10:57pm March 12, 2014

the-problem-isnt-that-clothes-are-gendered-i

allies-person:

youneedacat:

feliscorvus:

youneedacat:

kaninchenzero:

the problem isn’t that clothes are gendered. i mean, we wear clothes to communicate with each other much more than we use them as protection from the elements. it’s fine to communicate “i’m feeling particularly feminine today” by wearing a pretty frock.

it’s the hierarchy of gender, the…

I don’t know.

For me there is a problem with clothes communicating gender. I mean I guess it’s not a problem if you have a gender you want to communicate. But if I have long hair and wear skirts it doesn’t mean I want to communicate anything feminine, and I get annoyed at the presumption that I do want to communicate anything of the sort. There’s nothing about a lower garment with one hole for both legs that is more feminine than a lower garment with two holes, one for each leg. And I’m starting to get annoyed at the amount of people in the world that presume I want anything to do with femininity just because of some of my clothes and actions. So for more, that presumption is itself a problem. Even without feminine being considered inferior. Because I’m not communicating “I’m feeling particularly feminine today”, I’m communicating, if anything, “I like the way this looks”, “I like the way this feels”, or “There’s a reason that I’m wearing this and it has nothing to do with gender”?

If I change from one set of clothes to another, one hairstyle to another, people practically perceive me as a whole different person because of the way they attribute gender to these things in a way that I don’t.

Someone said of me to a friend of mine recently, “She’s wearing skirts, she’s grown out her hair, she’s learning to crochet, she even shaved her armpits… do you think maybe she’ll shave off her beard?” Um… no. Because none of those things are even related to each other, let alone through gender, and they’re not somehow in opposition to having chin hair.

I don’t mind the fact that other people communicate gender through clothing, but it’s a pain in the ass when you don’t relate to gender that way at all and everyone insists on interpreting you that way.

Yep I can relate to this so much. I do pluck out my chin hairs but that’s more because they annoy me than anything else (they feel weird and itchy if I leave them alone.) But I can’t remember the last time I shaved my legs or armpits, and if I do shave them in the future it’ll be because I am too warm or something.

Yeah exactly.

I like the way skirts feel, and they’re much more convenient while bedridden (and for bed baths) than pants.

I shave my armpits because otherwise they hold odor too much when it starts getting warmer.

I wear my hair long because, at this particular point in my life, it feels more ‘grounded’ somehow than when I used to shave it, especially after a long complicated relationship with my hair type.

I crochet because I like making things and working with my hands.

None of these things are connected with each other.

Oh also the reason I have long hair, and the reason I don’t pluck my chin hairs, or my unibrow, are pretty much identical. Even though long hair is seen as feminine, chin hairs are seen as masculine, and unibrows are just seen as ugly (and unrelated to gender, in people’s minds). (Also I don’t bleach the hairs under my nose for the same reason.) I think I’m actually more attached to my chin hair and unibrow than to my head hair, but there’s still a common thread there involving feeling more like myself, more grounded in my body, with all of these things present, than with them absent. (And in fact I really wish I could grow more chin hair than I have.)

So all of those hair-related things are the same for me, and none of them are related to gender. Meanwhile, none of the several things cited as evidence of my ‘femininity’ are for the same reasons as each other, and none of them are related to gender.

Also another question in my mind…

Why is crochet and knitting considered feminine? And why are they considered super-different from other arts that involve designing, creating, and manipulating the shape of physical objects?

In fact, why are they so often not considered arts at all, nor considered something you need any particular degree of skill to pull off? (And does that have anything to do with them being considered “feminine” or “women’s things” and therefore worthless?)

Because to me, I put crochet and knitting in a similar category as woodworking, sculpture, or metalworking. Same with sewing. But somehow woodworking and metalworking are considered skilled art forms. And crochet and knitting are considered not quite really arts and not really skilled in any way.

(Plus they are considered “old lady” things, and old ladies are barely considered people at all, and that can’t help. Old people who crochet and knit really impress me given what it means to have arthritis and still work with your hands like that.)

So many good points.

When I started crocheting some months ago, I was actually surprised by how much intricate planning and engineering goes into the whole process, from the earliest stages to finishing an object. This is especially true of people who design their own patterns, but even following a pattern can be quite complicated, require math skills, etc. I probably shouldn’t have been so surprised by this, but I had internalized the idea that it was a mindless hobby for old women, just as people had always implied. Even crocheters who were themselves older women, like my grandma!

When I give my next talk about why Simon Baron-Cohen’s theories of gender and autism are bullshit, I’m going to use crochet and knitting as one of my main examples for why his theory sucks. Because if he actually bothered to explore things beyond tired stereotypes, he would know that these activities, and other coded-female activities such as cooking, etc., require a great deal of “systematic” thinking.

HEY WHERE THE FUCK IN A TRANS WOMAN SAYING “HEY NO ACTUALLY GETTING RID OF GENDERED CLOTHES ENTIRELY ISN’T A GREAT IDEA” DID Y’ALL GET THE IDEA I WAS SAYING PLEASE COME TELL ME ABOUT HOW I’M FUCKING UP YOUR LIVES BY MAKING SKIRTS FEMININE

SERIOUSLY I’M PISSED I SPECIFICALLY SAID THERE NEEDED TO BE CLOTHES THAT DIDN’T SAY ANYTHING ABOUT GENDER

THERE ALSO NEED TO BE CLOTHES THAT DO

FUCK OFF MY POST, ASSHOLES

I don’t think anyone thought you were fucking up our lives by making skirts feminine. I can only speak to my own response but…

Long version: I can’t read minds, and I tend to read things fairly literally. I actually really liked a lot of what you were saying in your post, but I felt like it was incomplete. Because what you seemed to say was:

1. There is no problem with the fact that some clothes are gendered.

2. The only problem is that feminine clothes are devalued.

3. But there should also be clothes that aren’t gendered.

I’m nongendered and so is at least one other person who responded. I totally believe that what you said was right for your experience of gender and of clothing, but for me it was incomplete. So I attempted to add further information.

I don’t know how to resolve the conflict there, but there is one: I don’t need to wear a specific kind of clothes that aren’t gendered. I need no clothes at all to be gendered so that I can wear whatever I feel like wearing without people reading masculinity or femininity or any other gender or lack thereof into my clothing choices. That’s in direct conflict with people who need to communicate their gender through their clothing choices.

I’m not trying to take away from those people’s need to do that.

But there is a conflict there and I don’t know the answer.

Not knowing the answer, I felt like I should add some information about my life and how that solution (having clothes that don’t have a gender attached) doesn’t work for my life. Because I want to wear “masculine” clothes and “feminine” clothes and “neutral” clothes indiscriminately and in any combination without anyone attributing a single bit of gender to it. Other people want to wear feminine clothes in order to broadcast to themselves and other people that they’re feeling feminine, and masculine clothes in order to broadcast to themselves and other people that they’re feeling masculine. And that’s fine, but I have no idea how to resolve that issue.

It’s not about you fucking up my life. You didn’t create the problem. But there is a problem. And your post made me think of that problem. So I responded to the post, thinking that, like usual, posts are put out there so that people can think about the issue and respond to them.

I feel bad that we’ve all upset you, but I can’t see any way either of us could have prevented my response (or any of the responses that came off of it), short of you telling nongendered people not to mention our experiences in connection with any of the issues brought up in your post.

Because all that really happened was you brought up an issue and other people added information about their lives that pertained to the issue, and people do that all the time every day on tumblr. You do it too. It’s not preventable short of having a locked post that other people can’t read, or specifically telling people not to respond, or not to respond in certain ways. (And even then, depending on how you do it, people might still respond.)

I do know that every time I discuss my experience of gender in public, someone gets mad, but I don’t know what to make of that.

I also know that I tend to take things literally. So when you say “there need to be clothes that have no gender”, I take that as meaning “there should be some clothes that are gendered and others that aren’t”, and that’s not a solution for me, and it won’t be a solution for me no matter how many times anyone says it. Meanwhile, totally removing gender from clothing won’t be a solution for you. And that’s the conflict that I have no idea how to resolve.

Anyway, my intent was to add information, so that people could have more information about what does and doesn’t work for different people. And then other people responded to my post with their own experiences, at least one of whom was as nongendered as I am. I wasn’t saying I had all the answers, it’s more like I had more questions. And I also wasn’t saying I disagreed with the idea that femininity isn’t valued. Only with the idea that it’s not a problem that some clothing is feminine. That is a problem for me and it will continue being a problem for me. You didn’t create the problem and I don’t blame you for it. But you mentioned the problem, so I talked about it.

I don’t know if any of that is reassuring or if it will just piss you off more, but I wanted you to know where I was coming from, and where I’m certain at least one other person was coming from. I’m currently having a lot of offline problems relating to physical appearance (including clothing) and femininity right now, including having people thrust really intense stuff about gender down my throat in a way that makes me want to throw up on a regular basis. I blame them for doing this, not you. You didn’t create the problem, you just mentioned aspects of it, so I thought I could discuss it. And then, like I normally do in discussions like this, I went off on tangents.

Short version: My reply wasn’t about you, and wasn’t blaming you for anything whatsoever. I was trying to respond with further information from my own life experiences as a nongendered person, that might lead to a deeper understanding of the issue on all sides. I feel bad that I upset you but I still can’t see any other possible way any of us could have known that you didn’t want people to respond with experiences that conflicted with yours.

Notes: