Again with the gender thing...

[strangetomato]

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?

Comments

[lalalaleigha.livejournal.com]

I attended a conference on gender this weekend so I hope I don't blather on too much.

What I find most fascinating about this phenomenon are two things:
1. That the males aren't extremely well-known as males in a female-dominated forum, and
2. That females seem eager to identify males as male

Put another way: females identify male Simmers as male more than male Simmers identify themselves as male.

What I mean by this is: females are, in general, more conscious of their own gender. The societal pressure tends to be stronger on females to perform in a certain capacity in order to meet societal norms. In the "Simmer's society" that you've established here, that pressure shifts to males precisely because, as you identified, it is a female-dominated forum. The 'social norm' in Simmerland is to be female.

To that effect, the majority -- females -- may note a male in Simmerland as noteworthy in the same way that a female physician in the 1950s was noteworthy. One might even look to the term "abnormal" to describe male simmers here (though it's a loaded term). So while gender is not such an important identifier in Simmerland for females, to be male and in Simmerland is unusual, and therefore women may be more inclined to make a note of the male presence.

Males in Simmerland are just here for the Sims. They probably don't see themselves as a "minority" per se because Simmers are an accepting bunch and a male Simmer is seen as interesting rather than, you know, weird or to be shunned.

*hopes that made sense to someone other than me*

[trippytexan.livejournal.com]

That made a lot of sense, actually. It's perfectly natural to be curious about someone else's gender, especially if you're interacting with them in a situation that's typically dominated by one gender or another, even if it isn't actually important and even if it isn't actually any of your business. Humans are naturally curious about other humans, especially if they happen to be different from us. It's just that problems arise when people make too big of a deal about those differences.

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

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.