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 so, it’s deffo not me! I’m a pretty average middle aged lady*

I’m still somewhat gobsmacked that this regressive shite has been touted round primary schools. WTAF were people thinking?

Swishy, glittery little boys and sporty, unfussy girls have always existed, wanting things from the ‘wrong’ toy aisle does not need to lead to the amputation of healthy body parts! Bring back the 70s orange-polo-necks-for-all and hand-me-down-bikes.

(Is it weird that as women got more rights in the workplace and became more able to live lives financially independent from men that the toys for girls became pinker and more gendered than before? I’m not saying it’s a big conspiracy, more a subconscious reaction? Or just capitalism doing capitalist things?)

*I actually dress like a lunatic.
i have two modes, paint splattered sweatpants, my son’s outgrown t shirts cut into baggy vests and crocs
OR
aging 1930s Hollywood high camp femme fatale.

This means I am either too scruffy or too overdressed for absolutely everything.

Now that some men are adopting the plastic look, fake tits, wigs, etc., that 'look' seems more mixed sex to me. It's starting to look more 'try hard' and not so stereotypical of just women. This is a good thing in my opinion.

The women that are just women and wear normal, everyday clothes are moving away from that plastic look now I think, and are just being their natural, beautiful selves. I don't think that is non conformity at all.

This, I almost started a thread about this after mentally misgendering a woman recently. I have been wondering if the sheer prevalence of drag in the arts and popular culture is going to shift that particular look away from being automatically considered "female".

I think this will be a positive if so, although I of course recognise that men performing this ultra stereotype have a choice which many women don't feel they have and I reject the notion men are able to identify into oppression this way.

(Woman in question was tall and slim hipped and dressed in what I consider to be drag regardless of which sex performs it. It's quite an unusual daytime look in London so I automatically assumed they were male until I met them from the front.)

Yes, you are. As is every human being who has ever lived, and virtually all of the fictional ones.

Even actual Barbie (has jobs in construction) and GI Joe (groomed eyebrows, definitely uses hair product) are gender non-conforming.

I don't think so. I think you naturally just don't conform to socially constructed gender stereotypes (which are really heightened at the moment), just as I and most of my female friends (straight, bi, lesbian) didn't in the 80s and 90s. It wasn't a label we gave ourselves, just who we were (and mostly still are) and also the fashion was more androgynous so maybe we were actually conforming! I don't think you are deliberately 'Gender Non Conforming' which is more like a trendy label to describe something that is just women being women (not 'girly-girls' as we might have said), and possibly used to make people feel like they are doing something radical. To say it's non-conforming is to make what 'women' are like when they are 'conforming', a very narrow concept. Also while I'm here, I don't even like that word 'conforming' because it really diminishes women who are more feminine, care about makeup, hair, dresses etc. and feeds into the horrible 'dumb blonde' mythology.

I blame the Early Learning Centre - before them toys were not really gendered and came in other colours than pink or blue!

Maybe, but I'm old enough that school subjects were very gendered, and girls in primary school got the crappy 'sew a cushion' option while the boys got to attack wood with sharp objects.

Luckily Brownies and Guides (original format) put the woodbashing back into our lives.

It’s only a thing if you believe that women wear dresses and men trousers. We should be past all that by now.
You don’t need a label beyond woman, and you can wear what you like.

"Gender non-conforming" is a load of bollocks. My generation spent our lives fighting for equality. Pushing the idea that people can do and be and wear whatever they want, and there’s no such thing as girls or boys toys, clothes, hair, hobbies, jobs, etc. Now we seem to have gone backwards and suddenly there are separate male and female things again?

Excellent and thought provoking responses here thank you..
I notice that a lot of you aren't happy with the term and wonder why gender non conforming lesbians or 'butch' lesbians are mentioned on here fairly frequently.

I agree with the comments fwiw, I am certain i am simply a woman, but wondering, if I were to be labelled, whether I'd class as GNC, just to be clear. And if not, why not...
Its notable that sime years ago, my Dd briefly identified as non binary. She wore very similar clothes to me so I asked her what was the difference, and she couldn't really come up with any kind of answer. She's given all that up now thankfully.

Probably because it's being used as a description rather than a label or an identity.

I don't label myself. I've always rejected being labelled whether that's as a tomboy, un-feminine, not like the other girls, male-brained.... I'm just female, and an adult, so I'm a woman, that's all.

I think we need to get past 'gender non-conforming' to be just about outward appearances.

If what we are talking about is 'sex-based stereotypes' then most women are more or less bucking against such stereotypes, whatever they wear or how long their hair is. I'm a woman: I run things, I boss people about, I earn a fair bit of money, I'm an internationally sought-after expert & I'm very successful in my (admittedly tiny ) sub-sub-field of my profession. I'm one of 15% nationally in my job who are women.

All that is pretty 'gender non-conforming.' Yet I have long hair & wear dresses. It's not about what you look like, it's about non-conformity to the: be lesser, marry, have children, sacrifice your career for your husband etc etc etc.

This.

You are a woman who wears what she likes. My mum and eldest sister were very feminine - clothes, hair, makeup… I remember when I was little (sis is 14 years older than me) thinking that it all looked like a lot of effort to ‘look pretty for the boys’ (I was a 70s kid remember).

I just throw on whatever is clean, pull my hair back and get on with it. In my teens I had Annie Lennox hair, wore ‘men’s’ clothes (some literally as I acquired some old handmade suits and coats from my dad when he was a skinny teenager), DMs (when you got them from your granny workwear catalogue). It’s just taste and fashion.

I don’t believe in gender. Just stereotypes, tastes and personality.

When a person calls themselves GNC that tells you something about the person.

When an observer calls a person GNC that tells you something about the observer.

Wear what you want, call yourself what you want, ignore labels if you want, be happy.

In my opinion a lot of this gender woo woo comes from people who see gender roles becoming blurred in society, less distinct, and yearn for thier return. Some of the gender impersonations seem utterly bizzare.

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.

Gender used to mean masculine or feminine.

I find the term useful to describe my reluctance to conform to a male-constructed ideal of femininity.

Society still finds this problematic but it's less to do with my prediction for comfy clothes and no make-up and more to do with my reluctance to metaphorically suck men's cocks.

The Early Learning Centre was the exact opposite of this in the late 80s/early 90s. Toys were grouped and labelled according to type, e.g. construction, role play (which didn't have sexual connotations then), literacy, arts and crafts etc. There were no fashion dolls or war toys, no film or TV character tie-ins, and very little pink. Lots of wooden toys and primary colours. Their TV adverts even featured a Barbie and an Action Man trying to break into one of their shops. I was shocked at how much things had changed by the time my DCs were adults. ELC seemed to have lost the plot.

Yes, it’s as if the ELC became the exact opposite of what it was supposed to be.

Here’s the old ad:

I buy most of my children's toys online now.

I just decide what I want them to have and then I go and buy it.

That still doesn't stop certain family members from buying pink dolls for my daughter and toy trucks for my son, but I just try not to steer either of my children towards any specific toys and let them play with what they want.

Generally that means they both go for the trucks because my son loves them and my daughter wants to be like her big brother, but he wants to play with the dolls from time to time as well.

We did have a slight incident the other day when my daughter, who is coming up to a year old and has rather Godzilla like tendencies, kept swiping the battery powered trains from the Brio tracks and ripping up stations, and my husband said, "Oh go and play with your dolls!"

I had stern words with him.

Any kind of definition of gender by behaviour or appearance is meaningless as these things vary so much across cultures and time.

You are just a woman. We come in all different shapes sizes and hairstyles.

I'd say I'm gender non-conforming in a way because I think gender stereotypes are utter bull and my personal preference would be to do away with gender and just have sex. Gender to me is very much a social construct. What exactly makes a woman a woman and a man a man from a gender perspective. Am I a woman if I stay at home with the children, doing all the housework and having a nice meal on the table ready for my husband to come home after his hard day at work earning the cash? If I don't, am I not a woman? I think wear what you want, work in whatever profession / job you want or stay at home with the kids if you want, both parties (where relevant) contribute to household duties etc but none of it should be specific to a gender (biology aside but that to me is sex not gender, so obviously a man can't carry a baby).

My view of gender non-conforming is just my way of saying f*ck the gender stereotypes and let's just be done with it all.

Aren;t we all? Most people dont fit a stereotype.

Just walked through my local supermarket, few women in sight there are gender conforming if you're going by long hair, skirts, heels, make up, as opposed to the very common gender neutral clothes and choices.

As a lesbian I used to get stick in the 80s and 90s for not turning up at clubs or bars with the uniform - no crew cut, no dms, not masculine presenting = high suspicion I was Lesbianing Wrong (or was lying about being lesbian). Outside said bars and in reality, lesbians come in every possible presentation and packaging, as do women.

It seems only the insecure and anxious who require others in uniform/costume to clearly signal themselves. Others just get on with it.