Gender

[tusayan]

Gender = masculine or feminine. Sex = male or female.

Masculine = male. Feminine = female.

Are definitions different in other parts of the world, or philosophies?

Well, you can break it down into those categories (I would, anyway). But it's more complex than that (isn't everything? lol).

Even within the Western world, you have people (I'm thinking of some feminist theorists in this case) that would challenge those basic categories.

But, what I meant was that in every society there are norms accepted by the majority of people that define what is masculine and feminine. And these aren't the same across the board. They even change through time.

For example, in the US today the majority would probably not define a real man as a male who wears lace, is well perfumed, wears make-up, a powdered wig of long hair and is well versed in romances and ballroom dancing.

But, there are also third genders or multiple gender categories that are accepted in other cultures. And it has to do with the role people take on, not necessarily their sexuality (although it may involve sexuality as well).

This is really interesting to me compared to the orthodox Western view of two genders, two sexes, two different roles, one type of sexuality and anything is else is outside of the norm.

We're seeing in this thread, too, that individuals have their own take on how they accept or reject, enact or react to those norms.

[leo9]

For example, in the US today the majority would probably not define a real man as a male who wears lace, is well perfumed, wears make-up, a powdered wig of long hair and is well versed in romances and ballroom dancing.

In Britain a man who wears a powdered wig of long hair, a velvet robe and stockings is a High Court Judge, which just goes to show that the gender role of costume is a social construct.

I've been reading a book (The Sexual Rainbow, Olive Skene Johnson) which tries very hard to be an objective study of gender, but the snag that keeps tripping the author up is how to define "masculine" and "feminine" in human terms. You can study rats till the Grant Allocations come home, and if they mount other rats they're behaving in a "masculine" way, if they build nests they're "feminine"; but when you apply the same methods to humans you're trying to nail down smoke. Johnson admits herself that a lot of the behaviour defined as "masculine" or "feminine" in classic 1950s studies would today be just laughable.

Less than a hundred years ago, doctors seriously debated whether women could work in the professions without becoming infertile. We have come a long way from such a simplistic equation between gender role and sex, but perhaps we have to go a bit further and accept that body gender is only a small part of what makes a person what they are.

I'm physically male and happy to be so (though I admit to a sneaking envy of female orgasms.) I grew up in a household of females with a largely absent father, which according to old stereotypes should make me gay, or at least a male sub; I've tried both, but ended up primarily a het Dom. But I don't feel that kneeling at a woman's feet makes me "feminine", any more than beating her makes me "masculine".