I'm starting a separate thread because I didn't want to derail either thread created on this today.
I struggle to draw a line of distinction between "masculine" and "feminine" because to me, the terms are useless. All they do for me is draw on stereotypes. I find those every bit as useless as the terms in quotations above.
Do you find any practical application for either term? If so, why?
Here are my thoughts on this in a stream of consciousness sort of way.
When I was real young, my dad called me his sunshine girl, because I was a stereotypical feminine child that played with dolls, loved pink and bright colors like yellow, wanted to be a princess and a ballerina, etc.
When I was in my teens all that went out the window; it was all about jeans and comfortable clothes and no thanks on too much pink. I was also really awkward, but what teens aren't.
As an adult, I thought the terms were pointless in much the same way: by this point in my life I'd known "feminine" men and "masculine" women and would think, "well what's the point of these words, my friend here isn't any less of a man just because he has traditionally feminine characteristics, etc."
So I thought maybe it would be a good idea to abolish the terms entirely.
Then, I met trans people for the first time. In my case my first trans friend was a F2M I met through mutual friends. We quickly became friends, but I mentally revisited the whole masculinity/femininity thing. I wondered: if masculinity and femininity don't mean anything, then what are trans people that wish to present trying to accomplish?
So my ideas changed again. Some people
like the concept of gender. And that's okay. (As it turned out, despite my tomboyish tendencies, I still felt feminine, so I felt like it was OK to claim that again). So I started to think that traits are probably just not gendered unless they are felt to be gendered by a person, and a person uses a given trait as part of their gender identity (should they have one).
So for instance, being nurturing is traditionally a feminine trait. But I know some great dads that aren't just stoic discipliners: they're very nurturing and gentle when needed with children, or with friends and partners, etc. But it still just seems so masculine to me in the way they do it. So, I think that for a given trait (like "nurturing"), if a person considers doing that trait part of their gender identity, then it's a gendered trait: a man that thinks the way they nurture people around them is masculine is nurturing in a masculine way. A woman that thinks the way they nurture people around them is feminine is nurturing in a feminine way. And then for people that don't really consider it to define their gender traits, it's just neutral: they're just nurturing.
It's not a perfect system because there's still subtle stuff about the way we're treated when we have masculine or feminine mannerisms and presentations. As I mentioned in the other thread, I'll sometime dress more feminine or less feminine and I know exactly what I'm doing when I do that: it leads to different expectations of how I'm going to be socially treated.
So anyway, those are my thoughts.
I believe everyone has both a masculine and a feminine side within them.
