Children and gender

[Mama Mia]

Looked it up, it's Toys r Us. And they are going to make an effort to have boys and girls playing with the different toys in ads and on packaging. Smart on their part, only will increase their market, especially in this economy, the exclusive boy/girl merchandising has gotten ridiculous the last 10 years or so.

[JesusFightClub]

Bumping this thread back up to say very many thanks to people who replied. I had to take a couple of weeks off because RL, but this has given me loads to think about and it was super helpful.

I'm still confused on a couple of issues. I had a chat with some male comrades who have studied privilege theory (I haven't) and some people who are not theoretical at all. All of these people had a different view about what the idea of transgender means. But none of them are transgender so I am missing a big voice in the discussion here.

I still don't get where I fit into the spectrum or what differentiates me from the rather rigid gender roles which seem to define male and female. To me, I am a woman, but going by gender roles I am not one at all. I am not bothered about romantic relationships (and would prefer not to have one). I've done "blokes' jobs", including heavy lifting. I shave my head and wear trousers 99% of the time (making exceptions for marriages, funerals and Important Meetings). Yet there must be something in my brain which says "You're female, ya get me". This must be the same thing that MTF transsexuals have.

I have had arguments where trans women have said to me "I'm more of a woman than you'll ever be". This begs the question, then what is a woman? I wouldn't call myself overly feminine at all. I am typing this to you wearing a pair of jeans, a Class War hoodie and Doc Martens. I am not wearing any makeup, or dandling a baby or doing anything which would be a traditional marker of femininity. I'm still a woman. I am 100% sure of this (and I have played male characters online too ;)) To say I wasn't a woman would be like saying my name was stolen, or my parents weren't my parents, or that my life til now was a lie. It's a massive incredibly weird concept.

But they say that they're more female than I am because...why exactly? I also got told that men would fancy them more than me. Indeed, I am not very attractive, but I'm fairly used to that :dance: I didn't think that made me more or less of a woman, because my femaleness is not based on how much men feel attracted to me. I just sorta got it, and I think transsexual women have it as well.

Perhaps what it is is that in negotiating the minefield of gender and sex, some people who feel that they are actually women need to take cover in being stereotypically feminine whether they want to or not.

[2xx1xy1JD]

JFC - someone who says "I'm more woman than you" isn't more female than you, they are just more obnoxious (unless I'm missing a joking tone). I'm not a contest.

I did find it refreshing that a former prof of mine actually chose to sometimes dress as a rather ordinary, even mildly frumpy, middle-aged woman. I assume that some of the more exaggerated, campy feminine looks come from a desire to really play with gender roles, or make a strong statement.

[JesusFightClub]

JFC - someone who says "I'm more woman than you" isn't more female than you, they are just more obnoxious (unless I'm missing a joking tone). I'm not a contest.

I did find it refreshing that a former prof of mine actually chose to sometimes dress as a rather ordinary, even mildly frumpy, middle-aged woman. I assume that some of the more exaggerated, campy feminine looks come from a desire to really play with gender roles, or make a strong statement.

I think even with a joking tone, there'd be a bit of an edge there which I am not comfortable with. It's like me saying as a Scot to an Indigenous person in Australia "The colonisation of my people was much worse than yours". It's a bit of a 0_o statement unless you know the person really well and guess that they're joking around, and even then it might be offensive. No-one likes hearing their personal experience devalued.

I dunno about the exaggerated campy thing either, because trans people usually don't reckon they're doing it to mess with gender norms. Your professor was (being a trans woman) maybe just by nature an ordinary, frumpy, middle aged woman. It's when performing femininity shows you're "really female" that I start to get disturbed.

It is hard to explain this, but when I hear from someone who's trans but "always knew they were a real woman inside" in the media, their arguments are "I liked to play with dolls from an early age" or "I always liked wearing skirts" or "I felt that I was so much more feminine than I was allowed to be".

I am a "born woman" (do not love this term, so basically I mean I was assigned female from birth and that was the correct assignation) and I am not and never have been interested in playing with dolls, wearing skirts, copious amounts of lipstick or looking like a super-feminine person. My mother despairs of me to this day because she'd dreamed of a girly girl who wanted loads of babies and ended up with me :D

So I do repeatedly ask -I bleed to a quite epic level when I have my period, to the extent that when I was younger I used to faint. I've got a big pair of knockers which get in the way of doing common-sense tasks. I am 100% a woman, even if that annoys me sometimes (like bleeding through your best pair of jeans) and I have a womb which can carry a baby (even though I would strongly resist this). What about me is not or less of a woman than someone who acts like a stereotypical woman?

[Mama Mia]

I dunno about the exaggerated campy thing either, because trans people usually don't reckon they're doing it to mess with gender norms. Your professor was (being a trans woman) maybe just by nature an ordinary, frumpy, middle aged woman. It's when performing femininity shows you're "really female" that I start to get disturbed.

It is hard to explain this, but when I hear from someone who's trans but "always knew they were a real woman inside" in the media, their arguments are "I liked to play with dolls from an early age" or "I always liked wearing skirts" or "I felt that I was so much more feminine than I was allowed to be".

I am a "born woman" (do not love this term, so basically I mean I was assigned female from birth and that was the correct assignation) and I am not and never have been interested in playing with dolls, wearing skirts, copious amounts of lipstick or looking like a super-feminine person. My mother despairs of me to this day because she'd dreamed of a girly girl who wanted loads of babies and ended up with me :D

So I do repeatedly ask -I bleed to a quite epic level when I have my period, to the extent that when I was younger I used to faint. I've got a big pair of knockers which get in the way of doing common-sense tasks. I am 100% a woman, even if that annoys me sometimes (like bleeding through your best pair of jeans) and I have a womb which can carry a baby (even though I would strongly resist this). What about me is not or less of a woman than someone who acts like a stereotypical woman?

I don't see that there is anything about you that makes you less of a woman, or somehow not a " real" woman. Just like my girly girl super feminine self is a "real" woman. I don't need to prove anything to anyone despite liking only "girly" things. I don't need to be more well rounded in my interests, you don't need to take up wearing frilly aprons. We're both women, I don't know why you would need to add some new term to describe yourself, you seem perfectly happy with the traditional label of woman and last time I checked you don't need to like certain types of clothes or hobbies to claim the title :P