From my very basic cis position and trying to learn as much as possible of the right ways to name each, this graphic is actually quite nice, but it confuses me that things like hobbies, roles, jobs, personality traits are treated as part of gender identity… Is it just me and my autistic ass that considers those as completely independent from the gender identity? My gender identity is really clear to me, but I don’t let that define what hobbies I may have or like what movies I should watch or something like that.
That’s definitely one of the problems with this graphic. Those are a part of “gender roles”, stereotypical expectations of masculinity/femininity. Your impulse to consider them independent is correct, but you may encounter bigots with old fashioned ideas about what’s appropriate for someone to get up to based on their gender.
If I’m understanding you correctly, I think the key distinction is that gender expression is completely arbitrary and based on the society you’re in, but gender identity is something that is tied to your inner sense of self/brain and seems to develop fairly early in children (3-4).
For example, wearing a piece of clothing that has a single opening for both legs and stops at the knees would be called a skirt and be considered solely a feminine gender expression in most areas, but a kilt and something considered a masculine gender expression if it has the right pattern and is in Scotland. There’s no functional difference between them, it’s completely social.
That said, we do live in a society and all that, and people tend to want their gender expression to match (or at least complement) their gender identity. What you wear and do doesn’t change who you are, but who you are likely changes how you feel about what you wear and do.
Overall, I agree. That said, because of the socially constructed associations with gender, people sometimes find euphoria from doing those things as a result and experiencing that euphoria (not because you enjoy the thing, but because its a “feminine”/“masculine” thing) could be a sign that perhaps you should consider that maybe your gender isn’t the one assigned at birth.
it confuses me that things like hobbies, roles, jobs, personality traits are treated as part of gender identity
It depends a lot on social context, but for some professions and hobbies, there are still strong lingering gender associations that are hard for people to shake. Examples below are my own observations of the state of things in the US and other countries I’ve been.
If I grab someone off the street and ask them to picture a nurse in their mind, 9 times out of 10, that nurse will be a woman. That statistic is reflected in the actual gender representation of nurses where I live. As a society, we consciously acknowledge that nursing is no longer an inherently gendered profession, and yet it is still seen as unusual for men to want to be nurses.
Similar is true in education. The vast majority of early childhood educators in the US are women because it was long held that women are natural caretakers of young children, while men are often stigmatized or seen as creepy for choosing to work with kids. Meanwhile, you get into higher education and find that a lot of universities are still patriarchal systems because men are scholars. Though when I was in China, there were a lot more early childhood educators who were men than there appear to be in the US, so this is not necessarily a universal standard either.
It’s normal for men and women alike to enjoy cooking, but for some reason it is still faintly stigmatized for men to like cooking for themselves or women to want to get paid for it. Most professional chefs are still men, while cooking at home is seen as a woman’s work.
For hobbies, there are a lot of gender overlaps, but depending on the specific hobby, you may still find mostly men or mostly women engaging with it. Video games used to be seen as something only boys cared about, but now I think it’s fairly gender neutral. Yet if you’re interested in book clubs, prepare for it to be mostly women. Or if you like fishing, it’s mostly men, and of course serves as traditional father/son bonding time. I’ve also never met a woman who enjoys playing Warhammer, though I have to imagine they’re out there somewhere.
These are all things that I believe should not be, but nevertheless are. I have no idea why this continues to be the case today, but I think is slowly but surely self-correcting as more people consider the absurdity of applying gender binaries to activities that are not inherently gendered.
From my very basic cis position and trying to learn as much as possible of the right ways to name each, this graphic is actually quite nice, but it confuses me that things like hobbies, roles, jobs, personality traits are treated as part of gender identity… Is it just me and my autistic ass that considers those as completely independent from the gender identity? My gender identity is really clear to me, but I don’t let that define what hobbies I may have or like what movies I should watch or something like that.
That’s definitely one of the problems with this graphic. Those are a part of “gender roles”, stereotypical expectations of masculinity/femininity. Your impulse to consider them independent is correct, but you may encounter bigots with old fashioned ideas about what’s appropriate for someone to get up to based on their gender.
If I’m understanding you correctly, I think the key distinction is that gender expression is completely arbitrary and based on the society you’re in, but gender identity is something that is tied to your inner sense of self/brain and seems to develop fairly early in children (3-4).
For example, wearing a piece of clothing that has a single opening for both legs and stops at the knees would be called a skirt and be considered solely a feminine gender expression in most areas, but a kilt and something considered a masculine gender expression if it has the right pattern and is in Scotland. There’s no functional difference between them, it’s completely social.
That said, we do live in a society and all that, and people tend to want their gender expression to match (or at least complement) their gender identity. What you wear and do doesn’t change who you are, but who you are likely changes how you feel about what you wear and do.
Overall, I agree. That said, because of the socially constructed associations with gender, people sometimes find euphoria from doing those things as a result and experiencing that euphoria (not because you enjoy the thing, but because its a “feminine”/“masculine” thing) could be a sign that perhaps you should consider that maybe your gender isn’t the one assigned at birth.
It depends a lot on social context, but for some professions and hobbies, there are still strong lingering gender associations that are hard for people to shake. Examples below are my own observations of the state of things in the US and other countries I’ve been.
If I grab someone off the street and ask them to picture a nurse in their mind, 9 times out of 10, that nurse will be a woman. That statistic is reflected in the actual gender representation of nurses where I live. As a society, we consciously acknowledge that nursing is no longer an inherently gendered profession, and yet it is still seen as unusual for men to want to be nurses.
Similar is true in education. The vast majority of early childhood educators in the US are women because it was long held that women are natural caretakers of young children, while men are often stigmatized or seen as creepy for choosing to work with kids. Meanwhile, you get into higher education and find that a lot of universities are still patriarchal systems because men are scholars. Though when I was in China, there were a lot more early childhood educators who were men than there appear to be in the US, so this is not necessarily a universal standard either.
It’s normal for men and women alike to enjoy cooking, but for some reason it is still faintly stigmatized for men to like cooking for themselves or women to want to get paid for it. Most professional chefs are still men, while cooking at home is seen as a woman’s work.
For hobbies, there are a lot of gender overlaps, but depending on the specific hobby, you may still find mostly men or mostly women engaging with it. Video games used to be seen as something only boys cared about, but now I think it’s fairly gender neutral. Yet if you’re interested in book clubs, prepare for it to be mostly women. Or if you like fishing, it’s mostly men, and of course serves as traditional father/son bonding time. I’ve also never met a woman who enjoys playing Warhammer, though I have to imagine they’re out there somewhere.
These are all things that I believe should not be, but nevertheless are. I have no idea why this continues to be the case today, but I think is slowly but surely self-correcting as more people consider the absurdity of applying gender binaries to activities that are not inherently gendered.