Talk:Gender role/Archive 2003

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Can/should Gender Identity, Gender Role, and Sex be Segregated? (1)

Before too much ink or blood is spilled over this subject, it would probably be a good idea for those of us interested in this question to go back to John Money's work. If memory serves, he originally spoke only of gender and then found that single term inadequate because society not only looks at clearly male genitalia, clearly female genitalia, and cases that are either in-between (is it a big clitoris or a small penis) or mixed (e.g., and individual with both a penis and vagina, one testicle and one ovary) and assigns these individuals to sexual categories like "male" and "female", but societies frequently are insistent about the appropriate behaviorisms, manner of speaking, clothing, etc. (gender signals), and also about the appropriate roles these individuals may take up in society. He had a rather odd-looking term, something "gender-role/i.d.", which IMHO did not convey his insights very well. That being said, I would rather define a term like "theory of relativity" according to the way that Einstein spoke of it than to define it in terms of the way the multitude of casual and often ignorant users of the term speak.

Patrick0Moran

Whoa... Patrick I can't say that I like any of the new text at all. Both in tone and in length, it seems more appropriate to a sociology journal than to an encyclopedia.



As far as the length goes, an encyclopedia article doesn't have to expand on every detail of the subject - often briefer is better. I think people got the idea of gender role pretty well in the original article, and the reiterating of details and examples just made it longer, not better.

As far as tone, the new text seems vague and weird. E.g. I guess I can figure out what "the external representations and the internal representations (self image) of what sex one is" means, but it takes me a while to parse it (as a non-sociologist). I can't figure out at all what "once clothing and shaving were invented" has to do with anything. And using the term "human beings" so much sounds weird and doesn't flow well. What's the benefit of using "male human beings" over "men" everywhere, other than making it sound like it was written by the Coneheads? ("Greetings Earth creatures...")

The new text also doesn't integrate well with the rest of the article. I thought the "Cultural views of gender roles" section was a good intro to the topic, but now it's prefixed with a lot of strange specifics in the new text.

I do agree that the difference between gender role and gender identity is both clear and useful, if you think hard enough about it, and they should be kept as separate articles. A simplistic way of putting it is that gender identity is whether you think you are male or female, while gender role is whether you tend to act in a masculine or feminine way. E.g. a man who stays home and takes care of the kids has a male gender identity but could be said to be acting in a female gender role.

GGano 14:56, 22 Sep 2003 (UTC)

I reverted all my changes. Patrick0Moran 02:09, 23 Sep 2003 (UTC)


Can/should Gender Identity, Gender Role, and Sex be Segregated? (2)

Martin started me thinking about this page and how to distinguish between gender and gender role. I wasted my time by trying to answer his needs in one fell swoop.

Let's look at this article point by point, just picking things that I see as problems.

"biology of gender"

What is that supposed to mean? Gender is a social construct that may be based on biology, but is something that needs to be clearly distinguished from biology and its sub-category, sex.

Women used to wear blue jeans that had zippers at the side -- to distinguish them from men's jeans that opened in the front for obvious reasons. But before long it was just easier for unisex jeans to take over -- still adapted to male physiology thank goodness. So sex can be operative in suggesting ways that gender can be signaled without making men pee over the tops of their trousers, but there does not have to be a connection.

I changed the sentence: "Considerable debate exists as to whether gender roles are biologically mandated, in the sense of the behavioral traits arising primarily from the biology of gender; or culturally mandated," to speak of the "biology of sex" because it seems to me that if a gender role is mandated by anything in biology, it is probably sexual dimorphism and/or innate behavioral differences between the sexes not some difference between the genders. It makes some sense to have large animal veterinarians be males, but my female veterinarian is larger and stronger than I am. It would make a lot of sense that most farriers are males because there are not many people around who can hold up the hoof of an uncooperative Clydesdale, and the number of women who can do that is most likely much lower than the number of men who can do it. But when you make it a social convention/rule that women should not be large animal veterinarians or farriers (and men should not be hairdressers) that is a social construct that goes beyond the biological facts to mandate that all guys are big and tough and all gals are small and fragile. There is a biological fact behind a sociological fact that gives the sociological construct some measure of rationality (and not purely conventional).

If we say that gender roles depend on gender, that is virtually a tautology. They are both matters of social definition and not matters of "biologically mandated" decisions.

So, what do people think? Shall we leave gender confused with sex in this case? Patrick0Moran 02:42, 23 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Another problem with this page. It begins with the words:

"In sociology, gender roles (or sometimes sex roles) describe the behaviors and responsibilities prescribed for each sex by a society."

This sentence amply illustrates the kind of confusion that makes it a problem when society imposes gender roles (and punishes those who do not conform) on the basis of superficial characterists. Is there any difference between gender and sex? If there is a difference, then what is the author of this sentence trying to say here? The main reason that John Money diverted the grammatical term "gender" and invented the term "gender role" is that people were being caused to suffer when the society in general was prepared to deal only with male human beings who acted like John Wayne and female human beings who acted like Ann Sothern. Society looked at the external genitalia, saw male and said, "Dress and act in such and such a way." It saw female and said, "Dress and act in such and such a way." If it saw anything other than "standard" genitalia it freaked out. The basic problem with the sentence quoted above is that it assumes that sex is unambiguously determined by external genitalia.

If there were two sexes, or any number of sexes, and they were unambiguously determined by external genitalia, then it would not likely be problematical for society to decree that individuals should keep their genitalia under cover but to announce what was kept covered by unambiguous and truthful symbols. It would still be problematical if the authorities jumped from the observation that most individuals of sex V were large and relatively aggressive and that most individuals of sex Z were small and relatively nurturing to the assertion that all individuals of sex V were aggressive and all individuals of sex Z were nurturing, and that therefore Vs should be lawyers and things like that and Zs should be nurses and things like that.

Since external genitalia do not unambiguously determine the minds, motivations, and other characteristics of individuals, major social problems can result from the simplistic assumption that one knows "the sex" of a human being.

A quibble: To me "sex role" sounds like it means the kinds of things one is expected to do (or does do) as a sexual partner, not the general kinds of things that an individual of one sex is expected to do as a normal part of daily life.

Patrick0Moran 23:52, 23 Sep 2003 (UTC)

The first sentence, ""In sociology, gender roles (or sometimes sex roles) describe the behaviors and responsibilities prescribed for each sex by a society," is not adequate because it does not reflect the facts. What actually happens is that those in authority (at least in the dominant culture of the U.S.) look at the external genitalia of an infant, and declare that it is a boy or a girl. If it isn't clear whether it is a boy or a girl, then a decision has to be made whether to surgically "repair" the problem or to leave an individual that is not going to fit in. So the first thing society does is to declare that "It's a boy!" or "It's a girl!" And along with that announcement come blue blankets or pink blankets, "Francis" or "Frances", and "He'll make a great baseball player like his dad," or, "She'll look beautiful in a prom dress some day!" So immediately after the announcement of external sex comes the assumption of a gender identity. This is how you will be known. You will wear trousers, and you will wear skirts. You will cut your hair short, and you will let your hair grow long. Etc., etc. First comes external genitalia, second comes sex, third comes gender, and only then do people get around to saying things like, "Boys don't cry!" and "Girls don't spit!"

The sentence in question would be more accurate if modified to say:

"The behaviors and responsibilities prescribed for each gender by a society are called gender roles by sociologists and sexologists."

Patrick0Moran 14:07, 24 Sep 2003 (UTC)




I agree with both the change you made and the one you propose. We should be accurate about sex vs. gender identity but we should avoid talking about this distinction in this article - that's for the gender identity article, it would only confuse the matter here. One issue with your proposed change is that IIRC it's a wikipedia custom that the first sentence of each article should begin with the name of the article's subject and then define it - e.g. "George Washington was the first president of the U.S." So it should probably be switched around so that the subject comes first (or close to first anyway).
GGano 15:17, 24 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Can/should Gender Identity, Gender Role, and Sex be Segregated? (3)

I believe that it is clear that the following list is flawed precisely because it does not distinguish between sex and gender:

  1. A man, who enjoys sex, has a career, and has difficulty expressing his emotions.
  2. A woman, who wears cosmetics, and wants to get married, start a family and be a housewife.
  3. An effeminate man, a man who is more or less like a stereotypical woman.
  4. A girl, who wears skirts and dresses, plays with dolls, likes the colour pink, has long hair, and wants to wear make-up.
  5. A tomboy, a girl who behaves like a stereotypical boy.
  6. A boy, who wears rugged clothing, likes the colour blue, plays with toy soldiers, participates in competitive team sports, enjoys fighting, doesn't cry, and has short hair.
  7. A sissy, a boy who behaves like a stereotypical girl.

There are problems with the wording of these list elements. They are not sentences, for one thing. The heading is: "Examples of western gender roles." In an odd, but probably unintended way, the heading works very well with the list elements. The reason is that if you read it carefully it gives "man," "woman," "effeminate man," "girl," "tomboy," "boy," and "sissy" as gender roles. Actually it should be "gender" for each of those seven, and then the remainders of the seven phrases would be the behaviors and activities that form the roles for each of these genders. So this list is saying, for instance, that "girl" is a gender, and that the role to be played by a girl is to wear skirts and dresses, to play with dolls, to like the colour pink, to wear long hair, and to look forward to wearing make-up. But then the definition of the gender called "tomboy" is bad because it defines the gender "tomboy" by the gender "girl" on the one hand and then says that this tomboy=girl has a role which is like that played by members of the gender called "boy."

Let's go back to the beginning. Society finds a newborn infant, checks out its external genitalia, says, "male" or "female," and then everybody knows what color of blankets to buy, whether to buy the child a pitcher's glove or an oven mitt, etc. If we make no reference to the putative sex of the individual, the obvious external genitalia, we cannot make sense of the difference between "man," "woman," "effeminate man," and so forth by looking at this list. A person who wears cosmetics and wants to get married, start a family, and be a housewife could equally well be called a woman or an effeminate man if nobody looks under the clothing. Similarly, a person who wears rugged clothing, likes the color blue, plays with toy soldiers, etc., is equally a boy and a tomboy. Any sissy could equally well be called a girl -- unless we check out the external genitalia. (And of course the tomboy may actually be a boy boy with androgen insensitivity syndrome and a body that has been sexualized as like that of a female, so things get even more complicated.)

If one does not distinguish between gender and sex, then messed up formulations must inevitably follow. One other problem is that the way these things are set up there is no way to know that the terms with "boy" and "girl" in them apply to a different age group than do the terms with "man" and "women" in them. There are probably many adults who fit the description given for "boy."

For society to be willing to call someone a woman, that person must have female genitalia in addition to all of the other characteristics. Otherwise society will call the person a transvestite or maybe a transexual.

Unless we use the minimal amount of required unambiguous terms, we cannot hope to give a useful explanation of something for which many people need a clear understanding since they presently have no idea of "what is going on with these weird creatures."

To avoid saying ridiculous things we need to say things that are carefully worded. We need to be very careful of how we formulate statements because the situation is very complex and because misconceptions are rife. There can be two or more views on the sex of an individual. Society may look at a person, see male genitalia, and say, "This is a male." The individual may look at "his" desire to bear children, tendency to be nurturing, abhorance of acting in an aggressive way, etc., and decide that "he" is, despite the genitalia, a female. Then misunderstanding and conflict will often occur.

Society says to this individual, "You are a boy/man and you should behave in such-and-such a way." In so doing, society asserts both its interpretation of what the person is and also its expectation of how the person should act. The person looks inward and says, "I am a girl/woman, and I should behave in such-and-such a way to properly group myself with other girls/women." The society may look at the person and ask, "Why are you behaving in this perverse manner?"

Maybe the easy way to say all of this is that if one is presumed to be a male then one is expected to behave in a certain way, and if one is presumed to be a female then one is expected to behave in another way. One is expected by society to display the matching gender signals (dress or trousers, etc.) and to do the appropriate kinds of things. On the other hand, if the onel actually feels about oneself and other people in a certain way, then one interprets oneself to be a boy, man, girl, woman, or whatever. That gender may or may not match the appearance of one's external genitalia. But once one decides whether one is a "he" or a "she", once one has decided what one's gender is, then one will tend to identify with other people of the same gender and will tend to want to dress and behave in a way that is in agreement with one's gender. Western culture acts to socialize individuals with male external genitalia to the gender and the role of a man, to socialize individuals with female external genitalia to the gender and the role of a woman, and regards any other kind of external genitalia as an abnormality that needs to be corrected. Conflict results when one regards oneself as of one gender and adopts the matching gender role, and society regards one as of the other gender and insists upon the other gender role.

Apparent sex-> Socionormal gender-> Socionormal gender role

male-> man-> Actively impose will on the outside world in various ways.

(immature m.)-> boy-> Irrepressible attempts to actively impose will on the outside.

female-> woman-> Passively adapt to the wills of males, nurture infants, etc.

(immature f.)-> girl-> Learning how to achieve active goals via passive techniques.

intersexual-> none-> none

Apparent sex-> Sociocontrary gender-> Spoiled gender role

male-> woman-> Passively adapt to the wills of males, nurture infants, etc. "Effeminate man"

(immature m.)-> girl-> Learning how to achieve active goals via passive techniques. "Sissy"

female-> man-> Actively impose will on the outside world in various ways. "Virago"

(immature f.)-> boy-> Irrepressive attempts to actively impose will on the outside. "Tomboy"

These descriptions of "acceptable" and "unacceptable" gender roles need to be filled out.

Patrick0Moran 21:06, 25 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Most of what you've said is true, but... I think much more appropriately explained on the gender identity page than here. Trying to explain both concepts at once would be very confusing I think. The issue of the gender roles of people whose gender is unambiguous is an interesting enough concept, and should be explained first. The gender roles of others (sorry, what's the right term for that?) should be discussed separately, because it adds another layer of complexity. My ideal solution would be for this article to explain the former, and then link to a (new) second article about the latter. The current article can explain that, to make the discussion easier, we're assuming that the person's gender is unambiguous and is identical to their sex; for discussion of cases where that's not true, see article two. In other words, I'd like to sweep the issue of all the bits about "external genetalia" under the rug for a bit, just until people can see what "gender role" is about, and then add them back. Otherwise it's way too hard to explain. Does that sound like a reasonable plan?
As to the list you mention, I agree that there are some questions about it. First of all, it's assuming that the reader understands that it's really talking about the "male gender role" when it says "man". Maybe that's not a good assumption. Second, it's not clear whether "effeminate man", "sissy", and "tomboy" are gender roles. I'm not sure - if they're not, then what are they? Gender stereotypes? That's certainly related. It seems useful to mention those in a list along with the other doesn't it, but then what exactly is it a list of?
A few minor points: (1) I think we can safely assume a bit of understanding on the part of the reader, e.g. than a "boy" is younger than a "man". (2) "Actively impose will on the outside world in various ways" is a weird view of the male gender role I think. In general the existing list matches my views of traditional Western gender roles much better, even though the enumeration may be flawed.
GGano 17:09, 29 Sep 2003 (UTC)
I also have some questions about the proposed additions as I do not know that we should be aiming this article at graduate level sexology students. Perhaps we should work on making things more Plain English without losing the depth of meaning. As it is, the material is very dense and the Wikipedia should not really read like a scientific journal. Also, when information is added, we should try to be careful to keep it NPOV. Paige 17:31, 29 Sep 2003 (UTC)

What I wrote above was not intended for external consumption. It was written to try to get people to look at the fact that the formulation that is currently in use is fatally flawed. Let me repeat:

If we make no reference to the putative sex of the individual, the obvious external genitalia, we cannot make sense of the difference between "man," "woman," "effeminate man," and so forth by looking at this list.

Here is the list again:

  1. A man, who enjoys sex, has a career, and has difficulty expressing his emotions.
  2. A woman, who wears cosmetics, and wants to get married, start a family and be a housewife.
  3. An effeminate man, a man who is more or less like a stereotypical woman.
  4. A girl, who wears skirts and dresses, plays with dolls, likes the colour pink, has long hair, and wants to wear make-up.
  5. A tomboy, a girl who behaves like a stereotypical boy.
  6. A boy, who wears rugged clothing, likes the colour blue, plays with toy soldiers, participates in competitive team sports, enjoys fighting, doesn't cry, and has short hair.
  7. A sissy, a boy who behaves like a stereotypical girl.

Let's take GGano's understanding that "man" = "male gender role", etc. I think that's equating sex to gender, which I thought we had agreed was not the correct way to do things, but for the sake of argument we would get the names of several gender roles... Actually, let's call them "masculine gender role", etc. Then following each "X gender role" we would have a thumbnail description of that role:

  1. Masculine gender role: X enjoys sex, has a career, and has difficulty expressing emotions.
  2. Feminine gender role: X wears cosmetics, wants to get married, start a family, and be a housewife.
  3. Effeminate gender role: (same as feminine gender role)
  4. Virago gender role: (same as masculine gender role)
  5. Masculine jr. gender role: X wears rugged clothing, likes the color blue, plays with toy soldiers, participates in competitive team sports, enjoys fighting, doesn't cry, and has short hair.
  6. Feminine jr. gender role: X wears skirts and dresses, plays with dolls, likes the color pink, has long hair, and wants to wear make-up.
  7. Sissy gender role: (same as Feminine jr. gender role)
  8. Tomboy gender role: (same as Masculine jr. gender role)

Do you not see what I'm getting at? If you only look at gender roles, there is nothing to distinguish between a sissy and a girl's girl, or a virago and a man's man. For instance:

If somebody says, "I am a woman," and that person looks like a woman, talks like a woman, leads a typical woman's life, that is what that person is ... But what happens if that person marries and her husband discovers that she is anatomically a male and therefore cannot complete, to the husband's satisfaction, her role as a woman?

Again, I understand your concern, but I think that's a good topic for gender identity, not gender role. If her husband is annoyed because she doesn't want to stay home and take care of the kids, that's a gender role issue; if he's annoyed because she has a penis, that's (quite a big) gender identity issue. GGano 15:19, 30 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Remember, it wasn't my list to begin with. I agree with GGano when he says: "It's not clear whether "effeminate man", "sissy", and "tomboy" are gender roles." That's the other way to fix the list. Just eliminate effeminate gender role, virago g.r., sissy g.r., and tomboy g.r. Then if somebody asks something like, "Well, then, what's a virago?" you have to say, "That's a female who adopts a masculine gender role."

Patrick0Moran 02:09, 30 Sep 2003 (UTC)

I agree. So let's say that there are only 2 stereotypical gender roles, male and female. We subdivide these into adult versions and child versions. Then, an effeminate man is someone who doesn't fit into the stereotypical adult male gender role. Similarly with tomboy, sissy, and "virago" (whatever that is). GGano 15:19, 30 Sep 2003 (UTC)
It's always been my understanding that, at least in modern Western societies, there are only two commonly recognized gender roles and only two commonly recognized genders: male and female. Isn't that the general thrust of heteronormativity? All the rest, effeminate men, tomboys, (BTW virago is a non-PC term I suggest we avoid) are special cases of individuals not matching the expected gender role for their sex. This doesn't seem like it needs to be such a long and complicated article...and I certainly do not just mean Patrick0Moran's edits. This article has been sloppy for a long time and it's a prime example, IMHO, of one of those rare articles here that needs massive trimming rather than growth. So, my suggestion in this case would be, Patrick and GGano, if you agree, do you think either or both of you could suggest places to trim? Perhaps the answer here is a skillful editing process, not lengthy enumerations. Could whittling down to the basic facts and relegated the special text on tomboy to the tomboy article, etc., solve things for both of you? *fingers crossed* (P.S. It?s a really neat thing that the two of you have been able to disagree over this and still keep things civil, rather than resort to an edit war and name-calling.) Paige 16:02, 30 Sep 2003 (UTC)
I don't think the article is way too long - this is an encyclopedia after all, not a dictionary. The only parts I think that need trimming are in the "Examples of western gender roles" section. (The rest doesn't flow spectacularly well but it's not bad.) I think that the 7-element list and the 2-element list need to be combined. I think the "unisex" part is at best only tangentially related, and should be ditched. I think the part about "transgender and genderqueer" belongs in gender identity not gender role.GGano 21:42, 30 Sep 2003 (UTC)
Sounds good to me. So what are you waiting for? Be bold, dang it!  :) (BTW, the unisex part ended up there becuase of me...I was writing up a bunch of fashion entries and that one was deemed unworthy and dumped here by some one. Sorry!) -- Paige 21:51, 30 Sep 2003 (UTC)

(1) Most important: Does somebody know how to break this page up with the little [[{{fullurl:{{{1}}}|action=edit}} edit]] dealies? If I am on my IBM I can't edit it, so I have to switch to my antique Macintosh.

(2) Here is one thing we could do. We could say that if X regards Y (and Y may be X him/herself) as having a masculine (not male) gender identity, then X will think Y should behave in such-and-such manner (which is technically called Y's gender role). And we could follow the same format to make definitions for the other gender identities.

The trouble with that is that if someone gets to "gender role" without having thoroughly digested "gender identity," then I think s/he will find the definition so sparse and so tautological that it won't be helpful. (If X is a man, then X should behave in a manly way.) It won't be helpful because it doesn't give a clue of why we need or use this terminology. It is the "most natural thing in the world" for men to act like he-men and women to act like real women. The only reason that the issue of gender role and gender identity ever came up was because people needed to be able to talk clearly about those of us who have gender identities that are discordant what whatever people believe our sex to be.

It would be much easier for the general reader who has searched for "gender role" if the article explained things this way:

If X believes Y (and Y may be X) to be a male human being, then X will call Y a man or a boy (depending on age), and will expect Y to behave in such-and-such a way. (And follow that by similar definitions for the case of female human being, etc.)

This way of defining terms takes care of the kinds of things that happen in the real world. (A) X sees Y in the shower in the gym, says to him/herself that Y is a man, then sees Y in his job as a bouncer in a bar and a happily married father of 3, and says to him/herself that Y is is a real man. Y looks at himself in the mirror and in internal experience, says, "I am a man," and is happy with his role in society. (B) X identifies Y as a male, then sees Y put on woman's clothing, follows Y to the beauty parlor where Y works, and X doesn't think that Y is a real man. Y knows about the apparently male genitals but feels like a woman "inside," thinks of herself as a woman, and is perfectly happy with her job and role in life.

There is a reason why we have both the word "feminine", and the word "effeminate". Choosing between which to use depends on one's belief in the sex of the person who is to be discribed by either term. One can't make sense out of someone saying, "Jane is a very effeminate woman."

Patrick0Moran 23:06, 30 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Wow - I totally disagree.
The trouble with that is that if someone gets to "gender role" without having thoroughly digested "gender identity," then I think s/he will find the definition so sparse and so tautological that it won't be helpful. (If X is a man, then X should behave in a manly way.) It won't be helpful because it doesn't give a clue of why we need or use this terminology. It is the "most natural thing in the world" for men to act like he-men and women to act like real women.
Huh? I think everyone in the world is familiar with plenty of men who don't act like he-men and women who don't act like "real women" (i.e. very feminine), and the vast majority of these people have gender identities that match their sex. I don't think you're giving enough credit to the reader to be able to figure things out. Do you think the current article leaves the reader unclear on gender roles? (It may leave them unclear on gender identity, but that's the job of gender identity, not gender role.)
The only reason that the issue of gender role and gender identity ever came up was because people needed to be able to talk clearly about those of us who have gender identities that are discordant what whatever people believe our sex to be.
There are lots of people who have a male sex as well as a male gender identity, but stay home with the kids while their wife works, and so therefore are fulfilling a (traditionally) female gender role. His sex and gender are completely concordant, yet his gender role is a perfectly reasonable thing to talk about. But you're saying it's not.
GGano 14:45, 1 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Regarding length and content -- I agree with GGano that it is not too long, and with Paige that it needs to be trimmed. I, too, think that the examples are the place to look second (after we get sex back to the extent necessary). Some of the attributes listed are too superficial to avoid trivializing the subject. For instance, I have never heard anybody else suggest that boys should like blue and girls should like red. "Baby blue" and "baby pink" are used to code infant blankets, but the typical little boy is going to associate baby blue with being regarded as a baby. My favorite shirt, as a five-year-old, was a bright red cowboy shirt. Look in the stores. How many non-blue shirts are made for little boys? How many blue articles and non-pink articleds are made for little girls? Anyway, rant rant rant, that's just an example.

I do not believe that it is proper to limit gender roles to those approved by the dominant forces in the dominant sub-culture in the United States. Whether most people know it or not, we live in a world in which there are hijra, evening people, men who live a woman's life among the Native Americans in the U.S. and Canada, etc. If a hijra moves to the U.S. or England, then these places will have a "new" gender identity and a new gender role.

What people need to understand, more than everything, is that things are a great deal more important than American Gothics think they ought to be. Getting the pitchfork after the newly arrived "evening person" (maybe "twilight person" would be a more fitting English designation) from India does not make them disappear, and the fact that somebody does not buy into that person has decided to display his/her alienation from carrying natural masculine characteristics to their unnatural extremes should not give pitchfork wielders free rein to demean them. Patrick0Moran 14:24, 1 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Evening people, etc. are examples of people with non-standard gender identities. That's only tangentially related to gender roles. When a person with indeterminate gender identity becomes a hard-hitting power lawyer, you could say that their gender role was clearly a masculine one, even if their gender identity is less clear.
Please don't take offense, but it seems like you're on a quest to have people acknowledge non-traditional genders more than they do now. That's fine, but I don't understand why it needs to be fought on the gender role page, rather than the more appropriate gender identity page.
GGano 14:51, 1 Oct 2003 (UTC)
(P.S. I somewhat agree on the colors thing - I think the stereotypical girl likes pink, but the stereotypical boy doesn't care.)



Let's take one thing at a time. The sticking point, for me at least, is the question of whether one can just define a gender identity and match it with a gender role without mentioning sex, and in doing so have adequately explained why we have these concepts. Another way to ask the question is to inquire why we don't just determine the sex individuals and speak of their normal social roles. For instance:

  • A (male human=) man, [is expected to be] who enjoys sex, has a career, and has difficulty expressing his emotions.

I'll go back and try to deal with other problems after we get this point straightened out.

Schematically, my problem is:

if

Gender A corresponds to Gender Role V

and

Gender B corresponds to Gender Role V

then what is the difference between Gender A and Gender B?


Patrick0Moran 22:36, 1 Oct 2003 (UTC)

I'm really confused. You seem to be making my point, unless I'm misunderstanding you. In your example, if V correponds to the male gender role, then what do A and B correspond to? Maybe they might correspond to A = (male sex, male gender) and B = (female sex, male gender)? In which case I would say that, yes, the gender of A and B is the same. You seem to say that they're different? You seem to be saying that someone's gender includes their sex? GGano 14:54, 2 Oct 2003 (UTC)

O.K.! We are getting close. The list has "effeminate man" and "woman" corresponding to more-or-less the same gender role. My point is that if you have a person who enjoys sex with males, wears long hair, wears loafers without socks in informal situations, wears jeans with shirt not tucked in in informal situations, defers to guys, wears lipstick on a date, wears high heels on a date, shaves legs and underarms, never hawks and spits, says "Oh, sugar!" when dismayed, waits for others to open the door, etc., etc. (No description or idealized version of a gender role is ever perfect. And, anyway, nobody lives up to the proper gender role as demonstrated by my grandma -- who never wore slacks or (heaven forbid) jeans in her entire life..) there would be no way to determine whether it's an "effeminate man" or whether it's a "woman" -- unless you know what the sex of the person is.

If gender A and gender B are the same then you can't have "man" and "mannish woman". Then the gender and the gender role define and name each other. (What is the PC term for "virago" anyway? The original list avoided the whole question by not having a female with a man's gender role.)

Let's deal with this part first.

Patrick0Moran 00:01, 3 Oct 2003 (UTC)

I would say that, assuming that this person is trying to present themself as a woman, then their gender identity is female and their gender role is female. In other words, when you ask if they're a man or a woman, I'd say that their gender is female, and it doesn't really matter in this context what their sex is.
If a person presents herself as female, and if she stays home and takes care of the kids, then people will view her as fulfilling her "proper" gender role, regardless of her genitalia. Because most people will never see her genitalia. That's why I think we should base this article off of gender identity, not sex.
Also - the more I think about it, the less being "effeminate" has to do with either gender identity or gender role. An effeminate man (i.e. someone who presents himself as a man, regardless of his actual sex), has a male gender identity, and might or might not be fulfilling a typical male gender role, regardless of his mannerisms. My view of gender role has to do with the person's career, likes and dislikes, etc., not their mannerisms. I would say that "tomboy" could still be a gender role (girls who like climbing trees, etc.), and "sissy" is kinda 50/50 - it's a gender role as much as it implies liking ballet and not football, etc.
GGano 13:47, 3 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Whoa, whoa, whoa! So a tomgirl is really a woman, and a tomboy is a man? Or do the folks on the Rocky Horror Picture Show really believe in transvestite transsexuality from the planet Transylvania? Rickyrab 00:12, 3 Oct 2003 (UTC)

If Nimby LahRoo is the perfect gynecomimetic, and has even used hormones to grow breasts, s/he may realize a kind of idealized feminine role. By being invested in acting in an entirely proper womanly way, s/he may not have the little flaws in performance that would occur in the case of one who was not so highly invested in that role. (Some women don't care about the expectations of family and society and are perfectly willing to hawk and spit. For Nimby to spit would be like the way Tom Sawyer dealt with the heavy object that the lady surprised him by throwing for him to catch.) Anyway, Nimby meets a guy and they fall in love. They decide not to have sex until after they're married. The new husband expects to have progeny by his new wife. For obvious reasons they are unable to comsumate the marriage. I think that when the bridal gown comes off, the guy is going to accuse Nimby of deceiving him. And he's not going to say, "You gave me a correctly matching gender activity and gender role, but you didn't disclose you sexual identity." He's going to say, "You led me to believe that you were a real woman! And what do I find? A man with breasts."

When I brought up this kind of situation before, GGano said:

(1)"If her husband is annoyed because she doesn't want to stay home and take care of the kids, that's a gender role issue; if he's annoyed because she has a penis, that's (quite a big) gender identity issue." So gender identity is divorced from gender role? Does this mean that gender should be in agreement with sex, but gender role can be divorced from sex without causing ill feelings?

Now he says:

(2)"I would say that, assuming that this [male] person is trying to present themself as a woman, then their gender identity is female and their gender role is female." Does this mean that gender need not be in agreement with sex?

In several places above, GGano makes explicit reference to sex when defining or discussing the meaning of gender identity and gender role:

(3) "A simplistic way of putting it is that gender identity is whether you think you are male or female, while gender role is whether you tend to act in a masculine or feminine way." The direct way to determine whether you are male or female is to strip and look at yourself in the mirror. If mom and pop tell you, "You're a little boy," and you later decide that you're really a little girl, it must be on the basis of something that trumps the sex organs, but you are also going to be aware of the discordance.

(4) "the reader understands that it's really talking about the "male gender role" when it says 'man'." I think that by "male gender role" you mean "gender role that is appropriate to males, or is conventionally associated with males." -- But maybe you meant to say "masculine gender role"?

(5) "A man who stays home and takes care of the kids has a male gender identity but could be said to be acting in a female gender role." But "male gender" involves a reference to sex, no? And "female gender role" also involves a reference to sex, no? If you meant "masculine gender identity" and "feminine gender identity", then somebody who has a "masculine gender identity" is acting out a "feminine gender role". That a situation where somebody who identifies "himself" as a "man" acts out a non-matching gender role. But you have to emphasize the word "acting" here, I think. He is saying, in effect, "I'm really a man even though I am currently putting on an act by doing womanly things." Or do you really mean that this person says, "My gender identity is 'man', and my gender role is 'woman.' Make of that what you will."

(6) "The current article can explain that, to make the discussion easier, we're assuming that the person's gender is unambiguous and is identical to their sex." Are you saying that gender means nothing other than sex? Or do you really mean that gender is concordant with sex? And, either way, isn't this statement tantamount to admitting that sex has some kind of a bearing on gender?

To sum the views GGano seems to uphold:

(1) gender role is divorced from gender identity
(2) sex is divorced from gender identity and from gender role
(3) gender identity = ascribed sex, and gender role = masculine or feminine behavioral traits.
(4) there are male gender roles and female gender roles (gender roles appropriate to m & f?)
(5) people who have male gender identities can have female gender roles
....people who have female gender identities can have male gender roles
(6) unambiguous genders (gender identities?) are identical to the sex of the individual

Question: What is the criterion for whether something is masculine or feminine? Doesn't "masculine" mean "appropriate for males" and "feminine" mean "appropriate for females" (or "characteristic of...")

Question for GGano: Is there no real relationship between sex, gender identity, and gender role? If there is a relationship, what is its nature.

Patrick0Moran 01:11, 4 Oct 2003 (UTC)


After doing a little thinking and a little research, I think the problem has been the differences in our terminology on two points: (1) can "male" and "female" apply to gender identity, and (2) what does "gender role" encompass?
(1) You said: "But 'male gender' involves a reference to sex, no?" Not the way I define it. When I say "male gender" or "male gender identity", your term apparently would be "masculine gender identity". Please read it as such. (I don't know which one of us is technically right.) I think you can say that someone has a male sex and a female gender identity; you apparently think that's the wrong terminology, you'd instead say that that person had a male sex and feminine gender identity, I believe. Google shows about twice as many hits for "male gender" and "male gender identity" than "masculine gender" and "masculine gender identity", so I think my terminology is fine. If I say "male gender", don't assume that I'm talking about their sex in any way.
(2) Many behaviors that you consider to be part of gender role, I considered to be part of gender identity. But after consulting Google [1] now I think I was wrong. I thought that those behaviors where you're trying to act like a woman (like putting on lipstick) are gender identity behaviors, not gender role behaviors, but that appears to be wrong. Sorry for the confusion.
It's too bad there's no good terms for what I want to describe - a person who presents themself as being a male, but who fulfills a traditionally female role in the family, for example. Such as a person (of either sex) who appears to be a female and is the high-powered CEO of a tech company and likes to ask guys out on dates and opens the door for them, or a person (of either sex) who appears to be a male and stays home with the kids. With my (incorrect) terminology, I'd say that the first person has a female gender identity but a male gender role; with the correct terminology, the best I can say is that they have a female gender role in some areas but a male gender role in others. Oh well.
GGano 15:41, 4 Oct 2003 (UTC)
Re your last paragraph; are these people you describe not transcending gender roles? They still have a concrete gender identity, but their actual gender role is mutable; I am guessing you would be interested in Queer theory too...

The first paragraph of the Sex article says:

The members of many species of living things are divided into two or more categories called sexes. These categories refer to complementary groups that combine genetic material in order to reproduce. This process is called sexual reproduction. Typically, a species will have two sexes: male and female The female sex is defined as the one that produces the larger gamete (i.e., reproductive cell).

The "disambiguation" part of Webster's New World Dictionary of the American Language entry for "male" says: "male is the basic term applied to members of the sex that is biologically distinguished from the female sex and is used of animals and plants as well as of human beings; masculine is applied to qualities, such as strength, vigor, etc., characteristic of men, or to things appropriate to men."

In ordinary language you can talk about a "very masculine woman" or a "very feminine man" but you can't talk about a "male woman" or a "female man" -- unless you are talking about a gynecomimetic or an androcomimetic.

Patrick0Moran 16:23, 4 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Gender is not the same as sex. Dysprosia 15:58, 4 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Correct. They should be clearly distinguished by not using terms appropriate to sex as adjectives to describe genders. "Male gender" is an incorrect use of language, no matter how many people use it.

Patrick0Moran 16:23, 4 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Apologies, I only saw your comment (presuming you were the anon) with just the paragraph with the copy from Sex... Dysprosia 01:14, 5 Oct 2003 (UTC)
No problem. I did wonder exactly what you meant. :-)

Patrick0Moran 02:29, 5 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Some basic considerations

A very complex set of circumstances yields individuals, most of whom have unambiguous sexual organs and behavioral attributes that are generally congruent with those sexual characteristics. The open display of those sexual organs would minimize the length of time that individuals pursued inappropriate sexual partners. But when people started to wear clothing, other means of clarifing the sex of individuals became very useful. Clothing and many other traits are differentiated in most if not all cultures. So a person with male genitalia will, as a child, be informed that he is a boy, and will most ordinarilly grow into the adult role of a man. Other people in his society will observe his clothing and behavior and will infer that he possesses male genitalia. The gender role that he learns is modeled for him by his father and other men in his community. The same general procedure produces people who fulfill the adult role of a woman. Then the members of that society look at the external indicators provided by such a gender role and infer the sex of the individual.

If you look at a hen and a rooster you will probably never be mistaken about which is male and which is female -- despite the fact that chickens do not have external genitalia. The wattles and combs of chickens are dependable signals. In the case of human beings, however, things do not always go that smoothly. That is because the external genitalia of individuals is not as reliable an indicator as it is in the case of chickens. Some individuals, in full knowledge that they have genitalia of the male kind, will identify themselves as girls and later as women. Other individuals, who have female genitalia, will identify themselves as boys and later as men. If they are free to do so, they may display all the signals of dress and behavior that mark them as men and women. When other people in the society look at this group of people, they will infer that their genitals are different from what they really are.

What one's chromosomal sex is, what kind of internal and external genitalia are present, what one's "brain sex" is, how one defines oneself as formed on top of those factors and under the influence of social conditioning are all different issues. There are cases where one's chromosomal sex is XX and one's internal genitals are female, but one's external genitals have been masculinized. Looking at the naked individual, members of the society will feel they have been deceived if the individual has dressed and lived as a woman -- even though that is really what she is.

Where language says we have a simple dichotomy there is in fact a bewildering diversity. On top of the question of "What is really going on with this person?" there is the further complication that gender identity and role are different things for the individual and for the member(s) of the society trying to understand that individual. The individual has his/her own assessment that we call his/her gender identity, the individual chooses his/her own role in life and the vast array of behavioral and other characteristics that he/she relates to his or her own assessment of fittingness to self. Then the various members of society look at that gender role and infer that the individual must either be a man and have male genitalia or must be a woman and have female genitalia. If anything is ambiguous in that picture, or if members of society discover that the feminine attire and behavior covers a male (or vice-versa), then they become very unset indeed.


Sex, Gender ID, Gender Role Factor Matrix
Chromosomal Prenatal Early Conditioning Outcomes
X Excess male hormone levels Consistent masculine programming Happily "a guy"
XX Normal male hormone levels Consistent feminine programming Unhappily "a guy"
XY Excess female hormone levels 1st masculine then feminine Happily "a gal"
XYY Normal female hormone levels 1st femine then masculine Unhappily "a gal"
etc. Hormone insensitivity Inappropriate to this society Deliberately send false signals

This table is not meant to be real from left to right. An ingredient in column 1 row 3 can meet up with an ingredient in column 2 row 1, or whatever.

I think that for this article we should stick with what happens with ordinary run-of-the-mill XX and XY individuals, whose gestation is normal, whose brain sex is congruent with their chromosomal sex, whose early conditioning is consistent with the above, and who therefore exhibit in life a gender role that is within "normal limits" of the society. (Just as there are probably as many gender identities and roles as there are individuals, each being made up by the individual as s/he goes along, there are also probably about as many expectations of the gender identities and roles as there are people in the society. Some will believe that "real men don't eat quiche," and others will think that quiche eating is just fine.

The main idea we should get across is that "He's a guy," is a gender identity, and "Guys do this way and gals do that way" is an expression of gender roles, and that there are real-world reasons that have caused societies generally to insist (even in some cases by imposing criminal penalties) that individuals practice "truth in advertising" so that time, money, and energy is not misspent in courting the wrong individual. Also, so that someone who is less powerful due to privileges of sex does not arrogate the power of the more powerful sex to himself/herself. Are there other reasons for insisting on TIA? Possibly.

Patrick0Moran 03:27, 6 Oct 2003 (UTC)

After finding out that I've been using the wrong terminology, I think I'm mostly exhausted on this article, to be honest. I think I understand your last comments, mostly, and I agree with them. Here are my only remaining thoughts on this article:
  • It should talk about gender roles of those people with "standard issue" gender identities first, to make things simpler, and only then should it talk about the gender roles of those with non-standard gender identities. (And this second part might be better in a separate article.)
  • I'd like it to mention the two very different aspects of gender role, IMO, which are the gender that you present yourself as (i.e. do you actually try to make people think that you are a woman), and the things that you do and like (i.e. do you staying home to take care of the kids and do you like to watch figure skating). Previously I thought that the former was called "gender identity" and the latter was called "gender role", but that doesn't seem to be the case.
  • The article should read like an encyclopedia article and not like an article in a sociology journal. It should be brief, not go into tremendous detail, not use words that are appropriate to a sociology journal but feel out of context in an encyclopedia, and not focus too much on genitalia :)
Have at it, Patrick.
GGano (I can't seem to log in)

I'm drafting something offline. It's easy-going work and there seems to be no problem keeping to everyday English.

Patrick0Moran 05:33, 8 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Comments on latest edit (prosecution of transvestites)

"People who practiced cross-dressing (transvestites) were subject to criminal prosecution in many places before the third quarter of the twentieth century."

(1) What does "before the third quarter of the 20th century" mean? Are you talking about the 1940s or 1970s?

(2) Does "many places" mean many places in the U.S., or many places in the world?

130.57.22.69 17:01, 6 Oct 2003 (UTC) (GGano)

Draft

How about doing it this way:

Note: This article is in the process of revision. The proposed new text is followed by the original article, portions of which will later be moved to other articles.

One?s gender role is made up of all of the things that one does to express one?s gender identity. It then becomes the set of signals by which others infer one?s gender identity. For instance, if one identifies oneself as a girl or woman, then one will ordinarily do the kind of things that will let other people know that one is a girl or woman. And if one identifies oneself as a boy or man then one will ordinarily do the kind of things that will let other people know that one is a boy or man. A man who wants to attract girlfriends would rarely if ever use his clothing, behavior, etc., to present himself in the guise of a woman. Similarly, a woman would ordinary be ill-advised to seek a man by presenting herself in the guise of a man. In most cases, when a man appears in the guise of a woman, or a woman appears in the guise of a man, then most people will agree that they are disguising themselves, that is, that they are engaged in deliberately deceptivel behavior. (Because many societies impose expectations on the behavior of the members of society, and the expectations are linked to the gender identities of those individuals, there are prescriptions regarding gender roles, i.e., expectations that men and women will hold different kinds of positions in society. Failure to comply with these expectations can produce a wide range of sanctions.) It should be noted that some societies are comparatively rigid in their expectations, and other societies are comparatively permissive. Some of the gender signals that form part of a gender role and indicate one's gender identity to others are quite obvious, and others are so subtle that they are transmitted and received out of ordinary conscious awareness.

Some elements of gender role are connected with body differences related to sex. For instance, women?s blouses make room for women?s breasts and do not have pockets that cover the nipples. Men?s shirts, essentially the same garment, are flatter and do have pockets over the nipples. Men frequently find it convenient to urinate while standing, but women rarely do. Women frequently nurse infants. Men have mammary glands but they only very rarely nurse infants because the special hormonal states that produce lactation usually follow only from pregnancy.

Another set of gender roles are related to body differences related to sex, but the body differences are things like height and muscular strength for which there is a substantial overlap of the abilities of men and women. Some women are stronger than some men. Some women are larger and/or taller than some men. But if you average the heights of all men and the heights of all women, they won?t be equal. If you are looking for the world champion weight lifter, it is unlikely that it will be a woman.

In many societies, there is a strong tendency to exaggerate gender role differences. Starting with the belief that men are generally stronger than women, people conclude, somehow, that men should be stronger than women, and that there is something inadequate about a man who is not very strong. Starting with the belief that women are generally more gentle and nurturing than men, people construct a socially supported ideal that says that women should be gentle and nurturing and should not be harsh or aggressive. Many societies jump from the observation that men are less likely to cry than are women to the practice of indoctrinating boys, virtually from birth, not to cry.

Some gender role differences are purely conventional. That is, they work the way laws about which side of the street to drive on work. As long as everyone in Great Britain drives on the left side of the road, and as long as everyone in the United States drives on the right side of the road, there will be no problem with head-on collisions. In most societies, men wear trousers and women wear skirts. But in a traditional Malay community it is an ordinary practice for men to wear sarongs. In the traditional society of Scotland, men wore kilts. As long as the cultural context matches the choice of clothing it would be unusual for any negative comment to arise in such cases.

Gender role differences that are purely conventional are easier to change than are those that have some link to the biology of individuals. One consequence of social unrest during the Vietnam War era in the United States, Great Britain, and many other countries, was that men began to let their hair grow to a length that was previously considered appropriate only to women. Somewhat later, in response to other social changes, many women began to cut their hair to lengths previously considered appropriate only to men. The practical consequences of these changes were not onerous.

It would, to the contrary, be rather more difficult to get men to give up trousers that have a zipper that facilitates urinating while standing. It would likewise be difficult to get women to wear tight-fitting fly fishermen?s vests made of nylon netting with a half-inch mesh. Such a garment, regardless of how stylish it might be considered one fine year, would be too uncomfortable for a woman to wear unless she first bound her breasts with some other fabric to protect them from rubbing against the harsh netting and pocket contents of the vest.

Biological factors sometimes have a strong impact on which occupations are judged by a society to be appropriate for men, and which are judged appropriate for women. There is no reason why a large woman could not successfully shoe horses or deliver freight shipments from railway stations to the recipients? homes. However, there are not even very many men who have the strength and stamina to put shoes on an uncooperative Clydesdale draft horse. Societies seem to frequently jump from a valid observation to a false conclusion in cases such as these. A society may jump from the observation that only a very few women would be physically suited to shoe a heavy draft horse to the conclusion that no woman should be a farrier, of jump from the observation that only a few women would be physically suited to serve as a fireman to the conclusion that women should no be eligible to apply for that job.

In many other cases, the elements of convention or tradition seem to play a dominant role in deciding which occupations fit in with which gender roles. In the United States, physicians have traditionally been men, and the few people who defied that expectation received a special job description: ?woman doctor.? Similarly, we have special terms like ?male nurse,? ?woman lawyer,? ?lady barber,? etc. But in China and the former Soviet Union countries, medical doctors are predominantly women, and in Taiwan it is very common for all of the barbers in a barber shop to be women.

As long as a person?s external genitals are consistent with that person?s gender identity the gender role of a person is so much a matter of course in a stable society that people rarely even think of it unless for whatever reason an individual adopts a gender role that is inconsistent with his or her gender identity. When that kind of thing happens, it is most often done to deliberately provoke a sense of incongruity and a humorous reaction to the attempts of a person of one sex trying to pass himself or herself off as a member of another sex. People can find much entertainment in observing the exaggerations or the failures to get nuances of an unfamiliar gender role right.

It is not so entertaining, however, when the external genitalia of a person, that person?s gender identity, and/or that person?s gender role are not consistent. People naturally, but too easily, assume that if a person has a penis, scrotum, etc., then that person is chromosomally male (i.e., that person has one X chromosome and one Y chromosome), and that the person person, in introspection, feels like a male. Mother nature is much more inventive than is our language and system of traditional concepts. The person may have a penis and scrotum, but may be a female (with XX chromosomal sexual identity) with normal female sexual organs internally. When that person reaches puberty, ?his? breasts may enlarge to ordinary female proportions, and ?he? may begin to menstruate, passing menstrual blood through ?his? penis. In addition, this person may have always accepted a gender identity that is consistent with ?his? external genitalia or with ?her? internal genitalia.

Just as there are individuals whose external genitalia make them falsely appear to be male, there are also individuals whose external genitalia make them falsely appear to be females. There are individuals whose genitalia are intermediate in appearance between those of an ordinary male and those of an ordinary female. An examination of their chromosomal sex and/or other tests may be necessary to determine what these people really are. And there are even individuals who have both male and female sexual organs in the same body.

When we consider these more unusual products of Mother Nature?s inventiveness, the simple picture that we saw in which there was a high degree of consistency among external genitalia, gender identity, and gender role then dissolves into a kind of jigsaw puzzle that is difficult to put together correctly. The extra parts of this jigsaw puzzle fall into two closely related categories, atypical gender identities and atypical gender roles.

Language is a system of abstractions and frequently deals with idealized cases. The more sharply masculine gender roles are distinguished from feminine gender roles, the less likely it is that any individual human being will comply perfectly with the requirements of that gender role. And besides that fact, every individual in a society is likely to have his or her unique definition of the ?proper masculine gender role? and the ?proper feminine gender role.? Any individual, then, might well be expected to be in compliance with the gender role ideals held by some people and to fail to be in compliance with the gender role ideals held by some other people. When, for instance, a boy cries too readily for the tastes of some people, they will call the child a ?sissy? to indicate that in their view he is not a very ideal boy. There are many such pejorative role-related terms .


Patrick0Moran 06:52, 9 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Comment after looking around the WWW for atypical gender roles: Very many websites use "gender role" to talk about lifestyles that are permitted to women, and generally appear to involve arguments (which sound reasonable to me) for letting women do things that have previously been permitted only to men.

I don't like the expression "failed gender roles" -- what really happens is that some critic claims that somebody "isn't a real man," "isn't a real women," or whatever, and so the failure is alleged to be with the person not with the ideal role that the critic's society has prescribed. Any suggestions for a better way for wording that title? Patrick0Moran 07:20, 11 Oct 2003 (UTC)


Someone has changed "oneself" to avoid its "overuse." So now the article says things like: "...the things a person does to express their..." Changing a person into a plural entity by this awkward device really bugs me. Hasn't anybody invented a real neutral pronoun yet? P0M 02:05, 12 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Nope. Dysprosia 02:16, 12 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Information Needed

Please give me some suggestions for a list of atypical gender identities and corresponding gender roles. I am looking for terms like "gigolo" which is a role in society that can only be played by a man, and one that involves an atypical decision regarding employment and sexual behavior. Hijra, xanith, wikte, castrati, etc., are also special gender roles. There must be similar roles for special gender identities that involve having female external genitalia. Prostitute would be one of them. What is the term for women who are paid to gestate the fetuses of other women? Even though society clamps down much harder on women in this regard, there must be some other atypical gender roles for those with female external genitals.

Patrick0Moran 05:32, 11 Oct 2003 (UTC)

What is the term for women who are paid to gestate the fetuses of other women? Surrogate mothers? Dysprosia 05:37, 11 Oct 2003 (UTC)