And amusingly enough, I find Ahunter3’s theories only seem to be enforcing those notions, instead of trying to break them down. He may not INTEND that, but that’s exactly how he comes off.
You live in a world where certain expectations are still tied to gender, but there is greater acceptance in people ignoring these expectations. In fact, actually laughing at these expectations is where we largely are now.
Could you give one example of a “behavior code or rule” that would cause a man’s card to be instantly revoked by the general public?
Caitlyn Jenner.
That’s what I got out of most of his writings.
Yes, there is greater acceptance of people ignoring these exceptions. You can thank pushy people like me to a significant extent for that. We’re not done yet. Maybe you are satisfied with the status quo, I don’t know, but I’m not.
What I can give you — effortlessly — is evidence that gendered expectations still persist.
The entire subject of “explicit consent” is heavily packed with the expectation that the male person is asking for the consent and the female person is consenting (or opting to not do so). Now, yes, it is also populated with participants who don’t make that assumption, but that doesn’t make the presence of that assumption irrelevant. The people who do think that way are not perceived as outside of the norm by those who don’t think that way. And the people who do think that way think the folks who don’t are delusional about “real sex differences”.
The SDMB thread I linked to is just one local, immediately current example of the ongoing cultural dialog on the subject. The dope is pretty progressive. Read the thread. The situation where it is the male seeking consent is established from the start {ETA: well, post #12}; tell me when you get to the first place where the hypothetical person seeking consent is described as a she, or where the person of whom the consent is being asked happens to be a he. You can even count male-male or female-female scenarios, although those don’t directly question the hegemony of the heterosexual dynamic.
Yep. “In this world there is only girl stuff and boy stuff, and I’m a boy who likes girl stuff so I must be some kind of virtually unique girl-boy. Discuss, at length and in terms of only fawning approval, how unique and ground-breaking I am.” Only, y’know, in about 5000 words.
Pfffft! Oh please. 5000 words is an abstract. That’s the little part you do in italics on the grownup writings for people to decide whether or not to actually read the thing.
Ooh, did you just assert that entrenched social attitudes to gender roles, which have traditionally seen men in positions of power and control - boys get toy trucks and diggers, girls get toy hairdressing salons - and relegated women to roles of passive support, have only changed because some guy thought it was a good idea? You old chauvinist, you did, didn’t you? What else should women be grateful to you for?
If, hypothetically speaking, it were a world that only had “girl stuff and boy stuff”, and I was trying to change that situation, then at the very moment that I make the first teeny weeny itsy bitsy smallest bit of progress, it would have ceased to be a world that only had “girl stuff and boy stuff”. It would now have “androgynous stuff” or however you want to express that.
Teeny weeny itsy bitsy progress ≠ problem fixed
Believe it or not, by “people like me” I did not in fact mean male people. Or guys.
The saddest part of all this is that you probably actually believe that.
In my first semester in grad school I turned in a 230 page term paper. Don’t mess with me, I’ll verbose your ass into the next context.
Which explains the stunning academic and writing success that you’ve achieved in life. Expect it to continue in the exact same vein for the rest of your life.
I was thinking of switching to arteries.
Dude, that doesn’t even make any sense. “Haha, he said ‘vein’ so I said ‘artery’! Pwned!”
I like prawns. Especially with garlic and butter sauce.
I would agree with this. But I would modify this understanding a bit: I think most educated people hold that belief on the surface, but that on less conscious levels they are more affected by those notions than they realize.
One of the most common examples from real life is parents who have sought to raise their children without instilling a bunch of that stuff, only to find that they had more deeply embedded gendered attitudes and expectations and so forth than they’d initially realized. And so did the world around them: they’d go into the endeavor thinking “we’ll just make sure that both Susie and Tommie get to play with both trucks AND dolls” and expect it to be that simple and they become amazed at how embedded gender-polarized treatment and messages actually are.
I know you believe this, that this is what I’m asserting. (You may or may not have a point about “this is how I come off” to people. Consider me to be in the process of pondering that).
I have replied to this a few times, since you (among other people) have said it many times in the course of many of these blog threads.
Can you say back to me what my reply has basically been, whether you agree with that reply or not? I’m curious: I don’t know if you are understanding my reply or if you’re just not according it much credence because you disagree with it.
This is going to sound very, very harsh.
I would say the constant, “I do this, and that is traditionally feminine, thus I am not an actual man, but some kind of ‘male-girl’”.
Or in your latest thread, where you out right accuse guy who, much like you, aren’t the typical Macho He-Man of “selling out”, simply because they choose to say, “yeah, I have feminine interests, but I’m still a man”.
I think you’re trying to create too many labels and boxes when there really isn’t any need for them.
Maybe gender roles and ideals are entrenched. I was a really girly girl growing up and I mostly still am. But I don’t ever remember it being enforced on me. It was just what I was attracted to. You yourself know you can’t force a kid into a role they aren’t suited to.
Or look at it this way. You have said you wanted to help “kids like you”. But I think it’s much much more common for little boys to be hesitant to try things that aren’t traditionally masculine because they’re afraid of being called “gay” or “sissy”. They don’t WANT to be told they can be a “male girl”. They WANT reassurance that yes, it’s okay to play with dolls, or jump rope, or whatever, and it doesn’t make them gay, or a wimp. Same as girls – being a tomboy doesn’t make you a lesbian. (I may not spend much time around the LGBTQ crowd, but I HAVE spent a lot of time with kids)
And when people finally got you to say what exactly made you a “male girl”, it was basically that you liked romantic comedies, you wanted deep relationships rather than one night stands, you played with your hair, and gave very detailed descriptions on the way you walked, moved, sat, etc. And other than the occassional cross-dressing, a lot of other guys said, “well shit, I do all that stuff, what makes you any different from me?” You really couldn’t answer their questions. But you still insist you’re a male-girl, or that you’re somehow different from other feminine dudes, without ever telling us HOW.
To be brief: I interpret your ramblings as “if you do X, that makes you Y. Because X is something that is done by Y.”
(Look: call yourself whatever you want. But I don’t think what you’re doing is necessarily going to help the people you want to reach.)
To Guin: No, I mean can you summarize back to me what I’ve replied (a few times now) to people who say that I’m doing this: