Sex And Gender

[poliphilo]

People get pulled up on the feminist site I frequent for using "sex" and "gender" interchangeably. The distinction is useful. If I've understood it right, "sex" is about physical characteristics and "gender" is about what goes on in your head.

Someone proposed that if you enjoy the cut and thrust of the work-place your gender is male and if you like staying home knitting bootees your gender is female.

I expect they got jumped on. But here's the problem. Sooner or later you stumble over the stereotypes. "Sex" is easily determined (in most cases) but "gender" is a social construct.

I'm confused. I've just written a book in which my tomboyish heroine keeps dodging in and out of drag. She is, of course, a version of myself.

I'm a man. And I'm heterosexual. But when I put myself in a book it's as a girl who goes running about with a sword in her fist having wild adventures.

I think there are probably quite a lot of us with this cast of mind- we are the male fans of Buffy and Xena and Uma Thurman's Bride- but I don't believe there's a word for us...

...Yet.

Comments

[arielstarshadow.livejournal.com]

Hmmm...for me, sex is something you DO, gender is something you ARE. Thus, heterosexuals enjoy having sex with those of the opposite gender, homosexuals with those of the same gender, and bisexuals with both. For me, the word "transsexual" is an incorrect term and should always be replaced with "transgender." I suppose if I were to define the former, it might be something along the lines of "someone who is confused about with which gender they prefer to have sex."

I'd comment more, but my migraine-addled brain really isn't up to it at the moment.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Sorry about the migraine. I used to get them on a regular basis. I know how horrid they can be.

Yes, trans-sexuals are usually quite clear about whom they want to have sex with.

Though I did come accross the case of a transsexual who went from gay man to lesbian woman. I guess in this case the person's self-identification as gay trumped everything else.

[archyena.livejournal.com]

Why would there be a word for that, anyway? Isn't it a slightly too gendered perspective to need a term for men who can be fans of women who kick ass. But if we need a word, I think it's best to consider probably the most influenetial ass-kicking woman (recent scholarship aside), Joan d'Arc. The word, then, is "French." :-D

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

No, a label isn't necessary- though an enlargement of vocabulary usually leads to an enlargement of consciousness- meaning that people only become aware of a thing when there's a word for it.

I suggest the term "French" could lead to confusion. How about Arcist(pronounced with a hard "c") or Joanite?

I'm an Arcist and proud of it! Yes, it sounds pretty good.

[arielstarshadow.livejournal.com]

Why Joanite? I must be missing the connection to something...

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Joanite = admirer of Joan of Arc

[arielstarshadow.livejournal.com]

I did suspect that, but....why would that be connected to....hmmm....OK, I think I may see the connection now. :)

[karenkay.livejournal.com]

Fully evolved human?

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Do you think so? It would be nice...

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

but I don't believe there's a word for us...yet.

I can think of several:

enlightened, sophisticated, appealing...

I could go on if you like...

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Oh please...please....

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

Let's see, where was I?

...erudite, urbane, empathetic...

Well! I could just go on and on, silly me...

[morrison-maiden.livejournal.com]

I'd say the right word is something like a visionary :)

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Wow. I like that! :)

[morrison-maiden.livejournal.com]

Hehe, really?

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

"Visionary" is a big praise-word in my vocabulary.

[morrison-maiden.livejournal.com]

I think so too :)

[kaysho.livejournal.com]

I remember reading a chapter in some sociology book or other about sex vs. gender roles, and how different cultures assigned various tasks to the sexes. While some tasks obviously had a strong bias toward one sex or the other (in most cultures the men hunt and the women rear the children, for example), there was no task that every single culture on earth assigned universally to one sex or the other, bar one. In no culture were women primarily responsible for hunting marine mammals.

Be a man. Kill a whale.

[ide-cyan.livejournal.com]

Can you read French? If so, read this (http://www.lagauche.com/lagauche/article.php3?id_article=27).

I'm a man. And I'm heterosexual. But when I put myself in a book it's as a girl who goes running about with a sword in her fist having wild adventures.

I think there are probably quite a lot of us with this cast of mind- we are the male fans of Buffy and Xena and Uma Thurman's Bride- but I don't believe there's a word for us...

...Yet.

Yes there is. You're a stereotype. Have you never read the complaints about straight guys who write themselves into stories in female drag without having any clue what that actually entails?

Sheesh.

Pretending to be a woman doesn't automatically make you a feminist or a gender revolutionary. There's far more thought involved in the process.

Buffy, Xena, and the Bride are interesting characters for women to project themselves into because power fantasies appeal to everybody, but women who project themselves into Buffy, Xena or the Bride face several problems in the way of their indentification with them because power fantasies are never simple when you don't actually have such power. Especially when class divisions as important as gender come into play, and the reason you're banned from empowerment is because your gender is exploited. Hang out with female fans of those shows and you'll see plenty of examples of the problems they encounter, and the characters they do project themselves into, and how.

You should notice, for one thing, that all of the examples you name are male creations. Joss Whedon, John Schulian & Robert G. Tapert, and Quentin Tarantino created them.

How original does that make you? Heh. Your arrogance is a sick joke, a privileged self-delusion.

Have you thought about writing a book in which a tomboyish heroine cannot ever dodge into drag? Where she can't free herself of gender roles magically because the author hasn't experienced and isn't willing to imagine the punishment for women who want to escape them? Have you seen Boys Don't Cry? That would turn your dreams into nightmares.

Your books are safe.

While it is fun to offer positive images of powerful women, mystifying the acquisition and the cost of such power by either playing along with gender stereotypes in every other regard or getting all your examples of how powerful women should behave from the accounts given by other men is a sure way of never threatening the status quo.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Delphy is saying we should stop categorizing people by sex/gender. Altogether. That gender is a matter of class. OK.

I write what I write out of inner compulsion. I find myself projecting into female characters. This is something I can't help and which is beyond intellectual control.

Buffy etc are all of them male creations. Yeah. But the power of men in the entertainment industry has determined that there aren't any female-created equivalents. While things remain this way we have to take what we can get.

I don't pretend that the book I'm talking about is anything other than an entertainment. Sure it's safe- it's in the genre of the Three Musketeers.

[ide-cyan.livejournal.com]

How lucky for you that your pathetic excuses mean no alteration to your privileges need come to pass.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I am well aware of my privileges. I don't think I've ever tried to deny them. Have I?

I'm a man. I get all the breaks. I know this. I would like to see the system changed. I want a radical feminization of society. I want equal pay, equal rights etc, etc, etc....

I have, from a mixture of choice and necessity, worked in a number of less privileged female-identified jobs. I have been a nursing auxiliary, a cleaner and I am currently a carer (which means I get paid a pittance for looking out for my wife.) Also, in the past, I chose not to go chasing after a career because I needed to be at home to care for my kids.

I'm not complaining about my life. I'm just pointing out that you're making assumptions about me that I don't think are warranted.

Don't insult what you don't know

[craftyailz.livejournal.com]

I'm Poliphilo's wife. You don't know him - I do. He is my carer. He does all the housework, he helps me with my personal needs. Where I wasn't interested in the feminist issues, he has convinced me - by talk, by his actions and his beliefs - that I should be. He has never claimed the priviledges of being a man. If anything when I met him he was too apologetic for being a man. It has taken me a long time to convince him that being a man is okay and that diversity is a good thing. He is someone that the term metrosexual could have been devised for.

So don't knock him - he's the one in a million genuine man who regards women as right.

[manfalling.livejournal.com]

dude.
she's a bitch.
what is she talking about 'the well known blah blah of men who put themselves into tomboys who blah de blah dum dum dum... i'm shouting cos nobody listens to my normal voice blah'
i can't say i ever HEARD of a book with drag switching tomboys before. she says 'your book is safe'- which i resent cos it could well be a quote directly from the neverending story, a sacred tale, and if she's polluting it with this tirade, even accidentally, then that makes me pissed.
she's gumpf. if i never HEARD of this kind of book before i hardly imagine there can be many complaints about it.
plus she said a load of other crap i can't remember what but it was all crap and let's kick her ass together if she comes this way again.
YEAH!

[manfalling.livejournal.com]

further- she disses your book and you admit it's just an entertainment. bollocks to that. that book is ABOUT stuff. in the cave and the little girl and all the vying for roles- it's all rock on. don't go belittling it OK?

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

This is usually a quiet and well-mannered corner of the LJ universe. I guess it's good to have a little action.

I hope I wasn't belittling the book. But- yeah- you're right!

[aftertorless.livejournal.com]

Hello. Pleasure to meet you, so to speak.

I would be interested to know the following, should you care to elaborate more than you already have...

[1] Correct me if I am wrong, but did Thurman not collaborate extensively with Tarantino regarding the creation of The Bride? (Just checking.) What are your thoughts upon considering that bit of information?
[2] Would your response to this entry have differed if it were offered up by a gay man as opposed to a straight man? I would be particularly interested to read your thoughts on this point.
[3] Why did you not continue this engaging discussion beyond your final (and rather rude) response? I, for one, think that if you espouse such militant arguments, you should be able to see them through to the absolute end. But perhaps that's just me.

Let's bring the debate up a notch, shall we? (And feel free to continue it in my own diary, lest you insult poliphilo any more than you already have.)

[ide-cyan.livejournal.com]

[1] You're weren't arguing about that here (http://www.livejournal.com/users/poliphilo/88112.html?thread=483120#t483120). Quentin and Jean-Luc, not Quentin and Uma... I know she contributed, but Kill Bill was hardly advertised as "The First Film By Quenting Tarantino And Uma Thurman". Or even the second one, if you want to count Pulp Fiction, wherein the assassin pilot first germinated. It's funny how women's contributions are more often brought to light to be used to refute arguments made by other women. Really. I'm laughing. But I'm not holding my breath to see them remembered without prompting.

[2] Politics exist in context. Homophobic oppression interacts with misogyny. It doesn't cancel it out.

[3] I thought this "discussion" was over when poliphilo Godwinised it by comparing me to Nazi aircraft, natürlich.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry that you took the Messerschmiddt thing as an insult. here in Britain we don't think of the Luftwaffe as nazis, more as worthy and gallant opponents.

[ide-cyan.livejournal.com]

You should ask archyena, who seems to know so much about Usenet, what Godwin's Law is. Or you could always Google it.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Whydon't you just tell me yourself?

[ide-cyan.livejournal.com]

Because you'll remember it better if you make a minimal effort in learning it.

[aftertorless.livejournal.com]

Or is it perhaps because you can't articulate it yourself, as evidenced by the fact that you have neglected to articulate responses to so many other of your posts in this thread?

Be strong, my dear: if you initiate a debate, be sure you're able to see its completion.

[aftertorless.livejournal.com]

I wasn't arguing anything in the response I wrote; I was, instead, elaborating on the connection between Quentin and Jean-Luc's cinematic style, on which I elaborated at length with my comparison of American Westerns and the Kung Fu films. Aside from my personal admission that I "am a sucker for films with strong female characters," gender had nothing to do with the response you linked.

Additionally, it was not billed as "The First Film By Quentin Tarantino and Uma Thurman" because it was a creative collaboration, not a co-direction. Also, I did not address Uma's contribution merely to refute your argument; I simply asked for elaboration from you regarding why you reacted so vehemently to this entry; I do not have to be reminded of women's contribution to anything. Whereas, your "argument" seems to be, "if you have a dick, anything you say about women is automatically null and void." Which would of course be similar to some of my more militant gay friends who hate all straight people.

[besideserato.livejournal.com]

And you know you're Right.
[Laughs]

[besideserato.livejournal.com]

Oh, I know, I was just talking about Will about my visit to the East Coast and he was so overjoyed, I think he almost had a heart attack. You would like him. He is my Ferris equivalent--if I may even make that sort of comparison. Just like it's unusual to find nice Republican boys who are smart and fun, so is it nice to find journalists of that description.

[besideserato.livejournal.com]

Darling, you did not overreact at all. I think you raised some interesting points. I am in accord with you, naturally, and I think, too that Ms. ide_cyan would do a great deal better getting her points across if she behaved with a little more decorum.

Though I disagree with it, her point was indeed an interesting one but her manner of expressing it was so violent that it is no wonder so few of us took the time to consider her thoughts. I, for one, was so livid with her lack of civility that I had to return to this post after I had gotten over myself.

She has to realize that there is a place, a time and a code of conduct for her politicking and theorizing. She is not going to "threaten the establishment" by screaming at the top of her lungs and vulgarizing the fine art of debate--all that does is alienate her audience.

Does that help a woman's struggle any more than commenting that you enjoy man-made literary and cinematographic creations? Ah, and we wonder why the feminist is so villanized in the media--mind you, the liberal media (yeah, it's bait, come and get it, I dare you).

My dear poliphilo, I hope you are not turned away from this wonderful medium by the abuse you have suffered here. You are not a misogynist, you are a charming and caring wonderful individual full of perfections and faults, the sum of which, Ailz will agree, is fabulous.

Sex & Gender

[hepo.livejournal.com]

Don't be confused. For me its perfectly normal to write of the opposite of what I am. Simply put, we write what stimulates and challenges our mind and what we generally believe to be 'interesting' for the reader.

Write on...

Yours

Hepo

Re: Sex & Gender

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Thank you.

Yes, it's not a matter of conscious choice. I write as I do because I have to. I had a go at writing a novel- quite recently- in a male voice and it ran into the sand after a single chapter.