Am i gender non conforming?

[FleetwoodName]

Name changed for this. I was reading another thread and reference was made to gnc lesbians, with a brief description.

I'm a straight woman. Clothes of choice are jeans/combats/shorts etc with fleece/sweatshirt.

I have always had short hair. I wear ear studs but rarely other jewellery. I don't wear make up.

I don't consider my appearance much, beyond neat, clean and appropriate for whatever I am doing. I'm just really not very interested in style and beauty, rather good health and doing things that do interest me. I suppose i have my own style but I think of it as just 'clothes'.

I have young adult and teen children and do run of the mill family things.

Am i a gnc woman or a woman? Or does gnc only apply to lesbians? Or is it just another label?

I'm not taking the piss, I promise. I'm just a bit curious.

If your sex is female, then you're a woman. All the stereotypical 'feminine' stuff like make up and long hair is just optional window dressing, and is available to both men and women

No, it's just how you choose to dress and present yourself as a woman. This would have been nothing of note in the 80s, believe me.

So is 'gender non conforming' as a descriptor just as a foil to all the gender identity nonsense?

"Gender non-conforming" is a phrase that applies to any woman who rejects one or more of the standard gendered behaviours that are expected/encouraged/normalised etc for women in their current culture. As such, it's fairly meaningless, as no-one is a living archetype of expected feminine behaviours.

As a feminist, I want to see gendered expectations disappear so that what remains is a person with a sex, in my case female, and a personality.

Gender, in the original feminist sense, was distinguished from sex to enable discussion about all of the superficial societal baggage that comes as a result of your sex. It is society's expectations and fashions thst follow from being a woman or man, not what defines it.

In this sense, everyone is at least a little gender-non-conforming, because nobody fully subscribes to all of the stereotypes or fashions culturally associated with one's sex.

Having short hair these days might be considered non-conforming because it is fashionable for women to have longer hair, but in the 80s and 90s most women I knew had short hair. Go back further and it was fashionable for men to have long hair. By this example, there isn't anything inherently "womanly" about the length of one's hair, apart from current fashion.

Yes, in order to define non-conforming we need an agreed list of elements that indicate conforming. This changes over place and time and can be pretty nebulous.

Not really useful.

Not even always an indicator of conformity - I have long hair. It hasn't been cut by a hairdresser for 5 years although I take the kitchen scissors to it occasionally. Not a marker of femininity, more an indicator of an annoying phobia of someone else touching my scalp.

It's a good question.

The idea of being gender conforming is an odd one because it implies that the "genders" available to conform to are limited to male and female, which are of course not genders.

There's a debate to be had about "non binary", because there is one school of thought that says that being non binary is being gender non conforming because you are choosing not to conform to either "male" or "female", but also another school of thought that says that non binary is just a new gender which has been invented and so people who identify as non binary are choosing to conform to that instead.

But if we assume there are only two genders to conform to, what the hell does that even mean?

Who determines what gender conformity looks like?

If features of being a gender conforming woman include things like having long hair, wearing dresses, wearing makeup and so on, does a gender conforming woman become gender non conforming at night when she takes off her makeup and changes into her pyjamas?

Does a Scottish man who usually wears jeans become gender non conforming at weddings when he wears a kilt? Or is he gender conforming still because a kilt is a skirt for men? If kilts are skirts for men and other skirts are for women, does a woman who wears a tartan kilt become gender non conforming? What if she happens to be a teenage girl attending a girls' school where a tartan kilt is part of the uniform?

Basically none of it makes any sense because it kind of implies that there is only one way to present as a man or a woman, without specifying what that way is, and it doesn't address whether someone is gender conforming or gender non conforming if they, you know, change their clothes.

Tomorrow I will work from home wearing jeans and one of my husband's jumpers, with my hair tied up in a ponytail and no makeup on. In the evening I will pick my kids up from crèche, remove my husband's jumper and use the secret opening in my otherwise very unremarkable looking T-shirt to breastfeed my baby. (Is this plain black T-shirt which is clearly designed to be worn specifically by a breastfeeding woman gender conforming or gender non conforming? If it is only for women, why is it not pink?) When I have finished doing that I will put a dress and makeup on and go out for my friend's birthday drinks.

Will I be gender conforming or gender non conforming? Or both in the same day? What happens the next day when I wear different clothes?

It's all just fucking nonsense isn't it.

Genre non-conforming is just another part of the nonsense. Gender, whether the conforming or non-conforming kind, is just deeply routed in sexist stereotypes. Were men wearing pink back in the day GNC or just following the latest fashion trends when pink was a mans colour. It's just based on whatever is in fashion.

I agree with this.

Youre a woman.

All the bells and whistles of what being a woman supposedly is are just that.

Gender non-conforming is such a misnomer. It could apply to anyone who doesn’t live their life as a walking Barbie or Action Man.

It’s my female sex that makes me a woman, not my hair or nails or clothes or interests. I’m not manly because I have power tools and can fix plumbing. I’m not more womanly because I’m straight and I wouldn’t be less womanly if I were a lesbian.

It goes along with the insistence that everyone has a gender identity and really, it is a load of twaddle! Kind of hoped we would be beyond that by now.

My boss is a female engineer working in a male dominated industry. She has very short hair. She also wears makeup, heels and silk blouses.

Is she gender conforming or gender non conforming?

🤔

Yes, quite...

Engineer-gender is a law unto itself!

On the Mermaids scale of Barbie to Action Man I am the little orange person with puff sleeves, or maybe the red one with a side pony tail…

Yes, you are gender non-conforming. Much the same as most women in FWR and more women than not in the world. Congratulations, this makes you LGBT+ special and worthy of a pride flag.

I worked in Eastern Europe around 2000 and the default hairstyle for young women then was a really striking short pixie cut. Looked fantastic with Slavic cheekbones, really accentuated feminine features. These days, short hair on teenage girls apparently means they're really boys. Or, according to a younger colleague who used to have short hair, it also means you're a lesbian, a prostitute or recovering from chemotherapy (based on unsolicited comments).

It was alot simpler inthe 90s when both boys and girls had long greasy hair and clumped about in DMS, combats and big Nirvana hoodies.

I would like the body of number 1 but currently look more like number 5. Is there a label to sort this out for me?

Well, you’re normal. Like everyone else. Just be yourself, wear whatever and stop with the labels (that don’t fir everyone anyway, so people have to create even more labels).

What is ‘conforming' anyway? 1950s stereotypes?

I LOVE the orange one, what on earth is that guy doing?

Is the red one supposed to be a pregnant trans man?

My thoughts on the whole gender thing is its a stupid craze.
And in a few year alot of people will see how stupid they wear.
I do however feel sorry for the young kids with parents that believe in all this crap as it will affect the MH.
I did watch a show on youtube about this sort of thing and the regret some come to face is unreal.
I do blame SM for a lot of it i also blame the parents forcing it upon the kids.
Dont get me started on the wacky names.

You are man or woman male or female.
Right im now going back under my rock.

It's time and place specific. You would be gnc if you lived in Afghanistan or 1950. But not here and now and not in 1940, because you would be driving an ambulance or making munitions.

Men have more scope to be gnc, because dressing like an (inferior) girl is a humiliation. Some of them like that.

You’re a woman and a feminist because you choose not to buy into archaic sex stereotypes.

Thank you all so much. I love that I can rely on you lot to articulate my thoughts for me.
In that case though, perhaps we need to stop referring to some lesbians as gender non conforming? Or perhaps that descriptor is currently useful because of the current silliness around gender?

I translate "gender non-conforming lesbians" as "clearly a woman, but stubbornly refuses to look like Kim Kardashian".

That is succinct enough for me to remember 😂