What is Gender?

It seems like such an easy question, and yet somehow it has become very convoluted. I am a biological heterosexual female, or at least I was most of my life growing up. Now, I am apparently a cis-gender birthing person. Okay that’s not really much more of a mouthful, though I am birthing person hear me roar doesn’t roll off the tongue as nicely as I am woman.

But I felt the need to pose this question, what is gender, in light of the transgender participation in sports debate. As stated, I am biologically a girl and I identify as such if asked what my gender is. However aside from purchasing bras, having a menstrual cycle each month and being married to a biological male, there’s little other “gender normative" activities I participate in.

I will not say I have never worn a dress. Though even to my own wedding I wore jeans, sneakers and a flannel shirt, so I can certainly attest that given the choice, I won’t wear a dress. Yet the odd little society of which we live in still holds that during certain social events my having an abundance of annoying fabric fluttering over my legs is more appropriate than slacks. And that heels are more appropriate than Oxford, heels guaranteed to destroy my feet, break my back and ruin my posture and that make-up clogging my pores and its smell needing to be covered up with perfume is more attractive or powerful than simply being myself.

My gender as biologically female also means I will receive still less pay than my biologically male counterparts, be over looked for most jobs, or promotions, but at least I have a longer life span than the average biological male that I won’t be able to afford to enjoy because of a lifetime of less pay meaning less money paid into social security as an American woman.

As far as my activity, hobbies and interests go though, rarely would they be considered “girly things". I detest shopping, don’t cook (my husband does and is great at it), I wouldn’t dream of having a spa day, I don’t like to listen to or share in gossip, wear make-up, do my hair in anything but the most basic of ponytails mostly because I’m too lazy to cut it. I don’t tear up watching the Notebook, thought it a rather boring film, my husband liked it far more than I did.

I would far rather work on engines, play with computers, or play in the mud. Even at a young age you would see me playing with Tonka trucks and GI Joe over Barbie. And my older sister had plenty of Barbie’s for me to play with so its not like I was denied the ability to play with dolls just because I preferred trucks as a child.

I have always preferred blues, greens and yellows over pink. And liked football and full contact sports over jump rope and four-square. Give me power tools and I can build you a house, give me cooking utensils and I’ll burn that house down.

And yet I still identify as a girl. And can only say there is a fleeting desire to be a male for about 5-7 days every 28-32 days give or take. Being 100% the living embodiment of the “Tom-boy".

But then society, for as much as women are held back in many professional sectors, largely allows for me to be interested in whatever more classically “male" activities I like, than it allows for males to be interested in the more classically “female" activities.

Though as mentioned already, there are still times when I am forced by societal expectations to don the mantle of “girly". And whereby being female I am excluded either by social pressures or sheer physical limits from masculine activities.

So when asking, what is gender, what would my gender be considered? Would it be female since that is biologically what I am and how I identify myself? Would it be male since those are the gender roles I adopt at every given chance? And why do we even have gender roles in the first place? (Okay yes I know long long ago someone wrote a book called the Bible and the majority of society has professed to believe its every word since including its quite clearly defined gender assignments especially since just a couple of hundred years ago or so you could be killed for saying nuttuh about anything in said book…)

But truthfully, there are differences between men and women physically and mentally, minor to be sure, however depending on the task men and women will as the average perform differently. Women are, on average, capable of true multitasking this has been proven under contrasted active MRIs, men are not, they do what we’ve always been told all people do, which is microtasking switching in seconds from 1 activity to another. Women on average are flexible enough in their spines to bend down and touch the floor, standing with their toes touching a wall and with 1 toe to heel step back, men on average are not. Men exert less effort doing a pull up with palms facing them, than women and women exert less effort than men doing pulls up with palms facing away from them.

But these differences have next to nothing to do with the roles we are pushed into by society. And many of societies views seem to be in opposite to our physical builds, men without the swaying of hips and having a stick over a slit would probably be far more comfortable in a skirt over women where we need to be more concerned about foreign particles getting to our gentiles more so than men, and where swaying hips moves the fabric around rather awkwardly and can cause it to be entangled in our legs, which leads to a very stunted stride.

Hygenically, it simply makes more sense for the men to be in skirts and dresses and the women to be in pants and shorts. But is that really what it means to be female? Wearing a skirt at the greater risk of bacterial or fungal infection? If so, what does that say for the cis-gender males who figured it out and love to wear skirts, dresses and pink soft fluffy sweaters, on date night with their cis-gender girlfriend. They are not looking to be women, they are not looking for a boyfriend, they like the color pink, they like the cool feeling of wearing a skirt, they might even enjoy the time it takes in putting on make-up marveling in the illusions it can create with an artistic flair. And they might even still spend their weekends enjoying themselves by working on a hemi engine or playing with some power tools.

So what exactly does it mean to identify as a gender? Again, this started as a curiosity sort of question with the controversy over transgender participation in sports, yet that is not the question being posed here over rights and wherefores of competitions and their competitors. This is not a question about should parents be allowed to start gender transitions prior to children reaching age of majority.

This is a question about what it means to be one gender or another or to choose not to identify as any at all. This is a question concerning society assigning genders to specific roles aside from that of person who born uterus and person who was born with a prostate. And can we as a society really break down those gender role barriers, by making pink Tonka trucks and fake blue vacuum cleaners? Dressing our sons in skirts and daughters in jeans? Or by changing how we refer to ourselves to a more detailed language?

Please share your thoughts on the matter, in a respectful way. Ignorance is not a crime, hiding malice in the guise of ignorance however should be. And I will be the first to fully admit my ignorance on this matter.