gender – Page 11 – (en)gender

February 11, 2012

“Something Amazing About Harry”

On this page of mugshots from the 1920s, I found this one:

Under which is the caption:

When ‘Harry Leon Crawford’, hotel cleaner of Stanmore was arrested and charged with wife murder he was revealed to be in fact Eugeni Falleni, a woman and mother, who had been passing as a man since 1899. In 1914, as ‘Harry Crawford’, Falleni had married the widow Annie Birkett. Three years later, shortly after she announced to a relative that she had found out ‘something amazing about Harry’, Birkett disappeared.

There are photos of her/him in another photo array, this one of female criminals. S/he’s #13.

(“Femme Fatales” seems a misnomer, as that term is usually used to describe a certain type of female criminal.)

February 1, 2012

Sliding Scales

January 25, 2012

Sasha’s Sex

The couple who chose to keep their child’s sex a secret so that s/he might be raised free of gendered expectations and stereotypes, have now revealed their child Sasha was declared male at birth.

The reason, of course, is that Sasha is starting school.

Miss Laxton, a web designer from Sawston, Cambridgeshire, admitted that keeping her child’s gender under wraps for so long had not been easy. At her mother and baby group, she said she was regarded as ‘that loony woman who doesn’t know whether her baby is a boy or a girl’. ‘I could never persuade anyone in the group to come round for coffee,’ she said. ‘They just thought I was mental.’

At school, Sasha sometimes wears a ruched-sleeved and scalloped-collared shirt from the girl’s uniform list. But he has yet to encounter any teasing or bullying. ‘Nobody’s ever mentioned it and I would hope that if they actually said something to Sasha, he’d be confident enough to make a good response,’ his mother said.

I think they sound entirely sane and reasonable, and I applaud their efforts to raise their child without the restrictions gender places on all of us.

January 17, 2012

Her First Period

The Frantics-Her First Period – watch more funny videos

January 5, 2012

White People

“White people are so lame.” – Homer Simpson

It’s so excellent, and the vocals are spot-on.

December 29, 2011

Manscaping

Honestly, I understand why people are starting to turn to ’70s porn: now everyone looks like (a) a child, (b) a plucked chicken, or (3) some kind of weird sea organism.

Robert, a 25-year-old investment manager from Massachusetts, trims his pubes with an electric razor—“the kind that barbers use for shaving heads,” he says. Just as he prefers a woman to be groomed when he performs oral sex (“the less hair, the better”), he imagines girls don’t want a bush in their mouths either.

How downright egalitarian.

Still, if genitals unframed by pubic hair are your thing, this decade’s for you.

December 16, 2011

Shit Women Say

I love it, but I have my moments of being a misogynist asshole. That said, I also really can’t stand the way women behave sometimes, because so much of that bullshit is a put-on. That is, if only girls said these things, they wouldn’t annoy me, but when grown women squeal something like “twinsies” it really does make me ill. But there are plenty in here I’m guilty of, too:

And I love Juliette Lewis.

Via Andrew Sullivan.

December 14, 2011

Andrej Pejic in Push-Up Bra Ads

Oh, I love the gender deconstructing that’s going on in the wake of Andrej Pejic’s career. Now, he’s in ads for a “super push up” bra.

The most common plastic surgery for men is for gynecomastia – that is, to remove breast tissue. That said, if most guys with gynecomastia looked like Pejic, I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t bother.

Wow is he the Hotness.

(via Jezebel)

December 1, 2011