This must come as news for all the asexual aromantic men and women out there.
Yeah. The real liberal position would be that anyone can dress and act and identify how they like, but other people should not be forced to validate them. It’s like forcing someone to call the Queen ‘your majesty’ - I object to that too. Not to saying it but to being forced to say it.
Well, I am asexual. Which is why I don’t think I have a very strong gender expression or identity. I dress in ways that signal that, yes, I am a female and I have been programmed in ways coherent with the average female in my particular society. But I do not dress or groom myself with the conscious intention of appealing to a specific partner or members of a particular sex. If I woke up tomorrow with a sexuality and the desire to have sex, you better believe I would start doing this. If I wanted to appeal to heterosexual men, I would probably lotion up my legs so they aren’t so ashy, make my hair a little less wild, wear make-up, and shave my pits and maybe pare back on some of my more masculine habits (at least on the first few dates). I know my current costume isn’t signaling “My pussy wants your dick.” It’s signaling, “I’m not interested in dicks right now. kthxbye.”
Since we’re up here talking about woman and evereything, I think if you were to ask the average woman whether she went through a stage when her “costume” (dress, mannerisms, etc.) was shaped by her intention to acquire a romantic or sexual partner, she would say yes. And if you asked the average woman if she has ever assessed any parts of the “costume” of potential partners to determine compatibility, she would say yes too. I’m gonna take a wild guess and say that genitalia would be a HUGE part of that equation. If you really want some D, you aren’t going to be thrilled about dating someone without D. If you want to munch on some P, seeing that only D is on the menu is going to disappoint you. You don’t have to be Dr. Ruth to understand this very basic thing.
Pansexuals and demisexuals might be attracted to invisible mental states, but the vast majority of people aren’t like this. They aren’t craving mental states. They are craving biological parts. The costumes we wear help to signal to others what kind of biological parts we have so that no one has to do any asking.
I’m trying to see the consistency between these two posts here, really I am, but I’m not succeeding. Either your gender expression is actually signalling your sexuality, or you’re just fitting in. You can’t be doing both.
I’m noting asexual aromantics are often not androgynous at all. So gender expression is clearly more than just about the Ds and Ps. Not even potential ones.
And obviously we’re not talking about the vast majority of people here, and more the corner cases. That’s the nature of the space we’re talking about.
I can’t take that assumption as Gospel because it is too simplistic. Because of social pressures and expectations, people who have alternative gender preferences are often stressed and conflicted and can feel many different things and express themselves in many different ways literally from day to day.
Fair enough - but at any given moment someone either is really expressing their sexuality OR they’re not. Which one it is can change, that’s not the issue. I’m just saying that “gender expression is only signalling your sexuality” is not true.
I agree. I am a “go along to get along” person so I wear clothing that enables me to “go along to get along” as much as possible without sacrificing my wants. I don’t want people to treat me like a weirdo, even though I often feel like a weirdo. But if I lived in a society where one’s physical appearance wasn’t a factor in discrimination (social as well as employment), I would feel a lot more comfortable dressing/grooming outside of gender norms. Whenever I do dress or groom outside of gender norms and another woman criticizes me for it, it hurts, not gonna lie. (Just like it hurts when another black person accuses me of “acting white”.) So to avoid that hurt, I get with the social programming and try to do “female”, but with my personal spin.
If I were sexual and trying to find a mate, no way would I dress however I want without any care to what others think. Assuming I were heterosexual, I would dress however I want but within the standards necessary to acquire a straight male partner. I would not expect the average straight male partner to be able to overlook my light mustache and chin hair, so I would remove these features. I would not expect the average straight male to be enamored by my raggedy Tevas and even raggedier feet. And I would not expect the average straight male to be attracted to me if I wore men’s clothing and had a noticeable bump between my legs. Because these things are not signaling to the average straight guy “person you’d want to smash”.
Expecting an average lesbian ciswoman to be attracted to a male with a full beard, a dick, and testosterone coursing their their blood is expecting a little too much. Just because that male might be wearing the clothing of a butch lesbian does not mean their overall costume is signaling “person you’d want to smash” to the average lesbian ciswoman. It’s kind of crazy that anyone would be surprised by this.
It’s complicated. How can you separate out looking and acting a certain way to fit in with society, to appear more attractive to get better treatment in general (halo effect), to be more attractive to your partner, more attractive to potential sexual partners in general, for your own aesthetic pleasure, or because you’re internalised certain standards and feel like you have to?
Probably a fair amount of gender expression arose to try and be more attractive to potential partners, but people who aren’t interested in that still act in similar ways because they’ve been socialised to do so or just want to fit in.
I’ll add that a lot this probably operates on a subconscious level, just like most habits do. When we adopt a particular style of dress and grooming, we’re not consciously thinking “these nifty cargo pants are the thing that are gonna snag me some girls” or “guys are into earrings like this, so I’m gonna wear these earrings”. But I do believe most people subconsciously put themselves in the shoes of the people they’re trying to attract and model themselves after the image they think their prospective paramours like. Those who don’t do this (or do it poorly) tend to struggle with dating.
When women get large breast implants, they often say they are only doing it for themselves, not for men. And I believe they are not lying about that, at least not consciously. But a woman’s self-image doesn’t emerge from a vacuum; the male gaze is an influential force. If she’s internalized the idea that having big breasts is the standard of beauty, then she will feel pressured to conform to that standard. Her desire to have big breasts is not innate; it is a product of socialization.
IMO, the same applies to pretty much everything that we associate with gender. It creates a positive feedback loop that looks like this:
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Feminine gender expression is encouraged in women because society tells women that it is attractive to men; men receive the message that feminine women are attractive, so they become biased towards feminine women.
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Masculine gender expression is encouraged in men because society tells men that it is attractive to women; women receive the message that masculine men are attractive, so they become biased towards masculine men.
Here’s my theory for why we see more diverse gender expressions among bisexuals, gays and lesbians: They are either operating more independently from the programming that influences straight people (i.e. a lesbian is less emotionally invested in catering to the male gaze, so she’ll be more free to express herself in other ways) and/or they adopt an aesthetic that they subconsciously believe most appeals to desired same-sex mates (i.e. expressing a masculine style to attract interest from more feminine people).
But all of this stuff is window dressing when you get down to it. Gender expression is the human equivalent to peacock feathers. There is not enough substance to it to form the basis of human sexuality. Part 4 of the Duncan essay did a good job of explaining why: when the clothes and accessories come off, all you have are naked bodies with naked genitalia. If your sexual orientation makes you wired for one set of genitalia but not another, you can not will yourself to ignore this very primal and fundamental thing. This is not transphobia. It’s reality.
I think it’s because sexuality is widely seen as something that “healthy, normal” people do. Most people want to appear somewhat healthy and normal even if they aren’t sexual. So they will tend to do what sexual people do by dressing/grooming themselves in accordance to gender norms. Sexual people are the dominant group, so it is hard for asexual people not to find themselves taking some of their behavioral cues from them.
If women started sporting pineapples on their head because men started preferentially selecting women who showcase femininity like this, I probably would get myself a little pineapple hat. Because I wouldn’t want to be the only woman in the office without a pineapple, being an oddball. I wouldn’t sport a big one because I wouldn’t want to attract a lot of male attention. I would get me a little one just so I can blend in and not draw a whole lot of negative attention to myself. Kind of like how I’ll wear a skirt, but not shave my legs and not paint my toenails or wear high heels. I do just enough to let people know I know the program.
It is complicated, but I don’t think it’s that hard to grok how sexuality has a huge influence on human behavior even for people not in the game.
Well, maybe. I think most clothing and appearance choices aren’t even that close to sexual attraction. Most are simply habit, availability, and imitation.
Right now I am wearing a T-shirt, shorts, ad athletic socks. I’m not wearing these things to consciously attract a mate, or even subconsciously. I am wearing them because
- These clothes are what’s available,
- They are consistent with what other people wear and so I will not be made fun of,
- They are appropriate to a hot summer day, so I will feel good, and
- The shirt and shorts go together as an ensemble so I will, again, not be looked down on.
This apparel might be connected to sexual attractiveness INDIRECTLY, as defined by fashion experts who decided these items of clothing were suitable for an adult man (they’re all bought new this year) but that is several steps away from me desiring women. As monstro points out (she is by far the MVP of this thread) it’s not so much that I want to appear sexually attractive, it is that I want to appear normal, and some connection to sexual attractiveness is baked into fashion. If, on the other hand, my wife asks me out to dinner at a fashionable restaurant this weekend, I will more consciously dress to enhance my sexual attractiveness.
Of course, it’s gendered. I am wearing clothes designed for a man, not a woman, in part because they fit correctly but also because, again, I don’t want to stand out or be made fun of. Gendered expectations are sexist, but they’re forced on me, and I can’t be bothered to challenge them.
This is me as well. In my everyday wear, I am quite androgynous. But when I really want to impress others, I tend to pick attire that makes me look sexually attractive since it is hard to look like an interesting, put-together confident person if you aren’t also sexually attractive to a certain degree (especially when you’re female). And I up my gender-normative grooming game as well, because a sexy dress with a hairy legs and face doesn’t scream sexually attractive for most people. I don’t really want to look sexual, but I don’t mind looking sexual if it means people think nice things about me and thus treat me well.
Thanks so much for the compliment, by the way.
Have you seen this article on trans people in sports @YWTF?
It’s all about how there are two sides, one supporting inclusion and the other fairness. But if you look at the comments they are 20-to-1 supporting fairness. 100% of the readers picks are against letting transwomen compete in women’s sports. Someone even remarks how the paper is pushing the ‘two sides’ thing, when there really aren’t. And how misleading it is to associate the ‘fairness’ side with Trump and the republicans when there are plenty of people on the left who believe it.
Dems might as well be a gazelle with two broken legs waiting for the lion to pounce. This story has checkmate all over it.
Only a fringe minority supports gender affirmation in women’s sports. If there was one issue that the Dems could be trying to broker a safe compromise around, it would be this one. But nope. Too much to ask for, I guess.
I laughed, but 4 more years of Trump isn’t exactly a laughing matter. If Republicans are trying to show that Dems support politically correct ideology over common sense, then this is the perfect opportunity.
Something else another commenter pointed out: There are 4 pictures of athletes in the article, all of trans women. They are humanised and treated sympathetically by the media, the cis women athletes who lost to them remain faceless.
Headlines from the mainstream press consistently frame the issue from the perspective of transwomen. The human interest story is almost always told from their POV, but not the girls and women concerned about the loss of fairness and opportunity. I rarely if ever see quotes from the female athletes who have played with or against transwomen.
And then there are articles like the one below:
Ok, so there are “dozens” of academics that have criticized World Rugby. A female athlete is also quoted who is supportive of trans inclusiveness. No prob. But the article doesn’t mention the large number of people and groups who support World Rugby’s conclusions. No mention of other works that corroborate the finding that male physical advantage is retained even after a year of estrogen therapy. No one other than World Rugby is quote in defense of World Rugby.
The journalistic slant is hard to miss.
Transwomen in sports is not an issue that a significant number of voters are even aware of, and the tiny percentage of those who would even be aware some Democrats feel transwomen should be in women’s sports AND who would be willing to vote Trump as a result of that issue is so miniscule it might not reach three digits, and will have no effect on the election.
True, but it’s not the only issue where the left is severely out of step with the majority, and blindingly convinced of their own superiority. At this point I’m pretty much expecting Trump to be re-elected.
The right is much more blindingly out of step, though. I’m not super optimistic about the future, but I’m not going to blame the trans issue if the Dems lose in November. I’m going to blame Russia.
I wouldn’t blame the trans issue, I guess I just see it as a symptom of a larger problem.
But the fact something like half of Americans don’t vote suggests the big two parties aren’t doing a great job of representing their views.