Thread-hopping is groovy, especially when it leads to interesting discussions like this.
That interview with Ashley Crawford is interesting, and I can certainly relate to some of the thought processes that went into it. It's interesting that I found myself reacting to this comment, though: I was ambivalent at the start — some of the androgenic effects took me a long time to feel at peace with. But at the same time there was an attraction to the idea of looking less feminine because I knew that having such feminine body often made people treat me in a way I didn’t want to be treated. I think that many people have rather low expectations of what girls and women can achieve in certain areas of life, and that sort of attitude has always been very frustrating for me to confront.
Now, I don't believe it's the major reason for Ash's body mod decisions. I personally am fine when people want to mod their bodies to fit their self-identity better or even, actually, just for the hell of it. But I find myself uncomfortable with that kind of reactive thinking being even a small part of the consideration framework. Although maybe I'm just being obtuse - part of the point of being t/g and going through treatment is being able to present to the world as the gender you feel yourself to be.
As an adolescent I used to fantasise about striding around en bloke, and not having to worry about being a gurl... and bought into feminism as a way of letting go of that victim image. Also in my fantasies, I wanted to swap back to being a female - my gender ID seems pretty fixed. I'm lucky enough that I don't have to modify anything physically to not be subject to straight (male) expectations. Other than my own performative utterance of my gender, of course! Heh.
But at the same time, being beyond gender is a cool ideal. However, I don't know if gender is a concept that can be totally done away with. I seem to have more sympathy with the idea that gender can be divorced from the body's morphology, and also the concept of multiple genders. Of course, once you start creating multiple instances of something, you then have to categorise them and slot things into the categories. Perhaps going "beyond" gender would allow a kind of fuzziness to evolve around the concept - people might be able to engage in what we currently consider to be gendered behaviours, but without being locked into a complete behaviour set, or the expectation of having the "appropriate" physical morphology for behaviour X. Hm, interesting food for thought.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-12 10:20 am (UTC)That interview with Ashley Crawford is interesting, and I can certainly relate to some of the thought processes that went into it. It's interesting that I found myself reacting to this comment, though:
I was ambivalent at the start — some of the androgenic effects took me a long time to feel at peace with. But at the same time there was an attraction to the idea of looking less feminine because I knew that having such feminine body often made people treat me in a way I didn’t want to be treated. I think that many people have rather low expectations of what girls and women can achieve in certain areas of life, and that sort of attitude has always been very frustrating for me to confront.
Now, I don't believe it's the major reason for Ash's body mod decisions. I personally am fine when people want to mod their bodies to fit their self-identity better or even, actually, just for the hell of it. But I find myself uncomfortable with that kind of reactive thinking being even a small part of the consideration framework. Although maybe I'm just being obtuse - part of the point of being t/g and going through treatment is being able to present to the world as the gender you feel yourself to be.
As an adolescent I used to fantasise about striding around en bloke, and not having to worry about being a gurl... and bought into feminism as a way of letting go of that victim image. Also in my fantasies, I wanted to swap back to being a female - my gender ID seems pretty fixed. I'm lucky enough that I don't have to modify anything physically to not be subject to straight (male) expectations. Other than my own performative utterance of my gender, of course! Heh.
But at the same time, being beyond gender is a cool ideal. However, I don't know if gender is a concept that can be totally done away with. I seem to have more sympathy with the idea that gender can be divorced from the body's morphology, and also the concept of multiple genders. Of course, once you start creating multiple instances of something, you then have to categorise them and slot things into the categories. Perhaps going "beyond" gender would allow a kind of fuzziness to evolve around the concept - people might be able to engage in what we currently consider to be gendered behaviours, but without being locked into a complete behaviour set, or the expectation of having the "appropriate" physical morphology for behaviour X. Hm, interesting food for thought.