strangetomato | Again with the gender thing...

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Again with the gender thing...

Gender is weird, huh?

I've noticed that people on lj (and other places online, I assume) tend to make something of an issue out of people getting their gender wrong. Someone made a secret about me at one point, saying that they always thought I was a guy, and I wonder how they thought I was going to react to that. I don't really care. If anything, I think it's nice to be anonymously without gender on the internet, and I usually don't select a gender when given the option in profiles and such. If people don't know, then you don't have any of the baggage that comes with it. It's the same reason I use SO instead of husband. Husband feels like such a loaded term to me.

I see people rushing to correct people when they get the gender of a simmer wrong, whether it's themselves or someone else. I notice, too, that it's always males. That's not surprising. It makes sense, given the predominantly female nature of the sims fandom (and fandom in general). We're going to assume y'all have ovaries unless we're told the difference. But why is it so important to correct people?

I was curious about it, so I thought I'd ask (rather than make a simsecret or some such nonsense). For those of you that have done it (and I know a number of people on my flist that have), why do you feel the need to inform people that you or someone else is a male? Note that I'm not here to pick a fight or anything of the sort. I'd just like to hear your side of it.

(Oh, and... for the record, fanseelamb is a female. :P This one seems to come up over and over again.)

And another thing...

I've always been one of those people that tries to be conscious of the gendered messages I give to children in the way I talk to them, like not telling girl's they're "pretty" while telling boys they're "smart" and crap like that (which people do ALL of the time, if you listen to them), but then I noticed I was treating Petey (my first male cat) in a distinctly different way than his big "sister," Suki. How much of that is personality, and how much of that is me projecting? (He's a total Momma's boy, by the way. :P) It's crazy how we slip into these things. The cats are both spayed/neutered, so it's not like they even have any sex-based behaviours to speak of. And they're cats! Do they even have gender?

What do you think? Have any thoughts or interesting stories to share?

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Kids are naturally inquisitive, but I think they often get taught/are encouraged to not think and question, so eventually they grow up and accept that things are just the way they are. Unfortunately.

It must be very interesting to view the ideas of gender as someone whose identity is changing. Do they suddenly seem less real? More real?

The question of why there's gender at all is an interesting one. My best guess is that it simplifies things for people. If a baby is dressed in pink, then they don't need to ask. But gender is an odd concept. A whole culture springs up around a sex. Some of these things seem to have developed from a place of some logic, like the physical differences, but others are harder to understand.

I try to remind myself to bring up intersexuality in conversations about sex and gender (and sexuality, because that usually gets linked in, too). It really throws the thing wide open. Just like people get caught up in these distinct categories of gay vs. straight, they're far too concerned with making male and female these two extremely distinct things, while there are all sorts of in-betweens. People don't know what to do with them, they don't know what to think of them.

This whole discussion of whether a simmer is male or female doesn't even consider for a moment that they might be both, neither, or somewhere in between. It's another good reason to be wary of the whole thing.

That's very true. It's not always that they are intentially taught that, but they are all the same.

And me jumping in there for a few moments to try to open their minds isn't going to undo all the work of their parents or their peers or society at large, but you never know... sometimes it's the very small little things we remember and it sticks with us.

Obviously, I've chosen to stick with optimism. :P

"Cats don't have a gender as such, but do we project one onto them? Are they really that different when you strip away the sex characteristics? I struggle with this same thing with people."

Good point. The difference between cats and humans, of course, is that whatever we project onto them doesn't actually change the way they behave one way or another. They're still just going to be cats... and themselves. Human children, on the other hand...

Optimism is a good thing. I wish I was better at it. :P

I haven't seen it all that much. It happened with me a couple of times (both people popping in to say, "WHUH?! You're not a dude? :P), and I've seen people inform me of the gender of a simmer (male in each case, but not always correctly), and a couple of guys point out that they are guys. I haven't seen a kerfluffle, either, but sometimes it struck me as odd that someone would react to that one little he or she enough to go out of their way to comment on it.

I think it's a bigger deal for guys to be mistaken for girls. Men are generally raised to avoid being feminine at all costs, so it's probably a knee-jerk reaction. As women, we're told that masculine traits are generally okay to have, so it doesn't bother us as much.

I guess the WoW world has women dealing with the idea that games are a guy thing, so it's more that you're fighting to be recognized as a player. It comes down to having to prove yourself as having the same skills, perhaps? I don't think we see that much in the sims fandom. (Yeah... we're here because we don't need to have gaming skills! XD)

On a related note, my cell phone bill has been coming to me addressed as Mr. Firstname Lastname, but I'm way too lazy to go through the 20 step process to call them up to change it. I have chosen to merely find it amusing. I even say it's for my SO and he should pay it, since he OBVIOUSLY must have took my whole name as his own, as women often do. Now he's Mr. Strange Tomato. About time!

Edited 2010-08-16 21:12 (UTC)

I don't know about that. I'm sure cats are going to do what they want, and how they relate to each other, but I think the way we treat them does have some impact on how they behave towards us. If I am more affectionate to one cat or another, then they might be a friendlier cat. If I play agressively with one (and I have noticed people doing that more with male cats, as a general rule), then they might be tougher, more likely to scratch someone. We can socialize our pets through our behaviour with them.

But yes, I agree with you, overall. We have far more influence on human children. I guess I was just interested in how the same thing can be seen in animals, to some extent.

It's not always easy, for sure.

True. I guess I was just thinking more about how we talk about them, as in 'oh, she must be doing [behaviour] because she's female' type stuff. We like to try to explain what cats think and why they do certain things, but I think most of the time we really have no idea. :)

Also, I've had two male cats in my life. The first one was what you'd call an aggressive cat. He was affectionate enough when he wanted to be, but he was also unpredictable, and wouldn't take any bullshit. Getting him into the travelling cage was a bit of a nightmare. He also had a strong preference for me - I was pretty much the only person allowed to pick him up and hold him for more than 10 seconds.

Our second cat is about twice the size of our first. He's very calm most of the time, and very tolerant, even of children. Anyone can pick him up and cuddle him, and any person who'll scratch his neck is good in his book.

Pretty much like night and day, those two.

Haha, well yeah, poor meetme2theriver skunk. Being thought of as a guy isn't -that- bad at least! :D

Somehow I always assumed you were female even with that male icon. It's in the way you write and the things you say. Plus I'm also guilty of assuming everyone is like me when I don't know any better. I think lots of people do that.

I like knowing people's locations too, just because I'm curious about that particular topic. That may stem from RL though since I live in a city where folks hail from all over the world and talking about their home countries is a common topic. But online I promptly forget people's answers so it doesn't colour my perception of them too much.

As for the girly topics - that's great if you don't mind discussing them with guys. I'm just not comfortable complaining about cramps and stuff to dudes. And while discussing hot guys with gay guys is lots of fun, straight guys just don't seem to appreciate the topic much. :p

You're certainly right though in that everyone is different and we can't assume they'll be a certain way based solely on gender. For me it seems to boil down to how well we know each other. If they're a passing acquaintance or random creator it doesn't matter at all. In fact, if someone calls me a guy in an upload post (like if they recoloured my whatever and are giving credit) I don't usually correct them. If they're an online pal though, it's nice to know basic info like gender. Now come to think of it, I don't recall ever asking. It just comes out naturally during conversation. When it comes out naturally like that, saying "pshaw, kick my nuts in all you want.... I'm a girl!" is really more conversing than correcting.

I liked "thinking about thinks" -- when I saw that (in my email notification) I thought it was very clever! xD

I've been mistaken for a guy online. Not in the sims fandom (because of my girly avatar) but in the Disney and Harry Potter fandoms, even though they also have a female majority. I think it's because I tend to gush over the hotness of females. But I also gush over the hotness of males just as much, and then everyone gets confused.

I really couldn't tell whether you were male or female when I first started reading, so I just didn't assign a gender. I found out when I first saw your self-sim.

Oh, I wasn't getting on your case about calling them kids. I think we were talking basically about kids in this sub-thread. But speaking from stuff I've seen in WoW it's often adult males falling into this trap of being manipulated for gold and gear by players who purportedly are female -- I know of one case where I was convinced that the person in question was actually male, until I heard her in Vent, because the stuff she would say was so stereotyped and bad, I didn't think a chick would really stoop that low. *grin*

I wonder if your Ripp and Johnny avatars have something to do with people thinking you're a guy. Just seeing that male face over and over might give them an unconscious impression, like how you see meetme2theriver as a skunk. People have told me they think of me as green! :D

My SO has a story about shocking his parents at the age of five or so by imitating a sexy woman in a perfume commercial. He sang "I can bring home the bacon, and fry it up in a pan, and never never never never let you forget you're a man!" I can just see his skinny little boy-self doing the hip-bumps, and his parents' horrified faces. I think it was in front of company too. xD He treasures this memory as the beginning of his rebellion against sex roles, I think.

I lol'd at your comment about Sims players and lack of gaming skills. For sure I was over my head in WoW, having never played anything but Sims and Luxor. Not even one shooter, or RPing game, or even paper-based D&D. But y'know, I don't remember anyone who gave me grief ever connecting it to my sex. They just called me a noob, which was justified.

Your SO will always be Mr. Strange Tomato to me! (I already think of him as Mr. Tomato.)

Okay, I think I've had plenty of time to get my thoughts together by now.

-"what groups you would consider acceptable to mock"
As I said, only people of certain groups, and not people who make major choices that require a lot of consideration or are wrong, morally, ethically, etc. I wouldn't make fun of a woman who has had an abortion or a person who has committed murder, for their choices. Those are such serious issues that making light of them would be unacceptable.
You use "mock" when I originally said "make fun of". I wish I thought to say this before, because I only just saw that the two are the same thing. I didn't intend it that way. I interpreted "make fun of" literally. When I make a joke about someone, it is intended to be fun. It's intended to take an unimportant aspect of that person and turn it into something that everyone can laugh at, even the person being joked about. Good intentions don't make a tasteless joke any better, though.
An example of a ridiculously petty thing I'd bring up in a joke would be something like a person's preference for pink. Not that I'd actually joke about that specifically — because pink is certainly a fine color — but do you get the idea? It's about things that are clearly subject to one's opinion. If they realize that when I say "orange is better" that I'm expressing my opinion, they shouldn't be offended, because it ought not to have a bearing on their tastes.
Another thing that's probably more common in my online rants that poke fun at another person is my joking about their seeming lack of common sense. It's not because of their choice to lack common sense, since it's not always a choice (and if I think I have common sense but really don't, why would I try to develop any?) but because of their choice to show themselves as lacking it.

-"what you consider a 'choice'"
I mean, choices are choices. For example, you can choose to live within their means, as wide or narrow as that might be, or you can run yourself into debt. You can choose to hand over all your money or let the mugger shoot you in the head and still make off with all that money anyway. Just because one of the choices seems to be the more reasonable or obvious approach doesn't mean that it's a foregone conclusion.
Nowadays, there are all kinds of things for which it seemed that the only option was to accept one's fate. There are treatments for disease, disorders and the like. In my experience, I haven't found too many aspects of the human person that can't be changed by choice. A person doesn't have to let genetic or chemical conditions or predispositions control their actions.

-"why it matters whether it's a choice or not"
Again, I only make fun (by my preferred definition) when the choice being made is something subjective and insignificant. If the person knows the choice being made won't have a great impact, and that neither their choice nor mine can be considered right or wrong, what bearing should my opinion have upon them? They should feel free to make their own choices and not feel enslaved to my views, tastes, feelings, etc.

Wow. How did you react to that? You must have wondered where to even start with that one.

I'm very sorry about your grandfather. That's tough enough to go through without having to deal with motherly nitpicking (mine does it, too, though not as much as she used to). I hope you're doing okay. It's hard to lose a grandparent.

That's an interesting point. I can see how identifying with a gender is more important for those who have to struggle with it in that way. What I might resent may be seen as desirable to them. I guess the bottom line is respecting people's wishes. When you put it that way, I have a better appreciation for people making a point to specify what they identify with.

It took me a while to realize that livejournal was mostly female. I had no idea. Why is that, I wonder? Because it's mostly fandom-based?

A whole conference on gender? Sounds interesting! ^_^

I'm not sure I agree on your first statement from my own experience. Most of the males I know in the sim community (and I know at least 4 or 5) did identify themselves as such before I thought to ask, or at least that's how I remember it. I believe it came up more or less casually in about half of the cases. And I have noticed others (females, we would assume) pointing it out just as must as the males themselves.

Thinking a little broader on the whole online community, I thought instantly of J.M. Pescado, and he is well known as a male in the sims fandom and gets those "I have a wide-on for Pescado" secrets made about him, so he is sort of singled out for being male, aside from his renown as a modder.

Aren't all people's bits dangly? :P Some are danglier than others, I guess.

I was like you when I came to the sims fandom. I think I initially imagined it would be more of a mixed group, though I'm not sure why. Before this, I was pretty involved in the crafty blogosphere (mostly knitting), which is very much female dominanted, but I think it's easier to see why. With Sims, I was looking at it being a computer game more than a girl's computer game. I think the sales show that it's a pretty mixed group, don't they?

No, I guess not. They don't style themselves in certain ways, and they all sway their hips when they walk. In fact, there's a bit of a human-projected notion that all cats are feminine and all dogs are masculine, isn't there?

When I'm talking about cats, it's more "sex" than "gender" and I shouldn't confuse the two terms.

Luckily, I haven't seen anyone get really offended or anything, but most of the time I wonder why people even bother to correct someone for using he or she incorrectly. I don't think I'd even pick up on it. I'd just skim the pronouns and get to the meat of the sentence, like the part where we talk about SIMS. Sims are very important to me. :P

I like to think about thinks. I like to think thinkly things. I'm thnking a think right now. XD

Hi, my name's Amelia. I hope you dont mind, but I've been watching your journal for awhile since I got hooked on 'Strangetown, Here We Come'.

I think a lot about gender issues, partly because I've been mistaken for a guy more than once. Not online so far, ironically enough, but in real life. Or, if people dont think I'm a guy, they tend to think I'm a lesbian (which, to be fair, is half correct). I cant blame them, cause in a lot of stereotypical ways I'm sort of masculine in how I look and present myself, but I totally identify as a girl. I guess I think gender has two levels to it: the stereotypical level, and the actual identity level, and the two dont always line up. On the stereotypical level, I'm kind of masculine, but on the identity level, I'm totally feminine. I think the whole thing kind of operates on a continuum as well, much like sexual orientation: from female, to genderqueer, to male, plus a zillion things in between.

Anyway, that's my two cents. I hope what I said made sense.

Haha. S/he overdid it, did she?

I'm really interested in this idea of sounding like a male or female. The way we talk, or the way we write, can give us away. I've heard a guy say that another guy "sounded gay" because he talked too much. I've heard the idea of more dynamic or musical speech being associated that way, but for this guy, even talking much at all was considered feminine.

It does make a certain amount of sense when you compare it to what's considered masculine in physical movement. "Real men" don't move much. They don't swing their arms when they walk. They don't turn their body one way and their head another.

On LJ, I tend to assume everyone is female and blonde until shown otherwise. I don't know why, but it's just this default setting I have, and I get surprised when I find out someone isn't blonde. Not in a "dumb blonde" type of way, either. I really don't know what's up with that. LJ has more female users than male (as shown on their stats page), and the sims is often considered a "girly" game, so it's not a far reach to expect that the majority of simmers on LJ will be female.

I guess I like to know things about people, so knowing if they're male or female just helps fill in the blanks. Like, I'm confused about Jenfold. I've seen many people say "LOL Jenfold is male, duh" and just as many say "LOL Jenfold is female, duh", that I kinda just want to know to know? I don't treat anyone differently based on that information, but it's just basic curiosity.

I suppose that in the LJ simmers world, the male player isn't as common, so maybe people just want them to know that? It's like how the majority of LJers are American. People tend to assume you're American unless you've told them otherwise. I'm Australian, and that means my world view and experiences are different, and I like people to know that I'm Australian, not American. Back in my earlier LJ days, I honestly used to be too gung ho about it, but I've definitely chilled there. I guess it's all just part of how we identify ourselves, and whether or not our sex or gender is a big part of that.

/ramble

I've actually once been PM'd by someone asking me why I play a "girls game." Needless to say, that person was soundly told off, and she hasn't spoken to me since.

Wow. They deserved a telling off!

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Again with the gender thing...

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