Fangenderqueer?

[kateorman]

It becomes ever more obvious that, in a number of ways, I'm a boy. It began when I hung around with my brothers' mates as a teenager. It continued when I came to fandom in my late teens, and when I came to online fandom in my mid-twenties. I didn't think of myself as male. For example, as a young fan, I identified with the powerful female

Comments

[louisedennis]

I'm what the US would term a Maths Major. I work with computers and adore programming. I'm a Who fan. I enjoy making lists. I gain pleasure from collecting sets of things. I become distressed if required to divide my attention even for short periods of time. I don't think that's a socialisation thing - I have no brothers, I went to an all girls school - so as far as I'm concerned its probably brain wiring at some level

[jhg]

Rape and 'intimate violence' are considered a part of the female experience??!!!

I think you're well out of that club.

[kateorman]

Sadly, they're both common experiences for women - for men also, obviously, but not to the same extent. For that matter, I've never been sexually harassed or experienced personal discrimination, although I have experienced street harassment.

[jhg]

Indeed, but not for the *majority* I'd hope - at least not in Britain, Australia and 'similar' countries.

[kateorman]

No, but certainly a large proportion - and, importantly, those are experiences women have "under patriarchy" which would be much rarer in a more equal world.

[acelightning]

i've always been a boy myself, despite the absence of a Y chromosome. from my very earliest childhood, i was interested in science and technology... and science fiction. there were damned few strong female characters to identify with, and you could count the female SF writers on the fingers of one hand, even if you included C.M. Kornbluth and Andre Norton. after a while, i ran across a few other young science fiction readers, all male.

my first contact with fandom - indeed, my first inkling that there was such a thing as organized fandom - was about 1960. i very quickly discovered that female "fen" were just about as scarce as female writers. on the other hand, i wasn't terribly interested in fandom, even if i'd had money and transportation to participate. i've sort of been just beyond the fringes of it ever since.

socially, i don't respond in a typically "female" style, in any setting, even "real life" - i simply don't act like a girl. (i know how to, but it's a learned skill, and it takes conscious effort to apply it.) i never

[dameruth]

You might enjoy the Gender Analyzer.

You enter in a URL and it tells you if they think the person putting the site/blog together is male or female. It's largely entertaining for how often it's wrong. Most of my female f-list tested male. I was declared male with a 98% certainty based on on my LJ . . . though, interestingly, when I entered my IJ URL (I use that as pretty much a fic-only "mirror" journal), it came out as something like 70% female. Since I'm not aware that I using the English language *that differently* when I write fiction as opposed to general blogging stuff, it really makes me wonder what criteria they're using to sort things. I do use more profanity in day-to-day writing, but so do a lot of gals I know; that's about the only difference I can think of.

ETA -- whoops! This was meant to be a general response (not one particularly to you, acelightning, though you'll probably also be amused by the Analyzer), but I figure I won't futz around with this comment any more than I already have, and will leave it here).

[louisedennis]

Hmmm - my blog... 85% female, my personal web page... 90% male, my professional home page... not written in English, apparently!

[dameruth]

Celebrate your own inner diversity! :D

[hexacontium]

The first paragraph might have been written by me, even though I don't agree that being raped is part of being female.

Still, I hate makeup, heals, handbags and prefer cargopants and shirts over dresses, and would love to appear at a social in a smoking when a serious frock would be appropriate :D I have a MSc in geology btw and work in the oil industry and always preferred adventure stories and SciFi to girly books, and climbing onto trees to dressing up Barbie.

I guess it must be brain wiring. My parents agree that they did not change their style of raising my sis and me, and she's a complete and utter girly who hates everything I love, and v.v. Pity I never had a sister to play with.

[dameruth]

The first paragraph might have been written by me, even though I don't agree that being raped is part of being female.

Word.

[kateorman]

I don't agree that being raped is part of being female.

Just to clarify - sexual assault is a experience of a large proportion of women "under patriarchy", but obviously that doesn't make it an automatic part of being female.

TBH I had to stop and think to come up with examples of typically female experiences which weren't negative (rape, domestic violence, sexual harassment) or reproductive (pregnancy, abortion, childbirth). Bit of a trap for feminists, that focus.

[antikythera]

I know what you're talking about, but I never felt the need to identify as a boy just because I liked boy things (playing war games, getting dirty, building models) and didn't fit in with girls who did girl things (squealing over hot male celebrities, watching soap operas and reading romance novels).

I hope there is a place in the realm of femininity for women whose interests lie outside of culturally-assigned or stereotypical acceptability, whether it's preferring stories about starships or not feeling that maternal drive that everyone says a real woman should have.

[antikythera]

And the reason why I hope that is that nobody should feel like they have to choose between their gender identity and their lifestyle, career, mannerisms, fashion sense, or interests. You might be comfortable calling yourself a boy in that context, but not every girl would be.

[kateorman]

The trap, of course, is binary thinking, and the grinding of gears it produces: you must be either a (fan)girl or a (fan)boy, and it must be clear which you are. But "fangirl" and "fanboy" are cardboard cutouts: reference points, collections of shared cultural assumptions, experience, and practices, useful for discussion, but certainly not real people. Hence "fangenderqueer". :)

[kateorman]

I never felt the need to identify as a boy either - I was just into the same things as my mates, eg being able to identify different makes of expensive car, different kinds of gun, etc. It wasn't that I repudiated all things feminine, I just had no interest in them.

not feeling that maternal drive that everyone says a real woman should have

Bwa! That's what cats are for.