I have to be honest I am pretty clueless about gender. Like I see gender function as social roles on a daily basis, but no framework to analyze it on a more meaningful level than picking up on some common behaviors and stereotypes.
I have to be honest I am pretty clueless about gender. Like I see gender function as social roles on a daily basis, but no framework to analyze it on a more meaningful level than picking up on some common behaviors and stereotypes.
This is something I've been wondering about. Queer folks talk about presenting as masc/fem but isn't what's considered masc/fem based on social norms and stereotypes? What if positions like "men don't wear makeup" and "women shouldn't be swole" stopped being dominant? I haven't put a ton of thought into this but basically, what is gender without stereotypes?
If things were different, then they would be different. If society did not make any distinctions between different genders, then people would no longer say that they were "presenting fem" because it would be incoherent. But it is coherent because those distinctions do exist.
I don't think we can treat people as being independent of the world in which they exist. Most women today wear pants at least sometimes, but in the past it was seen as a transgression of norms. If we took a cishet, pants-wearing woman from the present back in time, then in her mind she would be presenting as cishet but society would see her as presenting as queer. Essentially, she would be a foreigner operating under different norms and understanding categories differently. Maybe she would continue identifying as cishet while presenting in a way that society at the time perceived as queer, or maybe she would adopt the standards of the time and stop wearing pants, or maybe she would start identifying as queer, since that was the way society perceived her. A person's identity is inherently tied to the outside world, regarding gender but also regarding many other qualities - who you are does not end at your fingertips.