I'm having some issues getting what I want to say down here, and nobody here really KNOWS me or anything, so even though I find it intellectually interesting, the rest of you feel free to ignore this. I was reading comments on chapter 7 of Rules are Rules, and I just got really confused about this idea of gender stereo typing being necessary for him to fit in and not get caught and it just kind of felt wrong to me. I think gender is much more complicated than all that surface garbage, and it's also pretty transparent. It's only a big deal if there's something wrong. Am I wrong, is it something that some people spend a whole lot of time actively thinking about? Because I admit I hang out with an enormous mash of punks, hipsters, and queers. In the world I live in, gender stereotyping just bites you in the ass. Nobody really does it, and anyone who was actively trying to fit some kind of girly girl mold would be the one under constant scrutiny. See what I got thinking about, is that me and all my friends, we basically act pretty similar regardless of gender. Maybe I just live in a strange microcosm of humanity, because I mean, I admit, boys who dress like girls get no shit in my circle, and neither do boys who were born girls, or the whole genderqueer mash-up at large. So things like like the idea that being girly means wearing skirts, and long nails, etc. just confuse me. Gender is complicated, and hard to explain, and hard to describe, and it more than anything it just IS. So take the most androgynous boy around, stick him in skirts and cover his face in slap, and he's still a he. Take the butchest little girl ever, and stuff her in a boys body and she's still a she right? So ya, just random thoughts running around my head. I mean, based on the stories here, lots of people are really hooked on the girly stereotyping, and I'm not saying it's a bad thing, although I prefer the stories with out it. What I am saying, is that there's something so 1950's proper etiquette for young ladies about it that it seems almost anachronistic to me. Hope nobody takes this in a negative way, it's just me expressing random thoughts inspired by stories and comments I read here.
JL
Comments
it always depends
Is it complicated? Yes very and sometimes not at all. I'll admit I haven't read the story yet so this is a generic and maybe slightly personal view. Stereotyping is very real almost everywhere and everytime, though the 'types' may vary a bit from place to place. I live in Sydney and there are places here where 'alternative lifestyle' is 'almost' normal. Gay, Lesbian, TG have their areas where it is 'safer' than others and they may even overlap a bit and there is I think a wider acceptance than in the past. Though that varies from area to area and there is still plenty of 'poofta' bashing.
From your statement you seem to think that an androgynous guy or butch girl is still what they are, fine. But take that androgynous guy and have his heart and brain tell him from the age of 5,6,10... that he is not a guy, but really a girl. Then you start playing with family expectation, ingrained belief, fear, longing, desire and a whole bunch of other emotions and thoughts... over years. Putting on some eyeliner and nail polish and swishing down to the local nightclub with ya mates might be a lark but in this case it will only be a very superficial mask on a deeper longing.
Thats when you start to get into the deeper psychological stuff. By your defnition I am a guy... and legally I am. Yet my name, now, is female and has been for some years. Perhaps one day the body will match and legality will meet my reality. I am not little miss girly girl, never was, never will be. Yet I do wear skirts and dresses and makeup and I am aware of expectation of role both individual and social. It aint the 50's but it is not anything goes either. You said it yourself girls are girls and boys are boys... and yet.... I'm not or maybe I am.
Complicated?? Nah, not at all. I am as complicated as people get and as simple as they come... and I suspect there are others out there too, oh dear the worlds gone mad. Someone wrote a book once titled 'Conundrum', nice word.
Kristina
If you think my definition
If you think my definition lumps you in with the guys I did a worse job than I thought expressing what I meant. Sorry. I was not making light of transgendered people. I was trying to say that gender is inherent, but kind of infinitesimal. A girl is a girl so to speak and it doesn't matter if she was born that way. It sure doesn't matter how well she aligns with some hyper feminine ideal. I was really just pointing out a trend I've noticed with a lot of TG fiction. One could argue that that trend is inherent due to the large number of transgendered people involved in its creation. I do realize it's fiction, and people are going to idealize things they long for and or dream about. I guess I just had an overpowering urge to get on a rooftop and shout, "but that's not how people really are!"
Gender - difficult or not?
I'll say it's difficult.
Gender stereotypes exist all over the place and the main bulk of stories here and everywhere for that matter, try and tell people that girls do this, girls do that and boys do something else or the other.
Is that true?
No is the short answer.
My girlfriend and I have been together for over twenty years and if I were to use her as a blueprint for all girls I wrote about, I'd be screwed and ridiculed as being someone who didn't know what he was talking about.
The fact is that everyone has a mix of male and female - to what degree is absolutely down to the individual. It is something that is in their genes and I don't mean Levi's either. If you look across the spectrum of ALL men and ALL women on appearance alone, you will find some women are more feminine than others and as far as men go, some are more masculine.
Then there's the bits we don't see. Some very macho-looking men are actually quite feminine and some very feminine women are really quite butch.
So now we have a whole melting-pot of possibilities and we haven't even broached the question of gender bending.
My niece hates shopping and has done all her life, yet it seems to be one of the mainstays of being a female according to some of the writings on here. On the other hand, her husband absolutely loves it, so go figure.
The three people I have just cited don't even represent one one-hundredth of a percent or the population of a village - not even a hamlet and yet they alone can turn the perception of male and female stereotypes upside down.
People are what they are and I believe that many of the ones who discover that they are not the gender they were supposed to be will actually model themselves on someone they know and represents if you like, an icon of what they aspire to be, whether that be male or female.
Not all natural women are Julia Roberts or Cindy Crawford and not all males are Brad Pitt or Richard Gere - you are what you are, like it or lump it.
Though surgery can do a lot, there are some things it cannot change - the size of hands and feet, the broadness of shoulders, the shape of the head and whilst hormones can alter some attributes, it cannot turn a six foot six, two hundred and fifty pound man into a five foot six one hundred and twenty-five pound woman or vice versa - although women would have more chance of increasing their size to match their male ideal.
There are too many permutations out there that could adequately describe a stereotype of either sex, so most of it's hooey!
What are covered in many stories here, are ideals as perceived by the many. The descriptions of mannerisms, ideal likes and dislikes, clothing preferences and it's all baloney. It's a perception. Not all women like stockings, thongs, miniskirts or even makeup, whilst not all men have rippling pecs, a six-pack, huge biceps and strong jaw lines.
Welcome to the real world...
NB
People are what they are and
People are what they are and I believe that many of the ones who discover that they are not the gender they were supposed to be will actually model themselves on someone they know and represents if you like, an icon of what they aspire to be, whether that be male or female.
Exactly, and I think it comes out in TG fiction because there are many TG people writing and reading it. So the stereotyping may be impossible to escape inside this particular community. :) I personally prefer characters who aspire to be themselves, even if that self crosses gender lines, rather than aspiring to fit a mold. But I can respect the near fetishization of all things girly by such a group. It would probably be more strange if it wasn't that way. Anyway, just struck me as being interesting and sort of worth mentioning.
Gender Fiction
Well, let me first remind you that what you see here is fiction, even the stories that try to keep at least one foot firmly planted in reality. As one woman who edited some of my stuff pointed out, nobody wants to read a story about a day-in-the-life. Most stories have some element of conflict of some sort or another, something that has to be sorted out by the protagonist. Here that tends to be about gender. Thus, situations are set up where there is some conflict over a male trying to successfully pass as a female. These stories are not documentaries, and what our heroine has to go through seldom reflects real life.
Crossing over to real life, in spite of improvements in public acceptability of alternate lifestyles, gender stereotyping is very real and discrimination very common. Physically, I was very fortunate to be able to easily slip across the gender line, I'm short and slim, with small hands and feet. People tend to see what they expect to see, so I don't have to be "girly" to be seen as female. But most M2F transsexuals, post-op or not, are going to be cursed with physical characteristics that make them look "off". This sets up a situation where a person sees a transsexual and the obvious physical signs are "female" - dress, styled hair, makeup, heels, etc. But the smaller signs that sink in down at the unconscious level are saying "male" - their walk, their voice, an Adams Apple, hand and foot size, you get the idea. This makes alot of people uncomfortable, even if they don't immediately know why.
As for the public acceptance of the gender-queer, it is not common, and I also find myself suspicious of many people (I'm not pointing the finger at you) who proclaim how many friends they have with alternate lifestyles. To me it smacks of the days when whites proclaimed how many black people they called "friends". When it ceases to be a label used to differentiate among people then I'll believe that real acceptance is happening. Around my office I'm friendly with most of my coworkers, but to many I'll still be the "short lesbian girl with long hair", (thankfully only one or two know of my post-op status). Last month I had an argument with a coworker concerning one of my jobs that he was supposed to be assisting me with, and when I told him to do something a certain way his reply was, "Who the hell do you think you are talking to, bitch!" Yes, things are improving, but when even women are still perceived as second-class citizens, any real minority group has a long way to go.
Karen J.
"Being a girl is wonderful and to torture someone into that would be like the exact opposite of what it's like. I don’t know how anyone could act that way."
College Girl - poetheather
“When a clown moves into a palace, he doesn’t become a king. The palace becomes a circus.” - Turkish Proverb
Gender roles
"I'm having some issues getting what I want to say down here, and nobody here really KNOWS me or anything, so even though I find it intellectually interesting, the rest of you feel free to ignore this. I was reading comments on chapter 7 of Rules are Rules, and I just got really confused about this idea of gender stereo typing being necessary for him to fit in and not get caught and it just kind of felt wrong to me. I think gender is much more complicated than all that surface garbage, and it's also pretty transparent. It's only a big deal if there's something wrong."
I only read part one of Rules are Rules, so I'm just going to speak in generalities. Is there a "standard" ways of being female and male? The short answer is a qualified yes. The expectations for male and female are (in general) completely different, and it's not sexist to say so. The actual genetic chasm between men and women have been compared to the code between monkeys and humans. As a biologist friend of mine once said, "Men and women's brains are hardwired differently." Men and women don't dress the same for a variety of reasons, many due to the mating rituals, and we don't act the same. True, the surface garbage isn't the main thing, but I'd say it's a serious reflection of it. It's nature at work, and she's been doing it for tens of thousands of years.
People don't see a person walking down the street, they see a man or a woman. People expect to see differences, and like that very androgynous male/female character on Saturday Night Live a while back, they generally feel uneasy not knowing a person's sex because men and women are treated differently by both sexes. Western society is in flux at the moment, so there are more societal variations at both ends of the bell curve than there were in the 1950's, but the old forces are still powerful and probably always will be. The role gender assigns us is undoubtedly the greatest factor in our lives.
I don't know how that relates to the story; some people go a little overboard with the differences -- certainly not me, nope, no way, never -- :), but that's my $.02.
Aardvark
"Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony."
Mahatma Gandhi
"Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony."
Mahatma Gandhi
Interesting Point of View
Are there differences between men and women? I personally think so. Are they treated differently? In some ways more than others. One example already given is the disparity in pay for similar jobs (I know there are exceptions) where those who's documentation say they are women get paid 10-20 percent less than those who are male. I've not seen statistics on how people in transition or have transitioned do vs. those that are not, but if I were to guess, I'd guess they did worse still.
The amount of acceptance those with "alternative" lifestyles get, probably is very different in different parts of the world, different parts of a country, or even city. As I sit here, thinking of some of the places I've lived, I know I saw different levels of acceptance of the gay/lesbian community. In some places, it was a VERY underground community as it was activly discouraged. In others, it was out in the open, but stil discriminated and in a few, it seemed like there was more acceptance.
More to your point. Are there things besides biological that are different between men and women. I certainly think so. Does that mean that some men don't exhibit characteristics generally associated with women. Good grief no. Does that mean they're women? Of course not. It also doesn't mean they aren't (as far as they're concerned). The reverse is also true. There are certainly men, who are perfectly happy being men, who are not necessarily happy with "fitting in" with some of the stuff society seems to view as "appropriate" to men. The same is true of women.
Here's an example (not a great one maybe). In GENERAL, females are considered the "nurturing" sex. One of the BEST project managers I ever worked for was a man. His teams all LOVED working for him. He cared for them, made sure they got the time of the needed, got extra if they had issues, etc. In generally one of the most caring individuals I've ever known. What else? Well, he also really enjoyed sports, and excelled in many. He could be very competitive there. These are just two aspects of his personality/being. But, I believe they reflect a lot on the point I'm trying to make that people exhibit traits (to greater or lesser extent) of both sexes. So, it's not surprising that some people will tend to be all at "one end" or the other.
Now, as to the point in question. Acting "girly" to avoid being recognized as a guy... Well, being perceived as a guy or a girl is dependant, to a large extent, on the stereotypes the viewer has. It has little, if any, dependancy on how the person perceives him or herself. Also, the more stereotypes a person fits, the easier it is to be perceived one way. Thirdly, NOT meeting one of those stereotypes can be jaring, and may cause a typical viewer to look below the surface to perceive what's actually there, rather than what's being presented. So, if you want to be perceived as a girl, acting the way the majority of people expect a girl to act is a good step along the way. Once you are perceived as a girl, actions out of character with a "typical" girl are less critical but can still cause that "jar". You probalby have heard how important first impressions are. The average person makes a first impression quickly and most of that is based on visual queues. If you pass muster there, then the more reinforcement that first impression gets (quickly) the stronger it is set in a person's "knowledge" of YOU. Eventually, you can change something, and it takes a log time for friends to recognize what changed, however acquaintences pick up on it more easily. How many times have you gotten a new hair style and gotten asked "Did you loose weight?" or some other thing. "What did you change?" They can tell there's a change, they just don't know what it is.
Well, there a bit more than I'd meant to write. Nice to be able to find some internet in this corner of the house (I thank the neighbors.)
Phran
In another life, a long time ago.
I was born physically male. Yet, when I was very young I was beaten much for being too effiminate. He wanted to "beat the woman out of me".
Around age 5, I put my sister's skirt on and innocently walked into the living room with the rest of the family. When asked if I wanted to be a little girl, I said yes. What hell on earth that caused !
Forcefully indoctrinated into being male, I eventually developed the swagger, the obscene vocabulary, the spitting and all the mannerisims of a male.
I married and raised three children; though my own son recently told me that he could always tell I was miserable but he did not know why. It was the un-natural feeling role. Looking back, I needed a husband; someone to nurture and protect me. Instead I had to do all that. I was a doting and loving father as I slowly died inside.
During my early adult years, I rode motorcycles, broke horses, topped very tall trees, remodeled houses, did white water rafting, etc. In short, if it was not dangerous, don't bother me. Modern psychologists recognize this as the super masculine stage that some transwomen experience.
One day, everything fell apart, and I started being me. Immediately, people thought I had gone gay or something. I was still living like a man, but I lacked credibility. My own wife suddenly began saying that I "presented like a gay man". What blind bias !
I was never Gay; never had sex with a man willingly, though I was raped by several other teens as a teen.
When I came out for the second time
, I moved into life as a woman with natural grace. The voice was the most difficult. I was never told that I walked like a man, or acted like one.
I moved into my correct gender with little difficulty and was never nervous about it for even one second.
We can hide our true gender but we will never be happy.
Merry Christmas
Gwen
The allegory of TG
JL,
I think you might be missing something here. TG fiction is not just about gender. I have come to think that the whole genre is really an allegory for something else. Everyone in the world feels restrained by social roles - class, education, geography, size . . . as well as gender. We spend a lot of our lives fighting against those restraints to find our selves. For a few people (and they appear in at most half of these stories.) the struggle is a very, very clear thing, they are the ones trapped in the wrong form of body.
I think this is the important factor to the majority of the readers, the gender struggle in itself is not personal to them, but other types of less defined social struggles are.
(It doesn't hurt that 'gender' comes so close to 'sex' either, and there probably are many (especially with the x and r rated stuff) that are dealing with their on homosexual urges that they won't admit ("If he looks like a girl, I ain't gay, right?" "And don't ever let the 'man' give pleasure to the 'girl' or perform any queer acts either." [Yeah, sure]) But this is not always a necessary element in the psyche of the reader or of the story.)
I think this explains the popularity of force; the expression of independence is at the same time its punishment, and again the victim is trapped in a new social role that he can not easily adapt to. All of which is inflicted by the Other (always a woman), making him kind and gentle and soft (the cult of the feminine) while all the true shes are cruel, harsh and rough. (moral = stay in your place.)
Not all the stories rely on force, there are also the voluntary explorations (escapes from one role to the other), but to work in the allegory the behavior can't be realistic, there must be the extreme differences.
For many of the writers of these stories things are often different; for many of them the gender struggle is very real and very personal. But there (I promise) it helps a great deal to distance the story from the reality too. And the stories that come too close too the reality muddy the allegory. ("Get the guy in a dress and hurry it up; who cares if most women only wear such things once a month or less.")
I think you might under value the struggles of your 'genderqueer' friends (maybe even a deliberate Pollyanna view of yourself?? Or maybe you're just expressing it that way.). This is never easy, and as one ages, it gets harder and harder and harder. It is possible for a few to survive forever within the avant guarde, but not for all, even the fringe occupations (artist, designer, etc.) have limits and require talents that do not (actually) always come with being TG or gay or androgynous.
Just some thought of mine that haven't even coalesced into an opinion yet, and that aren't that easy to express clearly or fully. It probably just bs. but I hope it helps or adds fuel to your thoughts. And I hope I've done so without offending anyone.
One question though: Why do you talk about androgynous boys but butch girls? Surely, girls may be androgynous too, can't they? And a totally androgynous boy - in behavior, presentation, and affect - would be indistinguishable from a girl equally androgynous, true? (A secret goal of mine for all society - don't tell anyone about it.) However, in my own small circle there are 'women' (genetic who wish to transition and that have absolutely no desire to do so), who behave more stereotypically male than any male would be allowed to within our little social microcosm; the same is true with some feminine males. This, of course, proves our on impositions of gender restraints.
Joy; Jan
Interesting thoughts. I
Interesting thoughts. I tend to ignore the sadistic forced fem side of TG fiction because I don't like them, but as you say they play an important part in what constitutes TG fiction. One that I had not give full consideration to. I have to admit that I'm a little unsure if sadistic forced fem even really falls into the same genre as most of the stories I like, and that I'm just not interested in it enough to make a thorough enough study to form a real opinion about it.
As for undervaluing the struggles, I don't think so. I mean I am genderqueer, and visibly androgynous. I started getting call miss, and being told I was a pretty boy by people who didn't mean it as a compliment at an early age. So I'm not being all "some of my best friends are gay/tg/whatever". I do have first hand experience in the matter. Now, admittedly, I'm comfortable with myself, I don't really feel any need to try and be more masculine, or more feminine. Hell, I'm not sure I could pull masculine off. I can cut my hair off, not shave(not that it makes much difference), walk in someplace in jeans and a tshirt and still get the random pronoun treatment, from experience. Although, I've had better luck in the opposite direction, but androgynous feels like me, if I step it up to full on feminine I feel like I'm putting on a show. So you know, I can only speak from where I'm coming from, but this is my blog so I'm guessing that's ok. :) I also accept that the fact that I tend to ride the gender line heavily influences just how I view gender.
As for your one question, I replaced a word I was afraid some people might find offensive with butch. It's a word that's not offensive among my friends, but I thought I'd be a little tactful there. Course I realize some people don't like genderqueer either, but I DO so I decided people could just deal with that one. You're secret goal is also safe with me, although I'm interested in the means by which bigenderists can be properly subjugated and controlled. :)
JL
Gender is complicated... and fun
I'm all for reveling in gender anachronisms, stereotype-messing, missteps, faux pas-ing, queering and rule-breaking, especially if that's who you are.
However, in a world where people hurt you and scare you for being gender-different (the world many trans-people grew up in), the fantasy of being happy in a gender role they can *understand*, or even a safe, comfortable stereotype, is an attractive one.
Three cheers for gender-fuck and the people who understand it.
Three more for being a 50s princess... and accepted.
Thanks. I liked your comment.
Michelle
50's princess
UM, that would be me. :)
Gwen
Princess Power!
Surely not... NOT *crinolines*??
Michelle
P.S. I know... don't call you Shirley...
Gender, Desire, and Fetish
Yes, it's much more complicated than the simplistic interpretations you find in some stories. Some authors do a much more realistic take on things, in my humble opinion, than others. Like we were discussing on another thread here, the TG "genre" is actually a collection of many, many subgenres. Different ones appeal to different types of readers.
As far as sexuality goes, I once wrote a very brief summary of the seven scales of sexuality (click here), based on a PowerPoint presentation I found on the web that was given by a psychiatric practitioner who specializes in treating the transgendered, after we discussed it in a chatgroup for awhile.
As you note, Presentation is but part of one of those scales ("Aesthetic"), and most people vary their presentation based on circumstance.
For those of us who have a strong, but repressed, desire to cross gender lines, it sometimes happens that all they can see is the Presentation aspect, because in large measure, that's the aspect they feel has been denied to them. And, for better or worse, some aspects, or sub-genres, of TG Fiction are describing fetishes.
Anyway, my advice is live, and let live. Read the stuff you enjoy reading, ignore the stuff you don't, and if you have a better idea of what kind of fiction you would like to read, then write some of it to share with others like you.
Oh, I agree %100 with most
Oh, I agree %100 with most of what you said, I just want to point out that this was purely me expressing random semi developed thoughts. Not attacking anyone, or the fiction that they like, I just thought writing it down might help me to refine the idea down to something that made more sense to me. :) So it's just all really just ideas and rambling from my end. But I kinda followed your advice in the last line, good advice by the way, in that I enjoy reading ideas and rambling about gender, so I wrote some down.
JL
Gender is not complicated
Gender is realively simple. It is your mindset not your anatomy. Your anatomy determines your sex plain and simple.
There are blood test done now to determine chromosomes, hormone levels and xy or xx factors and their multiples.
A child can be born inetersexed, what is their gender? It becomes a wait and see situation, Let the child determine their own gender. By age three a child actually knows their correct gender contrary to the popular belief that age seven is the age of awareness or reasoning.
Gender is from the mind.
Jill Micayla
May you have a wonderful today and a better tomorrow
Jill Micayla
Be kinder than necessary,Because everyone you meet
Is fighting some kind of battle.
...
The thing about fiction, any faction, is that nothing is understated. Its like drawing a cartoon, if you want someone to smile or look really happy they have great big grins. In fiction you lose a lot of the fine detail, that in real life you pick up from body language, the color of the sky... etc.
So in TG fiction a male to female character pretty much has to present themselves as female, in all the fiction I have read I can't off hand think of the amount of stories where as a female the boy/man only sort of looked like a girl. That might have been the start but when they were en femme, they really were... The same can be said in reverse I'd imagine but I tend not to read things like that.
If sexual and gender stereo types were used as they are in real life, and the extra color was removed from the story, then yes the story may better reflect life but equally I doubt as many would read them.
In rules are rules, the main character is androgynous already, putting him in a dress makes him look female, I'm guessing that if he were to wear standard teen male clothes and have standard teen male behaviors no-one would even consider him to be female (story wise), in real life as it has been pointed out its much more complicated than that.
But as an example from real life. A long time ago I did some work experience in a local school, the school had pupils from the age of 4 to 12 (Junior and Infant school) I helped in the upper end of the school, working with the kids mainly but also doing some preparation work for the teachers.
In class five (juniors so aged 10-11) there was a young child, lets call them Sam (not their name but it was similar). Their appearance gave no gender clues, s/he was either a tomboy or a boy. Last time I saw her she must have been about 16 and there was entirely no mistaking her true gender. Yet for over a year I assumed she was a he based on looks, behavior and lack of distinguishing name.
It sounds like a story that I'd write, it sounds like a lot of stories I have read. But its real. :D
JC
The Legendary Lost Ninja