Performing Femininity

[apple_pathways]

(Disclaimer: Dudes, I want your opinions, too. I know there's, like: two of you who read my journal regularly. But don't feel left out if it seems I'm only talking to the ladies!)

The subject has come up elsewhere, and it's been on my mind recently: what is femininity? Is it the traditional, stereotypical traits that have historically been prized in women? (And in whose history?) Has the definition evolved significantly over time, or are we still stuck in an antiquated frame of mind? Which qualities are absolutely necessary in order to be considered feminine, and which are optional?

Are you offended when certain traits, interests, or qualities are described as masculine or feminine? As for myself, whenever I've taken any sort of "Male or Female" brain test, I've always skewed slightly toward the masculine side of the scale. (Including when I took such a test in college as a research participant for credit in my psychology class.) It does bother me when people say I "think like a guy", but I do realize that when it comes to science, they're speaking about statistical norms, which I'm cool with, because I like math. :P (Even though, as a child, I got much more attention for my writing abilities than I did my mathematical skill.)

(If anyone else is interested in taking a test based on "male vs. female" brain science, here's a really good one from the BBC. Save it for when you have some time, though, as there are multiple parts. Though I do believe you can save each section as you finish.)



[Poll #1749763]

Also, I'd like to know: how well do you fit into (what you perceive to be) your culture's definition of 'masculine' or 'feminine'? What do you think of others who are unable to adhere to your culture's rules? How many of the differences between men and women come from biology, and how many are culturally constructed?

I'll provide my own responses once I've had some sleep!

Comments

[evilhippo.livejournal.com]

I don't even know where to start. I managed to whittle my ideas down into ticky-boxes (more or less... still not sure about some of my answers). I agree with what someone else said earlier, though... it's definitely about the interaction of the traits. After all, you can have a boyish-looking face and still be a girly-girl in every other way.

I'm having trouble articulating everything I want to say about the ticky-boxes, so I'm going to talk about the brain-gender quiz. I ended up taking it twice. In part because I misread the instructions on one part (stupid commas), but mostly because composite faces creep me the heck out and I wanted to see if I'd have an easier time with women (I didn't. In the end, it became a test of which choice was less cringe-worthy... agh, I fail so hard at that part. Apparently I like more feminine features, but I could've just told them that and spared myself the frightening pictures.) Anyway: I kept all the rest of my answers the same, other than that part, so at least I wasn't technically cheating, just exploring the test (or something).

But the part that actually confuses me is the systemizing part. Because that was set up like one of those middle-school "What should your career be?" kinds of quizzes, and 1) those are easy-as-heck to cheat at and 2) they're almost always wrong. For example, apparently I'm just one point shy of being good at analyzing and building systems... when in fact, I am just interested in systems. I can memorize them and learn them and I really like them, but I'm not as much into creating them, nor am I particularly good at creating them (also, I suspect my affinity for maps is more to do with knowing which objects go where than it does with the angles test. I tend to use maps to find landmarks I can navigate by (even if those landmarks are intersections) more than I use them for figuring out the shape of my route or where streets intersect or whatever the proper use is.) I also tend to wonder what the "typical" way of doing the spot-the-difference test was. Because I made up mini-stories about clumps of objects so I could just match up stories instead of objects (the bear was lifting barbells, which was hanging out with the binoculars because they're both binary and all the rounded edges were having a tea party that the suitcase interrupted. Most of the rest were kind of boring--drinking while on the telephone ended up staying the same after the switch, but it got less classy.) So really, I suspect my 86% on that one had more to do with memory tricks than any particular skill at spacial relations.

The funny part is, when I didn't screw up the word association game with my lack of commas, I scored exactly in the middle. But once I threw my full 24 words at it, I ended up at the 50 mark for feminine. Which actually surprises me a bit, because I beat the male average pretty badly at the angles and systemizing, tied them on the shapes... and I prefer feminine features. Does my vocabulary really have that much more to do with things (I mean... yes, I am quite fond of it, but really...)

I guess, all in all, I do consider myself more feminine than masculine. I'm not a really emotional person, but that's more a state of being than a gender-choice... I coo at things and wave at children and indulge in plenty of other girly nonsense. But then I wear nothing but pants and bike everywhere and am actually kind of proud when I end up muddy/dirty/covered in chain grease/sopping wet from unexpected rain... and I'm not a huge fan of chocolate (which in some circles is an automatic rejection from the girl club). And then I have issues like today, when I biked the 7 miles home in hazy 95-degree heat, stumbled dripping into my apartment, and then managed to sprain my thumb trying to get my sports bra off. How does one classify that as far as femininity/masculinity goes? Sweaty, questionably-sane, jock-like... followed by a klutzy bra-related injury, which just screams "hapless nerdling girl." I just don't know. Obviously society is not quite set up for me. (-;

[apple-pathways.livejournal.com]

Yes, a problem with that test is the same problem you run into with any tests of that sort: the more tests of that sort a subject has taken, the more skewed their results will be. {As I mentioned, for my Psych 101 class we had to participate in research studies for credit. One of the studies I was involved in was exploring people's negative feelings about aging and older people. They asked us to sit at a computer and watch the screen as words flashed across it. They told us we were going to be asked later to remember the order the words appeared in. I figured out rather quickly that memorizing the rather fast-moving word sequences was impossible, and they had just told us that in order to get us to concentrate extra hard. And so...I just sat watching the screen, and stopped trying to memorize the words. [The words were either associated with youth/aging (healthy, older, vibrant, gray, etc.) or words with a positive/negative connotation (happy, caring, disgusting, bad, etc.). They asked us which words we remembered seeing together, and were interested in whether people were quicker to associate negative words with aging or not.]

Anyway, when I confessed all this during my exit interview, they were forced to throw out my results as 'biased'. Oops!}

Also: it's harder to measure the more extreme ends of the scales. Particularly, the smarter you are or the better you are at a particular task, the harder it's going to be to measure exactly how good you are. So yeah, I'm not surprised you were unsatisfied with your results!

The test doesn't really measure 'masculinity' or 'femininity' in the cultural sense. Instead, research has determined that there's a slight difference in the abilities of men and women to perform certain intellectual tasks. Women tend to score slightly better on verbal tasks and have bigger vocabularies, hence they will come up with more synonyms during the vocab test. It's doesn't mean you're 'girly': just that your brain tends to behave in a way that's been statistically determined to be indicative of the female sex! :P

It's been more than a year (maybe two?) since I've taken the test, and don't remember what the 'systemizing' task was like. Refresh my memory?

[evilhippo.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I kind of made that transition poorly there. That was meant to be a jump to your last "where do you fit in" question, not a response to the test... I know the test is for male set-up vs. female set-up brain workings, and not societal femininity vs. masculinity (goshdarnit, why do we not have more specific words for things like this yet? It's something we really need to get on top of, as a society. (-;) I think what I'm challenging about the word-association thing is that it doesn't scale for people who write habitually. Which brings it back to people on extreme ends of the scale, I suppose. I was just surprised that that made the difference between me being brain-neutral and being in the feminine camp, when so many of my scores were decidedly on the masculine end of things (especially since my hands are apparently exceptionally masculine--my ring fingers are almost a full centimeter longer than my index fingers. And I have no brothers (at least, not by my mom, which is what counts on that.)). It makes me wonder how things are weighted.

The 'systemizing' task wasn't really a task. The questions were mixed in with the 'empathizing' questions in the "Do you agree/slightly agree/etc." section. I can see that format working for empathy, since it's something that's internal--it is what you think--but systems are something inherently external. Though I guess they don't have to be--you can imagine your own systems to organize the world... but most of the questions had to do with things like maps and stereos, rather than a desire to organize the world internally, so from certain angles it boiled down to a "Girl interests and boy interests!" sort of section.

It does kind of make me curious how much of the feminine vs. masculine brain aptitude is hormonal, as opposed to inherent (genetic) brain structure (and this may be a shortcoming on my part--I dunno how much of brain structure is affected by hormones during development), as opposed to practice and learning. Surely someone somewhere has done this kind of test on transsexuals before and after hormone therapy (but I'm not having an easy time finding it. Also, the only study wikipedia mentions on transsexual brain chemistry only studied MTF transsexuals.) And how do you even design a brain-workings test that doesn't end up biased by the masculine/feminine in society vs. masculine/feminine in the... er... brain. (Methinks the problem here is that they called the two types of thinking after the sexes they are most often seen in. But then that comes back to how much of it really is genetically/hormonally ingrained. ... I'm not entirely sure where I'm headed with this, so I'm going to finish this comment so I can skip to your other comment and complain about bras some more.)

[apple-pathways.livejournal.com]

Ok, I remember the 'systemizing' part now. Yeah, I have no interest in cars or stereos, so that's out for me; I'm fine with maps, but bad at navigation in general! (I can read a map no problem, but I can't make a picture in my head of actual 3D...life. I routinely get turned around less than a mile from my house. True story.) I love systems when it comes to organizing data (can you tell?), but have no need for organization when it comes to the physical things in my life. (Clutter is my friend, damn it!)

I don't remember what they were on about with the finger lengths, but my index and ring fingers are pretty much the same length, with my index finger on my right hand being slightly longer. (Am I a freak?) I have a brother, but he's younger. I do remember that having older brothers is a (slight) predictor for being gay for men. Interestingly, my aunt has 3 sons, but it's the oldest who's gay. /anecdotal evidence

I know that hormones do play quite a significant part in brain development in utero, but I don't know much of an effect they have after that. If you find the sort of studies you're looking for, I'd be interested to know. (I wonder if I can still log into EMUs databases? I'll have to try that out later.)

[apple-pathways.livejournal.com]

Oh, and as for your bra-related injury: OMG, I've totally done that! Sports bras are the DEVIL! When they're particularly tight-fitting and sticking to your body with sweat, they are murder to get off! I have no idea what this says about our femininity. :P

[evilhippo.livejournal.com]

Okay, so long as I'm not the only one that gets into fights with the things. I don't understand why the sweat isn't a lubricant... Surely someone would've fixed this problem by now? I've gotten in to work in the morning and accidentally punched the (occupied) stall next to mine while trying to get a sports bra off (they're polished granite stall walls, too, so it rang and echoed. I was kind of afraid to come out afterward, lest my victim put a face to their assailant). This is the first time I've actually injured myself, though.

[apple-pathways.livejournal.com]

Bras in general are not to be trusted, I find. Lately my breasts have been busting through bras like the Incredible Hulk. I've had two underwires snap on me in as many weeks! And now that I'm out in the garden everyday and want to wear my sports bras, I can't find any of them. If this trend continues, I imagine I'll be resorting to binding myself with duct tape soon.