that point to what we might recognise as a similar concept are very different. They do not mean exactly what we mean (in English in 2023) by those terms. The ancient Greek conception of self was very different - and radically so - to the modern concept of “identity”.

When looking back at the past, we always need to bear in mind that the words and the concepts they are used to refer to do change over time - sometimes very radically - and when words change, or when translating from one language to another, what looks like a synonym is not necessarily coextensive with the same concept. The Greeks are very interested in masculinity and femininity and the self. But they don’t remotely conceptualise these in the same ways that we do with current ideas of “gender” or “identity”. That’s one of the reasons why the texts are so strange and so interesting.

I haven’t misread those texts, you are quite wrong and I suspect haven’t even read them yourself. The women in the historic case studies presented in these books were not “often suffering from a range of different conditions”.

I have said that gender nonconforming people were historically persecuted, and this is one of the ways in which certain gender nonconforming women were in fact persecuted during a particular time period and in a particular place. I have never said it was “the norm” for this to happen.

You’re also changing your mind on “identity” and “gender”. You stated first
*Previous eras did not conceptualise anything like the idea of “gender” (or “identity”) that we have right now *
Now you are agreeing with me that they did have these concepts, but that the meaning was different: The Greek terms that point to what we might recognise as a similar concept are very different. You are now only half wrong.

Greek does not have the word “gender” or “identity” (obviously).

Wrong.
Ancient Greek for identity- the self- was ψυχή, or psyche which is the root of the English terms psychology and psychiatry- the study of an individuals self. Their concept of identity was identical to our concept of identity today.

Ancient Greek for gender was γένος, genos, which means kin, stock, race but was first used by Plato to mean gender. This use of Ancient Greek genos, was then the root of the Latin genus, which became the root of gender in English. It’s not only the same concept, but our word gender actually comes from the Ancient Greek for gender! 🤓 A word, you said did not exist.

They, and the other ancient civilisations I listed, did have the concepts of identity and gender. Yes, their view of gender conforming vis a via gender roles, stereotypes and expectations attached to them were different, but the concept of gender itself was identical.

Let’s keep in mind you originally said that the concepts of gender and identity did not exist until the twentieth century. They absolutely did.

What did not exist was the merged concept of a “gender identity”. I think you have recklessly extrapolated from this without doing your due diligence.

Your posting style is incredibly familiar - were you Discoverreads? There’s a very similar combination of rigid thinking, and the tendency to reduce historical specificity to anachronistic generalities.

You can carry on believing anything you like! But you need to develop what is, right now, very muddled thinking and ahistorical analysis. Genos, the concept, meant nothing like the current contemporary English meaning of “gender”. And classical Greek is not English. The word “genos” is quite literally not the word “gender”. Neither the term nor the word are the same thing at all. Neither is “psyche” the same word or idea as “identity”. “Psyche” just simply did not include a lot of important post-Freudian ways of conceiving of the self that are contained in the idea of “identity”. The Greek term thymos was actually far closer to the modern idea of identity than psyche — though it also differed from the modern idea in very significant ways: one way is that all Greek terms for the interior self were fundamentally conceived of as essentially physiological, and not socially constructed at all. Similarly, medieval and early modern European ideas of interior selfhood are almost exclusively rooted in the physiological - they are completely at odds with the idea of identity as either socially or abstractly constructed. Similarly, the word “emotion” did not appear until after well after the early modern period: there was little concept of the idea of emotions (as psychological, rather than physiological or humoural entities) before the Enlightenment.

Sorry if you don’t believe me: however, I don’t care! I’ve been a historian of ideas for more than twenty years, including in Begriffsgeschichte, and quite specifically the history of nineteenth and early twentieth century sexuality, mental illness and the connections between psychoanalysis and psychiatry. I’d you actually listened, you might actually learn something interesting. But I don’t work for free to be insulted, so I’ll stop there and you can do your own research. And not on Wikipedia! 😂 Bye!

No, I’m new. Is that why you have consistently used personal attacks? You thought I was another poster?

I do believe that you are a historian that hasn’t researched very far back and you’ve just confirmed you specialise in 19th/20th c. history.

Plato would disagree with you on that as he definitely used genos to mean gender.

Yes I know Ancient Greek isn’t English; I showed how genos is the root of gender via Latin genus. Why would you say that unless you have also missed out on basic etymology and linguistics in your 20yrs of historical studies? You should be familiar with that fact that language has a history of its own.

Thymos is not closer than psyche to the modern meaning of identity as thymos is the breath & feelings of emotion. It is physical and physiological. Psyche is the mind, your individual self. Of course, it then makes your argument that the Greek idea of identity was physiological easier by picking the wrong word. Also, identity is never socially constructed, you seem to be mixing up gender which is socially constructed with identity which is individually constructed or discovered.

I find it a bit off that I have posted historical sources that are actual books by historians and an Ancient Greek play by Aristophanes to support my points, but the only sources you have referenced are Wikipedia, TikTok and so on- although it’s always in the context of a personal attack. If you’d like me to “learn something” perhaps post some historical sources to back up your points?

Plato’s theory of psyche (usually translated as soul) is much more complex than you suggest, and not remotely coextensive with the contemporary ideas either of “mind” or “identity” (and neither with a modern psychoanalytic use of the term psyche). Moreover, the definition and use of psyche varies hugely across Classical texts and philosophy from the presocratics to Aristotle (who had a different theory of psyche to Plato). Importantly, for Plato, psyche is composed of different parts - some of which are the very opposite of our contemporary notions of identity (hence why thymos is closest - it’s the aspect of desire for self-recognition).

None of the ways that the Greek tradition thinks about either identity or gender is directly comparable to contemporary notions. “Genos”, an ontological term meaning “kind”, “race” or “stock”, is not equivalent to “gender” in the modern sense at all, in Plato or elsewhere. Greek concepts of what we now call sex and gender were very different — though if you’re only reading isolated plays in translation, this might not be immediately obvious.

Also, identity is never socially constructed

You think identity is never socially constructed? That’s the very basis of identity in all psychology and sociology of the last century.

Gosh you are confused. I never mentioned Plato in relation to psyche. Plato used genos to denote gender as he wrote extensively about how the soul was genderless and therefore men and women should have equality.

I see you’ve cut and pasted the Wiki definition of genos and perhaps by now have seen that as I was saying, it is the entomological root of our word gender.

You have gone from “Greek does not have the word “gender” or “identity” (obviously).” to now saying, they do have the words but they’re “not directly comparable”. So what if they’re not directly comparable? Why should they be?

Yes people in different times and in different cultures thought/think differently from how we think, and certain words have evolving definitions over time but that does not mean they did not have the same concepts. You are thinking too rigidly and narrowly to say that if a certain definition of something doesn’t exactly match the modern English definition; then it does not exist, that the “other” had/has no concept of gender, identity or even emotion and sex.

I challenge anyone on this thread to read only one thing, Plato Republic 5 recording a debate with Socrates on sex and gender- and then decide for yourself whether Ancient Greek thought on gender and sex cannot be compared to how we think of them today:
https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0168%3Abook%3D5

”Do we expect the females of watch-dogs to join in guarding what the males guard and to hunt with them and share all their pursuits or do we expect the females to stay indoors as being incapacitated by the bearing and the breeding of the whelps while the males toil and have all the care of the flock?” “They have all things in common,” “he replied, “except that we treat the females as weaker and the males as stronger.” “Is it possible, then,” said I, “to employ any creature for the same ends as another if you do not assign it the same nurture and education?” “If, then, we are to use the women for the same things as the men, [452a] we must also teach them the same things.” “Yes.” “Now music together with gymnastic was the training we gave the men.” “Yes.” “Then we must assign these two arts to the women also and the offices of war and employ them in the same way.”

“Then is not the first thing that we have to agree upon with regard to these proposals whether they are possible or not? And we must throw open the debate46 to anyone who wishes either in jest or earnest to raise the question [453a] whether female human nature is capable of sharing with the male all tasks or none at all, or some but not others,47 and under which of these heads this business of war falls. Would not this be that best beginning which would naturally and proverbially lead to the best end48?”

there is much more.

That's what I thought too...

This is all getting far too Dunning-Kruger, so I’m out — but, here’s a hint, @L3ThirtySeven — you are reading a translation. HTH! 😂

All that Plato stuff has gone over my head but I'm not sure I much care. He was a mam with some ideas. Even if he said everyone has a gender identity, that doesn't make it a fact.

But that’s basically everybody? So if no one is conforming to gender stereotypes, surely they are not stereotypes anymore? If everybody is GNC, does that mean everyone comes under the stonewall umbrella and therefore no one is special?

You have fundamentally misunderstood the concept of gender conformance/nonconformance. Gender nonconforming isn’t an identity. By definition, most people are gender conforming, as in most people exhibit behavioural, cultural, or psychological traits typically associated with their sex.

how so? Surely no one conforms to,100% of gender norms, therefore everyone Is GNC? Or Is it a certain percentage of gender norms you have to conform you to not be GNC?

Someone said 'most' which is pretty vague. I guess 'most' might be 95% though that would leave most people GNC? To get to a place where GNC is somehow a small percentage of the population I think we'd need to say that you're GNC if you conform to less than 5%? Though how on earth we draw out all the behavioural, cultural and psychological traits I don't know. Plus the TW I know seem to conform to many behavioural and culture traits or manhood otherwise they'd not be trying to silence and threaten women for not readjusting the concept of woman to serve their needs.

Goodness, I'm a Lesbian with a lot of niche interests that attract mostly males but I like makeup and long hair! I enjoy cooking which women do but I see lots of famous male chefs!
Oh I know! maybe I'm a woman, a person with diverse interests like everyone else :)

Are female physicists/mathematicians/computer programmers GNC?

just wondered if some “markers” had more value. Is it all about presentation- clothes, makeup, hair, nails? What about hobbies or jobs. If you like traditionally “male” or “female” hobbies are you GNC? If a man did adult ballet classes, or a woman took welding courses?

is it about what you say you are? So not about sociological markers, but whether you feel like you are not female or male? So if I say I’m GNC, that makes me so, even if I like wearing dresses and shopping?