There definately seems to be alot of thought about gender in the rewilding community. I think that we see gender as a very base part of our nature that has something to do with our personalities, desires and roles. This has made the experience of being transsexual very interesting.
I have identified as trans for the past 9 years of my life and no longer subscirbe to the idea of “I am a woman traped in a man’s body” or vis-versa. I believe that if I am a man, then my body is a mans body, whatever my physical sex is (I don’t think of myself as a man or woman, that was just an example. I identify with beasts and nature and use the pronouns we so often assign these things; “it” and “thing”).
I started to realize gender is a human construct that cannot be proven. I don’t see nature trapping anything in the wrong body, I only see us, trapping our own minds with invented and assigned genders. Sex is a physical reality that only pertains to breeding, where gender is a theory that we attempt to apply to personalities and relationships. I would love to hear from folks on this, and don’t worry about offending me.
Who ever said there can only be two genders?
You’ve experienced extremely restrictive gender roles. That doesn’t mean that gender itself is a bad idea. Culture really does need to provide gender roles. Notice that while our gender roles manage to be too restrictive for many people, they also manage to be simultaneously too lax for many others: Fight Club does a fairly good job of exploring the ways in which the gender construction of masculinity has failed, for instance.
Once again, it’s the difference between a dysfunctional, abusive family and a healthy one. Healthy gender roles allow and expect for diversity, honor it and support it, but still provide ideals and role models necessary to enact and embody one’s sexuality culturally. Like I said, whoever said there has to be just two genders?
As to the proposed resolution of multiple genders--to me that is like the freedom of choosing one's slaver
I’d much rather choose my slaver, or whatever, than not being able to. Realistically, to me, the highest level of freedom is that to choose ones slaver.
Not doing so, or calling oneself their slaver (realistically impossible to me), or abolishing the idea of the slaver (and this being to me, what rules someone), leaves you both in a void, or without direction, and defenseless to being conquered by any stronger force, and any force is greater than none.
I'm fine with being ruled by larger things--the earth, sky, the bush and forest of my place of abode, and such. I won't and can't live similarly under humans or human ideas, unless I come to admire them in my own way to the point that they approach the significance of the sky.
yeah, that’s what I was saying.
I don’t know, maybe that’s the difference between a wild human and a rewilded human. Perhaps in the past, we were ruled by nature. Perhaps today, we try to rule over nature. Maybe in the future, nature and mankind will cooperate instead of participating in a domination paradign. Being free to choose your slaver is not freedom, not even when your slaver is agreeable or lax. Those are just concilation prizes.
I think that we may, in this culture, already have multiple culturally recognized genders. There’s the traditional male, and the traditional female, roles I think are easily recognized in our culture as the difference between barbie and GI Joe. I also think that “the flaming gay man” is effectively a gender role in our culture, linked to sexual orientation. You can see how it’s developed away from just being a feminine male. I also think women have a 2 effective genders, one being the homemaker, and the other being the professional woman trying to make it in a mans world. I think througout history different cultures have made the division between women who marry and produce kids and women who remain unmarried and do other things (though this has usually been unfavorable, with the second group generally being considered taboo). I may be stretching a bit, but thats how I think of it. If you think of gender as the social constructs surrounding sexual characteristics, then there’s certainly room for each “sex” to have multiple gender options available.
I’ve been away for a few days, I’m glad to see folks have responded, I was a little worried no one would. Okay, so, American society as a whole is most definately of the belief that there are only two genders. I have been reminded of this on a daily baisis, so please take my word on this. Individuals are a completely different beast of course.
What I am talking about more than “gender roles” is gender itself. I know our gender roles are ridgid, but I am not talking about being a male that wants to wear a dress. It is more like my friend Devan, he was born with a female body, has been living as a man for years, AND likes to wear a dress. To this most people would say, ‘what was the problem in the first place?’. He doesn’t adhere to gender roles, and that really pisses alot of people off because we (trans folks) are expected to be slaves to traditional gender roles.
Is it really gender roles? or is it our gender roles? (our as in our society)
What if there were a gender that was expected to cross boundaries?
Honest questions, not trying to start anything…
Or rather, what if gender roles were more like dresses, and you could change from one to the other, and maybe make your own if so inclined?
I feel like we are able to cross gender role expectations pretty freely as long as we are willing to take a little (or at times alot of) flak for it. But again what I am talking about here is not gender roles, but gender itself. I believe there are countless different genders. This is different than the countless ways in wich we all to some degrees transgress gender roles on a daily basis.
The reason I started this wee disscussion was for a different purpose. Not that I mind the track it has taken, it has been interesting as well. However what I personally was more intrested in was very basic. I’ll use an example to try to put this across in a different way. Say I was born male and have decided not to have a sex change for a number of reasons even though I have identified as a woman for a number of years. Within my circle of friends I am respected for who I am in mind and body.
I go to an Earth First! rendezvous and it’s really fucking hot and alot of people of both sexes are going toppless. I give in to the heat and take off my top as well as my padded bra. I of course am seen as a man instantly. It’s to be expected and I am used to this. I try to politely let folks know that I am a woman, I am transsexual, and to please use female pronouns for me. I get stares and confusion, a few very personal questions, and spend the remainder of the rendezvous fighting an uphill battle over my pronouns in stead of enjoying myself and making connections.
Is it fantastical to think that a whole scene such as rewilders can step away from sex organs, gender, and gender roles enough to let people be themselves? I know it is I suppose. The trans community can’t even get it, this has been ingrained into us all. Folks can theorize like there’s no tomorrow, but when it comes down to a man with with boobs standing in front of you, could you actually see him as a man? Do you even think you should?
I get stares and confusion, a few very personal questions, and spend the remainder of the rendezvous fighting an uphill battle over my pronouns in stead of enjoying myself and making connections.
perhaps you could let the pronouns go amongst strangers and concentrate on what you went there for. Just a thought.
when it comes down to a man with with boobs standing in front of you, could you actually see him as a man? Do you even think you should?All I see are humans. As far as "shoulds" are concerned, I stopped using and thinking in that term ages ago.
I just came home froma place where one of the residents was a human with a full beard, no breasts, and a vagina(was told this). This particular human preferred to be called he, so that’s what everyone calls him. My perception saw this human as a man.
There was also a human with breasts and a vagina that preferred the pronoun he as well. I respected their wishes and used he when referring to them in third person, but I still saw a female human.
My question is this. Why do you think that you get to choose what perception another human has of you?
Among strangers I agree, letting pronouns go helps keep me sane. I often don’t come out as trans unless I want to get to know somebody on a more than superficial level. Also your question is a very good one. I know that I most definately cannot choose how people perceive me. People will see what they will, and think what they will. Wether they see a dirty punk loser, or a digusting homo, or somebody that just wants a reaction from the mainstream, that’s fine, but I will do what I can to try and show them where I feel I am really coming from. When I began to use “it” as my pronouns my roommate asked me why I thought I could force such grammatically confusing language on the people around me. I told him I had forced nothing on the people around me, he was a great example of somebody that had never once used “it” in reference of me, he obviously had not been forced to do anything. I feel the same about peoples perception of me, all I can do is put what I am out there for people to use how they will. I of course will also use their response to my gender identity as I will. I cannot be friends with somebody that does not want to try to respect or understand me.
My last attempt at reframing this question is this; Is gender a human invention or a fact of nature? This question seems simple to me, but I realize that is only because I have been part of a community that has very specific language on the subject. Many people don’t know the difference between sex, gender, and gender roles. We are usually not exposed to these thoughts and terminology unless we or some one we know is not gender normative, or we’ve taken a college course on gender studies (often taught by a proffessor that has only read books on the subject). (One useful cliche is “gender is between the ears, sex is between the legs.”) Many have no interest in this and that’s fine, though I personally believe it is important to fight oppression on whatever fronts you have the energy and knowledge for. There are ton of books on the subject, I am pretty burnt out on gender 101 talks or else I would try to explain. So again…
Is gender a human construct, or a fact of nature?Hmm, imho, i don’t think it’s an either/or thing. Some aspects do appear to be biological, whereas others appear to be cultural. I’m hardly an expert (in any sense), but this is where sane gender “definitions” allow one culture to be more supportive of it’s members than another culture that fights against nature.
Hell, i dunno.
I want to know how you differentiate between gender and gender roles, then. Because I’d say that gender is a social construct, but it’s entirely about what role a given sex is supposed to take on.
On the most basic level, people really want to assign to one gender or another because they want to know the most basic question of human interaction: “Can I hit that?” Most people are attracted to a specific gender. They think they’re attracted to a specific sex, but gender is how one advertises their sexuality, so in practice it’s the gender they like. Knowing your gender determines how they will relate to you. Are you a potential mate, potential competition for a mate, potential ally in finding a mate, or not involved in the mating thing directly?
I think for that reason we’ll always have gender as long as we have sex. And anytime, in any culture, you go genderqueer, you’ll cause the kind of questioning and confusion you noted because people want to, possibly need to, fit you into their mating model. But a society could potentially allow gender to be something you change over the course of your life (in fact, ours does already, since prepubescent gender is different from postpubescent gender). It could allow gender to be like masks you put on and take off when it suits you. It could have a looser association between gender and sex, though this may make gender less useful. but what you won’t find is a culture where there is no gender, because gender is made up of the cultural expectations regarding sex. And you also won’t find a culture where you aren’t jusdged based on your gender, because gender is a judgement in and of itself.
Is gender a human construct, or a fact of nature?
The question seems pretty similar to the whole “nature vs nurture” question, to which I think the answer is “yes”.
I think by nature we have a desire as Andrew pointed out to categorize someone as “fuckable” or “competition” or “neither”. But I think culture determines the finer details of those broad categories–especially when it comes to the roles we play in our culture. I think cultures have existed (an sill probably do exist) where the norms filled a lot more places in the spectrum than they do in our binary culture.
Of course you find difficulty in this culture as a woman without breasts or a man with a vagina or a boy in a skirt or whatever way in which you “threaten” the norms. This culture sees in binary terms, but I don’t think all cultures do.
Just like your misanthropic statements in another thread, I hope you can see that your reaction doesn’t stem from experience with humanity as a whole as much as it stems from experience with this specific culture. Unfortunately, this culture has infected a vast portion of the globe, but that doesn’t mean that it’s the only one.
You probably can’t just go live as a two-spirit in one of the few remaining cultures that sees things in more than binary terms (just like you can’t just go join a hunter-gatherer tribe to escape any other aspect of civilization). But we can forge the culture of the future that develops in our bioregion during and after the collapse.
Also (not to put too much of a pie-in-the-sky, happy post-apocalyptic bent on this) but after the oil runs out, we probably won’t see “gay” or “trans” or “straight” so much as just see “survivor”. It’s hard to look down on other people when we’ve all been dropped to the bottom of the barrel. In fact, if you can get by when others can’t they’ll be looking up to you despite any lingering distaste they may have felt for “your kind” in a past life.
Hmmm… ;D
Still, tho’, whatever feral cultures we have coming up really should allow for a more sane perspective on gender than the one we’ve grown up with. So, since interest is a pretty good indicator of the best success, how about it Trollsplinter? Feel like trying to figure out how to apply two-spirit genders to the feral cultures of the future?
Of course! I’m really excited about what is going on in my family/clan right now. I know that at least in our little pocket of the rain forest there is a place for me and others to live as we are, what more could I want? I also must make it clear that I totally respect folks that enjoy more normative gender, and roles.
I don’t identify with the two spirit thing, and so far all the things on the various tribal genders that I have read, (I admit, not alot) have not rang true with me personally, but I think they are pretty rad for other people that are into that.
It has been really cool hearing what you all have to say, there have been alot of ideas that I don’t normally encounter, and I have new ideas to mull over. Especially the “fuckable” and “competition” ideas. These are things that don’t really enter my very queer mind, cause honestly, I can’t think of much that is not fuckable. I feel a little odd about failing to even think of the fact that most people have slightly more selective tastes, and therefore, place more value in gender expression.
Oh yeah, I also strongly disagree with the statement that most people are attracted to a specific gender, and that gender is how we advertise our sexuality. Perhaps I am just missunderstanding what you are saying Andrew. I can definately say that I don’t represent my gender the way I do as an advertisiment of my sexuality, infact I have a problem with people always thinking that is what I’m doing, and I have to try to explain what is really going on. In my experiences, most people are indeed attracted to sex, but I would like to understand where you are coming from. I know trans men are rarely accepted in the gay community, and trans women accepted even less by lesbians, even though they are the same gender of these folks that are homos. I don’t know an abundance of straight men that see no big difference between a woman with a vagina, and a woman with a penis.
I believe we will indeed always have gender, because most people want it around, it works for the majority and I don’t think there is anything wrong with that. What bothers me is that it’s so pervasive it makes it very hard for people like me to escape.
As far as gender vs. gender roles goes, gender roles are something a group believes in as a general representation of a gender. How can you have gender roles for all the possible genders out there? Gender is an individual and personal thing, a gender role could be called a stereotype.
I think the reason that trans-whatevers have issues is that they advertise as a specific gender that others have expectations about, equipment wise, that wind up not being true. In other words, they give a “false hit” on the “mate-competition” spectrum. It has nothing to do with what you intend and everything to do with what they expect. Now, people are selective beyond gender, as well, so there’s no real reason one can’t simply put trans-women into the group of women you wouldn’t want to mate with, along with women taller than you, women who make more money than you, and brunettes (if those are one’s personal criteria). But for whatever reason, most people don’t handle it that way.
But I get your gender/gender role distinction now. They aren’t the terms I would use myself, but it’s a valid idea and your terms are as good as any. So I’ll start using gender to refer to a person’s idea about themselves, and gender role as the ideas imposed from outside. So we can se that even our “binary” society has more than 2 gender roles. The ones I can think of are “infant”, “little girl”, "little boy, “Male”, “Gay”, “Homemaker” (with the subset “potential homemaker),” “feminist”, and possibly “Grampa.” I think any of those acts as an effective gender role (in the terms of the mate/competition/neither spectrum I positied earlier). These are the widespread gender roles I’ve noticed in society. I’ve definately seen others, but not, as they say, on TV. Conflict arises when your personal gender doesn’t fit into these roles.
A different society might/will have different roles. One of those roles may match your personal gender better. But I think having those roles is inevitable, the same way that any generalization is neccessary to communicate. The gender roles of a given society are expressions of that societies ideas about mating.
I agree, a societies ideas about mating are definately expressed through their gender roles of choice. (can you tell I don’t know how to insert quotes? and no I don’t think that makes me a better “primitivist”.) I also realized due to another of your posts that it is possible being more sexually open could play a role in my ability to be more open to seeing others because I do not focus on a bodies sex to determine their “fuckability”.
This makes me begin to think of all the queer gatherings that are like a temporary gender paradise, (well, to an extent) and wonder if creating a totally queer community like Ida is the way to go. I think it’s dumb to exlude people based on their sexuality, and also unnecessary being that many straight types have been wonderful allies for me. Weird, I feel like this conversation has brought me full circle and I am feeling similar to how I was when I first posted this whole biznaz, but somehow rejuvinated and feeling good.