masculine/feminine

[ljgeoff]

Reading tiger_spot's post here got me thinking about how I parse masculinity and femininity.




Feminine Traits

being emotional
being subjective
being easily influenced
being submissive
disliking math and science
being excitable in a minor crisis
being passive
being illogical
being home-oriented
being sneaky
getting feelings hurt easily

Masculine Traits

being aggressive
being independent
hiding emotions
being objective
being dominant
liking math and science
being active
being competitive
being logical
being skilled in business
being direct

Overall, I guess I don't see, from this list, why anyone would want to be feminine. Actually, this list is pretty dated. But I still bump up against this kind of stuff every once in a while.

So, as an excersize, I'll list some things that make me go "masculine" or "feminine." One interesting thing for me has been to think of something, like wearing make-up, and picturing a woman doing it and a man doing it, and looking at my reaction to that. This is only my list, I'm not saying that any of this is definitive, it's just a list of my own personal prejudices.

Feminine: Make-up, hair-styling, wearing clothes that were made for only women to wear, having good communication skills, being a good multi-tasker, disliking "getting dirty" and having things like germ phobias, being drama-ish, being good at taking care of their body, being good at asking for help, disliking the way that their body looks

Masculine: more casual grooming, being less verbal, stoic, won't ask for help, likes mechanical things and techie gagits, not knowing their limits or ignoring their limits, more violent, will eat almost anything, not as physically flexible, insensitive or oblivious to other's feelings, more willing or able to just relax and have fun

Comments

[audreylucero.livejournal.com]

Hey, listing out how you think of things *really* puts it into perspective-for me, at least. It's suprising the garbage and re-runs of other people's beliefs you have in there. I often view writing for me, as 'cleaning house'. Nothing clarifies the gunk in my head like a private bit of writing that gets deleted after it's done reminding me of what *not* to do or think.