Escaping the Box

[citrakayah]

For the longest time, I viewed myself as "masculine by way of inertia." It wasn't like "man" was something I clung to strongly, but it was what everyone else said I was and I was fine enough with it that, despite growing up knowing many trans and nonbinary people, I didn't feel that I was one. But in my interpersonal interactions online, I came off as androgynous enough (or at least my name did) that people would assume I was a woman. I have usually found this hilarious and rather liked people not being able to tell.

There was always some part of me that wasn't fully comfortable with masculinity, or at least its stereotypical format. I liked jewelry and shaving. Despite having progressive parents I stopped wearing jewelry; I kept shaving my face but only shaved my legs once. It wasn't even over any harassment. I was masculine because of inertia, I therefore did masculine things, and I didn't feel strongly enough about those to keep it up.

But as I've gotten older, what started out as an inoffensive box has grown more cramped as I find that I have a certain affinity for appearing androgynous. I like the pointed, narrow features. While I wouldn't mind fur I don't like body hair (it's too curly). I can't really pull off the appearance (I have too much body hair and not enough normal hair), unfortunately.

Being nonbinary would be the obvious conclusion. The problem is that when I look back, a large part of my discomfort wasn't just because I was put in the wrong box, it was because I was put in a box at all. And I'm not sure how to integrate a desire to escape this framework entirely. I like the idea of appearing androgynous, but while online that's as easy as using my theriotype as a profile picture and not specifying gender, offline that's done through fitting into people's ideas of what a stereotypical nonbinary person looks like. And while I don't entirely mind that image, it's still a box.

Comments

[the_broken_tower]

Some of the Tempos cohort tried to write about similar sentiments. They don't perform gender, or even really have it. To them it only means as far as a category other people have slotted them into and will form the basis of how those people interact with them. It isn't personal, or internal - just this funny quirk of others' perceptions and preconceptions and social ideas. They still act however they want to regardless of that.

One of them put it this way - 'It's a game other people don't realize they're playing. You don't have to play it.'

- Keith (he/him)

[citrakayah]

Yeah. But in addition to liking androgyny aesthetically, part of me resents being categorized. Which is where I run into the trouble of "how do you avoid being pigeonholed when a lot of people pigeonhole what 'nonbinary' looks like?" Do they have a similar conflict?

[the_broken_tower]

You can't control how other people percieve you, and they're going to categorize based on their perceptions, not reality. It happens to everyone. As annoying as it is, there isn't a lot you can do about deterring it.

For the Tempos cohort, yes and no. It doesn't happen to them now because they're surrounded by people and in a culture that also doesn't practice gender. In places they used to be, they would get subjected to it, but were generally in a position where they could shrug it off and continue as normal. They let it roll mainly because of local customs for wherever they happened to be - it was something they weren't concerned with, you know? Just a funny little quirk of the locals, while they had more important and interesting things to focus their attention on.

In this place, we run into clashes a lot because in gender isn't part of our cultural framework, but locals assume it's universal and try to put everything through it. (And as a result of that, a lot of cats wind up in boxes that they resent being put into.) What's worked is finding people who are accepting and secure in themselves, and who get 'Everything is gender neutral' as a concept. And find some safe space around them away from the ridiculousness of everyone else.

- Keith (he/him)

[injunjane]

why is it so important to define your behaviour and looks like 'masculine' or 'feminine' in the US?

In our part of the world a person can be bullied for being a man and in the same time using a lot of cosmetics, expressing playful and provocative behaviour - but noone tells you nothing if you're a just a guy with long hair and earrings who's sensitive enough to be 'mistaken' for a girl.

The girls who behave and dress like guys are common here, but people who call them 'masculine' are labelled as rude, illiterate and stupid.

For the most part, noone cares much. Me and my feminine friends had a habit to address ourselves sometimes as 'я пішов', 'я зробив' ('I went', 'I did' in masculine gender which is not possible in English since you do not gender your verbs) and it never meant anything except our disdain to gender rules.

Why is it so important in your part of the world?

[citrakayah]

It isn't that important, I suppose. And a lot of people aren't conforming with strict gender roles while still being a man or a woman. But it feels like if I don't define myself people will do it for me, at least a little--you can transgress gender norms without people caring very much, but they still exist. And there is a part of me that resents that, especially since the stereotype doesn't actually describe me. Even though it's also a category with its own stereotypes, it feels more... liberating, I guess, than sticking with what I am now out of inertia.

Less liberating than not being labeled at all, though.

[injunjane]

thank you, it's what I was thinking about but you explained it clearly. It's also important for me as a person...well, almost from another planet. May I explain this last statement :)

It seems like there is a fundamental difference between so-called 'western' and 'eastern' civilization based on whether it is important to define things, or the things just exist regardless of the labels (Alice in the forest with no names in 'Alice Through the Looking-Glass' pictures it beautifully). I see it in Western Europe a lot - the idea that if something is not defined, it does not exist. In our part of the world...if it works, you have to deal with it, if it doesn't just leave it alone, but the things still exist (or don't) regardless if you name them or not :)

I'm working in the Western scientific world for more than 10 years already and still have to remind myself that I have to define things (or, as you correctly say, the others start to define them for me).

As for belonging to a certain sex (or gender? I'm of female sex because that is my physiology). I was thinking about it a lot, also because part of my research is a study on 'asexual animals' (they are females from physiological point of view but function differently)

My subjective feeling that mind has no gender. I don't feel neither male nor female when I'm thinking about things. Like, at all. When people around me speak of 'masculine or feminine behaviour', I'm starting to correcting them in the style 'you're in fact talking about job and relationships, not about men and women'

Hence is the question, should we really define ourselves as certain 'gender' in communication that has nothing to do with flirting, sex and reproduction? Why should we do it with friends and work colleagues? Does it make any sense at work where we have professional relationships with people?

I feel like a complete idealist but that's it :)

[citrakayah]

You know, that reminds me of something interesting. Japan definitely has a gender binary, so the classifications and labels are there, but I've also heard from people who lived there that Japanese men don't really worry about it to the same degree as American men. So while not a degree of kind, there is a degree of difference.

I also have a fondness for the vision of a world where we simply are and are not assigned a gendered role in society based off what genitalia we happened to be born with, and where people don't assume a bunch of often unrelated traits are somehow inherently linked together. The problem is that we don't live in that society. So we need to figure out how to live the life we want in the society we live in (example: I may not like being gendered but people are still prone to do that regardless), while still trying to bring about the world we want.

[injunjane]

what I know about Japanese that they are very humble about themselves, even saying 'watashi wa' ('speaking about me...', 'what's related to me...') instead of plain straight 'I' - so I guess (speaking about me), 'I' and what gender is that I is not that important

You're a realist (or at least a realist in a certain type of society), that's great :) I'm an idealist asking myself "Are we not shaping that society, do we only 'live in it'?
With each woman who stood up for women's equality, votes for women, work for women etc etc the society of past was changing to what it is now. Can't we do the same about this gender topic? Can't we just say 'I'm not doing this work or talk with my genitalia, so what's the importance of me being male or female?'

BTW I've seen a famous facebooker who makes videos about French vs English language funny interview with French President E. Macron. He was testing Macron, French native, about 'is that word feminine or masculine in French', and about 50% of Macron's answers were incorrect :)))) But some (not all) French are still getting mad at someone who's saying 'la train' and 'un baguette', which is ridiculous.

I'd like to be a living breathing part of the new society with new rules.

[injunjane]

PS Oh, I've got an idea: can we just demonstratively and publicly treat genders of humans the same way Ukrainians in Prague are treating gender of tram? (spoiler: it's feminine and we're used to masculine, but nobody cares anymore. Tram is not using any genitalia to drive us home. We are just trying to say it in a grammatically correct way according to Czech norms and not more)

[citrakayah]

With each woman who stood up for women's equality, votes for women, work for women etc etc the society of past was changing to what it is now. Can't we do the same about this gender topic? Can't we just say 'I'm not doing this work or talk with my genitalia, so what's the importance of me being male or female?'
Because just refusing to talk about it doesn't mean it's not there. If you just avoid ever dealing with the matter gender norms will remain, just in a manner of more quiet strangulation (or sometimes pretty loud strangulation--see TERFS, who simultaneously say that their sex shouldn't matter and also seek to make gender categories iron-clad by brutalizing trans people). They will continue to categorize you into boxes. Only deliberately confronting and transgressing them can work, because you're making the box no longer apply.
another BTW: there are situations when gender = sex and it matters, f.ex. when people want to be liked or loved in a romantic way. And I know not a few guys who are sad and worried if they can find a mate being 'neither meat nor fish', if girls would like them. Same (and even worse) with tomboy girls.
That's... not really true. That's not gender being the same thing as sex; it's not. That's people being attracted to specific gender categories. Those happen to line up with specific sexual categories, but that's not universal and I strongly suspect that if people weren't socialized to think they ought to line up, they'd care less. There's a good deal of sexism and transphobia shaping how men respond to masculine women; it's not absolutely impossible that this doesn't shape sexual and romantic attraction but it probably does.

Also, could you please edit this stuff into your posts rather than breaking it up into a bunch of little posts?

[injunjane]

Also, could you please edit this stuff into your posts rather than breaking it up into a bunch of little posts?

Sure, I'll try to make it as readable as possible. My apologies, I write a lot of little posts because my mind works in chunks, I let one portion out and only then can work on another. This may be uncomfortable to digest :(

I'd like to ask in turn - please don't consider my answers as contra-arguments to your arguments, but rather as my pieces of the puzzle added to your pieces of the puzzle :)

Because just refusing to talk about it doesn't mean it's not there. If you just avoid ever dealing with the matter gender norms will remain, just in a manner of more quiet strangulation (or sometimes pretty loud strangulation--see TERFS, who simultaneously say that their sex shouldn't matter and also seek to make gender categories iron-clad by brutalizing trans people). They will continue to categorize you into boxes. Only deliberately confronting and transgressing them can work, because you're making the box no longer apply.

I'd say, this is logic within the frame of a certain culture (your culture). There are other cultures and other language spaces (where tram has genders, for example) and the people of these cultures will see things differently (and either put them into totally different boxes or won't box them at all).

TERF - don't you think they are extremists (and IMHO poorly educated ones en masse) - in any problem there be extremists who twist your words and make you an enemy. You eliminate one such unit only to observe birth of another one. Ignore them? Fight them? I don't know, but I prefer to orientate my ideas and deeds towards educated and balanced people...

I didn't mean to ignore the problem, but instead actively propagate the idea that in many (if not majority) of the situations it really does not matter what gender or sex the person is.

You go to a doctor - yes you definitely need to indicate your sex, because it's physiology and certain organs. As a medical lab worker I see differences every day...we have trans people identifying as a gender different from their sex, that matters not when I fill in the card, but quite a lot when I'm checking the measured values and try to see if it's a normal value or a pathology (yes men and women have different levels of many markers in their blood).

But how happy would I be if I would not need to place my name (which points to certain gender to a European person) in a grant proposal. Fortunately, now we have blind reviewing so some people would not make derogative comments on the author (yes imagine they still can go personal and do it).

I would be happy to have no mention of my sex at work and getting comments about how my work is different from that of my male colleagues (yes they still do it!), no questions about whom of the guys in the lab I would chose (after I told I have a boyfriend elsewhere).

I would personally prefer totally banish any connection to sex in non-personal space, and leave the gender only as a formal marker (same as feminine tram in Czech language that really means nothing).

Would it work for everyone? No I don't think so, but I'm pretty sure there will be many people who'd support this idea and stop boxing others based on stereotypes.

That's... not really true. That's not gender being the same thing as sex; it's not. That's people being attracted to specific gender categories.

You mean, long hair and soft attitude to people can be categories of a certain gender? Hmm. I watch a lot of Chinese and Korean period drama, these traits are very much male ones there :) Moreover, long hair was a strict obligation for Chinese men for a long time, and being soft and smiling is a general way of many Asian cultures regardless of gender.

(sorry I'm trying not to mix up sex and gender, I'm familiar with the definitions but my head of an irrational person can make a mess of everything)

[injunjane]

another BTW: there are situations when gender = sex and it matters, f.ex. when people want to be liked or loved in a romantic way. And I know not a few guys who are sad and worried if they can find a mate being 'neither meat nor fish', if girls would like them. Same (and even worse) with tomboy girls.

I say, look at many if not most rock stars (say Paul McCartney, Robert Plant, Billie Joe Armstrong, Andy Biersack, Kellin Quinn, you name it) and Arya Stark (need to find more popular women tomboys, damn it) as an example.

[injunjane]

there is a beautiful book 'The Gendered Society' by Aronson and Kimmel, I wonder if you know it

[injunjane]

btw it's hard to think about genders in the world where you've got 3 genders (masculine, feminine and neutral) and all 3 are used for both living beings and things.

'tramway' (tram) is feminine in Czech but masculine in Ukrainian and Russian, and nobody knows why. 'Ambulance' is of feminine gender in all 3, 'window' is of neutral gender in all 3, 'moon' is masculine in Czech and Ukrainian but feminine in Russian. And also nobody knows why.