gender as confusing

In the androgynes and genderqueer groups, new members sometimes write about how at first they thought they were FTM (or MTF), but then they found out about androgynes (or genderqueer people), and then they were were no longer sure or were confused about their gender.

The way someone worded it today, it struck me that they must not have thought gender was at all confusing to begin with. What an odd concept... Yet, isn't it that way for most people? Most people feel they are a man or a woman (or a boy or a girl), and it seems simple and not at all confusing or open to question, to them.

Wouldn't it be simple if there really were just some set of questions you could ask someone (not including "what is your gender?"), and their answers would definitively tell you which gender they were? Wouldn't it be simple if gender were quantitative instead of qualitative?

What is the difference between being a person who feels that they should have a penis and no breasts, and being a man? What is the difference between being a person who feels that they should have both a penis and breasts, or neither, and being a man or a woman? Is there a difference, or are they just a man or a woman with the particular quality of wanting their body to be that way?

What is the difference between a person who feels that they fit in with other guys and who wants to be treated like a guy, and a person who feels that they have more things in common with guys than women, but who still feels they are a woman?

What does it mean to want one's body to be a particular way? What does it mean to want to be perceived by others as a particular sex or gender, or sometimes as one and sometimes the other, or as something other than the one or the other in a world which just sees two?

Not confusing? Indeed.

voices

Something personally objectionable that I sometimes notice myself doing, is that when I'm reading an email or a post by someone who has said they are female, or who has a feminine name, is that the "voice" I hear in my head while reading their words is high-pitched and sort of squeaky. Whereas if someone has said they are male, or if they have a masculine name, then the voice I hear is lower-pitched and not squeaky.

If someone has said they are FTM, sometimes that will change the voice I hear to a lower pitch, but not always. If sometime has said they are MTF, I may hear a slightly higher pitched voice, but it is usually not squeaky.

In real life, females have a wide range of voices - some have lower pitched voices, and some higher. Males have a wide range of voices too, and even some males have squeaky voices. Some people talk faster, and some slower, regardless of their sex.

A squeaky fast-talking voice to me implies excitability and non-calmness, and seems somehow less wise than a lower-pitched slower-talking voice. When hearing someone talk in person, my perception of them is also biased based on their voice, but at least it is biased based on their "real" voice, not an imaginary one I have made up for them.

By hearing the "voices" that I hear in my mind, my perception of a person and my interpretation of they write is already biased from the outset, based solely on my assumption of their physical sex.

(no subject)

What is the purpose of the fake LJ accounts that just have bunches of links to all kinds of pages?

[I decided not to post the links, in case they do have malware in them]

The links are given random names and seem to point to webpages that aren't real either - just more bunches of strange links. If the links went to pages that were trying to sell stuff, it would make sense to me. But these just seem strange. Maybe the links are pointing to webpages that have malware in them, and their purpose is to lure someone without the appropriate malware-protection into clicking on the links and getting infected?

I guess they generate the random names in hopes of getting search engines to index them, and getting traffic from the search engines.

(no subject)

Interesting article about the decriminalization of drug use in Portugal.

One surprising tidbit mentioned in the article is that "the U.S. is home to 5% of the global population but 25% of its prisoners." Wow. I did not realize that our incarceration rates were so much higher than anywhere else.


Link found via andrewducker.