# Some People See Me as THE STRAIGHT DOPE **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [October 23, 2017, 12:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/some-people-see-me-as-the-straight-dope/799626 "2017-10-23T12:53:51Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 8
**Author:** ![Penfeather](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/penfeather/32/384_2.png) [@Penfeather](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Penfeather)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2017, 1:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/some-people-see-me-as-the-straight-dope/799626/141 "2017-10-28T01:28:13Z")
> [@AHunter3](#): > > I do hope you, having read this entire longwinded constellation of traits and whatnot, now have a clearer idea, but you should think of all the sections above this as contributing to this final verb, the act of identifying, counterintuitively and unexpectedly, with the people of the opposite sex instead of those of the same sex. Valuing relationships, wanting to get on with people and liking autumn are not exclusively feminine traits. They’re not even _particularly_ feminine traits. ---
**Author:** ![Penfeather](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/penfeather/32/384_2.png) [@Penfeather](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Penfeather)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2017, 1:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/some-people-see-me-as-the-straight-dope/799626/142 "2017-10-28T01:37:34Z")
Most of your problems seem to stem from your having a narrow, constricting and caricatured view of masculinity: if I value close relationships over quick easy sex, I must be somehow feminine. ---
**Author:** ![you\_with\_the\_face](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/ecccb3/32.png) [@you\_with\_the\_face](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/you_with_the_face)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2017, 1:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/some-people-see-me-as-the-straight-dope/799626/143 "2017-10-28T01:49:07Z")
I appreciate you taking the time to write about how your gender is expressed, **AHunter3**. Hopefully you don’t feel like you’re on trial here, But it’s great that this time there’s an actual discussion rather than just a lecture. You listed a lot of traits that, in their totality, contribute to your identity as “one of the girls”. What you’ve told us, however, is that you are not transgender; I infer you consider yourself male in some fundamental way that trans woman does not. Your post didn’t really explain this part of your identity, though. So I have two questions: 1. How significantly different is a “male girl” from a trans “girl”? If femininity could be quantified in a biological male, with 0 representing the macho extreme and 100 representing Blanche Devereaux essentially trapped in a man’s body, would a “male girl” be like a 75 and a trans woman be a few points higher? 2. Do you understand why most people would consider some of this to be hair splitting? If you’re talking to people who are open-minded enough to accept the existence of transgender individuals, they probably already understand the idea that some people might strongly identify with the opposite gender while not quite crossing into trans territory. So is this distinction really in need of sounding off about? ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2017, 2:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/some-people-see-me-as-the-straight-dope/799626/144 "2017-10-28T02:46:36Z")
> [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > I did read the whole thing, and it seems to boil down to a simplistic view of gender essentialism, saying that “men think like _a_”, “women think like _b_”, “men act like _x_”, women act like _y._" … > [@AHunter3](#): > > Repeating the same disclaimer once again, not all female people have these characteristics, nor do all male people who don’t happen to be me lack them, and you know that and I know that, so you aren’t going to reply in a way that just reiterates that or claims that I somehow don’t realize that. ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2017, 2:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/some-people-see-me-as-the-straight-dope/799626/145 "2017-10-28T02:48:08Z")
> [@Penfeather](#): > > Valuing relationships, wanting to get on with people and liking autumn are not exclusively feminine traits. They’re not even _particularly_ feminine traits. … > [@AHunter3](#): > > Repeating the same disclaimer once again, not all female people have these characteristics, nor do all male people who don’t happen to be me lack them, and you know that and I know that, so you aren’t going to reply in a way that just reiterates that or claims that I somehow don’t realize that. ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2017, 2:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/some-people-see-me-as-the-straight-dope/799626/146 "2017-10-28T02:58:05Z")
> [@you\_with\_the\_face](#): > > I appreciate you taking the time to write about how your gender is expressed, **AHunter3**. Hopefully you don’t feel like you’re on trial here, But it’s great that this time there’s an actual discussion rather than just a lecture. > > You listed a lot of traits that, in their totality, contribute to your identity as “one of the girls”. What you’ve told us, however, is that you are not transgender; I infer you consider yourself male in some fundamental way that trans woman does not. Your post didn’t really explain this part of your identity, though. > > So I have two questions: > > 1. How significantly different is a “male girl” from a trans “girl”? If femininity could be quantified in a biological male, with 0 representing the macho extreme and 100 representing Blanche Devereaux essentially trapped in a man’s body, would a “male girl” be like a 75 and a trans woman be a few points higher? I think we should invite trans women to weigh in on this question as well, but my take on it is that SEX is one thing and GENDER is another. A trans woman (or trans girl) does not merely have the gender normally associated with the other sex, she also has the sexual identity – what trans author Julia Serano refers to as _subconscious sex_, essentially a wiring diagram in the brain that insists that there ought to be female parts. Serano distinguishes this entirely from all of the complex mess of behaviors and personality characteristics I was writing about above. So I think I am as feminine in the gender sense as a typical trans woman is, but I do not have that wiring-diagram sense of “hey, this male body is all wrong”. I think of it as an utterly different thing, in other words, the embrace of the gender identity versus the disphoria about the body itself. > [@](#): > > 1. Do you understand why most people would consider some of this to be hair splitting? If you’re talking to people who are open-minded enough to accept the existence of transgender individuals, they probably already understand the idea that some people might strongly identify with the opposite gender while not quite crossing into trans territory. So is this distinction really in need of sounding off about? Well, I think your question was an excellent question, and the asking _of it_ and your phrasing thereof indicate to me that hairs must be split. I need to make the distinction as I just did here, between physical dysphoria and identifying with the gender other than the one that normally goes with the body you do have – as two separate things, not as a “lesser than” / “more than” points on a continuum sort of thing. ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2017, 2:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/some-people-see-me-as-the-straight-dope/799626/147 "2017-10-28T02:59:39Z")
> [@Penfeather](#): > > Most of your problems seem to stem from your having a narrow, constricting and caricatured view of masculinity: if I value close relationships over quick easy sex, I must be somehow feminine. … > [@AHunter3](#): > > Repeating the same disclaimer once again, not all female people have these characteristics, nor do all male people who don’t happen to be me lack them, and you know that and I know that, so you aren’t going to reply in a way that just reiterates that or claims that I somehow don’t realize that. Most of your problems seem to stem from an absence of reading comprehension. Plus, perhaps, an excess of hostility. ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2017, 3:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/some-people-see-me-as-the-straight-dope/799626/148 "2017-10-28T03:04:55Z")
> [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > Would you conciser all of these to be valid gender identities?: > > male girl > male woman > male boy > male man > female girl > female woman > female boy > female man Yes, excellent!! Sorry I missed this part in the process of being dismissive of the first part that you wrote. Or (to split more hairs) they are all combinations of gender and sex identity, where “male” and “female” are sex and “girl”, “woman”, “man”, and “boy” are gender terms. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2017, 3:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/some-people-see-me-as-the-straight-dope/799626/149 "2017-10-28T03:13:30Z")
> [@AHunter3](#): > > Repeating the same disclaimer once again, not all female people have these characteristics, nor do all male people who don’t happen to be me lack them, and you know that and I know that, so you aren’t going to reply in a way that just reiterates that or claims that I somehow don’t realize that. Hanging a lampshade on it doesn’t make it not true. ---
**Author:** ![Moriarty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/moriarty/32/49_2.png) [@Moriarty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Moriarty)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2017, 3:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/some-people-see-me-as-the-straight-dope/799626/150 "2017-10-28T03:30:35Z")
Thank you for providing a more clear view of what you are talking about. It is my observation that you are battling what you perceive as fairly rigid gender roles. If I may ask, was their any imposing influence on your childhood who shared this view, or who lived by some extreme gender role? In other words, who taught you how boys and girls “normally” behave? ---
**Author:** ![Penfeather](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/penfeather/32/384_2.png) [@Penfeather](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Penfeather)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2017, 3:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/some-people-see-me-as-the-straight-dope/799626/151 "2017-10-28T03:37:30Z")
> [@AHunter3](#): > > … > Most of your problems seem to stem from an absence of reading comprehension. Plus, perhaps, an excess of hostility. > [@](#): > > Repeating the same disclaimer once again, not all female people have these characteristics, nor do all male people who don’t happen to be me lack them, and you know that and I know that, so you aren’t going to reply in a way that just reiterates that or claims that I somehow don’t realize that. My reading comprehension is fine; it’s your ability to express yourself clearly that is woefully lacking. I’m about through with this anyway since you’re clearly only interested in repeating how special it is to be you. You don’t want a discussion, you want a soapbox. ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2017, 3:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/some-people-see-me-as-the-straight-dope/799626/152 "2017-10-28T03:49:19Z")
> [@Moriarty](#): > > Thank you for providing a more clear view of what you are talking about. > > It is my observation that you are battling what you perceive as fairly rigid gender roles. If I may ask, was their any imposing influence on your childhood who shared this view, or who lived by some extreme gender role? In other words, who taught you how boys and girls “normally” behave? I don’t really agree with that; I think most people have internalized at least as pervasive a set of gendered expectations. No one in particular taught me how boys and girls “normally” behave so much as everyone and everything, collectively – the ongoing “background noise” of the entire society – did so. I actually lived in a sort of pro-androgyny denial of how pervasive those expectations were, dismissing my difference from them as relatively meaningless because only sexist fools believed there were real differences between the sexes and I was onboard with feminism and the dismissal of all that. After all, I knew I was male and was fine with the idea that I was an exception, hence exceptions existed and it was OK for us to exist. But the boys – not as I was taught that they behave but as they actually, in real life, in general, _did_ behave – was different from how the girls behaved. My generalization, my experience. Call me sexist if you want. I did know it was only a generalization. ---
**Author:** ![monstro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba9def/32.png) [@monstro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monstro)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2017, 4:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/some-people-see-me-as-the-straight-dope/799626/153 "2017-10-28T04:04:35Z")
As a scientist, I like my generalizations to be informed by facts. Is there any empirical evidence that most women have the traits that you describe and most men do not? I am imaging how I would feel if you were a woman describing all the ways you’re a “man”. Like if you told us, “All my friends are guys. Long-term relationships aren’t my thing. I just want to have fun and have sex, not settle down. I love to goof off and tell jokes, the raunchier the better. I’m super competitive and prefer working alone. I like my movies to be full of violence and explosions and thrill, none of that mushy romance stuff. Besides my necklaces and bracelets, I can’t abide by any jewelry. My last boyfriend told me I walk like a lumberjack, even when I wear high heels (which I love by the way, don’t ask me why). I don’t get along with other women, so I consider myself one of the guys. Aren’t I special?” If I heard a story like this, I’d feel the exact same way I feel about your story. I can concede a woman with such a story is probably not within one or even 1.5 standard deviations of the “average woman.” But I wouldn’t think she was that special. And I wouldn’t be curious enough to probe deeper into her personality. Because I suspect she isn’t going to tell me anything I haven’t heard before. I suspect she’s got tales of woe from childhood about how mean the kids were to her on the playground–especially the girls. I suspect she will tell me about how the grown-ups in her life scolded her for not being “lady like” and how they would outwardly expressed their worry about her being a lesbian, despite her obvious heterosexuality. I suspect she will tell me she rubs people–usually women–the wrong way with her frankness and assertiveness. I suspect she will eventually tell me she can’t stand being around women because she finds them too catty and petty and silly (of course she will hasten to add the “not all women” disclaimer so as not to offend). I hear bits and pieces of these stories all the time. Sometimes in real life and almost everywhere I turn on the internet. “I’m not like other girls,” these women like to say. Sometimes I wonder who the “other girls” are since no one wants to be one of them. No, men don’t do this to the same degree. It is still cool to be “one of the guys”. But I still question whether a guy who plays the “I’m not like other guys” card is as special as he thinks he is. ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2017, 4:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/some-people-see-me-as-the-straight-dope/799626/154 "2017-10-28T04:23:17Z")
> [@monstro](#): > > As a scientist, I like my generalizations to be informed by facts. > > Is there any empirical evidence that most women have the traits that you describe and most men do not? Think carefully about exactly how a sociologist or social psychologist would go about operationalizing those variables. Yeah. You see the problem, right? You quickly end up with layers of interpretation, not only at the variable-defining stage but at the example-recognizing stage. You can still express an opinion when you’re done but it’s not going to be appreciably more detached from the matrix of social mythologies and belief systems _about_ gender differences than statements made by the people being studied. I myself can’t separate out what I actually observed from what I was socially conditioned to anticipate observing, and I daresay neither can you, or anyone else. I have, at no point in this thread, made the claim that these, or any other differences, exist intrinsically as differences between male and female people. As Elizabeth Janeway once said, > [@](#): > > If we limit ourselves to what we know for sure about innate psychological differences between the sexes we can go no further than to say that their existence is an unresolvable hypothesis. What we can say besides is that there is little need to believe that men and women areborn with psychological differences built into their brains because the workings of society and culture, by themselves, are perfectly capable of producing all the differences we know so well, and in my opinion they have. If you’re trying to convince me that men do not actually have traits from Set A and women have traits from Set B, intrinsically as opposed to some percent of them having internalized the notion that they’re _supposed_ to, exacerbated by my tendency as observer to see their behavior skewed in those directions because I’ve been socialized to do so, you’re really preaching to the choir here. I’m already on board with that. But social beliefs and expectations are part of reality. Social reality. And if you want to claim that, no, nearly no one in our society harbors any _beliefs_ that men and women have differences, I think that would constitute an extraordinary claim you’re unlikely to be able to back up. ---
**Author:** ![Arrendajo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e0b2c6/32.png) [@Arrendajo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Arrendajo)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2017, 4:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/some-people-see-me-as-the-straight-dope/799626/155 "2017-10-28T04:53:04Z")
Yeah, but what makes you so special? ---
**Author:** ![monstro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba9def/32.png) [@monstro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monstro)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2017, 5:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/some-people-see-me-as-the-straight-dope/799626/156 "2017-10-28T05:40:17Z")
> [@AHunter3](#): > > Think carefully about exactly how a sociologist or social psychologist would go about operationalizing those variables. > > Yeah. You see the problem, right? You quickly end up with layers of interpretation, not only at the variable-defining stage but at the example-recognizing stage. You can still express an opinion when you’re done but it’s not going to be appreciably more detached from the matrix of social mythologies and belief systems _about_ gender differences than statements made by the people being studied. Science is all about interpretation. People can interpret the same data in different ways, but that is a problem in all scientific endeavors. Not just sociology. That’s why we have peer review and take classes in experimental design. I’m not asking for unassailable, irrefutable _proof_. I’m asking for empirical evidence, and I’m asking for it sincerely. Not to be argumentative, but so I can get a broader understanding of what you’re talking about. Except for wearing jewelry and skirts, none of those traits you described describe me. I don’t think I’m very womanly, and yet I don’t feel the need to tack on a “boy” or “guy” descriptor. Indeed, I feel little kinship with guys. Now, I don’t have a problem identifying as an exception to the gender rules. But I am curious if I really am an exception, and if so, how much? Do you think I’m an unusual woman? If you were to read a description from a woman that sounded like what I posted above (“My last boyfriend told me I walk like a lumberjack, even when I wear high heels…”), would you think “Oh, a fellow gender gueer!” Or would you think, “This woman is one those annoying ‘not like other girls’.” > [@](#): > > I myself can’t separate out what I actually observed from what I was socially conditioned to anticipate observing, and I daresay neither can you, or anyone else. I don’t know what this means. Almost sounds like you’re saying there are no such things as facts and findings, just opinions and feelings. I can’t agree with that. > [@](#): > > I have, at no point in this thread, made the claim that these, or any other differences, exist intrinsically as differences between male and female people. But you are arguing that because you exhibit a list of traits, you are more like the latter than the former. Intrinsically or not, you are positing that men tend do it like _this_, while women tend do it like\* that\*. Gender differences certainly do exist, there’s no doubt about that. But if we were to discover that many of the traits you describe don’t cleanly break along gender lines, how would this affect your self-concept? Would you feel any less “man girl” if we were to find out that, say, 40% men are relationship nurturers, despite what stereotypes may portray? > [@](#): > > But social beliefs and expectations are part of reality. Social reality. And if you want to claim that, no, nearly no one in our society harbors any _beliefs_ that men and women have differences, I think that would constitute an extraordinary claim you’re unlikely to be able to back up. Let me come at it from a different way. A lot of people believe that black people are different from white people. Whether they believe the differences are intrinsic or not doesn’t matter. They look at a black person and expect them to be into R&B and hip hop, to speak Ebonically, to be athletic and sensual, and to be more emotional than intellectual. So let’s say you’re of African American descent. You like classic rock. You can’t get the hang of the habitual “be”. You’re a klutz with no rhythm, no swagger. And you’re as icy as Mr. Spock. Does this make you any less black? I mean, sure, “black” is just a label, and if it doesn’t fit, you have the right to swap it out for something else. But “black” isn’t the problem. The problem is that black has been narrowly defined with bullshit generalizations. Now, I wouldn’t have a personal problem if you decided to eschew “black” and make up your own label. It’s a free country and I’m all about self-identification, even if it doesn’t make sense to me. But defying generalizations that I don’t even believe wouldn’t make you interesting to me. And I don’t find a guy who is into nurturing relationships to be a fascinating creature since I don’t presume that this is some kind of anomaly. ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2017, 10:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/some-people-see-me-as-the-straight-dope/799626/157 "2017-10-28T10:17:47Z")
> [@monstro](#): > > Intrinsically or not, you are positing that men tend do it like this, while women tend do it like that. Gender differences certainly do exist, there’s no doubt about that. But if we were to discover that many of the traits you describe don’t cleanly break along gender lines, how would this affect your self-concept? Would you feel any less “man girl” if we were to find out that, say, 40% men are relationship nurturers, despite what stereotypes may portray? I think that something that would change ( or would have changed) my perception would be if quite a few more guys were posting in response to my self-description “Hey, I’m male and except for not identifying as a ‘male girl’, a lot of what you said is true for me as well”, and shared more about their own experience, and if throughout the board guys posted from that kind of vantage point in threads about dating and being a man and so forth. And that my voice didn’t perpetually sound to me like a really rare one. I spent 20 years basically approaching this as a “men’s libber”, not expressing it in terms of me being different but as a male rejecting the narrative about what men are like. I tried to find like-minded folks who were angry about the hostility and dismissive contempt directed towards those of us who don’t embrace the “masculinity” act, and I assumed that either men in general were _not_ like that or that only some were and that a significant portion weren’t, and that either way there had to be a contingent of guys like me who had been through what I’d been through and wanted to speak back to it. I used words like “masculinized”, describing it as a political process. I claimed words like “sissy” proudly, but with the notion that it had nothing to do with BEING different so much as no longer being silenced about it. It’s not that I never hear “You are like me” from any other male people but a) it’s rare and b) rather than correcting me about my silly notions about feeling like it practically makes me one of the women they say I’ve given them a lot to think about. They say things like “I never ran into ideas quite like this, it’s an interesting way to look at it, it kind of fits although I’ve never considered it in quite those terms”. ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2017, 10:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/some-people-see-me-as-the-straight-dope/799626/158 "2017-10-28T10:26:21Z")
> [@monstro](#): > > Science is all about interpretation. People can interpret the same data in different ways, but that is a problem in all scientific endeavors. Not just sociology. That’s why we have peer review and take classes in experimental design. > > I’m not asking for unassailable, irrefutable proof. I’m asking for empirical evidence, and I’m asking for it sincerely. Not to be argumentative, but so I can get a broader understanding of what you’re talking about. When I was a sociology grad student I tried to pursue a dissertation on it, along with research into the specific experiences of sissy/femme males who were hetero. I’d like more empirical evidence myself, shine more light into that room. The professors I sought to be advisors discouraged me, saying that so much of it (masculine versus feminine) boils down to nuances of behavior that are very difficult to define and operationalize in ways that folks reading the research would agree (“Yeah, they measured masculinity in that study and found that men are only more marginally more masculine on average…”) and that vast chunks of it aren’t directly manifested as behaviors at all and could only be self-reported or attributed. ---
**Author:** ![you\_with\_the\_face](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/ecccb3/32.png) [@you\_with\_the\_face](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/you_with_the_face)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2017, 2:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/some-people-see-me-as-the-straight-dope/799626/159 "2017-10-28T14:44:18Z")
> [@ywtf](#): > > 1. Do you understand why most people would consider some of this to be hair splitting? If you’re talking to people who are open-minded enough to accept the existence of transgender individuals, they probably already understand the idea that some people might strongly identify with the opposite gender while not quite crossing into trans territory. So is this distinction really in need of sounding off about? > [@AHunter](#): > > Well, I think your question was an excellent question, and the asking of it and **your phrasing thereof indicate to me that hairs must be split**. I need to make the distinction as I just did here, between physical dysphoria and identifying with the gender other than the one that normally goes with the body you do have – as two separate things, not as a “lesser than” / “more than” points on a continuum sort of thing. You fail to explain why these hairs must split, though. It’s clear you think these distinctions are of extreme importance, but to everyone else? it’s like watching someone debate the difference between purple and magenta. Yes, these colors might not be precisely the same but _on a practical level_, their overwhelming similarities make it hard to care about their differences. Which goes back to the first critique I made to you: you presume we care about what you call yourself, and then argue from that position. Recent posts suggests others don’t buy the “male girl” construct as you’ve presented it. But the existence of disagreeing opinions regarding your gender identity should not be conflated with mass interest in being lectured to on your gender identity. If I think magenta and purple are simply next door neighbors on the color spectrum and not vastly distinct on a practical level, I have little incentive in poring through a wall of text that tells me I’m wrong but fails to convincingly explain why being wrong even matters in the grand scheme. ---
**Author:** ![QuickSilver](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quicksilver/32/7832_2.png) [@QuickSilver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/QuickSilver)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2017, 3:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/some-people-see-me-as-the-straight-dope/799626/160 "2017-10-28T15:03:59Z")
> [@AHunter3](#): > > OK, y’all asked, so I wrote it. > > By popular request… > > Repeating the same disclaimer once again, not all female people have these characteristics, nor do all male people who don’t happen to be me lack them, and you know that and I know that, so you aren’t going to reply in a way that just reiterates that or claims that I somehow don’t realize that. > > To begin, [this is me](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dyWeml2rc44) > > **Priorities** —I value the establishing of voluntary cooperation more than I value defeating someone as my favored means of getting my way. My close interpersonal relationships are more important to me than financial success or being seen as a winner or a leader. Within those relationships, I want to be experienced as the listener, the person they can tell things to and expect to be understood, the person who understands their feelings and can sometimes give good advice, even if the advice is just on how to handle situations emotionally. I need to be valued by my friends and partners as a good person but I don’t expect or need my friends and partners to adopt my plans and centralize my needs. Being friends is more important than sex, and sex for me is something best shared with someone I have openness and trust with. > > In nearly every endeavor, the goal or objective is less important than the process by which it is sought. In any argument or dispute, the other person or people see things from a vantage point in which they are in the right, and it is always productive to try to see things from that vantage point one’s own self, to understand the folks you’re trying to communicate with, to perhaps realize that their position in the argument or dispute should prevail over your own, or, if not, to better explain your position in terms that they will understand — so disputes and arguments are not about defeating an adversary but are about sharing viewpoints and having the courage to consider things non-defensively. Courage, in general, is about being honest and allowing one’s self to be affected by others, to risk being changed, to be fully present and to integrate as much of the entirety of what one feels and thinks and cares about into one’s interactions with others as possible, while receiving as much of their thoughts and feelings and considerations as well. The ends rarely justify the means. > > People are of value for how they are, not merely for what they do or how they can serve a utilitarian benefit; their expression of themselves participates in making the world what it is, and those who brighten life are a positive. The individual self is not arrayed against the society, nor has a duty to comply and to be obedient to it, so much as the individual self is a participant, along with others, in forming a social self. We are interdependent, rather than independent. Our individual selfishness is a good, a seeking of the best that can make everything better for everyone when we understand it well. That’s because, as I said, we as individuals aren’t arrayed against the others. There is no need for adversarial struggling for the most part: as long as there’s enough to go around, being at peace with each other is a natural state, and fighting is an anomalous state that isn’t inevitable or necessary most of the time. > > **Tastes & Preferences** — I’m afraid I don’t have a very well-developed sense of humor. I’m ponderously serious and earnest mostly, although I can be silly and I can also see the ridiculous side of things, including myself in all my so-serious earnestly intended self-importance. I like things to be efficient in how they achieve their purpose, but not at the expense of being pretty. Elegance requires both. I like stories with a long slowly-developing plot line, whether in a TV series or a book or other medium, the long story arc with the entertaining episode or scene or chapter in the foreground providing faster and more immediate entertainment but with the long tale unfolding behind it. Corny as it may be, I like music and theater that creates the tension and builds and builds and actually gets you nervous and frazzled and then finally, eventually, explodes in a climactic moment. > > I don’t have a favorite color so much as a favorite color _combination_: rich deep blue (not DARK blue but blue like the Arizona sky in autumn, intense blue) with the contrasting color being a fiery reddish-orange, the redorange of autumn maple leaves. In short, you can understand why I love the northeast fall season when the leaves are changing! (It’s not something I grew up with, I come from Georgia and New Mexico where the fall foliage is quite different). I like classical music, the dramatic stuff like Tchaikovsky and Rimsky-Korsakov and Grieg and Beethoven and Verdi and Rachmaninoff, but also the ethereally shimmery stuff like Sibelius, Vaughn-Williams, Satie, Nystedt and others, and the ones who do a lot of both, like Holst. I can enjoy a good funky jaunty tune (or tale or personality) and I embraced rock (eventually) but I can be put off by perceived coarseness, bluntness, which sometimes pushes me away from things I later discover I like quite well. > > **Postures, Movements, and Gestures** — I sit small, or else I sprawl latitudinally with my legs extended out in front of me, but I don’t tend to sprawl side-to-side. In repose I have the opposite of resting bitch face —I seem to always be smiling. In motion, I tend towards extremes: small and slow movements or else rapid and purposeful. When I cook, my girlfriend says I “dervish”, spinning from one countertop to the next, darting here and there rapidly and leaving her unsure of where she can safely position herself to avoid collisions. When I walk, I stride, fast long walking that covers the ground. When I stand, I am out of people’s path, out of the way, accommodating people as they approach from any direction. I drive that way, too, changing lanes to allow faster people behind me to get around or making room for people coming in from the sides. I futz with my hair a lot when I’m talking to people, a nervous habit I guess. I also stroke my beard, not generally a feminine trait I suppose, although it might be if girls had beards. > > When I’m talking with someone, my hands are usually in my lap, sometimes between my knees. Maybe that helps keep them out of my hair. I flounce, especially when I get more animated, involved in talking. I’m more condensed when listening, sitting more still, letting the other person have the space. I have playful gestures, like I’ll reach past something and come around from behind it to pick it up, carving a sort of swirly shape in the air as I move. I bounce when I walk, making me a pathetic dancer, all spring-loaded on the balls of my feet and boinging around like Tigger from Winnie-the-Pooh. I skip. When I feel shy I often clasp my hands behind my back instead of in front. My partner **allthegood** says I have an array of flirtatous gestures and several times has asked me if I know what I’m doing, if I’m aware of what I’m doing, and I’m not sure. I think there’s a lot that I’m not aware of. > > **Conversations, Vocalizations, and Language Use** — I get “ma’amed” on the phone constantly. People can’t see me and without visual cues I apparently have a voice that people interpret as feminine. Here’s [that link again](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dyWeml2rc44), judge for yourself. I don’t talk particularly fast usually, though; I’m verbose (big big surprise, right?) and folks say I don’t tend to get to the point, so much as I sort of set off on an excursion with an eventual goal of getting to that point. I’m not an interrupter, mostly, although I have a bad habit of chiming in to finish people’s sentences sometimes. I have a quiet voice. In a room full of people, I often get excluded from the conversation because people don’t hear me starting to say something and talk right over me. It’s one of the reasons I prefer a small group. Not the only reason, I think conversations go in more personal and interesting directions in a smaller group, but it’s definitely a factor. I am a very verbal person with a large vocabulary, and I tend to describe things my own way. One of the feminine things I don’t do too much is that thing where you end all your sentences on a rising note as if you’re asking a question. Although I’m not a very funny person, mostly, I can be amused, and I either cackle or giggle when you get me to laugh. > > **Style & Adornments** — There’s a diagram that got floated around on some of the gender boards, a grid on which one dimension is your gender component (masculine, androgynous, or feminine) and the other dimension has to do with how much effort to put into your sense of style and expression. [Here it is](https://i.pinimg.com/736x/11/d5/ab/11d5ab17f6a47d86b35bd8275b69259f.jpg). I’m a swan-sparrow with intermittent ambitions to rise to swan-crow. My default garments are either jeans or skirts coupled with a simple t shirt, with a sweater or jacket or coat thrown over during colder months. I’d never be caught in one of those “suit” things that males tend to wear, the blazer jacket that opens in front down to your navel, with a necktie, and those hideous pants they wear with the side-slit pockets and the loose baggy fit… ugh! I always liked my clothes to fit well enough to contour to the shape of my body. That may be a notion I need to rethink as my belly keeps getting rounder as I age. > > Anyway, I wear my hair long and loose, except when I’m out hiking in which case I bind it up in a bun with bobby pins (to keep it from getting horribly tangled in the wind). I have several sets of post earrings, and I like a design that has a bit of a swirl to it, a creative shape either for the jewel itself or the mounting. I’m terrified of dangly earrings, I’d probably catch them on something. My footwear is exclusively sneakerwear unless it is rainy or snowy and then I put on boots. No way in hell I’d go around in high heels, and you shouldn’t either. They’re really bad for your ankles and feet. Most of my skirts are denim (consistency!) but I do have a couple nicer ones and some white dance tights to wear with them (I have nice curvy legs). I wear necklaces on occasion, and would like to acquire a few more. I hate rings and bracelets and won’t wear them. I trim my own facial hair with a Wahl shaver, and when I take my time and do it right, it ends up looking kempt and intentional and neat. I really should do that more often. I have a small collection of purses and pocketbooks but I only use them if I’m in a skirt that doesn’t have decent pockets, which they don’t tend to but some of mine do. My favorite bag is ALSO denim, with applique designs, very hippie-esque. > > **Flirtations, Seductions, and the Erotic Life** — I will be writing a blog post about this on Monday, specifically about visual aspects of sexuality and how that seems to be a different thing for me than for guys in general. But I can tell you I do like to look, and that it’s sexual for me. I don’t at all like being perceived, interpreted, treated, anticipated, or regarded as an appetite symbol, that whole thing where since I’m male it is assumed that I want sex from women more than they crave sex themselves, or want it in a different way, or that it means something different from what it means to them. That’s a very big thing for me, a very important element of all this. I experience sexual desire as a vulnerability, a needy openness and hunger that I seldom know what to do with. It’s always a little scary as well as exciting. Feeling those feelings does not translate for me into any kind of specific and focused desire to do any particular thing. I’ve always been very private about my own sexual feelings, dating back to being a kid when I had no idea anyone but me ever had such feelings. The ones that accompany the seeing of a sexy woman with sexy shapes and contours don’t have anything to do with her personally, it’s not like she’s aiming that appearance at me personally, and it also doesn’t mean we’d hit it off and be ideal partners or have anything particular in common, and nearly always she, whoever she is, is very much accustomed to being found sexually alluring by males so it isn’t going to be anything special for her to know it’s having that effect on me. > > So I experience it as a power she has, to either act on or not act on in any given situation, and my relationship to it is reactive rather than instigative. For me, sexual feelings are always complicated and bound up with ambivalences, wanting in the larger overall sense for sexual things to happen but not being anywhere near as clear on whether I want them to happen with this particular person at this particular time. I am not passive, and I should be explicit about that: I am aware of the possibilities, and I can and do exchange glances and give the other person the opportunity to look me over and consider the possibilities, and to have a conversation largely composed of gestures and glances and things you put into your voice. It’s sort of like a tennis or ping-pong game, no one is doing all the pushing, there’s always that sense of “your turn or you must not be interested” and that attitude is both a kindness or gift, “I don’t wish to impose this on you”, and also a pride and dignity thing, “I am not available except to those who are seriously about wanting me”. Wanting me personally and not just _some body_. And yes, I think I’m quite different from other males as a collective group, that they nearly all do this differently from how I’m doing it, and I need to be preferred. > > I’m not a prude; I don’t think there’s anything wrong with casual sex, either for other people or for me, myself. But it doesn’t have much appeal for me when compared to the emotional intensity of being with someone I can be noncasual with, be close friends and confidants and take care of each other on a variety of levels and not just the tingly-parts levels. I love to be in love, to get to that state where you’re just glowing with joy about the other person and daydream about them all the time and they seem so perfect. I know there are hormones involved, that it’s a very biochemically-driven process, so what? It’s delicious! I can give of myself and trust openly and completely and really let those feelings build, let it happen. I’m also resilient and a survivor and I am able to take the risk of a broken heart, a sudden unexpected loss of who and what I thought I had, and if and when that does happen I will make it through the misery and live to love again, I know that from experience. I want to play with adult women, passionate women who want this too and have been there and discovered the same. > > I maintain my relationships; I tend them, care for them, for what I and my partners have going between us. Relationships don’t just spring into existence and then exist of their own accord, you have to care about the relationships themselves as well as the other person IN the relationship. I go in expecting to be an equal partner, doing my share of the relationship-maintenance. Incidentally, I have been told over and over by women that they nearly always feel like they are doing this alone, that sustaining romantic relationships is something that women do, that keeping them ticking along, and hence “keeping your man”, is women’s emotional work, and that they rarely feel like they are equally partnered in this respect. (Your mileage may vary of course). > > **General Reactions to the Guys and The Girls, and Theirs to Me** — I don’t have and haven’t tended to have many guy friends, and the friendships I do have with other male folks tends to feel attenuated, flatter, with less personal sharing and less investment and involvement. I’ve spent my life, or at least the portion of it subsequent to 2nd grade, feeling like I was not like them and did not want to be perceived as being like them. Instead, I felt like I had a lot in common with the girls. > > Girls and women have not been particularly quick to see me and designate me as one of them. It’s a more gradual and cautious process. But, yes, long before I began specifically telling people ’ identify as one of you’, I found acceptance among the girls and women, and it tended to grow as they interacted with me and we became pals, folks who hung out together, friends, intimates. > > Boys and adult men have been far quicker to specify that I didn’t seem to them to be one of them. > > This section is really the one that counts, you know. A person’s identity is what they identify as. I do hope you, having read this entire longwinded constellation of traits and whatnot, now have a clearer idea, but you should think of all the sections above this as contributing to this final verb, the act of identifying, counterintuitively and unexpectedly, with the people of the opposite sex instead of those of the same sex. Wow. You need to get over yourself. 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