Reading your thoughts on learning to flirt in ways that are more traditionally thought of as feminine gives me some concrete concepts to connect some feelings I've had to.
I don't see myself ever being able to communicate overt sexual interest in someone who I don't already know very well. (The only time I have, it was with someone I'd known for over five years.) I'd feel much more personally comfortable and natural with a more indirect approach using modulated eye-contract, behavior, clothing, etc. It feels safer for me, and less hostile, which I guess I equate aggressiveness with on some level.
Maybe that's why I don't know how to deal with other people expressing a direct interest in me without other context, like someone who finds my profile on Fetlife (when I had an active one) and suggests we get together and implying sex; it's terrifying. It's most of why I'm not on there right now.
However! I also feel uncomfortable with that more indirect approach to being flirty. It's very important to me to communicate directly with people. Being intentionally flirty that way feels disingenuous. If I think someone is attractive and would like to get to know them better because of that, I should just tell them so. But then I'm being overt and aggressive and I can't do that because it feels just as wrong. I know that many people enjoy flirting in this way and do not see it as deceitful or manipulative. I think I'd even enjoy someone flirting that way with me if they initiated it and I recognized it (which is so hard for me!). But I can't seem to feel ok doing it myself, which means I've never learned how to and am not sure that I will. And, as I noted, it's nearly impossible for me to recognize that someone is flirting with me even making that conclusion feels like a disrespectful act in some way. Like it's wrong of me to assume someone might be interested unless they clearly say that they are, it feels like part of the toxic kind of masculinity that I abhor so.
---"So instead of merely finding gender expectations annoying and confining, and rejecting their limitations, I found a need to have others recognize me and understand my own array of sexual interest and feelings."
This, in particular, reminds me of conversations I've had with numerous other people, including my therapist yesterday. I fear adopting behaviors or appearances that, as a whole, are not clearly masculine or feminine. I feel that my non-verbal forms of communication will be perceived as incoherent and jumbled and no one will know how to react. That I will be disregarded; perceived as an invalid participant in the social interactions I may have. I feel that need that you express, but I cannot figure out how to begin meeting it.
I know what you mean about the indirect flirting thing feeling manipulative and somehow dishonest and stuff.
In a discussion taking place elsewhere about this post, I wrote:
--- quote ---
I know what you mean about "artificial and creepy as fuck". I feel very self-conscious whenever I try to describe it because it ends up sounding that way.
What I do inside my head is not so much "I'm going to do this posture and do this with my eyes". It's more like instead of hiding the fact that sexual possibilities are of interest to me and that, yes, they may have passed through my mind, and then at the same time trying to mount some kind of seductive campaign of coming on to her in exactly the perfect way (ugh!), to just let my face do the talking, including the part about being shy and self-conscious about those kinds of feelings.
So in a way it's mostly about being expressively honest and not trying to do something artificial.
If, on top of that, I've learned a lot from other people doing it to me, it mostly has to do with pretending in my head that I know something that actually I don't -that those same thoughts have been running through her head - and reacting to something that hasn't necessarily happened yet - that she expressed that. I suppose that qualifies as artificial in a way, but how it feels is like teasing. And if she wasn't thinking such thoughts she'll tend to miss it and I will not have been behaving creepy as fuck, and I keep it subtle, and not intrusive. Then I watch to see what happens next and if nothing does, I let it drop.
For what it's worth, I don't see it as artificial for the most part. It likely feels completely authentic to most people who are doing it. But when I become self-conscious about it, then it starts feeling like I'm being artificial.
Some people think of anthropologists negatively because (some of them anyway) break down a cultural behavior into this kind of set of discrete, functional parts and contextualize them as part of a a larger system. I think things can't help but feel artificial to a lot of people that way, even though they are not. I've commented that, if I have kids, I'd get them to read Goffman's Presentation of the Self in Everyday Life, which analyzes behavior with theatrical metaphor. To simplify it greatly, when we are on stage we act in certain ways to have control over how we are perceived. My parents always told me that I could be any way I wanted to and others' opinions didn't matter, but I honestly think a much more analytical, nuanced, and perhaps arguably artificial perspective might have helped me.
But I guess it's another part of the double standards I have for myself. It's ok, natural, and even positive when other people do it, but totally unacceptable for me.
Your last paragraph here really helps get the idea across to me. Imagining that there may already be similar ideas in the mind of the person you want to flirt with and behaving as such. That actually makes me feel like I might theoretically know how to do it. It doesn't help me change how I feel about it, but maybe it's a start.
I don't see myself ever being able to communicate overt sexual interest in someone who I don't already know very well. (The only time I have, it was with someone I'd known for over five years.) I'd feel much more personally comfortable and natural with a more indirect approach using modulated eye-contract, behavior, clothing, etc. It feels safer for me, and less hostile, which I guess I equate aggressiveness with on some level.
Maybe that's why I don't know how to deal with other people expressing a direct interest in me without other context, like someone who finds my profile on Fetlife (when I had an active one) and suggests we get together and implying sex; it's terrifying. It's most of why I'm not on there right now.
However! I also feel uncomfortable with that more indirect approach to being flirty. It's very important to me to communicate directly with people. Being intentionally flirty that way feels disingenuous. If I think someone is attractive and would like to get to know them better because of that, I should just tell them so. But then I'm being overt and aggressive and I can't do that because it feels just as wrong. I know that many people enjoy flirting in this way and do not see it as deceitful or manipulative. I think I'd even enjoy someone flirting that way with me if they initiated it and I recognized it (which is so hard for me!). But I can't seem to feel ok doing it myself, which means I've never learned how to and am not sure that I will. And, as I noted, it's nearly impossible for me to recognize that someone is flirting with me even making that conclusion feels like a disrespectful act in some way. Like it's wrong of me to assume someone might be interested unless they clearly say that they are, it feels like part of the toxic kind of masculinity that I abhor so.
---"So instead of merely finding gender expectations annoying and confining, and rejecting their limitations, I found a need to have others recognize me and understand my own array of sexual interest and feelings."
This, in particular, reminds me of conversations I've had with numerous other people, including my therapist yesterday. I fear adopting behaviors or appearances that, as a whole, are not clearly masculine or feminine. I feel that my non-verbal forms of communication will be perceived as incoherent and jumbled and no one will know how to react. That I will be disregarded; perceived as an invalid participant in the social interactions I may have. I feel that need that you express, but I cannot figure out how to begin meeting it.
Reply
In a discussion taking place elsewhere about this post, I wrote:
--- quote ---
I know what you mean about "artificial and creepy as fuck". I feel very self-conscious whenever I try to describe it because it ends up sounding that way.
What I do inside my head is not so much "I'm going to do this posture and do this with my eyes". It's more like instead of hiding the fact that sexual possibilities are of interest to me and that, yes, they may have passed through my mind, and then at the same time trying to mount some kind of seductive campaign of coming on to her in exactly the perfect way (ugh!), to just let my face do the talking, including the part about being shy and self-conscious about those kinds of feelings.
So in a way it's mostly about being expressively honest and not trying to do something artificial.
If, on top of that, I've learned a lot from other people doing it to me, it mostly has to do with pretending in my head that I know something that actually I don't -that those same thoughts have been running through her head - and reacting to something that hasn't necessarily happened yet - that she expressed that. I suppose that qualifies as artificial in a way, but how it feels is like teasing. And if she wasn't thinking such thoughts she'll tend to miss it and I will not have been behaving creepy as fuck, and I keep it subtle, and not intrusive. Then I watch to see what happens next and if nothing does, I let it drop.
--- end quote ---
Reply
Some people think of anthropologists negatively because (some of them anyway) break down a cultural behavior into this kind of set of discrete, functional parts and contextualize them as part of a a larger system. I think things can't help but feel artificial to a lot of people that way, even though they are not. I've commented that, if I have kids, I'd get them to read Goffman's Presentation of the Self in Everyday Life, which analyzes behavior with theatrical metaphor. To simplify it greatly, when we are on stage we act in certain ways to have control over how we are perceived. My parents always told me that I could be any way I wanted to and others' opinions didn't matter, but I honestly think a much more analytical, nuanced, and perhaps arguably artificial perspective might have helped me.
But I guess it's another part of the double standards I have for myself. It's ok, natural, and even positive when other people do it, but totally unacceptable for me.
Your last paragraph here really helps get the idea across to me. Imagining that there may already be similar ideas in the mind of the person you want to flirt with and behaving as such. That actually makes me feel like I might theoretically know how to do it. It doesn't help me change how I feel about it, but maybe it's a start.
Reply
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