Genderweird

[azurelunatic]

Gender has rarely been an issue of confusion for me. Quite a bit of this is because my parents raised me without a lot of the weird gender hangups and stereotypes that held over from the beginning of the century. I grew up knowing that dishes were for everybody, laundry was for everybody, setting traps for vermin was for Dad because Mama was squeamish, ironing shirts was for Dad because Mama didn't get it right, ironing quilt fabric was for Mama because Dad didn't make quilts, and listening to Tay-Tay's stupid violin tapes was for everybody because Tay-Tay didn't want to wear headphones.

I grew up able to shrug off a lot of gender preconditioning when I hit adolescence and then adulthood. There are no boy chores and girl chores. There are still girl clothes that are not boy clothes, but not a whole lot of boy clothes that are not girl clothes, but that's a societal thing. (It bothers me that some of my co-workers are fundamentally bothered by the thought of Spongebob's dumb friend the starfish wearing fishnet stockings.)

Hard and fast "girls don't" and "boys don't" rules bother me. As a general rule, the only "girls don't" and "boys don't" that I care to take seriously involve the original equipment manufacturer anatomy, except that people who are strongly mentally gendered who are born into a body with the wrong plumbing totally turn those things upside down.

Statistically speaking, there are always people on the fringes. If you set the scope too narrow and hard, no one fits and everyone hurts. If you set it too wide and fuzzy, there are no differences, and the wonderful rainbow of possibility is greyed out in a muddy blur. Best to make generalizations. "Many girls." "Many boys."

Comments

[azurelunatic]

The artist may also ask after the dress code (as in my workplace) because s/he (usually she) wants to wear her regular street clothes that are all hot & sexy, and wants to know the maximum amount of cleavage and midriff she can bare.

[torrilin.livejournal.com]

*cackles* that's technically *over*dressing for the workplace, as typically more bare skin == more formal ;)

But yeah, engineer doesn't usually want to make waves, artist almost always does. And I still have no useful words to describe either without a long explanation...

[azurelunatic]

In this case, it is sparkly croptops with things like "Divalicious" on them.

[torrilin.livejournal.com]

It horrifies me to say this, but in some parts of our culture that would be "formal". I shall go hide under a blanket now and cower in fear.

[azurelunatic]

I think I shall join you.

I wound up using your terminology to explain the viewpoints to one of my friends, and she grokked it immediately, so I really think you're on to something, especially with the terminology.

I've been using "appearance indifferent", with subclasses "appearance transcendant" and "appearance apathetic", for that elusive third class. Some people can throw on any old thing and make it work through sheer force of personality; some people just don't care.

[torrilin.livejournal.com]

Hrm, those sort of work. The "has messy appearance" category covers a lot of ground, from a homeless person (who doesn't necessarily have the option to act as if they care, even if they care very much), to a rebel without a clue (who thinks that bathing, dressing in clothes that are more hole than cloth and not cutting their hair is cool). Since it's not always a chosen appearance, I'm not sure how to approach it.

[azurelunatic]

"Appearance disadvantaged" covers those without the means or opportunity to groom properly, as well as those like Pigpen who attract bad grooming no matter how neat they're intent on staying. Rebel without clue is probably summed up best by "grunge", though that's a term out of its decade.

[torrilin.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it's a tough category tho, because if I'm talking about someone in particular, there *is* a right term. I usually don't have any way to determine what the right term is, and most of the maximally generic terms end up prejudging someone. And well, if using "girly" for appearance artists is bad because it prejudges their gender, I suspect "slob" or "sloppy" for someone who has a messy appearance is probably a bad idea too. The stuff you've come up with is at least a good way to handle it if you *know* that a particular descriptor applies.

And now my head hurts. Our language is *really* bad at handling "has specific subcategory, but correct subcategory is undefined" situations.

(and then there's "fat"...)

[azurelunatic]

Appending "apparently", to form "apparently appearance-indifferent", could work, perhaps. Or even "sloppy appearance", which addresses only the outcome, not the reason for it.