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Nov. 1st, 2014 01:30 pmI've been thinking a lot about gender recently. I'm a male, and I identify as a male, but I undoubtedly have a lot of personality characteristics that are more female than most. Nobody really tells this to me outright, but this is just something I intuitively understand. It's not something I can ask in a typical conversation either without getting an awkward response. Even if I did get an honest answer, I would find myself wondering if this person that I asked knows me well enough to -really- answer that question. So in a way, I had come to accept myself as this male with quasi-female attributes. At the same time, I don't have a need to identify myself as female, but I don't have much of a compelling need to be male either except to just fill the social norm that I am male.
I guess to a point though, I started questioning why I needed to be assigned a gender in the first place. I never considered myself to fit in completely as being male, but at the same time I don't identify with being female either. In reality, I think this is true for most people in which they identify with one gender, but they still can take attributes from the other. Does it come to case where if you take most of your attributes from one gender that you are that gender? Do we even have a choice to choose who we are?
I suppose those questions lie within a realm of psychology I'm not really familiar with. I'm pretty sure the answer has to do with a mish-mash of things, like cultural norms, feminist ideology, and a history of male oppression that spans thousands of years. In other words, there is no direct answer.
Gender has been on my mind lately because I've been playing a female character in a game, and people identify me more as female than the other males who play as female characters. This has caused so much gender confusion in the past that it's almost hilarious at times. Besides being hit on by a countless number of guys, a few girls also came to be attracted to me (or rather my personality) as a female character, causing them to question their own gender and sexuality. I wonder how different things would be if I did play a male character. Would the way they see me change? Would the way I act and see myself change as well?
I guess it's interesting to me because the online world blurs the line of gender. How do people react when they don't know if the person behind the screen is male or female? Because we're so used to the world being as male and female, I assume people would try to construct a perspective based around those two frameworks. It's very hard for us, as humans, to work with an ambiguous gender, and that's why we have to mentally (unconsciously or consciously) assign someone the stereotypical attributes that come with a specific type. When those perceptions are broken though, cognitive dissonance occurs.
At least to an extent, I know who I am.
I guess to a point though, I started questioning why I needed to be assigned a gender in the first place. I never considered myself to fit in completely as being male, but at the same time I don't identify with being female either. In reality, I think this is true for most people in which they identify with one gender, but they still can take attributes from the other. Does it come to case where if you take most of your attributes from one gender that you are that gender? Do we even have a choice to choose who we are?
I suppose those questions lie within a realm of psychology I'm not really familiar with. I'm pretty sure the answer has to do with a mish-mash of things, like cultural norms, feminist ideology, and a history of male oppression that spans thousands of years. In other words, there is no direct answer.
Gender has been on my mind lately because I've been playing a female character in a game, and people identify me more as female than the other males who play as female characters. This has caused so much gender confusion in the past that it's almost hilarious at times. Besides being hit on by a countless number of guys, a few girls also came to be attracted to me (or rather my personality) as a female character, causing them to question their own gender and sexuality. I wonder how different things would be if I did play a male character. Would the way they see me change? Would the way I act and see myself change as well?
I guess it's interesting to me because the online world blurs the line of gender. How do people react when they don't know if the person behind the screen is male or female? Because we're so used to the world being as male and female, I assume people would try to construct a perspective based around those two frameworks. It's very hard for us, as humans, to work with an ambiguous gender, and that's why we have to mentally (unconsciously or consciously) assign someone the stereotypical attributes that come with a specific type. When those perceptions are broken though, cognitive dissonance occurs.
At least to an extent, I know who I am.
