Middle-Aged Straight White Man Tells Woman Who Is And Isn’t Female Based On Bizarre Personal Category
Dude, really?
I don’t know how to articulate this but… I feel like this is how TERFs (or even most people) view binary transwomen. I had to have long, painful conversations with my own mom where she grilled me to make sure I wasn’t making a mistake transitioning because she thought I believed what AHunter is talking about - really binary, rigid stereotypey gender roles and behaviors.
The gender spectrum is complicated, and while I support nonbinary people, I don’t think I’ve ever met a nonbinary, genderqueer, or genderfluid person saying things in quite this way (quite the contrary, they’re typically very staunchly critical of the gender binary and some refuse to even acknowledge it which is problematic in its own right sometimes but…).
I don’t like denying people their identity, so I’m not going to say AHunter is wrong for feeling the way he feels (if I even understand it correctly), but the way the ideas are expressed is concerning and confusing to me.
What seems most relevant here is the distinction between sex, gender and gender presentation. While they seem similar, they’re different (but intertwined) spectrums.
Sex is the immediately, straight-out-of-the-womb-observable biological spectrum you’re born on, from clear female, to varying degrees of intersex, to clear male.
Gender presentation is how one chooses to present themselves based on societal views and stereotypes of mannerisms and modes of style. For instance, wearing makeup or dresses, or acting in the ways that your archetypal platonic ideal of how a modern American man may act. In a way, it can be viewed as the way one communicates their gender to the external world (but also may just be aesthetic!). Speaking of gender…
Gender is the stickiest one. It’s something more deep and intrinsic, but very real. It’s essentially how you’re wired to feel gender. It’s not entirely separable from presentation nor sex (some evidence suggests it could be endocrine or brain structure related), but instead of stumbling over my words trying to define this, I recommend looking at Philsophy Tube’s “What is Gender” video which goes over some standard texts on the subject (including Julia Serano’s Whipping Girl, mentioned earlier).
I also heavily recommend PFLAG’s “Guide to being a trans ally” which gives a good overview of sex, gender (called “gender identity”) and gender presentation (called “gender expression”), probably much less clumsily than I have. It even has useful charts and example cases!
While most people here are likely familiar with the sex/gender distinction, I feel like the introduction of presentation was necessary and wanted to include the other two for posterity. All of them range from “masculine” to “feminine” but are different concepts, which can cause a lot of confusion when one person is referring to gender and another presentation.
The way I interpret this is that AHunter feels a strong pull to have a feminine gender presentation, but is somewhere in the middle, maybe leaning a bit masculine in gender.
Compare this to say, a tomboyish transwoman (yes, they exist! even butch ones!) who, while born phenotypically resembling male, has a strong internal female gender but a more masculine presentation. Note that presentation is even stronger than just “fashion”, I know women (even transwomen) who are just not happy if they can’t be tomboyish but are strongly women.
The way I view it, AHunter’s discourse is, perhaps, somewhat mixing the notions of presentation and gender identity (which is easy to do! It’s hard to separate at times!) which is what’s causing some of the confusing assertions and stereotype-boxing.
I think this is what AHunter means by his answer to the “are butch women not real girls” question. When he says “some are, some aren’t” he’s clumsily trying to explain the identity/presentation distinction. Some people who present as butch women identify as women, whereas some identify as nonbinary transmasc or otherwise. (This one is rough, arguably “butch” exists on another axis of the presentation spectrum, because it’s subtly different from “masculine” and one could argue that a man could attempt to present “butch” and it’d be markedly different from “masculine” OR what we call “femmy”). Let me tell you, my femme-presenting strongly transmale (not NB transmasc) friend would be… quite cross if you asserted he was a girl boy. He’s femme in presentation, but his gender is very masculine (and due to hormones looks it).
However, even granting all that, I feel AHunter is perhaps too rigid when he talks about “men”, “girls”, and so on. It feels like an assertion that “other men are like THIS and I hate that” rather than “I deviate from the male end of the presentation and identity spectrum somewhat”, it leads to a lot of stereotypical boxing, where, while this is inherently a nonbinary concept, it needs to be framed in very neat binary boxes and I think that’s causing a great deal of trouble and concerning rhetoric, even if the implications of that rhetoric aren’t what AHunter intends. Someone at the far, far masculine end of all three spectrums is going to be somewhat rare, for instance. Almost everyone has a mix of hardcore platonic ideal masculine and feminine in them somewhere, in presentation and mannerism if nothing else.
By, the way, that wasn’t meant to be lectury but came off that way, it was more my attempt to outline my reasoning and attempt to understand and engage with the ideas.
I know this may sound like a stupid question, or patronizing, and I don’t mean it to be. But really.
AHunter, have you ever considered the idea of just dropping all the labels and nomenclature and taxonomy and just saying “fuck it…I am who I am, and there doesn’t need to be a name for it” ?
I’m not gonna tell you what to do. There’s no way I could ever know what it’s like to feel how you feel and to experience what you’ve experienced. But I like to think that if I did, I would try to stop overthinking it and just dismiss all the labels from my mind.
Not so much “if you’re displaying one”… more “if you’re displaying more from Column A than from Column B”. And it’s social not essentialist. It wasn’t that having characteristic a, b, c, d, e, f, h, h, i, and j “made you” Gender X, but more that having that constellation of characteristics meant that the expectations people around you had of people of your biological sex were not going to be borne out by your behavior and, as a consequence of that, they were going to fall back to their next level of interpretation, which is how they regard and react to oddball people of your biological sex who have characteristics a, b, c, etc etc. Some of which was spot-on accurate, some of which was somewhat distorted, but the problem was that some of it was just plain missing.
** nods ** yep
Here’s where we seem to have a communications disconnect. I had that attitude growing up. I was a little anti-sexist child all through grade school, holding the viewpoint that it flat-out doesn’t matter what you’ve got inside your underpants, that the polarized and rigid expectations (which were as you described in prev paragraph) were NOT very relevant because all those differences were made up and didn’t apply to all boys and all girls. I mean, c’mon, they didn’t apply to me so I knew damn good and well that all that stuff was bullshit.
I grew up side by side with feminism. I was in 8th grade in 1973. “Women’s liberation” was a socially discussed set of ideas, and incorporated into that was the premise that it is sexist to attribute a different set of characteristics to a person because they are male than those you would attribute to a female person. And sexist to hold people of one sex to a different standard than you’d hold people of the other sex. And sexist to interpret the same behavior differently depending on the sex of the behaving person.
And that didn’t work for me. The problem was that most other people who also believed that you could have any characteristic from either the “traditionally feminine” basket of traits or the “masculine” basket because we were beyond that kind of sexist rigidity, we modern feminist-era people, were people who exhibited some characteristics associated with the opposite sex.
And all that groovy feminism-inspired anti-sexist tolerance and lack of gender rigidity worked for them because they also exhibited at least that many characteristics that were normally associated with their sex. You could call them androgynous. It’s a good word. They weren’t imprisoned by the strictures of the gender beliefs that had been attached to their sex. They could have their hand in either characteristics basket.
But I just so happened, as it turned out — not by intention or anything — to exhibit more than some unspoken critical-mass of characteristics from the “feminine” basket and not so many from the “masculine”. And people who were all on-board with boys not having to be entirely masculine were somewhat less on-board with the idea of a boy being downright feminine. It’s not that everyone was intolerant and nasty about it. Several people were welcoming and accepting. It’s just that they assumed it was an indicator of sexual orientation.
And sexual orientation… well, dating and courting behaviors were very scripted and depended on people doing certain things in certain ways in order to not have to explain much verbally. And those scripts and roles are different for boys and girls / men and women. And I found the one written for my sex to be a really really bad fit and didn’t know what to do about that between the ages of 14 and 21 when it mattered the most to me.
Fascinating. I’m experiencing the, umm, grilling I’m getting as akin to how TRUSCUM view nonbinary transwomen.
Exactly.
In order for Gender presentation to exist as anything other than sex presentation, the people to whom one presents would have to actually have a societal view or stereotype or notion of gender. A very very large number of you people with whom I’m interacting in here come across to me as saying “We don’t”. That you believe biological sex exists, but that you do not harbor any (or hardly any) societal views that would cause you to perceive male-bodied people differently than female-bodied people, other than observing the difference in plumbing. And you say that I, on the other hand, harbor really rigid stereotypical ones.
Many of you have spent several paragraphs at this point informing me of how I come across to you, and I thank you for that. Well, this is how you come across to me. As people who deny that gender presentation is even possible.
As for myself… the only reason to wish to have a gender presentation of one sort as opposed to another is that the social context does in fact hold such societal notions.
And it ties them to sex. That is, if your sex is biological male, you are perceived to have a gender called masculine, or man.
It would make sense to dive into that before delving into gender presentation, wouldn’t it, so that when we’re discussing gender presentation we’re somewhat clear on what it is that’s being presented, yes?
That’s kind of circular if you see what I mean. No, I would not endorse that definition. I see gender as social. It’s something that takes place in the individual’s head but it’s about the individual’s relationship to those previously-mentioned socially shared notions (stereotypes, if you will) of gender that are held in common by the surrounding culture of the individual.
If they don’t hold any such notions, the person doesn’t have a backdrop against which to fit him or her (or xir or their, etc) self in.
If the world was utterly without any stereotypes or notions about how the male folk differ psychologically and behaviorally from the female folk, no individual would have gender, they’d just have a biological sex, period, and be done with it.
But if the surrounding world /culture does, in fact, have such notions, the individual does tend to establish an internal identity that fits the individual into that pattern in some fashion.
The usual fashion is what we call cisgender: “The gender that I identify as is the one that is socially associated with my biological sex”.
With me so far? Note that gender doesn’t necessarily have any biological aspects itself. I suppose it might:
… but whether it does or doesn’t, the “it”, the thing we’re discussing is how the individuals fits themselves against what they perceive to be the stereotypes and notions held in common by their culture.
The individual in question may ratify those beliefs — I mean, may believe them to be genuine built-in characteristics — but even if the individual doesn’t believe there are really genuinely any built-in differences in personality and behavior between males and females, that individual still may perceive that there is a set of beliefs about such differences that the surrounding social environment holds and hence will have a relationship to that.
Many of you folks, if I understand you correctly, seem to think that I believe there are genuine built-in differences, that I’m insisting that males are men (manly, masculine) and females are women (womanly, feminine). That I harbor the rigid stereotypes. That’s where our communication keeps breaking down. I don’t. When I discuss my gender I’m talking about my relationship to the socially shared notions that the world around me harbors, and that’s a social reality, a belief system, not a built-in biological difference between the sexes..
I have a strong pull to be perceived as feminine folks are perceived, to place myself into the matrix of those beforementioned socially shared notions about sex differences in the spot that is marked feminine.
That makes me transgender as opposed to cisgender.
This comes closer to what Julia Serano called “subconscious sex”.
Subconscious sex is not the same thing as gender. Subconscious sex is what Serrano describes as a sort of wiring diagram in the brain, a notion of what one’s body physiology ought to be, which can differ from what it actually is. Julia Serano was born male but had a subconscious sex of female.
Note that this has nothing to do with femininity versus masculinity, nothing to do with those socially shared notions of what males / men and females women are “like”, it’s a different identity factor.
No, sorry. When asked if butch women are real girls, and I answered with my “some are, some aren’t” answer, I should have prefaced that with “you should ask them.”
The butch women who identify as real girls are real girls. The butch women who do not identify as real girls are not real girls. Simple as that. I wasn’t answering the question with any attempt to place them in one identity or another and I should have made that more clear, especially since yes, I understood the question to be asking me how I would identify them. I shouldn’t have tried to get cute with my answer. The direct answer is that that’s entirely up to them and not to me.
As is the case with all gender identity, by the way. It’s about how people identify themselves against that matrix of socially shared notion.
And that brings us to yet another identity factor: how we identify others in our heads, how we “gender” other people (perceive them as having this or that gender identity). I like sociologist Erving Goffman’s term “altercasting”, so let’s use that.
I don’t think (as I said before) that I go around altercasting people in some kind of overly rigid black-and-white polarized way, but I also think I probably do altercast people based on what I perceive as their gender presentation.
Exactly. That’s the point I was trying to make.
And here again, I’m not saying what I’m apparently coming across to you folks as saying. Not meaning that, not believing that, and saying things that you’re somehow confusing with that, interpreting as meaning that, when it doesn’t.
I like lectury! We should continue comparing our terminologies and definitions and make sure we’re both clear on each other’s typology and perspective.
Don’t have time for a long response, but note that my personal views of gender were maybe a bit botched in that post. “Intrinsic” meant more “deeply, inflexibly held.” Gender as a concept is tricky, and personally I believe that gender is both performative (in this context, “performative” means more along the lines of “socially constructed”; people act in roles as the world around them defines them), but also has a large dash of what Serano would call subconscious sex. That is, people are wired in certain ways so that certain social constructs “feel right” to perform as (which I do believe are somewhat, but not wholly or even mostly, based on broad, vague biological tendencies correlated with sex). What portion of that wiring is fundamental, developmental, biological, or whatever else is anyone’s guess.
It’s damn tricky sometimes putting things into the right words, isn’t it?
I suspect we have similar and very-much-overlapping “gender worldviews” and stand a good chance of getting clear on what each other is trying to say.
I find it useful to distinguish between the performative aspects and subconscious sex although I dont doubt that the factors coincide in somewhat predictable ways.
When reading these threads, I think of the story of the two Buddhist monks–their beliefs forbid them from touching women, but they come to the edge of a river and meet a woman needing to cross, and one of the monks lifts her up on his back and carries her across. Miles later the monk’s companion is still berating him about touching the woman, until finally he turns to him and says “I left the woman back at the river’s edge–why are you still carrying her?” Most people–when they reach their 40s and 50s and 60s–have managed to put middle school and high school behind them. But AHunter3 is still carrying it with him.
Why would someone want to put middle school and high school behind them? Do people actively want to forget who and where they’ve been, the thoughts and attitudes that were theirs at the time? I don’t mean “gee why don’t you still want to suck your thumb, you were totally into it when you were two” — I mean, I do get the notion of personal progress and greater wisdom and not being stuck in your own past, constantly replaying something that happened backwhen like it’s a video loop… OK I guess that’s what you mean I’m doing, isn’t it?
Well, if that’s what you mean, yeah that would be unhealthy. I’m struck by the contrasting phrase “put it behind you” though. There’s something kind of post-traumatic suppressive about that too. And I don’t mean you intended that meaning when you used the phrase, but that’s how it struck me.
Do you think you would be more likely to be perceived as feminine by others if you didn’t have a beard, or look so much like a typical guy?
Yes. Your blog posts and discussions give the clear impression that your entire life and entire life’s work revolves around obsessing over what people said to you in the 1960s.
Possibly, but that would be more likely due to them misapprehending my body as a female body, and attributing femininity to me on that basis.
Well, 1970s mostly, but I get your meaning.
I think there’s a lot of truth to this, but that’s because I’m focusing on things that are mostly relevant to people when they are between puberty and young adulthood. Most of us middle-aged people have long since sorted out anything we need to sort out about our sexual and gender identity. (Not 100% true but mostly true). I draw on my own experiences (although I include anecdotes and narratives from people who grew up in the 90s or the 00s) and my relevant experiences were indeed back then.
Perhaps. Or maybe they would be more accepting of your feminine status if you just didn’t have such a manly beard! 
Hmm… my reply was formulated from my own experiences of the 70s. There was a definite and specific hostile frustration expressed towards long-haired males who did not have a beard: men would glance at them from a distance and see a long haired person with no compelling visible characteristics that screamed “male person here” and would think they were seeing a female person, and would perhaps have vague sexually-aware kind of thoughts and would then get all bent out of shape when they realized this was a long-haired guy. And they’s shout, “Grow a fucking beard, dammit!”
You’re saying that even someone is fully aware that both people are male, they’re inclined to perceive a male person with a beard as more masculine?
I’m trying to keep up, really, I am, but I’m a bit lost. ** AHunter3**, what exactly is it that you do/think/feel/are that makes you a male girl?
Perhaps it’s easy for me - I’ve never questioned that I was female, despite not being typically feminine.
I suspect that most people who grow beards think that. I suppose you don’t think that way, since you don’t seem to be the person who would want to appear more masculine, that’s why I was wondering. I don’t have a beard, so I can’t say what those with beards think, plus I myself don’t think that, so maybe. But many figures in modern movies and such that are supposedly very masculine have beards. Whether people think masculine guys should have beards, or beards make a guy more masculine is probably a good topic to discuss.
I would also think the same thing if your picture was you in a work-out shirt with bulging ripped muscles.
I’m sorry, I don’t understand the question. I mean, I can see a couple dozen things you might be asking instead of just one, and I’m not sure where you got lost.
Nothing “makes me” a male girl. I made me a male girl, it’s how I identify. It’s not a set of characteristics on a checklist or something, or a single litmus test. It’s my answer to the fundamental question “who are the people who are like you?” —at a crucial age where most kids identify with people of the same biological sex (which, in turn, is partly because they’re sort of pushed in that direction, and partly because each of them individually has been pushed in either a masculine or feminine direction personality-and-behaviorwise because that’s what’s expected of them on the basis of the biological sex), I, for various reasons that I don’t pretend to 100% understand, identified the girls as the people I belonged with, fit in with, was like.
I’ve never questioned that I was male.