Jump to content

Defining gender using metaphors/symbols?


OffworldHometown

Recommended Posts

OffworldHometown

Hi, new poster here. I've been thinking a lot lately about how society understands gender, and how I understand gender, and I wanted to know if anyone else thinks in similar ways.

 

To explain my gender, I have to touch on the traditional way people see gender. It's a system of metaphors where most female stereotypes relate to the concept of "soft", and most male stereotypes relate to the concept of "hard". So the stereotypical woman is gentle, nurturing, and emotional- all "soft" things- while the stereotypical man is tough, self-sufficient, and rational- all "hard" things. Most people don't realize that stereotypes are organized this way, but this is why those ideas are so persistent even though they're untrue. They're not just arbitrary lists of concepts, as a lot of people believe; instead, they're organized around simple, common images that (nearly) everyone has experienced. (There are lots of unconscious metaphors that explain how people think. If you're interested, look up Metaphors We Live By, by Lakoff and Johnson.)

 

So that's the very stereotypical view. Most people don't fully believe in those stereotypes, and a growing amount of people understand that there's not just two genders, but it's really hard to talk about gender in terms that aren't just variations on "male" or "female", and most people can't really agree on or define exactly what "male" and "female" mean. They're more than just the stereotypes... but if they're not always that, what are they?

 

Well, as I said, the overall stereotypes are "man=hard, woman=soft". But I don't think that's what those concepts represent for everyone, because that's not what they represent for me.I'm polygender, switching between being a man (which is my primary gender), being femme nonbinary, and several nonbinary genders that don't relate to the male/female binary. But I don't understand my masculinity and femininity in terms of Hard/Soft... I see my gender in terms of two different dualistic metaphors, which are In/Out and Open/Closed.

 

If you want to understand how I experience femininity and masculinity, then do something for me... take a deep, slow breath in and out. And as you do it, be aware of the feelings it gives you. I know this sounds silly, but I promise this is relevant. Just do it.

 

Okay, you took a breath. The reason that was relevant is because the feeling at the top of the inhale is my experience of feminine, and the feeling at the bottom of the exhale is my experience of masculine. But the weird thing is, I associate inhale/feminine with Out, and exhale/masculine with In. Because inhaling is interacting with the outside world; it's energy and expansion; and that's my version of femininity. And exhaling is returning to myself; it's stability and relaxation; and that's masculinity.

 

I associate femininity with In and masculinity with Out because of experiences I've had throughout my life- when I came out as a trans man, it was like coming home, but when I realized I was nonbinary, it was like waking up. The negative side of femininity/energy is anxiety and obsessiveness, which I've dealt with a lot of my life, especially before I acknowledged my masculine side. And I've learned that when I'm depressed (inert and isolated, and therefore too masculine), I can combat it with happy feminine things that involve beauty and being active. There are all these patterns in my life, and how I experience gender, which all lead back to these same themes.

 

The other metaphor involved in my gender is Open/Closed, which mostly has to do with how good/bad I feel. Happiness is feeling free and being able to breathe deeply; unhappiness is that tight feeling in my chest. It doesn't have anything to do with the concepts of "masculine" or "feminine". Usually, my In/Out feelings combine with my Open/Closed feelings to create whatever my gender is that moment; Out/Closed is a stressed femme person, In/Open is a man at peace. But sometimes the Open/Closed feelings are so strong that they drown out any In/Out feelings I might be having, resulting in genders that aren't related to masculinity/femininity at all.

 

So, why is my gender is a valid gender, even though it bends and breaks the gender binary? Well, one- everyone experiences gender differently and it's each individual's role to define it. But I see my gender as a lot like traditional binary gender because ultimately, they are both metaphorical systems that people use to describe how they relate to themself and others. The hard/soft binary never mattered that much to me personally, so my mind created this alternate system where masculine and feminine are meaningful to me. And yeah- I did consciously collect my gender experiences and organize them into a system, but I didn't just create that system out of nothing. It was more a matter of noticing patterns and seeing how they fit together. It was who I already was, I just put the pieces together.

 

I've seen people around the internet saying they feel more like animals, elements, abstract concepts etc. than like binary genders. I'm wondering if anyone here feels like that and/or thinks it might be related to my system of gender... or if anyone sees their gender similarly to how I do, or maybe this post will help them realize that there are metaphors underlying their gender. I can't speak for anyone else, but I do suspect that there are other people who have metaphors for masculine/feminine that aren't Hard/Soft.

 

Wow that was long. I hope someone replies.

Link to post
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...