How to Actually be Gender Non Conforming

[OuterSpaceCadet]

There seems to be some confusion out there over what constitutes being gender non conforming / deconstructing gender.

I thought a list might be a handy resource to direct posters to (those who are so keen to explain at length but less inclined to read the board first in order to understand what feminists think about gender or indeed anything).

So what are meaningful ways in which a man or woman can deconstruct gender or be gender non conforming sometimes?

And I mean real ways that actually have an impact beyond visual. Not length of hair. Not possession of moobs or mastectomy. Not choice of shoe.

I have lived in different areas of the UK and I think some parts of the UK are more gender conforming than others. Usually just in terms of presentation.
I wonder if peak gender conformity occurs when you are looking for love (for a straight person) and it makes it clear who you are and who you are after to any eligible person you might meet.

But so much of life is unrelated to gender: food preferences, music taste, political opinions, owl or lark, favourite holidays, introvert/extrovert, hobbies, opinions on pets, environmental convictions, religious beliefs, family background, what country your family has come from. I don’t know how you could live a life entirely according to gender norms. Large parts of life are determined by biology for better or for worse, but the majority of the rest of it is your personality.

Be yourself. Do the things you want to do and wear the things you want.

Be brave - sometimes doing the above takes bravery because not conforming is not actually celebrated by many people.

Understand that you change as you grow and that you will have many different styles, many different ideas about who you are.

I read a post yesterday from social media where someone was talking about how 'being yourself' isn't passive, it's active. You have to make choices every day in order to 'be yourself'. Like the food you like, read the books you want to read, do the things you want to do without having to be good at them. Things like that. I think the same principle applies - forget what everyone else is doing or saying (easier said than done, which is a whole point of feminist analysis).

And that doesn't just apply to doing what you want and like even if it doesn't fit into the gender box applied to you particular sex. Women are pulled down for being 'gender conforming' too eg being too much of something. Too feminine, too much of a mum, too sociable, too interested in clothes.

I don't think there's much point in telling people to be gender non conforming without understanding the social pulls in the first place but acceptance of people's own personalities in a starting point.

My daughter is 10 and is really starting to express herself and I know it's marking her out among her peers already because the 'style' she is developing is very different from theirs (for now anyway). She's got such a lack of self-consciousness about it in the way of kids and I am bigging her up every step of the way so that hopefully she's a bit less affected by social pressures if and when they come into play. Her sex should never determine how her sense of self develops but sadly that's how society operates. A woman or girl is 'gender non conforming' in the most basic sense, when she is just herself.

I’m not sure what exactly the OP meant by ‘deconstruct’. I took it as meaning more or less the first of the definitions in this link

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/deconstruction

The other issue I have about contrived non conformity to gender roles is there always seems to be the subtext that the stereotypically male things are superior, and that women who want to smash stereotypes are duty bound to put aside inferior 'feminine things'. I get tired of having things I enjoy disparaged, and things I have no interest in framed as superior, simply because more males do them.
I'd rather bake a cake than build a shed. As it happens so would my DS. Yet he'll be applauded for that, while I'm letting the side down.

Honestly, who cares? People should just be themselves and stop trying to fit into stupid categories. If someone has to think about what is gender non conforming and how to apply it their lives they are already an inauthentic try hard. Let's bring authenticity back.

Be really bad at handling the mental load as a mum.

I’m relatively similar to you but I interestingly wouldn’t describe myself at all as gender non conforming in the slightest. Non of things you describe relate to the male gender . I had no idea DIY was a considered a gendered topic!

I showed my DS how to change a wheel on his car as DH doesn't know how.
I think we must have fully embraced the gender non conforming handbook...

Well that’s very specific to mixed schools where it has been proved that when girls learn with boys they tend to default to humanities but single sex girls schools, without any influence from boys, tend to choose STEM subjects.
That isn’t quite gender stereotyping though, more that girls are more invested in boys opinions of them and default to not wanting to seem cleverer than the boys. It’s a weird thing to still be the case in the year 2025 but studies have proved this happens time and time again.

I think people really need to stop giving gender so much headspace. When and why did it become such a huge thing? It's a made up social construct based on crappy stereotypes. Let's go back to the days when gender just meant sex because there's nothing progressive about any of this nonsense. .

This. Just do what seems right to you without worrying about whether it's a boy thing or a girl thing. I've been doing it since I was about ten. I used to worry because in the books I read girls were either girly girls (Amy and Beth March, Ann of the Famous Five) or tomboys (Jo March, George of the FF) whereas I did some things from each pile. Being an autistic girl I was always looking for the missing instruction manual on How To Be and I used to ponder this mystery a lot. Then one day I just decided to forget it and get on with my life, which improved from then on in.

Ha sorry for a somewhat pointless and hard to understand OP! I posted impulsively and immediately regretted it. But the replies are interesting and food for thought, so thanks.

My OP was in reaction to the many male posters who swoosh in to explain gender at length to women here without taking any time to read or understand how women experience gender stereotypes and gendered socialisation first.

It's interesting several posters felt I was suggesting doing anything stereotypically thought of as feminine was a bad thing. That kind of parallels how so-called gender neutral clothing always looks like it's stereotypically male clothing for male bodies.

"Deconstructing gender" is a phrase I hear which sounds as if it ought to be a good thing yet in practice it appears to boil down to letting men who have adopted very superficial signs of femininity (lippy, moobs, hair) have unrestricted access to vulnerable women.

I wholeheartedly agree that genuinely "being yourself" is the best place to start. And that that's not at all as easy as it sounds.

I find it so strange that we're supposed to be so awed by superficial physical attributes like lipstick and tits that we overlook the stereotypically masculine behaviour of mansplaining, boundary violating, colonising, fetishising etc. Yet some men do act in ways that are less stereotypically masculine. But by default they're never going to be the ones arguing for women's boundaries to be ignored!

Ha. Yes. A man puts on a dress and lipstick and he's a hero for smashing gender stereotypes and fawned over in the ladies as a hero in the war against the patriarchy. Meanwhile I need to get a physics degree and build a shed.

I think just living your life according to your talents and interests and preferences is going to make most people gender-nonconforming in comparison to the stereotypes we are presented with. You could argue my grandpa was GNC: he made jam and baked cakes, was unashamedly good at it and enjoyed it.

A friend of mine had a go at me for being too stereotypically feminine: I like dresses and makeup and jewellery, she eschews auch things. But I also lift weights and have power tools, hate sentimental movies and literature, love sci-fi and action films. She's opposite. We're both pretty outspoken. Who's more gender-nonconforming? On appearances it's her but look beyond that and it's not so simple. The truth is we are both women and we are both living our lives in our different ways. GNC is just a fancy label for something very normal.

men would need to know the calorie content in everything and have a stock of random birthday / thank you cards.

women would need to lose the ability to see towels on the floor.

when you have a child that has a talent / preference that isn’t in line with the gender norms of your society - that’s a talent that will need additional support from you , be aware when any aunt makes an off comment and challenge it ( “that’s an unusual hobby” “ it’s only unusual because of historic ideas “ or “isn’t auntie old fashioned “ later ) . Without the support of my parents I would have given up maths. I was rather special at maths. But it lead to a lot of abuse. Wierdo.

the things I find hardest to throw off ( which stem from being told to sit on my hands and shut up ) are taking the lead and public performing.

But isn’t the effect you’re proposing in your last paragraph exactly about ‘gendered’ behaviour? It’s not an innate female trait!

it is clear that there are specific gender norms in different sections of society. I have never ever ever, in my entire life thought maths was specific to a gender. Actually no subject I have ever thought was gender specific. I did the subjects I wanted to do including maths and it never once occurred to me that I was breaking any sort of stereotype.

What matters most surely is just expressing yourself and your preferences in a way that feels right or natural for you; not just behaving in ways that are expected of you due to your sex? All of us are a combination of qualities and characteristics....some will be societally coded as 'feminine' and some maybe coded as more 'masculine' and some quite neutrally.

There should be no need to perform 'non conformity'. 'Performing' is what teenagers do when they are in rebellion phase and trying to find out who they are, or anyone else when at a crisis point in their life - when everything is in flux.

Do you think you just fell out of a coconut tree?

It isn’t about being yourself because yourself is formed in society and shaped by it - it is instinctive to follow the norms , to be part of your group. Especially with children . Group approval is important and every adult tends to encode gender norms in their interactions - passes through the generations .

so we need to reduce the expectations around d each group to enable people to achieve their natural potentials

Social class is a factor. You'll find that working class families are more accepting of conventional gender roles and presentations, in general.

Well. I suppose if you wanted to be a gender non conforming woman, you could always murder someone.

yet I was bullied and called a weirdo for my maths and the fact that no girls did a.level maths ever in my school was an indication that it wasn’t for girls . And the male maths teacher twent out of their way to humiliate me at every opportunity

gender is related or specific societies