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Jun. 18th, 2003 11:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
adrienmundiObligatory warning: What follows is based on limited knowledge, perception, and things which followed from the combination of the two. I make no claims to expertise, and can quite easily be misreading, or just simply wrong. In other words, these are my contingent opinions, and really not much more.
Doing the pragmatics of gender talk with a few important people lately, and I'm realizing that I really, really don't fit where I used to think I would, or should. While it's likely a gross overgeneralization, from what I have seen, read, and experienced, people with outies who want to be girlier tend to be not much like me, and I don't much want to be like what I perceive them to be (aside from the girlier; some are so pretty as to make me cry with hopeless envy. All too many of them, actually). I blame the Benjamin Accords for much of this, as well as the social force (hey you, not that I didn't say power)brought to bear on outies that, I suspect, when combined with the social force enforcing stark binarism, leads to a much starker deliniation of roles and boundaries. Again, this is just my experience; I'd like to think that there are cool, liminal-livin', theoretically powerful, smart and sexy pretty folks who may or may not have "wrong" parts, but it's not been my experience thus far.
On the other hand, I read a great deal about boidykes (and I realize I'm perilously close to what feels like a condescending overgeneralization; that's really, really not my intent, but I bear watching, just in case). At least as presented, both extra- and intradiegetically, it seems like this is something, a concept/movement/way of life, that captures the power and potential of language, role, individual power, and above all, choice and freedom. It may well be a case of the grass being greener, but my lawn is chock full of pink plastic flowers, so anything green looks like Eden by comparison.
This is where I usually whine about force dynamics, about how the "subjugator" class is at least as limited as those who are the "subjugated", usw., but I'm not going to do that; it's tired and old, even if it does feel true to me. (I certainly don't mean to excuse bad behavior on the part of anyone, no matter the amount of "power"; bad behavior is always bad behavior. I'm a poor apologist for assholes of any stripe.) I'm not sure where I'm headed with this, so I'll likely stop here for now.
Doing the pragmatics of gender talk with a few important people lately, and I'm realizing that I really, really don't fit where I used to think I would, or should. While it's likely a gross overgeneralization, from what I have seen, read, and experienced, people with outies who want to be girlier tend to be not much like me, and I don't much want to be like what I perceive them to be (aside from the girlier; some are so pretty as to make me cry with hopeless envy. All too many of them, actually). I blame the Benjamin Accords for much of this, as well as the social force (hey you, not that I didn't say power)brought to bear on outies that, I suspect, when combined with the social force enforcing stark binarism, leads to a much starker deliniation of roles and boundaries. Again, this is just my experience; I'd like to think that there are cool, liminal-livin', theoretically powerful, smart and sexy pretty folks who may or may not have "wrong" parts, but it's not been my experience thus far.
On the other hand, I read a great deal about boidykes (and I realize I'm perilously close to what feels like a condescending overgeneralization; that's really, really not my intent, but I bear watching, just in case). At least as presented, both extra- and intradiegetically, it seems like this is something, a concept/movement/way of life, that captures the power and potential of language, role, individual power, and above all, choice and freedom. It may well be a case of the grass being greener, but my lawn is chock full of pink plastic flowers, so anything green looks like Eden by comparison.
This is where I usually whine about force dynamics, about how the "subjugator" class is at least as limited as those who are the "subjugated", usw., but I'm not going to do that; it's tired and old, even if it does feel true to me. (I certainly don't mean to excuse bad behavior on the part of anyone, no matter the amount of "power"; bad behavior is always bad behavior. I'm a poor apologist for assholes of any stripe.) I'm not sure where I'm headed with this, so I'll likely stop here for now.
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Date: 2003-06-19 07:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-06-19 02:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-06-19 07:21 pm (UTC)I suppose it goes without saying that I'm not fully sure of much of this. However, here goes:
I don't think pretty and gender necessarily coincide; David Bowie is one of the prettiest humans in the public eye, and as far as I know, he's fully an outie (though I can't claim first hand knowledge). However, it may well enter in in that I tend to find "girls" pretty, more so statistically than I tend to find "boys". It may well be an artificial linkage that I both (partially) create and (fully) fear. I also worry that I don't try more/harder because I fear the "not being able to pull it off"; "pretty" is a big part of that, though I'm not sure the precise linkage. I know I don't feel or see myself as "pretty", and I dearly want that. Perhaps it is that I suspect people would be more positively inclined towards what I am (clumsily/awkwardly) trying to do if I looked less than decidedly "masculine" (and I know, I have a neck, not musclebound, usw, but I still think I easily and for most, comfortably, fit into what they tend to think of as "man", and I hate that).
I'm losing cogency; feel free to pick any point up and continue excavation.
Re:
Date: 2003-06-22 03:47 pm (UTC)