Thanks for your thought-provoking perspective. Writing as an older guy, I think kids are a Big Deal. I infer that you don't yet have kids (?); if so, be prepared for a huge shift in your worldview. I always knew I wanted kids, but thought babies were boring; I was truly shocked by how quickly and how deeply I bonded.
Yes, no kids yet! But I'm getting married in January and hope to start relatively soon after. I've heard it will be a transformative experience and I'm looking forward to it :) I am more of a fan of little kids than of babies. But as I've hit my early 30s babies seem a lot more appealing and interesting to me than they used to, perhaps just because I'm around them more - at this age it feels like one friend or another is having a baby every couple of months
Yeah, I assumed I'd enjoy chatting with my kid when she was idk 7 years old. Never imagined I'd coo and gush over a BABY. I mean, TBH they're barely-formed lumps of protoplasm. But damn. Triggered some kind of biological reaction, turning me into a permanent mush-brain. My feeling is that the instinctive Baby Reactions are usually pre-existing in women, but only latent in men. Obviously variable, but until we had one, the whole notion of a "cute baby" sounded like an oxymoron.
“Doesn’t Fit, Must Acquit!” – gloves, sorting hats, or gendered stereotypes. 😉🙂
But fascinating essay – as always, well worth the subscription ... 😉🙂
However, apropos of those stereotypes, I kinda think you’re muddying the waters, barking up the RONG tree with several “problematic” statements of yours and of Aella’s, these in particular:
“my gender related insecurities ...;
any time my gender was brought up or even alluded to ...;
all your thoughts are a woman's thoughts, your actions a woman's actions. your gender is a trap;”
While I appreciate your frequent use – eight times ... 🙂 -- of “femininity” and words related thereto – maybe somewhat arguably, one of the two halves of the mythical “gender spectrum” – I kind of think you’re still obscuring the profound differences between “sex” and “gender”. In particular, I think you’re using “woman” as both a sex – i.e., “adult human female (sex)” – and as a gender – anyone who looks like, or behaves like a typical adult human female. You might note what Merriam-Webster's "Usage Guide" says about "woman" as a gender:
If "woman" is just a gender then Bruce Jenner and his ilk get to qualify.
But kind of think it’s rather important to differentiate between the traits that correlate with our sexes – whether they derive from nature or nurture or a combination thereof, all of which might be subsumed under the category of “gender” – and what it takes to qualify as male or female in the first place, i.e., basically having functional gonads of either of two types, those with neither being, ipso facto, sexless.
But given your more or less justified “sublimations of femininity” ... 🙂 , you might have some interest in a very good interview of Heather Brunskell-Evans on Stella O’Malley’s Substack, but this comment of Heather’s in particular, and my elaborations thereon:
HB-E: “So the idea that masculinity is fixed and femininity is fixed, all that's different now is that you can have a boy's body be truly female inside and vice versa, and nobody explains what being truly female or truly male is.”
Some reason to argue that pretty much the whole transgender clusterfuck – and your and Aella’s observations on gender in general – devolves, if not degenerates or goes off into the weeds in a rather spectacular fashion, from a rather pervasive and pigheaded inability or unwillingness to say exactly “what being truly female or truly male is”.
"To be fair, I’m sure they were a lot more complex than I thought they were, after all I never really got to know them."
This is perhaps one of the most accidentally deep comments that I've ever seen. It, really, really resonated with me.
Thank you, Augustin. I didn’t really realize I had created these two dimensional characters until I wrote this out
That is not at all unusual. What is unusual is writing it out. Hence the resonance. *Nobody* gets to know us, usually.
Thanks for your thought-provoking perspective. Writing as an older guy, I think kids are a Big Deal. I infer that you don't yet have kids (?); if so, be prepared for a huge shift in your worldview. I always knew I wanted kids, but thought babies were boring; I was truly shocked by how quickly and how deeply I bonded.
Yes, no kids yet! But I'm getting married in January and hope to start relatively soon after. I've heard it will be a transformative experience and I'm looking forward to it :) I am more of a fan of little kids than of babies. But as I've hit my early 30s babies seem a lot more appealing and interesting to me than they used to, perhaps just because I'm around them more - at this age it feels like one friend or another is having a baby every couple of months
Congratulations!
Yeah, I assumed I'd enjoy chatting with my kid when she was idk 7 years old. Never imagined I'd coo and gush over a BABY. I mean, TBH they're barely-formed lumps of protoplasm. But damn. Triggered some kind of biological reaction, turning me into a permanent mush-brain. My feeling is that the instinctive Baby Reactions are usually pre-existing in women, but only latent in men. Obviously variable, but until we had one, the whole notion of a "cute baby" sounded like an oxymoron.
“Doesn’t Fit, Must Acquit!” – gloves, sorting hats, or gendered stereotypes. 😉🙂
But fascinating essay – as always, well worth the subscription ... 😉🙂
However, apropos of those stereotypes, I kinda think you’re muddying the waters, barking up the RONG tree with several “problematic” statements of yours and of Aella’s, these in particular:
“my gender related insecurities ...;
any time my gender was brought up or even alluded to ...;
all your thoughts are a woman's thoughts, your actions a woman's actions. your gender is a trap;”
While I appreciate your frequent use – eight times ... 🙂 -- of “femininity” and words related thereto – maybe somewhat arguably, one of the two halves of the mythical “gender spectrum” – I kind of think you’re still obscuring the profound differences between “sex” and “gender”. In particular, I think you’re using “woman” as both a sex – i.e., “adult human female (sex)” – and as a gender – anyone who looks like, or behaves like a typical adult human female. You might note what Merriam-Webster's "Usage Guide" says about "woman" as a gender:
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/gender#usage-1
If "woman" is just a gender then Bruce Jenner and his ilk get to qualify.
But kind of think it’s rather important to differentiate between the traits that correlate with our sexes – whether they derive from nature or nurture or a combination thereof, all of which might be subsumed under the category of “gender” – and what it takes to qualify as male or female in the first place, i.e., basically having functional gonads of either of two types, those with neither being, ipso facto, sexless.
But given your more or less justified “sublimations of femininity” ... 🙂 , you might have some interest in a very good interview of Heather Brunskell-Evans on Stella O’Malley’s Substack, but this comment of Heather’s in particular, and my elaborations thereon:
HB-E: “So the idea that masculinity is fixed and femininity is fixed, all that's different now is that you can have a boy's body be truly female inside and vice versa, and nobody explains what being truly female or truly male is.”
https://stellaomalley.substack.com/p/silencing-thought-a-conversation/comment/57660136
Some reason to argue that pretty much the whole transgender clusterfuck – and your and Aella’s observations on gender in general – devolves, if not degenerates or goes off into the weeds in a rather spectacular fashion, from a rather pervasive and pigheaded inability or unwillingness to say exactly “what being truly female or truly male is”.