Category: gender

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Another Example of Cool Masculinity

A father of a ‘gender creative’ son – a boy who is feminine – defends his parenting and his wife’s.

My wife also gets a load of emails from people asking where our son’s father is, as though I couldn’t possibly be around and still allow a male son to display female behavior. To those people I say, I’m right here fathering my son. I want to love him, not change him. My son skipping and twirling in a dress isn’t a sign that a strong male figure is missing from his life, to me it’s a sign that a strong male figure is fully vested in his life and committed to protecting him and allowing him to grow into the person who he was created to be.

A parent behaving like a parent. Amazing. What isn’t so amazing is how long these pernicious ideas about the lack of a strong male role model somehow “creates” feminine boys, when in fact, the lack of a strong male role model, in my opinion, tends to create bullies, not their victims.

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How To Look At Women

I thought this was great – one dad’s planned conversation with his son the first time he sees his son look at a woman sexually.

There are two views regarding a woman’s dress code that you will be pressured to buy into.  One view will say that women need to dress to get the attention of men.  The other view will say women need to dress to protect men from themselves.  Son, you are better than both of these.  A woman, or any human being, should not have to dress to get your attention.  You should give them the full attention they deserve simply because they are a fellow human being.  On the other side, a woman should not have to feel like she needs to protect you from you.  You need to be in control of you.
Also, this:
Let’s be clear: a woman’s body is not dangerous to you.  Her body will not cause you harm.  It will not make you do stupid things.  If you do stupid things it is because you chose to do stupid things.
Good, no?
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Gendered Book Covers

Wow. If we take the gender flipping meme to publishing, then what of book covers?


Yesterday, author Maureen Johnson had a great idea. She tweeted “I do wish I had a dime for every email I get that says, “Please put a non-girly cover on your book so I can read it. – signed, A Guy” – and so came the idea for a challenge for her 77,000 followers. A challenge that she called Coverflip. Below, she explains more.

And the simple fact of the matter is, if you are a female author, you are much more likely to get the package that suggests the book is of a lower perceived quality. Because it’s “girly,” which is somehow inherently different and easier on the palate. A man and a woman can write books about the same subject matter, at the same level of quality, and that woman is simple more likely to get the soft-sell cover with the warm glow and the feeling of smooth jazz blowing off of it.

Go look at the slide show. It’s pretty staggering.

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Dustin Hoffman: Tootsie Was Never a Comedy For Me

If you haven’t seen this by now, you’re living under a bigger rock than I do. Still, this is astonishing. He cries. You will too. I did.

“Sorry, that’s as good as it gets. That’s as beautiful as we can get you.”

Here is an interesting response by Alexandra Petri:


I am not sure this video of Dustin Hoffman crying about female beauty standards is as good as everyone says it is. Is he crying about the fact that he’s missed out on a lot of interesting people because he had been brainwashed to not talk to them? If so, he can fix this so, so easily. All he has to do is walk over and start talking. Or is he crying because this– this brainwashing idea that the way you look determines your inherent interest, this is real, and it won’t occur to everyone to walk over?

That’s quite powerful.

But I’m not sure I understand what her point is, other than that Hoffman is right: women are judged unfairly on their looks first before anyone even wonders if they’re interesting. She doesn’t seem to disagree with Hoffman – just clarifying how we dismiss women until or unless they are attractive – which is sadly the truth.

There are times I wonder if women know that women are people. Most days I don’t even hope men know as much, to be honest.

He gives me hope that maybe, maybe occasionally, there are men who can see women’s humanity.

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Proof Needed?

So here’s a weird story: a/n (assumedly cis) woman found the wrong gender marker on her birth certficate and so went to have it changed because she needed to renew her license. She was required to get a copy of her birth record from Vital Record Services where she was told “she’d have to receive Pap exam and deliver to them proof of her reproductive organs”.

“She said I needed to go have a PAP exam, have a doctor write a note verifying you’re a woman, and bring it back-– notarized,” Grimes told FOX 5.

Considering the woman was a mother, she should have just brought in her children.

That said, there *are* women born women who don’t have cervices (that is, the thing a PAP is done on) or uteri. Maybe she was born with sealed labia or a large clitoris, or maybe the M was a clerical error.

The point is: this is stupidly invasive, and makes the bullshit trans people go through that much more apparent to those of us with cis privilege who – accept if we get pregnant in certain states – are rarely forced to show anyone our genitals in order to get the right paperwork signed.

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RIP Esther Williams

Esther Williams, the swimming movie star, or the Million Dollar Mermaid, died yesterday. I’m not really a huge fan & like a lot of people find those movies kind of bizarre, but she is otherwise known for having outed her ex husband, Jeff Chandler, as a crossdresser. From what I can tell, she never recanted, but no one ever verified it, either, and plenty of people denied it. For me, though, her comment that he only felt “happy and secure” in women’s clothing rings true, no?

 

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Gynandromorph

How cool is this? This cardinal is a gynandromorph, where an animal is actually split – usually along a midline – and expresses sex characteristics of a male on one side & of a female on the other.

So to get gynandromorphs in flies, all that has to happen is that one X chromosome gets lost in one cell when the initial cell in a female (XX) zygotes divides in two.  One half of the fly then becomes XX, the other XO, and the fly is split neatly down the middle, looking like the one below.  But gynandromorphs don’t have to be “half and halfs”.  X chromosomes can get lost at almost any stage at development, so flies can be a quarter male, have irregular patches of maleness, have just a few male cells, or even a male patch as small as a single bristle.

Cool, right?

I’m not sure what the genetic similarity is between these birds and people who are intersex at birth, but some smart biogeneticist out there will let me know.