Underneath my yellow skin

Gender is a social construct, part three

Here’s the thing about gender. In an ideal world, I would not have to think about it at all because I don’t care about it (to an extent). Just as I don’t think about religion or children unless someone else brings it up. In that ideal world, I would just be a woman and people would accept that without question. I would not have people telling me that I was womanning incorrectly or pointing out all the ways in which I was not really a woman. I ended the last post by talking about the sexism of my father. His attitude is one big reason I’m a feminist now. He definitely believed that I was a fuckup as a woman, but he wasn’t the only one.

Here are many ways I have been dismissed as a woman:

1. Not having children (always at the top).
2. Not getting married.
3. Not caring about fashion and/or makeup.
4. Not liking dolls (as a girl).
5. Not caring about cooking, cleaning, or sewing.
6. Liking sex.
7. Imaging having sex with strangers.
8. Liking sex a lot. As in every day a lot.
9. I don’t shave anything (I’m also Asian).
10. I don’t do anything to improve my appearance.
11. I treat men, women, nonbinary, genderqueer, agender people as equally as I possibly can.

Just a note on that last one. I’m not saying that women are worse about this, but that women can be as bad about it. Because of how patriarchy works, women oftentimes do the major lifting of keeping other women in check. Patriarchy wouldn’t work if there weren’t women who were willing and/or eager to hold up the status quo. This is just an unspoken truth about sexism. Women are just as capable (if not more) of being sexist against other women.

Side note to the side note: This is part of the insidiousness of sexism. Women learn early on that in order to move up in America, you have to appease the men at the top. One way of doing this was to be more ruthless than men, claw your way up the ladder, and then kick it down below you so no other women can climb up it.

Side note to the side note to the side note: This is why I’m deeply suspicious when people say that the world would be a better place if women were in charge. I say it depends more on the system than the gender of the people in charge. If the system is sick, then it doesn’t matter the genders of the people in charge.

Back to my list.


12. I don’t think of people solely on the basis of their gender. What I mean is that I think of gender as one aspect of a person, but by no means the only one. I do understand why straight women are wary of straight men who claim to want to be friends. But I don’t agree that every straight guy just wants to get into the pants of every woman. I think many straight cis dudes think with their dicks (as do many gay cis dudes), but that’s not every guy.

13. I tihnk people of different genders can be friends. This may be because I have been bi since my early twenties so it’s strange to me to go with the mentality of not being friends with someone of the gender(s) you are attracted to. Since gender doesn’t matter to me , it’s not the first (or tenth) thing that I notice about a person.

No. That’s not the way to say it. Of course I notice a person’s gender presentation. Although, these days, I’m less apt to put someone in a box and leave them there. I may still default to what they look liek, but that’s just a placeholder. I’m trying to default to they when I don’t know someone and be open to whatever they tell me, but that’s not easy.

Back to what I was saying about being friends with people. I’ve had cis straight women tell me that there’s no way they can be friends with guys the way they can with women. I understand what they are saying from a societal point of view. Given how sexism is so prevalent and how there are so many guys who buy into it to varying degrees (and not even necessarily purposefully, but just berathing it in by osmosis because it’s in the air), it makes sense to be cautious.

One thing about being middle-aged is that it cuts out a lot of the ‘men only want to talk to you to fuck you’ thing. One thing that helped with that when I was younger was that I was just oblivious to it because I never thought someone could like me. I had a really low self-esteem, which did not help. I also had been told obliquely by my parents that I was a piece of shit and no one would ever want me.

Weirdly, I had a boyfriend tell me in college that every male friend of mine was just friends with me because they wanted to fuck me. (Which was his M.O. in becoming my best friend, but I did not learn that until much later.) Was he right? I don’t think so. But it was indicative of how many guys felt, I guess. Or maybe not? I want to believe that there are straight cis dudes who want to be friends with women/AFAB folk, but I don’t have anything to back me up on that.

I do know that I have two best friends. One a cis het dude and one is… a bit more complicated. She’s nominally a straight woman, but if she were twenty years younger and not married, she would probably be a queer nonbinary person. I consider myself in a queertonic (queer platonic) relationship with each of them. They are both so important to me and integral parts of my life. K and I have talked about how at the end of our lives, we will be in a nursing home together and hecklling the other inmates. This is assuming that she outlives her husband, of course. And Ian and I are just woven into each other’s lives.

I think one of the great things about being queer is the ability to look at relationships in a very different way. Not to say that there aren’t queer people who are monogamous or more traditional in their relattionsihps; there are. What I’m saying is that in general, because queer people are on the fringes, anyway, and tend to have different worldviews, it’s easier to expand your mind in other ways.

I’m done for now. More tomorrow.

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