Gender Bending

[amadaun]

OMG, are you my friend R? I can literally hear her saying that. She only loves them when I force-femme her into Gothic drag.

Y'know, the more I think about that, the hotter it sounds. Good times.

 

[Shankara20]

Y'know, the more I think about that, the hotter it sounds. Good times.

some of us thought it was hot the moment we read it, but them some of us are just perverted

 

[Shankara20]

Believe me, I sympathize... there are not enough tricks on the planet to make my hips any smaller, either.

I just realized one advantage of being into crossdressing and wearing a bra - I can decide if I want to be an "A" cup for a while then go to a "C" cup for a while. Sorta makes up for having no hips and a flat ass.

("A" cup at the moment if you must know... )

 

[amadaun]

some of us thought it was hot the moment we read it, but them some of us are just perverted

Hey, I'm perverted, too! Just a little slow on the uptake once in awhile.

 

[Shankara20]

Hey, I'm perverted, too! Just a little slow on the uptake once in awhile.

I suspected you might be,but I hate to make assumptions

*note to self - mark amadaun in the "pervert" column*

 

[CutieMouse]

I just realized one advantage of being into crossdressing and wearing a bra - I can decide if I want to be an "A" cup for a while then go to a "C" cup for a while. Sorta makes up for having no hips and a flat ass.

("A" cup at the moment if you must know... )

That made me laugh out loud.

(Having gone from 34A to 38DD and back to 34A, I have to say I'm partial to A myself. )

 

[Shankara20]

That made me laugh out loud.

(Having gone from 34A to 38DD and back to 34A, I have to say I'm partial to A myself. )

glad to be of service

 

[ammre]

I am a gender bender. I call myself queer in terms of gender. I don't go out of my way to do masculine things but i don't try not to either.
Like, i shaved my head back in march. I did it becasue i was curious what it would feel like. I really didn't give a second or first thought to me not looking gender correct. I was talking to a drunk guy who seemed like he wanted to flirt with me but couln't get past the hair and he just splurted out "You're so fucking beautiful but you went and fucked up your hair? Why'd you wanna go and look like a boy?!" Since he was a really nice kid when he wasen't sloshed off his ass i kinda talked him into another subject nicely, but really, all he did was say what other people wouldn't feel proper saying outloud, but i'm sure they thought it.

For as tomboyish as i am. I get along with "girls" better then "guys". Most of my female friends are the kind of girls woho would say something along the lines of "I get along better with guys then girls" yet i turn out to be one of their best friends.

I just don't worry about how i'm precived lining up with a social expectation based on whether i have a penis or not.

 

[Shankara20]

I am a gender bender. I call myself queer in terms of gender. I don't go out of my way to do masculine things but i don't try not to either.

Thanks for adding to the discussion.

A general wondering of mine - I'm almost 60. I remember getting in trouble when I was about 15 for letting my hair grow out just a little inspired by a new band called the "Beatles" and their "mop top" look. I had to get a more traditional hair cut to get my first job.

Three years ago I took a just selling products to restaurant and grocery industries. I was required to remove my earrings and keep my arm tattoos covered if I, #1 - wanted the job and #2 - if I expected to be successful selling here in Kansas, USofA. I even caught poop for wearing a light pink dress shirt with a suit and tie.

I no longer do that work and now my earrings and arm tattoos are in full glory - however I know that going to work with painted finger nails would be a problem, but not so much if I were 18 and not 59 - no way a skirt & blouse or dress would ever fly. So I self-censor for my work and the comfort of those around me including family members.

Do others here self-censor their gender bending for work considerations?

 

[amadaun]

Do others here self-censor their gender bending for work considerations?

Well, as it happens, I have a job where I get to dress up in a costume and play a character. (No, it's not Canadian Disneyland, that doesn't even exist, sillies). Most of the time, I play a young female character and do have to act "girly", although I usually try to subvert it a bit with "girls can do anything!" talk for the kiddies. I mostly just act like myself.

Sometimes, though, I get to play a male character for awhile. Not an opportunity I'm gonna let fly by. Out comes the drag king attitude, the package in the pants, the swagger and the deep voice. No female character is safe from my unwanted attentions.

Lucky, really, that I don't have a job where I'm expected to wear pantyhose and high heels. I shudder to think.

 

[Kierae]

Thank god I live in a city that is tolerant which is why I probably can't manage to move away from Seattle for any length of time. Most places here are tolerant of tats/piercings/fingernail polish and other gender bending fun.

 

[Netzach]

I had to wear hose and heels and business wear. It never stopped feeling like playing dress up. I eventually liked playing dress up, but it still feels artificial, in a way that I'd either learn to like or just kind of loathe. I like artifice and pretense and costuming, so it works out when I see it as just that.

I don't think I have a look or a presentation that *doesn't* feel like dressing a part. There is no neutral, really. Maybe in corporate a man in the right suit is a default, but even now there's enough diversity in male dress for a certain kind of suiting to bring a "classic, uptight, loosen your sphincter, dude." response.

There's never been an unmarked and neutral way to be a woman.

 

[BareFootPagan]

I am grateful that I can get away with as much as I do, going Barefoot, hair well past my shoulder blades , a preference for soft flowing fabrics and leggings instead of jeans at every possible opportunity, Oh yeah and 3 toe rings on all the time

I push things pretty far for a midwesterner

 

[HarletMinx]

Oooh, I something I can speak on. I recently covered some of these topics in a speech I was asked to give at George Washington University along with a couple other trans men and woman. For the most part society views gender as a binary construct but as many gender queer will say it's structured more like a spectrum (I've seen about 16 gender models but lets go with spectrum) Most people fall onto somewhere on this gender spectrum, the positions of which are defined by society.

This is where the importance of recognizing the difference between sex and gender comes to play. Sex refers to your biological characteristics and short of Sexual reassignment surgery(and even their it's a matter of opinion) or being born inter sexed is fixed in the male/female groupings.

Gender is more relating to the human psyche and how we identify in social as well as personal settings. This part is far from binary. The reason for "bending" tends to stem from society predefining gender roles. Women wear dresses, men need to be insensitive and controlling, women should be sensitive and emotionally insecure.

The scary thing is in the 70s Stanford did a series of tests (I'm going to search for the link) to see how people defined male and female genders as well as adult traits. At the time the traits for men all portrayed them as dominant, in control, and a authority figure while woman were subordinate, and unable to really function. The interesting thing is that the traits that are possessed by men are synonymous with those for adult and woman weren't given any "adult" traits.
Now the really scary part, they did the test again in the late 90s and women STILL had the same top 10 traits that they had in the 70s...

Part of the issue with gender is that as a society we sexualized them and our society tends to view sex as taboo. I mean honestly when from the bolt of cloth to the rack do panties or skirts become girls clothes? It's because certain looks, cuts, and styles are definitions of specific genders.... it's kind of a way of keeping each gender stereotyped.

I personally associate as a gender queer female. I go as a king to drag shows and it's fun as hell. Now I was also born biologically male, and will probably stay that way for another 2-3 years.
Honestly your gender has no bearing on your sex nor sexual attraction. Still love how people assume drag queens are gay or bi while butch women muuuust be lesbians.

Piper

 

[Netzach]

As a feminist, I used to be really infuriated that the helpless demure whatever traits are upheld as "woman" but it bothers me less so, I'm more into the Judith Butler way of looking at it -- it's almost like that's a common fantasy - I've never actually met that "woman" just people who have some of those traits or don't. Yeah, our platonically perfectly defined ideas of "man" and "woman" are very fucked up - but the venn diagrams that actually are how people are are different.

 

[DeservingBitch]

I dig Butler too.

I always find it amusing that the same performance is read so differently in different contexts:

The same me, wearing the same femme outfit (skirt, fishnets, heels, make-up, etc.), and putting on the same attitude, becomes two very different performance whether i'm out with a dude, or with a woman. Even more so if that woman is performing butch or something along those lines. Me with the dude -- I'm just your generic 'woman'. But if i'm out with a woman/butch, then i'm not generic anymore, or not in the same way. And suddenly, my performance is read as a performance.

 

[Netzach]

I think that part of my disconnect with seventies difference feminism is that I never really felt like a girl - or a boy either. I always felt like girl was something I *did* - so as you can see the light went on, way on, when I finally got to reading Butler instead of Audre Lorde or something.

I identify a lot with what Amadun posted - I never felt strongly enough about my body to hate it or want to transition, but I never felt like femme stuff was really integral to who I am. I'm mostly a human obsessed with building things. Sometimes that's in the kitchen, sometimes it's in the woodshop.

I do love love LOOOVE the power games you can play when you "do femme" so I stick to those often.

 

[DeservingBitch]

I think that part of my disconnect with seventies difference feminism is that I never really felt like a girl - or a boy either. I always felt like girl was something I *did* - so as you can see the light went on, way on, when I finally got to reading Butler instead of Audre Lorde or something.

I identify a lot with what Amadun posted - I never felt strongly enough about my body to hate it or want to transition, but I never felt like femme stuff was really integral to who I am. I'm mostly a human obsessed with building things. Sometimes that's in the kitchen, sometimes it's in the woodshop.

I do love love LOOOVE the power games you can play when you "do femme" so I stick to those often.

See, i got lucky: one of the first feminist i read is Butler. One of my oldest 'friend' so to speak.

My performing femme, consciously so at least, coincide with two moments: when I started going to and presenting at academic/feminist conferences, and my 'becoming' queer. There something really cool about playing the whole femme thing in a room full of over-educated white men OR feminist scholars = until I open my mouth to speak, the former look at me at the cute out-of-her-place little girt playing grown up, the former as a sorority girl traitor to the cause. Then i start speaking, and I can see them their brain trying to make the connection between what they see and what they hear. Hilarious.

And there's something about performing femme while out with a butch/boi. I think what i like the most about it is that it is clear for both of us that we are both performing. And a butch/boi understand the work in my performance that your typical het boy just don't get: for him, it's a given that I come in this 'package'.

 

[Etoile]

Hmm, just a clarity question, are we talking about "performing" as in conscious or subconscious? I am pretty much androgynous most of the time in terms of how I act, or rather I switch smoothly between girly and manly. But when I'm going to a party or something, I get girly without really intending to. It's not like "oh I have to put on a dress now so this is when I become a girl," it's more a subconscious movement into a very happy state of being. I like to be femme. I'm pretty much not ever butch although I do like when I get to play butch by being the one to fix stuff. Most of the time it's all subconscious when I am being femmey...just the way I am.

 

[Homburg]

And a butch/boi understand the work in my performance that your typical het boy just don't get: for him, it's a given that I come in this 'package'.

This is something that has aggravated me for years. I've seen this particular masque get put on so many times by so many women that recognising it is second nature. I see it for the acceptable, and sometimes wonderful, farce that it is. Yet I see my fellows males looking at this masque as if it were real, and worse, as if it were the totality. Worse, I see women that consider this masque to be their totality. That frightens me.

Nothing new about these comments, just stating it for the record.

And, insofar as topic goes, the only gender-bending I do is wearing kilts on occassion. I'm dull like that.

 

[rida]

Don't know if it fits here ... but here it goes.

When I was a kid, I always had very short hair and always wore boyish clothes. I hated skirts and frilly stuff. I always played with boys, and played boy games. I could not really relate with girls. Playing dolls or moms or whatever to me was really dull. And I looked boyish and I had a name that sounded boyish (to the point that when I signed up for a ski competition when I was 9yo I ended up racing with the boys). But I didn't think of myself as a boy. But not as a girl either.

Growing older I identify with being female and let also my hair grow long. Still a tomboy type, although I would love to shock my friend and show up in dresses and heels, instead of my usall jeans and T-shirts. Or I would just go and cut my hair crew-cut short (did it last time just this summer ...LOL).

In college more often than not I would be the only girl out drinking with a bunch of boys, but they would all treat me as one of them, and we would even comment on other girls together. One good friend once told me that during those outing he felt as if I was one of them ... but with boobs. LOL
Other times, they had no problem hitting on me.

Orientation thou ... I think I am straight (I just love cocks). Still had more than one woman hit on me. (the friend that made the comment of me being one of the boys but with boobs? He made no secret that he would have loved to get in my pants ... and his girlfriend too).

All this to say that ... I was lucky that I was never forced to be a girly girl when as a kind I didn't feel like. I always had an easier time understanding what goes on in men's minds, and now I have a pretty good understanding on women's mind too.
I love to dress womanly sexy, boyish casual or androgynous with pant suits and heels.

And as a comment ... I think it is easier for women to get away with gender bending than for men. Or at least in most of the world.

 

[Netzach]

Hmm, just a clarity question, are we talking about "performing" as in conscious or subconscious? I am pretty much androgynous most of the time in terms of how I act, or rather I switch smoothly between girly and manly. But when I'm going to a party or something, I get girly without really intending to. It's not like "oh I have to put on a dress now so this is when I become a girl," it's more a subconscious movement into a very happy state of being. I like to be femme. I'm pretty much not ever butch although I do like when I get to play butch by being the one to fix stuff. Most of the time it's all subconscious when I am being femmey...just the way I am.

It's honestly not subconscius for me. It was a conscious decision of "I like this femme thing now, this is how I'm going to populate my closet, and I'm going to return to makeup" Those things are only subconscious now as the result of a definitive moment. And they feel like even more of a choice and an action now after getting sick and really stripped down to asexual for a while. "Girl" = "work" for me.

 

[DeservingBitch]

Hmm, just a clarity question, are we talking about "performing" as in conscious or subconscious? I am pretty much androgynous most of the time in terms of how I act, or rather I switch smoothly between girly and manly. But when I'm going to a party or something, I get girly without really intending to. It's not like "oh I have to put on a dress now so this is when I become a girl," it's more a subconscious movement into a very happy state of being. I like to be femme. I'm pretty much not ever butch although I do like when I get to play butch by being the one to fix stuff. Most of the time it's all subconscious when I am being femmey...just the way I am.

As I said in my earlier post, to me, 'being' femme is a conscious performance, but it has not always been so. It is very much a conscious choice for me now to perform femme, and one which involve work, time, and money, which for a while I was actually not conscious about.

But you can also think about it in a more general way, and think about all genders as performance. Some are more easily 'decoded' as such (drag queen, butch, CD) than other (masculine man, femme woman), but all are 'performance'. Only, the repetition of some performances over others make them seem 'natural', and we don't see them anymore for the performances that they are. Which goes back to my earlier point about me being femme around a het guy or around a butch. Most het guy don't see my performance as one. They tend to assume that this is the 'default'. While most butches tend to see and appreciate the work put into this performance (i guess because they are themselves aware of their own performance).

 

[rida]

....

But you can also think about it in a more general way, and think about all genders as performance. Some are more easily 'decoded' as such (drag queen, butch, CD) than other (masculine man, femme woman), but all are 'performance'. Only, the repetition of some performances over others make them seem 'natural', and we don't see them anymore for the performances that they are. Which goes back to my earlier point about me being femme around a het guy or around a butch. Most het guy don't see my performance as one. They tend to assume that this is the 'default'. While most butches tend to see and appreciate the work put into this performance (i guess because they are themselves aware of their own performance).

I think that the bold part hits quite the nail on its head.
And I wonder how much the fact of being in a non-vanilla mind frame helps realize the truth of it. Or viceversa, if the fact of realizing that afterall all genders are performances makes you go away from vanilla.

Personally, I do not feel as a specific gender. If I had to say how I feel, I'll say nor male nor female, or better yet both. Most of my thoughts, decision are not dictated by my being XX. I choose to performe the female role, as it goes with my sexual orientation (and I surely like the sexy lingeries). But in my mind I am pretty much asexual, as in not gender defined.

Not sure it makes sense.

 

[sutherngent985]

My college football coach was a guy's guy. A tough as nails, hard-working, code of honor, band of brothers kind of a guy.

At the beginning of each season, he liked to say: "Boys, always remember two things. Number one: When a given rule is bullshit, real men ignore the bullshit and make up their own rules instead. And number two: None of *my* rules are bullshit."

For four years I followed his rules, both on and off the field. Tried just as hard as I possibly could to do what was expected of me, and then some. If football were sex, I would have been one *hell* of a great submissive. I really, really wanted to make this guy proud.

At the end of senior year, my buddies and I went to see Coach to say goodbye. For a long time, he just stood there silently looking at us, one by one. And then he started to cry. Not sobbing, just tears - giant tears - rolling down his cheeks and dropping unattended on the floor.

As if reading our minds, he said: "That's one of those bullshit rules, boys." After pausing to let this sink in, he continued. "I'm gonna miss you. You're some of the finest ballplayers I have ever had the honor to lead, and what's more, you're damn fine young men. I'm gonna miss you. No sense pretending it ain't so."

And that was the last in a very long line of valuable life lessons that he taught me.

"Real men don't cry" is a bullshit rule, and real men don't follow it.

This sounds like my father. Hes always been a no nonsense dont take no bullshit from nobody guy who would take on a grizzly with his bare hands, especially if someone he loves is in danger. But the when my mother was in the hospital recently, just about every time he was out of her room, I could see the tears in his eyes. He proved by his actions that real men dont cry is a bullshit rule.