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PROBLEM 2: IGNORING THE INFLUENCE OF SOCIALIZATION

I’ve been discussing the problems with the theory I wrote about in this post: https://defininglesbian.tumblr.com/post/172833170234/when-i-was-a-teenager-i-was-lets-say-sexually

No one lives in a vacuum.

The hypothetical question, “If you were born on a desert island, would you feel comfortable as your own gender?” is not a question we can answer. So much of our personality, skills, and preferences come from the culture we were raised in. It’s invisible and hard to notice.

Girls and boys are raised in different cultures. Even in modern-day America, children hear gendered messages loud and clear. They’re not always from parents. My parents were pretty open to getting me whatever toys I wanted, but I still felt a tinge of guilt crossing over into the boy toy section. I felt like I was trespassing some forbidden boundary. And although I badly wanted Nerf guns and light sabers, I never got up the courage to ask for them.

Just watch toy commercials. Commercials for “boy toys” are very clear – this toy is for boys. They’re loud, fast-paced, action-packed commercials for toys that promote violence, engineering, and sports. Commercials for “girl toys” are laced with sparkles and pink, and advertise toys that promote beauty, cooperation, and nurturing.

Studies have shown that just telling a girl that a toy is for girls will get most of them more interested in it. This has the opposite effect on boys, who will immediately shun it for fear of being seen as “girly”.

When children play, they practice skills that they will need in their adult life. They try on different roles, shaping their imagination of who they can become. The fact that we see some major differences in adult men and women – and the life paths that they choose – is no surprise when you see the stark difference in the toys boys and girls are encouraged to play with.

And this is ignoring the effect of parents and peers. Parents often tell girls to “play nice”, “sit with your legs together”, and “stop running around”. Boys are told “don’t cry”, “stop playing with that make up”, and “don’t act like a sissy”.

Where does this leave us?

If there truly is some inner masculinity or femininity, and men and women are usually polar opposites, how could we know? We could only know this if we lived in a world where boys and girls were treated exactly the same – and we don’t.

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Problem 1: Assuming Gender Stereotypes Correlate

In my previous post, I talked about when I believed that everyone’s mind was on a spectrum of masculinity and femininity. 

https://defininglesbian.tumblr.com/post/172833170234/when-i-was-a-teenager-i-was-lets-say-sexually

Now I’m going to discuss the first problem with that.

If everyone was on a scale of masculine-feminine, you might assume that “masculine” traits and skills would correlate with one another strongly, and visa versa. For instance, if someone was good at math (a stereotypically “male” skill), they’d also be good at navigating without a map, right? But this is not the case. Someone who is good at one gendered skill is no more likely than anyone else to be good at another picked at random.

There are studies that back up this point (and I would recommend reading Cordelia Fine’s Delusions of Gender or Testosterone Rex if you want a deeper analysis of this), but you can simply look around and see this in real life – even in yourself.

How many people do you know that seem to have a mix of skills and preferences? A guy who talks endlessly about monster trucks but also crochets a damn good scarf? A girl who prefers wearing skirts in pastel colors but also is a whiz kid in her college major – biomedical engineering? (I knew that girl personally, by the way.)

And what about yourself? I bet you can name a bunch of things about yourself that would seem to be contradictory if you believed in a gender spectrum.

I dress and act pretty butch, but I’m terrible at about every sport – I prefer painting and cross-stitching. I’ve been told I have a “masculine mind”, but I also cry at sappy movies. No one could guess what I’m good or bad at based on my level of “masculinity” or “femininity”.

 So what does this mean? Are these contradictory skills simply anomalies? Do we all have brains that are checkered with pink and blue? Should we invent new genders to place people in, if gender is not two dimensional?

 I don’t think so. Maybe, just maybe, none of these skills and preferences are gendered at all. Maybe gender roles are made up, and we’re just wonderfully diverse human beings with wonderfully diverse personalities.

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When I was a teenager, I was… let’s say, sexually ignorant. So I concocted some strange ideas about sexuality.

 I had this notion that everyone’s personality or soul was on a scale from masculine to feminine.

I didn’t stop to think about what “masculine” and “feminine” meant. In my conservative, Christian world, it was obvious. Masculinity was about leadership, sports, competition, strength, and logic. Femininity was about submission, beauty, quietness, homemaking, and emotions.

I imagined two bell curves across the spectrum of masculinity-femininity. Most men were about a -50, and most women were about a 50. A small but still sizable number of men and women were at 0 – not particularly masculine or feminine. And some even crossed over to the other side, but those were rare.

Now, I don’t know where I got this idea – but I also imagined that what attracted people to others was their level of masculinity or femininity. A man who was -50 would be attracted to a woman who was 50. Extremely masculine men would be attracted to extremely feminine women. And those who were  0 would be attracted to other “split down the middle” souls. It was sort of a yin-yang concept.

 What about masculine women and feminine men? Well, having a vague idea from anti-gay videos, I thought that lesbians were generally butch and gay men were generally effeminate. Why were they gay? Well, obviously because so many people on the equal and opposite side of the spectrum were their same sex!

So I thought that what gay men were attracted to was masculinity, and what lesbians were attracted to was femininity. There was an obvious solution to homosexuality, in my mind. Just pair a gay man and a lesbian together, and – ta-da! – they’d be perfect for each other! Lesbians just needed to find men who were feminine enough, and gay men needed to find women who were masculine enough.

 I placed myself on the spectrum somewhere between 0 and -25. This was the explanation for my problems, I thought. This was why I didn’t get along with other girls. This is why I felt uncomfortable with the female roles in my church – and in the world. This is why I had fleeting moments of attraction to women, and why most men didn’t look handsome to me. I just needed to find a somewhat feminine man, and then I would be fine – heterosexual and married.

 I believed that transgender people were an even more extreme version of homosexuals. Actually, this belief wasn’t just mine – it was unfortunately widespread among psychologists for many years. But I empathized with trans people, because I knew what was like to have a “male” brain stuck in a female body.

 Of course, there were many, many problems with this theory. I’ll go over some of them in the next post.

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Defining Lesbian #1

Don’t let men define “lesbian” as a porn genre where airbrushed, hairless, long-nailed women make out with each other to satisfy a male audience.

Don’t let trans-activists define “lesbian” as someone who identifies as a woman who is sexually attracted to others who identify as women. Or even worse, “femmes” who are attracted to other “femmes”.

 We are female. We are exclusively attracted to other women. We love breasts, vulvas, vaginas, the female bone structure, soft skin, female voices. We are not always feminine. We work hard, we sweat, we build our muscles. We wear what we want – what we feel comfortable in. But we are still women, through and through.

 We have our own sexuality, and it has nothing to do with men.