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

[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!