"If they found lace, jewels, ribands, or any ornaments in silver or gold, among the booty which they had taken, they used to dress their horses with it, but never entertained a thought of wearing it themselves…”
I read Sei Shonagon a while back, and it was remarkably like reading an intelligent person's blog. In fact, I wrote her up as a GURPS character for the GURPS Who's Who series, and when I submitted my draft the series editor joked that she had arrived safely and was being sarcastic about his furniture. . . .
One of the curious things about the evolution of human thought, to me, is the period in the Victorian era (I think-it might have been more the Edwardian) when the favored explanation for homosexuality was "inversion," or the belief that homosexual men were "women in men's bodies" and conversely for homosexual women. There were still hints of that at least as late as Stranger in a Strange Land, where one of the characters thinks of homosexuals as "poor in-betweeners" and concludes that the hero, a very attractive man, is safe from male passes because the people he shares water with are manly men and womanly women, who of course would never be attracted to their own sex(!).
Different behaviours are attached to different genders in different cultures in different places and at different times. So "gender fluidity" would have different meanings in a society where the limits are quite hard (as in the US; I was quite astonished when I first lived in New York at the rigid gender segregation in FAO Schwarz) and in one where they may be less so (as perhaps in the current Netherlands). The degree of importance attached to non-conformity with gender roles would also vary depending on the importance actually attached to gender (as opposed to biological sex) in that society. I say this as someone living in a social milieu where biological sex is assumed to be a hard line, but precisely because of this there is considerable flexibility in respect of behaviour, at least among the educated class. As an example, whether someone is 'girly' or 'tomboyish' in dress or habits wouldn't affect their status as women in good standing.
Indeed "gender fluidity" would have different meanings at different times and places, but I meant overall. There are many who state that historically it was all binary, and only now in these decadent times yadda yadda. But, like marriage, gender has not been one thing historically in all places. Ergo: fluidity.
What may be considered fluidity in one society or segment of society may simply be part of the normal range of behaviours in another. I don't think that there is a universal standard in any way, which seems to be the unspoken assumption of most writings that I have seen on the subject.
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"If they found lace, jewels, ribands, or any ornaments in silver or gold, among the booty which they had taken, they used to dress their horses with it, but never entertained a thought of wearing it themselves…”
I can't say how much I identify with this!
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Thanks for reading!
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One of the curious things about the evolution of human thought, to me, is the period in the Victorian era (I think-it might have been more the Edwardian) when the favored explanation for homosexuality was "inversion," or the belief that homosexual men were "women in men's bodies" and conversely for homosexual women. There were still hints of that at least as late as Stranger in a Strange Land, where one of the characters thinks of homosexuals as "poor in-betweeners" and concludes that the hero, a very attractive man, is safe from male passes because the people he shares water with are manly men and womanly women, who of course would never be attracted to their own sex(!).
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