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

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

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?

[will-o-whisper.livejournal.com]

Awkwardly. His parents are crazy fundamentalist Born-Again Christians - like, homeschooling their kids because the schools are Christian enough crazy - and his mom was in the room. I ended up telling him that I thought that wasn't a very nice thing to say, because lots of girls knew things about computers, and did he know I couldn't dance and didn't know anything at all about hair. I don't know that he bought it, and I doubt his mom liked but...I couldn't just ignore that. I mean, what. The. Fuck. Him and his sister, I worry about. They are the cutest, sweetest, kids, but they are going to be so messed up as they get older.

I'm doing alright. The funeral proper is tomorrow today, and that will be rough, but at least I got to be here.

The curious thing with my mother is that I really believe her biggest upset about my clothes was that I looked too gay (and my dressier outfits are fairly butch, I won't lie), and that would cause problems. When I tried to call her on this, she got very defensive; it was strange and pretty upsetting. Yet nobody cared, not even my crazy religious aunt and uncle; they thought I looked snappy, cute, what have you. They also kept teasing about how all the guys were going to come after me, and how I keep talking about never getting pregnant but I'll totally change my mind when I get married and settle down with a nice guy. I expected things to be a lot more uncomfortable on that front, and yet it hasn't occurred to any of them that I might be anything but straight and, ultimately, heteronormative. Now, there a few butch women who are married to men in my family, which is why it's "acceptable" for me to wear what I do; to a degree, "masculinity" in women is associated more with being a good country farm girl than anything. And we do love our farmers. With others, including my mother I would bet, female masculinity is associated with homosexuality - something absolutely taboo to this side of the family. So there's this interplay, and lack of interplay, between gender, gender presentation, and sexuality going on, and its curious to see how people react to it, at least in my family.

This is all tangentially related, at best, to your original post, but you mentioned the relationship between gender and sexuality down-thread and it made me think. And I might be navel gazing because this whole experience has been upsetting in more ways than one, and I'm taking frustration out on everyone's LJ. >.>;

Respecting individual wishes is probably the best way to go with things like this, in my opinion. Personally, I always check peoples' profiles and the first page of their journals to see how they refer to themselves; if I can't find anything, I assume female until told otherwise. Myself, I mostly don't care, and even enjoy confusing people and being Sir'd. In male dominated spaces, like World of Warcraft since it's coming up so much, however, it's much more important to me to be properly identified as a woman. With WoW, while I won't usually say anything when it happens, I really do not like being defaulted to male, despite my female toons with female sounding names. A large part of that, for me, and a lot of women, I think, is that geek culture is so horrifyingly sexist and misogynistic, that it's all the more important for some that our voices and existence be acknowledged, and being called, and treated like, a man plays a part in erasing that.

Something like all that. I have no idea why LJ (especially fandom circles) is so female dominated, though. It's something that gets discussed a lot, it feels, but damned if I have any links.

[sadieg79.livejournal.com]

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 just it - there *is* no relationship between gender and sexuality. I can only guess that people think that way through stereotyping, and lots of it - as you've mentioned, in fact. Butch woman = lesbian, camp guy = gay, etc. I've met enough butch women and camp guys who are straight :P But you've made a lot of interesting points about the whole thing.

[will-o-whisper.livejournal.com]

You're right. I'm conflating gender and sexuality, and I shouldn't be.

Somewhere in that jumble, more what I was trying to say was that social constructions and assumptions about gender, and its presentation, often overlap with social constructions and assumptions about sexuality, and its presentation. It's not how things are, but how people (to use a vague and useless term) tend to expect things to be, and how those expectations shape their thoughts and actions - and in the case of my anecdata, how those expectations change across groups.

I don't know if that's any better. I messed up, though, and I'm sorry.

[sadieg79.livejournal.com]

No no, I got what you meant - I'm just trying to dispell what seems to be a very common myth. It's hard enough trying to explain my position to people without then being asked "So.. do you fancy girls now or what?" >_< Tis frustrating - but never mind, that's another rant for another day.

But yes - it's a good example of what you were saying; how it's more what people expect that how it really is.