Unaware of my gender

created by prole

(idea) by prole (1 wk) (print) ? (I like it!) 1 C! Sat Aug 26 2000 at 23:10:36

mostly, i don't even think about it. it's not something i am or i'm not, it's just a distinction people sometimes use for various purposes that have little to do with my life. rationally, i do understand that i'm female. it's not something i question. but quite often, i get the feeling my attitudes are more those of a boy than of a girl.

for instance, i just filled a nodeshell (come home with me) with a silly story, and once i saw the title i had a very specific idea of what i thought should go there. and i tried to write it as a boy (though real boys will probably say that i failed to do it convincingly), and didn't think about that until just now.

it's not that i feel confused - soul searching brought on by insomnia aside, i know that i prefer boys to girls. i dress like a girl because womens' clothing is more interesting. but i think nothing of wanting to be a geek, thought nothing of wanting to be a professional skateboarder all those years ago. i'm full of post-feminist rhetoric, because it most closely approximates how i define myself, and because the idea that some people will still judge me first and foremost by my gender strikes me as weird and even dangerous. if i defined myself in a word, the first to come to mind would not be one with expressly feminine connotations. it would probably be dork (not derisively, i'm just an acknowledged spaz).

i wonder how common this is, if it's something a lot of girls experience, given the upheaval in our concepts of womanhood resulting from traditional feminism, the de-mystification of female sexuality, the increasingly popular idea that the best heroes are anti-heroes? i see a lot of what i'd describe as girly-girls, but i know it can't be just me..

girlotron: a-fucking-men.

(idea) by girlotron (2.4 y) (print) ? (I like it!) 1 C! Sat Aug 26 2000 at 23:29:51

prole, it isn't just you..
Maybe it's all of us. The stereotypical female wouldn't be on this site, and certainly wouldn't be reading Slashdot.
I look fairly girly, but when writing on the net I have found that if I don't specify my gender, people automatically assume I'm male unless I'm writing about women-related stuff, mainly because of my interests.
However I feel there's a certain point to trying to reclaim a definition of womanhood for ourselves. Many women, me included, reject traditional notions of what is 'feminine' and this has been discussed in stacks of nodes all over e2. But we ARE women, and men will always see us as such, however much we reject the stereotype. What we need is not an escape from that but a realworld, widely accepted positive definition of womanhood: not some token 'girl power' concept which merely rehashes the idea of women as silly, irrelevant sex objects, but one which includes science or skateboarding or computers or whatever else WE choose to include within it.
We all know the stereotype is outdated and false. The concept of 'woman' needs redefining. By being who we are, we make it happen.

printable version
chaos

Come home with me	It's not so much that I like him as a person God, but as a boy he's very handsome	alternative gender	Gender is a state of mind
gender assumption	How do you define your gender?	Asian arcade player stereotype	I think I'm turning into a guy
women's clothing size woes	Most men lead lives of quiet desperation	post-feminist	Pink boys
Language and Gender	gender identity	distorted gender roles	dichotic gender paradigm
Men make more money than women	Brainy people make the best friends	gang bang	gender dichotomy
Boy Hits Car	Yes It Is	Vegetarian meals that aren't just brown gack	Feminism

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