Of A Type

I'm one of those people for whom sex and gender may as well be one in the same. Be that as it may, I've understood that this isn't true for everyone. But with there being a growing sense that the two should be different, I'm starting to wonder if the stereotypes of masculine and feminine behavior aren't what's at issue here.

When Demi Lovato says that she's going back to using feminine pronouns because she's "been feeling more feminine" recently, I find myself being curious as to what that means. Come to think of it, I wonder what being "non-binary" is intended to mean. Masculine and Feminine, after all, are simply labels that have been attached to broad classes of behavior. But there's also Androgynous, which tends to be a catch-all for those people who don't fit into either category. While I understand that androgyny is typically ascribed to people on the basis of looks, rather than behavior, "non-binary" feels like a younger generation coining a new term for something that people were already familiar with, then claiming a discovery.

Although I suppose that non-binary is for those people who look very much male or female, yet don't see themselves as behaving in a particularly masculine or feminine manner. But this leads me back to the idea that it's really about the narrowing scope of gender-role stereotyping; placing oneself outside of the box, rather than making the boxes bigger.

When I was young, we had the concept of a tomboy; a girl who behaved in a more stereotypical masculine fashion than was expected of them. While there was a certain amount of social angst about this (which could manifest itself in remarkable destructive ways), it was a pretty straightforward idea. The flip side was the sissy, and that, like many roles that were conveyed as coming with a loss of status, it was seen as a problem to be solved, rather than just something to be. It was also the butt of jokes; I remember when the giant brawl at the end of Blazing Saddles spills onto a set where Dom DeLouise is directing a chorus of gay men singing "The French Mistake," and one of them shouts: "Get'em girls," just before the chorus piles into the fray. In a lot of ways "non-binary" is just a less judgmental term than the ones we used when I was young.

But still, the boundaries felt broader in those days. When I was in my twenties, I used to joke that I'd been forced to turn in my "Guy Card," for having no fear of asking directions, being reasonably empathetic and having a job where being nurturing was a requirement. I'm not sure, but I suspect that were I that twenty-something now, there would be more social pressure to declare myself non-binary on that basis. Whereas back then, it was simply a matter of needing to tap more into what people would have called my feminine side.

And I think that's the thing that I'm noticing; that both masculinity and femininity are becoming more "one sided," at least as I see it. Being "girly" or "macho" aren't specific ways of being feminine or masculine; they're becoming the sum total of those concepts. And this may be why it seems I'm more likely to encounter females who identify as non-binary, as opposed to males; men respond to the shrinking of the box by crowding more densely into the box. Personally, I think that making the boxes bigger will help a lot, but I'm not the one who makes the rules.