#i had this queued but i just saw a post that annoyed me by implicitly defining masculine and feminine in a gender essentialist

[bthump]

This is quite a broad question, but how do you define masculinity and femininity?

A set of culturally dictated traits which reflect cultural biases and social dynamics, and are forcibly assigned to men and women (and people perceived as men or women) through social and even institutional pressures.

Femininity and masculinity are in no way innate to women and men respectively, they're categories that exist to reinforce patriarchy, heteronormativity, cissexism, and even less directly associated power structures like white supremacy.

And as a sidenote, I don't think there's anything wrong with identifying with femininity or masculinity - they're all just collections of traits and there are positive and negative and neutral traits in both categories (though generally more negative feminine traits for the reasons described above lol.)

But I think that in an ideal world masculinity and femininity would not be coherent categories of traits, even if men and women are still coherent categories of people, and I think trying to redefine or reinterpret femininity or masculinity more positively rather than interrogating the reasons traits like passivity or objectification or irrationality are considered feminine and traits like anger, dominance, and violence are considered masculine misses the point. It's much more valuable to fight against gender essentialism and dismantle the categories of masculinity and femininity entirely than to attempt to redefine these categories positively while still associating them with men and women imo.

But also since we don't live in that ideal world it remains useful and interesting to analyse the portrayals of masculinity and femininity in media, and as a gender nonconformity enthusiast it's one of my favourite things to do lol

Thanks for the ask! It's always good to actually define terms, especially politically loaded terms like these.