Is gender REALLY just a social construct?

[never odd or even]

I despise all the power dynamics in sex and relationships and really wish I could... just, not be a part of them.

Regardless of my gender, I would be the same.

CSDM: I feel most comfortable in mixed company too.

Yes. I despise enforced single sex groupings.

That said, I was always the only "girl" hanging out with a bunch of guys, whenever I had friends they were almost always guys. It was the only place I felt comfortable, accepted. And if anyone actually treated me like a girl I was able to put them thoroughly in their place (that group of friends had a habit of mock wrestling mixed with martial arts, and I was able to beat most of them). I remember one summer my only contact with girls was when another one joined our group for one outing, and that was my sum total of hanging out with another FAAB that summer. It wasn't deliberate. I simply never had female friends I wanted to spend time with voluntarily (boarding school "friendships" are different). Despite all this, I really am not very male identified. Fortunately, most company I keep do not subscribe to gender roles and accept me as I am.

[CDSM]

I tended to spend time with all girls because I felt less pressure to fit in with them, since I was a guy.

I guess I figured if I was going to be the odd one out, I may as well be the odd one out with the group I wasn't "supposed" to fit in with.

[BaronTheCat]

I tended to spend time with all girls because I felt less pressure to fit in with them, since I was a guy.

I guess I figured if I was going to be the odd one out, I may as well be the odd one out with the group I wasn't "supposed" to fit in with.

I can relate to that very much actually. If I have to choose being with "the girls" or with "the guys", I'd rather be with the girls because I'm already expected to be different from them.

...and this is offtopic, but interesting still.

[miqui]

As girlish as I was, a political girl - or 'faab' - would not have been beaten and abused for being "too girly" in my place.

Not in any normative family anyway.

Right! Very true. Some faab people have non-normative childhoods and non-normative feminine experiences too. Some are also forcibly masculinised. :(

Yes, if you behave differently than is expected of you based on your percieved gender or sex, in this case male, and if this makes people confused, or angry, or sceptical, this is male experience in a political sense, even if your actual gender or sex isn't male.

I think it's really bad that the groups you're talking about dismiss your experience so quickly.

It makes it hard to find spaces where I can open up and sometimes that makes me feel like there's no one out there like me. But I know that's not true, we're just scared and haven't found our voice or our space. So I try my best to speak up - though irl I'm very timid, like a little mouse. I make up for it on the internet - on the internet I'm a lion. Rawr. ;)

There are men's groups who meet around feminist issues for example where my experience as a male isn't welcome, because it's not recognised as a male experience as they theoretically understand one. So they don't want to hear that I am sexually harassed or assaulted or that I feel the fear and apprehension which they consider to be exclusively female.

In order to make the best decisions, we ought to understand the situation, and we won't get a correct understanding of the situation if we dismiss some of the facts. There's not just one kind of male or female experience. How gender roles affect us depends on who we are. Your experience as percieved "femme boy", is one of the keys to understanding how gender roles work. And the people you mentioned are part of it without seeing it.

I completely agree with you. There are a lot of intersecting issues with this. The men's groups - unqualified - may be effectively heteronormative men's groups with homophobia issues. They may frame their fear of dealing with the vulnerability of other males in the group as a single-minded devotion to women or feminism, but it is really homophobic avoidance. The same is true in feminist groups, when unqualified, they may be heternormative feminist groups with heteronormative assumptions and focus. I find something like "the political implications of romanticism in the lesbian community" is never discussed in a feminist space without qualifying it first as a *lesbian* feminist space. But they'll talk about "male expectations on women to shave" without qualifying that as a *heterosexual* feminist issue. Then it's framed as just a "feminist" issue, full stop, as universal. So these unqualified spaces are usually heteronormative until otherwise stated.

I've gathered that because heterosexual men are too anxious to be vulnerable with each other they don't know how to engage with us or open up to us and relate to us in their groups, as they rely exclusively on women for emotional support. Because of this, feminist groups do not want to deal with any more male vulnerability as a heteronormative obligation for women - so no "making it all about men". The men's groups then appropriate this feminist language about "not making it all about men" as an excuse to shut up vulnerable seeming men in their own groups by dismissing their experiences as trivial and politically meaningless - even though it's ridiculous and patently heteronormative to say that a men's group should be "all about women". That saves them having to deal with other men as vulnerable people and scores political brownie points with some feminist women for using proper sounding rhetoric. That's my take on it, anyway.

But in the end for sissy boys it all just amounts to the same old din: "shut up", "stop being a sissy", "man up", "grow a pair", etc.. So the more things change, the more they stay the same. <_< I'm not sure heteronormative groups have the potential to break out of these gendered dynamics. Radical faeries seem to have broken free, subject-subject consciousness and things, but it's still not always inclusive of female bodied people or of bisexuals. And anyway in Spain, there are none. <_< I'm a little more optimistic about political bisexualism.

...about the trans group, there are different kinds of trans "communities". Some are inclúsive and open, and some are more oriented towards certain subgroups.

For sure, but this was a "genderqueer" group which said it was open to people of all genders and body types. So I wasn't expecting it to be a lesbian/boi group. Some purportedly open genderqueer spaces seem to default to this. But the main point is - there are trans groups which exclude male bodied people too, not only cis groups. And sometimes that exclusion is more insidious, because it's informal and inexplicit, as it's considered politically incorrect to make it explicit. I remember thinking in uni, at least with the radfems you know where you stand.

If I encounter a villain, I'd rather use a gun or a sword than a penis :lol:

I know right? :P There's nothing more fragile than a pair of testicles yet people talk about them being "steel". It's ridiculous.

I'm just kind of jumping in here, but I've always felt most comfortable in "mixed company", and hated when things were split up into guys and girls only (and I had to go with guys, and usually everything was slanted into 'guy issues' that I couldn't relate to).

I remember at some point in school I was friends with two groups of girls - a popular group and a geeky group. There was no way I could relate to any of the boys. Their conversations revolved exclusively around who had sex with girls, how much sex did they have with girls, how many times did they kiss girls, etc. They became jealous of me because I would be hanging around with these popular girls they considered sexy and desirable until late at night and into the next morning. Once one of them demanded I tell him what we were doing all night. I said we talked. He demanded, what about? So I told him.

"We were having an existential crisis."

"A...what?"

"We were feeling anxiety about the apparent lack of meaning in our existence. Why do we exist? Why does anything exist at all? Does the existence of something depend on it being perceived, or do things exist regardless of whether they are perceived? Do we all exist in bubble universes made only of our own perceptions? Do things have objective existence or only subjective existence? We were trying to find meaning in existence."

"*blank stare*"

"What do you talk about?"

"Uh...girls? Sex? Movies?"

For a long time I had a very dim view of the intellectual capacity of males because of these experiences. -_- But I've found it's just cultural. Where masculinity is anti-intellectual and intellectualism is seen as a feminine pursuit, things like this happen. But when femininity is understood to be anti-intellectual, it's just as vapid.

I despise all the power dynamics in sex and relationships and really wish I could... just, not be a part of them.

Yep. I'm very picky about individual relationships. I'm not even a little bit interested in what most people want out of a relationship with "a man". But you can't be picky about the society you live in and we're forced to participate in this cherade one way or another. I never consented to lifestyle BDSM but that's exactly what mainstream heteronormative society forces on you.

[eamonn]

Wait, so what is gender?

[never odd or even]

Wait, so what is gender?

TIS AN ILLUSION :lol:

A ghost if you will.

Called Caspar.

You should meet them some time, great ghost that one.

[never odd or even]

I tended to spend time with all girls because I felt less pressure to fit in with them, since I was a guy.

I guess I figured if I was going to be the odd one out, I may as well be the odd one out with the group I wasn't "supposed" to fit in with.

I can relate to that very much actually. If I have to choose being with "the girls" or with "the guys", I'd rather be with the girls because I'm already expected to be different from them.

...and this is offtopic, but interesting still.

I'd be the opposite... although I have not transitioned yet, it doesn't make a difference.

With people who know me as female, people expect me to be one of them, which I am not. With people who know me as male, I'm not expected to be "one of them" but I'm still left out, or just feel very uncomfortable that they are going to 'figure me out' or call me on something. Or worse, treat me as one of the girls because I'm not macho, can be camp upon occasion and obviously not the most masculine of men.

I'd prefer to spend time with guys because if they know me as female, the likelihood is that I'm going to be one of the very few "girls" there, and I am treated as "one of the guys" or as close as, unless this is a group I don't know very well, but I'll correct them pretty quickly on that one. If I'm with a group of guys who know me as male, and as I am obviously not a very normative looking chap, I don't feel so uncomfortable because they recognise it but I can still relate to them, particularly if they aren't so normative themselves. Now, my experience of being seen as male has only been around since easter, so my experience is not large to draw upon...

Although I think I'm going to always be uncomfortable hanging around with people who dont know I'm trans regardless of whether they know me as M/F until I look less like an androgynous teenage boy...