Published on 12, July, 2020
A discussion in this forum made me ask myself this question, what's gender?. I googled it but what I found there didn't make much sense to me. I always thought that the gender of the other person doesn't tell me much about who they are. It just informs me about the appropriate pronouns that this person wants me to use with them. Frankly I don't care about figuring out my gender. I was born in a woman's body and I never felt like it's the wrong one. I think I'd feel the same if I was born in a man's body. I have never spent time thinking about this part of myself because I never thought that it's important enough to me. I'll be the same person anyway, no? I don't think it would change much about who I am... Can anyone share how they understand gender?
Like you and several others here, I don't have a strong enough sense of gender to mind which I am. I am female because my body is female. I was not impressed when it grew boobs and started to menstruate as both of those things are inconvenient and uncomfortable and I dislike them. But I don't feel I want to be male instead. I do think if it had been an option to just not bother with puberty I would have picked that. But since I do have hormones I do have sexual feelings, which can be enjoyable, although they can also be inconvenient. I have always wondered about why some/most people seem to care so much about what gender they are.
I would be more bothered if gender roles were rigidly enforced like in many societies today and most in the past. I am afraid of the idea of pregnancy and childbirth, so developing that vulnerability scared me, and in one of those societies I would have had to find some role which avoided that, like being a nun. Also I am not interested in many of the traditionally female things, apart from textiles which is a special interest. But other of my interests are either neutral or what used to be regarded as male.
I identify as female because I have many shared bodily experiences with most people born female, although I experience them differently to what might be the majority, since I find periods so unwelcome and have never wanted children. I was always told my body clock would kick in some day but it still hasn't and as I expected, perimenopause has occurred first! But I think of myself as a person more than as a woman, in fact I still feel some discomfort with that word, maybe I feel more like a girl? But I am far too old for that. Female seems more comfortable than woman. Words are weird. Probably I am what Ausomely mentions as autigender.
One form of gender which has been missed in this discussion is grammatical gender! I find this concept even more puzzling than societal gender. Why do some languages call a table masc, some call it fem and some call it neut?! So weird and pointless. I think it has something to do with morphology, but even that is inconsistent.
AuTriker said:Why do some languages call a table masc, some call it fem and some call it neut?! So weird and pointless.
Old English had three genders, masculine, feminine and neuter. You have to thank the Vikings and the Normans for simplifying matters for us.
I know. Although neither bothered to get gender out of their own languages while they were at it! And the Vikings pared down their writing system so they could have done their language at the same time.
It would have bothered me less if all languages agreed that tables were masc and chairs were fem, but no consistency even within the Indo-European family tree! And with all that, is that where footstools and occasional tables come from, what the furniture gets up after humans go to bed?! But only in Europe of course...