Talking to other fathers of daughters, it’s interesting how we tend to recognise one another through behaviour patterns. I am very heterosexual but, although I from time to time commit the usual sins of mansplaining and the like, I find traditional male behaviour rather detestable and am much more comfortable around women; and I don’t mean with a sexual component. I would never describe myself as having a lesbian side because that would be appropriation of an experience I have never had, but I do think that my gender is more diffuse than that of most of the men I know, and that in my professional life this has had advantages in dealing with women colleagues.
So I would say there is definitely an experienced and learned aspect to gender.
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Thanks so much for sharing. You’ve made it a lot easier for me to understand.
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Thank you for sharing. I am not sure what gender dysphoria is, can you explain it from your point of view.
Makeup - this is a friend of mine’s brand. https://www.sallybskinyummies.com/ I spent an hour talking with her and she is super impressive about researching all the ingredients in her line to be the best for skin.
Almost all the department store brands are made by Estee Lauder. We have the factory near us so I get their grab bags at work - MAC, Clinique, Bobbi Brown. You name it. All Estee Lauder.
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I got to go to a warehouse sale once that was for friends and family of MAC/Estée Lauder employees. It was educational – seeing all these “competing” brands under one roof, and especially seeing all these luxury items in brown cardboard boxes on folding tables. It’s something anyone who thinks about it for more than two seconds realises, but the experience really hammered it home.
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I think I fall into the same general venn circle as you. I don’t think anyone that knows me irl would describe me as an effeminate male even though I am aware of multiple typically effeminate mannerism I have. I am much more comfortable hanging out with a group of women than a group of men. And while a component of that is I am mostly attracted to women, the main driver is I find most men and their ways incredibly foreign whereas women just makes sense. I have had the thought more than once that I am a lesbian in a man’s body but would never say that out loud as a serious statement as it isn’t accurate but it does describe to some degree my personal package of feelings where I lack better terminology. Is there a check-box for different but not different enough for a proper label? Or maybe a lot of other guys look at the men around them also wonder what the fuck are they talking about?
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While I’m talking about this, I’ll give a link to one of my favorite visuals, the Gender Unicorn.
It’s true that gender is a spectrum, hence people like myself that note they are specifically non-binary. There are, however, many people that identify and express close enough to the endpoints that they just don’t really feel the variance that they may actually have. In Western culture, this is even more true in the current era, when presentation isn’t as always delineated as it has been at other times. (Example: a female ABA person wearing jeans isn’t automatically violating the norms of her gender, although of course a male ABA wearing a skirt is.)
“Male” and “female” are certainly culturally defined, but many are still more comfortable with those expressions, even so. On that note …
It essentially means that you have to double your wardrobe! I’m personally most comfortable with a blended appearance, so not so much differently day-to-day, but usually more in the middle. I sometimes present as female, and rarely as male these days.
This can bring a different set of struggles – take the conversation I had with my doctor yesterday. (Extra complication: I get my medical care through the VA.) I finally had a conversation with her about having something in my record about my preferred terms of address: I want something to which I can refer care providers so they might get my terms correct. I’m very uncomfortable with “Mr. Horrid,” but since I don’t identify as female either, what honorific do I request? If I was identifying as female, that would actually be easier.
Oh, and just for the record, male and female aren’t always as clearly defined in biology (mostly non-biologists!) would have you believe.
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I know I do. That whole thing guys do, where they pretend that they don’t have emotions, and bust on each other for showing any type of sensitivity? Gah. I generally prefer the company of women, and I’ve found that when I can view the demographics of blogs and other online content I’ve written, it tends to appeal more to female readers. When I write fiction, I have kind of push myself to invent male characters.
My wife and I don’t have a kid yet, but it took me a really long time to adjust to the idea of potentially having a boy because all I could think of was what jerks we were in grade school. Of course, I say that to women and they’re like “What are you talking about? Girls are bitches!”
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This is where I think the French and Russian revolutionaries had a good idea when they tried to implement titles like “Citizen” or “Comrade”. A whole lot of assumptions about age, marital status, and gender just get swept away.
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You know, I might have to use that in day-to-day life!
A friend at a very inclusive kinky camping event earlier this month apologized and said that she’s trying very hard, but she’s so used to Sir or Ma’am that it was hard for her not to use a title. I finally agreed that as I was presenting as female for the whole week, she could call me ma’am. (I was OK with that, as she specifically asked instead of just assuming she could call me something else!)
I do wonder how that would go over at the VA, though …
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It’s nice to hear.
I actually became a bit self conscious here this last week in that I noticed multiple posts of mine where I shared a video, movie or song and part of my description included saying it made me cry. I don’t cry at the drop of a hat but presented with sad emotional content I react accordingly and don’t mind admitting it.
I’ve had some issues with partners in that most of my friends are female. For example right now I have one male friend that I actively do things with. I have a ton of what I would call male acquaintances. We are friends but neither I or they would ever plan to do anything together but if we ran in to each other at an event we would say hi and then stand there awkwardly for a polite bit.
My first was a daughter and I was full on super damn excited to raise her and encourage her to be everything and anything she likes to be.
And then my second was a boy and my internal voice went something like: “Oh fuck, of fuck, oh fuck how am I going to raise a boy child. What do they like. Oh no, I know what they like. Loud obnoxious things, that’s what.”
But it all worked out. Nut didn’t fall far from the tree. To this day I am not sure what if any gender my son prefers and thankfully he wasn’t into team sports (he does like to workout weights, running, yoga) but I was spared weekend sporting crap.
I was thinking since my first post above and I recall the first time I realized I wasn’t quite like the other boys 100%. In the 3rd grade I went with my dad to a garage sale and they had for sale a large paper grocery bag full of football cards for around $5. He bought it for me and when I got home some of the neighborhood boys came over to see what I had. I quickly realized that they knew every player, their stats, their worth, etc… They spoke a language that was just gibberish to me and even one kid’s little first grade brother’s knew as much as the kids my age. They didn’t seem to notice but I was aware these people are not my tribe.
In grade school I spent a lot of my lunch breaks in the library reading alone or hanging out with My Longfellow the councilor telling him about the latest episode of In Search Of or the latest science fiction I had read. I never got picked on for being different as it really didn’t show on the outside. On the inside I was constantly afraid someone would realize I was some sort of fake. Not in terms of biology. More in culture and temperament. By 8th or 9th grade I discovered punk rock and new wave and it was the first time I can recall seeing others out in the world that seemed to think like I did. Which I can’t underscore how much that helped me.
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I like the honorific “Mx.” (pronounced “Mix”) - but I also think it’s incumbent upon cis-het men to jump in with gender neutral/fluid terms so that they don’t just become designations for “Not Men.”
You could also do what I’m doing and spend a shit ton of money on a doctoral degree so that you can have the gender neutral honorific of “Dr.” or “Professor.”
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I’m picturing myself with a teenage son who’s like “I hate you Dad! I’m going to try out for football, and apply to business school and…I wish Ted Nugent was my father!!”
I wonder how much that’s changed. It doesn’t seem like being into nerdy/geeky stuff is all that unusual or stigmatized anymore, given that we kind of won in the end. All the a-hole jocks we knew in HS are now carrying computers in their pockets. Sci-fi has definitely entered the mainstream.
I started as pretty regular boy—played baseball, watched Airwolf—but after developing some conspicuously peculiar interests (UFOs and such) I got bullied by pretty much the whole school, from 3rd-6th grade, which kind of put an end to me being outgoing. And I think that’s why it’s really easy for me to identify with women and other marginalized groups—I’ve always been on the fringes. I don’t know what it’s like to be in the center, giving orders.
After HS I kind of went from having friends to having relationships (which come with their own pseudo-friends). In fact, the best man at my wedding was an ex-girlfriend (the actual relationship had been over for more than a decade—we’re close friends now…My wife likewise had a guy friend as her maid of honor. We’re not really into conventions).
To me, though, this seems to have less to do with gender, per se, than being an outsider and therefore feeling more comfortable around other people who have also been pushed to the margins to some degree. When you think about it the traditional masculine performance—being forceful, masking one’s emotions, prodding your friends’ weaknesses**—has everything to do with being in the center and pushing out those who can’t/won’t check your behavior.
And why would you want to be around people who are playing that game?
**When you think about the how the South Park kids treat each other, and how Matt and Trey modeled that on their own childhoods, it’s little surprise that show is so conservative.
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I find this fascinating, only because my reaction to men preferring/feeling more comfortable with female friendship is so drastically different from when I hear a person who identifies as a woman exclaim, “All my friends are guys! I prefer hanging out with guys.” My immediate reaction to that, valid or not, is to label this person a “cool girl”: http://jezebel.com/the-cool-girl-is-not-fiction-but-a-phase-1642985632
It underscores the notion that our understanding of male/female is so very culturally constructed. I clearly do it too by assuming that a woman who expresses a preference for male friendship over female is concurrently expressing a preference for the historical, straight, male social construct. Perhaps due to age, I’m beginning to understand that I don’t prefer men or women. I don’t want to hang out with those catty PTA bitches at my daughter’s school any more than I want to hang out with guys who do nothing but talk about guns, football, and sex. Yet, even as I am writing this, I also appreciate that the ladies I’ve met through BB (and now here) are some of my faves. So, hell, I don’t know. I do know that I Iike trying to think through this, however.
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Hip hop would have been cheaper…
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My rap pseudonym was “K-drama” and my dj name was “DJ Tape Deck.” Which sounds better “Professor DJ Tape Deck” or “Doctor K-drama?”
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Unfortunately it doesn’t work in Germany, as Frau Doktor Bundeskanzlerin Merkel can tel you.
When my youngest was at U in Germany she would mention the “Herr Professor” when speaking English; titles are a big thing over there.
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But of course! I must’ve had my USA goggles on when I responded. 
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Not a problem, just an observation. Now Dr. Merkel is the leader of the free world during the US vacancy, we have to pay more attention to Germans.
(Merkel comes over as somewhat gender fluid herself with her suits and her ability to switch in an instant from businesslike to maternal and back again.)
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Nor I, but then I didn’t want to start getting overspecific.
I’m not suggesting for a moment that women en masse are in some meaningful way better than men en masse.
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Yes, I’ve done their warehouse sale a bunch of times because we get the invites at my work. Know what you mean.
When we get the grab bags at work, I usually get about 5 of those “gift with purchase” bags with all the stuff inside. Also will get 2 MAC products, 2 fragrance gift boxes, and an assortment of other makeup. Rarely do they put in the skin care or if they do it’s some kind of odd thing like a toner. I’ll keep whatever interests me and eBay the rest of it. Usually the perfumes will pay for the entire cost of the grab bag so I end up with my makeup free.
It really is strange to realize that they own the whole spectrum of brands, and I think a lesson in branding. Each of the brands has their niche market, but it’s all basically the same stuff.
When I went to the Sally B store it was so different, really like a dream business where there was so much love and care into her work. The Estee Lauder place is very corporate.
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