What changes when people think you’re a woman? Nico Lang explains.
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When you write on the Internet a lot, you tend to notice patterns in your feedback and what pushes people’s buttons. If I plan to write about race, gender or rape culture, I have to mentally gear up for the blowback, and the couple times I wrote about Rihanna (who encompasses all three), I planned to just stay off the Internet altogether. Best to just take up croquet that day.
But the comment I get more often than any other is people questioning my gender—which I often don’t make explicit. At first it wasn’t a conscious decision, but as someone who dabbles in dating columns, I noticed that respondents would automatically assume that I was female. They would look at my name, which could go either way on the gender divide, and check the female box every single time. Even in pieces where I did briefly bring up the fact of my assigned sex, the comment board would somehow miss that part. Any fact that didn’t support the discourse of my femaleness would be left out, not part of the dominant narrative of my gender.
I’m going to take a moment to just say it. I’ve been working up to it for a year, scared if you would accept me if I told you. But I was born a male. Twenty-five years ago I shot out of my mother’s vagina with something that would later look much more like a penis between my legs. As a kid, I had long hair, and people mistook me for being female. As an adult, I have a shaved head, a nose ring, tattoos and a beard, so nobody has that problem anymore—except on the Internet. Varying perceptions of my gender don’t bother me, as I don’t see anything wrong with being female. As long as pronouns and genders are invoked with respect, who cares? I’m a myriad being.
On my birthday, I threw a Bridget Jones-themed birthday party, and I planned on going all out. I even got a damn karaoke machine, because if you tell me we’re going to be celebrating Bridget-style, I expect singing. It was a costume party, and I initially planned on going as Colin Firth, so I could wear a reindeer jumper and pretend to be mean to people. However, as the host, I knew that would be shirking my responsibility. Bridget herself needed to come to this party. I would have to bring Bridget Jones realness. Luckily, I had the clothing left over from my ill-fated Halloween costume, where I attempted to be Chloe Sevigny (from the videos) and ended up Very Mary Kate. I just frumped Mary Kate down and threw a Mickey Mouse sweatshirt over it. And then I threw out my bra. Bridget doesn’t need that.
Throughout the night, guests accepted Bridget as a natural consequence of the costume party—and hardly out of the ordinary. Drag was an expected part of social behavior and didn’t violate any expected norms. However, this changed when I had to leave the party in the middle of the night to go let someone in my building. I hopped in the elevator and pressed Ground, daintily tapping my Converse as I waited for the doors to close. I had to share the elevator with two frat-looking guys from my building, and I did the “dude head nod” out of social politeness, intended to make the experience of sharing a small, dark space with two total strangers less awkward. What (s)he said, I know.
The moment the two of them got a look at my face, which still had a beard on it, they started laughing hysterically. Naïve creature that I am, I didn’t understand why at first. Did I have a banana peel on my foot? Was my underwear showing? Had my mascara started to run? I then realized that they were laughing at me because the sight of a “man in a dress” is funny in our culture, even though a woman dressing in male clothing is comically neutral. When Diane Keaton and Coco Chanel embraced menswear, it was a revelation in style. For me to wear a dress was a joke, a debasement of my own masculinity. Because otherwise, who would want to be a woman?
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This sort of thing happens to me all the time on the Internet. When I’m writing a dating piece, commenters automatically assume that I’m a woman. If I’m writing on the Women’s section on Huffington Post, that makes sense to me—because the title of the section interpellates my gender. However, on Thought Catalog, my columns give the reader no marker by which to assume my gender, yet it’s projected onto my work in telling ways. That readers assume a dating columnist would be female isn’t a shock, because society tells us that women are supposed to be the only ones that obsess over a relationship and analyze everything to death.
Trust me, ladies: guys do it, too. They just don’t talk about it because it’s “not masculine.” They get nervous when you don’t call. They want to know what your text messages mean. When they meet you for the first time and they find themselves liking you, a moment flashes in their mind where they picture themselves married to you. Guys dream about their wedding days, and they want children and a home to ground them. Because it’s America, we like to pretend that every guy is Jim Belushi and every girl is the nag who has to trick him into staying married to them with a three-course meal, fuck-me pumps and fifteen minutes of strictly missionary.
However, that’s not the way it works in this thing we call “real life.” If you’ve ever actually been in a relationship that isn’t a cartoon depiction of what women and men are like, you know that gender norms are more complicated than popular discourse or Steve Harvey give humans credit for. People just like bounded categories, to place us in either/or, masculine/feminine, us/them or familiar/other because it’s simpler. It’s what we know. Thus, when you’re dating someone of the same sex, straights will often ask which person is the “man” and which of you is the “woman”—because it reaffirms gender models they’re already familiar with. It might not be the reality, but it’s a comforting myth.
Gay men get offended by this because a) it assumes heteronormativity and b) if they’re being honest, neither of them want to be the woman. Both of them like being the man.
But this question should be equally insulting to heterosexual couples, as it assumes total masculinity and total femininity. Being the “man” and the “woman” reaffirms limiting power hierarchies that we should be problematizing. We should be challenging what those terms mean and building a society where femininity is seen as strong and positive. We should all want to be the woman. Who wants to live in a society where little girls will grow up being ashamed of their gender and learning to hate other women, in order to externalize their own self-hatred? When we ask women to tear each other down, it’s because we’re asking them to be punished. It’s that Eve bullshit all over again.
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As someone with a gender-neutral name, I’ve experienced this first-hand. When someone wants to tear apart my writing—because I had the gall to suggest that society is racist or sexist—they often bring up my presumed gender to do so. I’m interpellated as “that girl,” “a chick on the internet,” “this whore” or just “some c*nt,” and my femaleness is never mentioned with respect. No one ever says, “O’ wise woman, thou hast shown me why fat-shaming is bad form.” They say, “Stop being so easily offended, bitch.” Femaleness is used to discredit me in a way that maleness is not. No one has ever said, “This guy is an asshole” or “Dude doesn’t know what he’s talking about.” Because maleness is our societal default setting, it’s never mentioned.
Interestingly, the only time that my maleness comes into play is when respondents dismiss me because of my perceived sexuality. I interchangeably call myself bi- or pansexual, which really just means that application is open to all (especially Christina Hendricks), but my queerness usually gets coopted by the binary. I’m never silenced for being a “heterosexual male” but a “faggot”—another marker of feminization.
In the feud between Azealia Banks and Perez Hilton, the reason she used that word against him had nothing to do with homophobia, because Banks herself is queer and to suggest otherwise erases her identity. (Frankly, Hilton should have stayed out of it to begin with.) As someone who raps in a male-dominated industry, Banks is forced to out-masculine many of her male counterparts—to be the “top dog” in the room by having the “biggest balls.” By always having to prove she’s one of the guys, Banks is likely experiencing Stockholm Syndrome, when it’s her femme fierceness that’s truly powerful.
To use a term like that against him wasn’t a signifier of his sexuality but his perceived femininity—because the ultimate dig isn’t labeling someone as gay. It’s calling them a girl.
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Katy Perry’s music displays the same tendencies. One of the reasons I loathe her is that I find her music a magic combination of sexist and homophobic, and her debut album under the Perry moniker contained tracks like “Hot and Cold” and “Ur So Gay.” The latter was a put-down song where Perry compares her rotten ex to a woman, which is an unfavorable thing. The gay metaphor gives it a putrid veneer of homophobia, but the song is really about his femininity, which is worse than being gay. Similarly, the object of critique in “Hot and Cold” is her beloved’s indecisiveness, a stereotypical female trait. Perry insults him by singing, “You change your mind like a girl changes clothes/You PMS like a bitch I would know.”
Of all things, that album was called One of the Boys.
Perry reminds me of one of those girls who doesn’t like hanging out with other women, so she hangs out with gay men instead—because it’s “like being around girls without having to deal with girls.” Sure, it’s casually homophobic, but it doesn’t come from a place of hating gay people. It’s about hating women.
I see the same tendencies in my father. He doesn’t personally have a problem that I intermittently recreate Samson’s “What What in the Butt” with men of varying ilk. (For my grandma, it’s just so long as they aren’t, you know, black.) It’s that on top of going to football games and being a loyal Cincinnati Reds fan (#socloseguys), I’ve seen every episode of Sex and the City and idolize Tina Fey, who I feel is my soul twin. I just get her. When I went through my first romantic comedy phase, at twelve, I devoured Julia Roberts’ entire catalog—and begged him to take me to see Erin Brockovich in the theatres. He told me to stop acting like a girl. I was just being me.
I hear that voice sometimes when someone attacks me for having breasts and an opinion, which are intended to be mutually exclusive, or tells me to shut my vagina. Before I wrote this piece, part of me didn’t want to come out and talk about my gender—because I knew that coming clean means affirming my own gender privilege. When I use gender neutral pronouns in my pieces, it’s because I want respondents to think about what gender means and how the ways in which we construct gender norms affect people. It’s not just a pronoun. These are realities that people live with, and if being called a “twat” in a message board helps me see that more clearly, I was fine with that. I’ll be the woman. I’ll be all the women.
In Communications courses, a certain exercise forces students to be cognizant of gender construction. The exercise asks students to describe their weekend without signifying any kind of gender—no masculine pronouns, no female best friends, nothing. When the students complete the assignment, the responses consist of complaining about how hard it was to take gender out of everyday life. They say that they never would have expected the problem would be so difficult. In the exercise, the instructor then asks them why that is. The student will think about it for a moment. They will pause. They will bite their lip. They will whisper something to the friend next to them. They don’t know. They never know.
Originally posted on Thought Catalog
Photo: Flickr/otisarchives2
“because the ultimate dig isn’t labeling someone as gay. It’s calling them a girl.”
Are you sure it is calling them a girl, as opposed to calling them not a man?
I thought you were nail cause in Spanish any name ending in O denotes that the person is male. I did like what you had to say. I’m an amateur astrologer so I have to ask are you a gemini or have planets in gemini? I only ask cause you are very good with words and did an excellent job showing both sides. You may be an aquarius given that you played up androgeny and being pansexual. Making sure everyone is recognized as valuable while you keeping you’re quirkiness is an aquarius thing. Finally, since I’ve been studying astrology, it’s… Read more »
I love this article and the clarity you give these issues. I do have to say, though, that coming forward as a man (albeit with inherited, unearned privilege) is doing more to help the issue than allowing people to come to their own conclusions about your gender. In this way, you can be an advocate and ally for women, using your privilege for good rather than evil. Thank you!
‘Because otherwise, who would want to be a woman?’ – This part of your article reminded me of a conversation I had with my Bf this week. I had just met my housemates friend from Czech republic. We are in the UK. He immediately starts the whole ‘treat um mean’ ‘Ill insult you in a sneaky way’ flirting tactic. I noticed his body language straight away when we shook hands. I knew some kind of BS was coming my way. He belittled me, asked me ‘how old I was’ when I mentioned training to be a counsellor and then questioned… Read more »
“We should be challenging what those terms mean and building a society where femininity is seen as strong and positive. We should all want to be the woman.”
Really?
Part A is fine but Part B is just a reversal of what the author sees as the norm and is basicly just as wrong.
It would be nice if instead we were all allowed to be happy as we are……..without either of the gender majorities being devalued to enhance the other…nor any of the gender minorities being either fetishized or devalued as less than fully human and perfectly normal
Um Archy…. No no no…. I am Australian and we do NOT use the word c*nt often. YOU might but the country does not. Try speaking without resorting to swearing, it’ll improve your IQ!
Stop being elitist. Crass swear words have nothing to do with IQ. You might be able to suggest they are a sign of socio-economic issues but if you actually have a high IQ you will know that the Cword can be used the same as many other words which even upper class people think are ok. The fact that it is a swear word doesn’t negate it’s use for putting a point across, nor does using a larger vocabulary indicate someone is more intelligent but simply that they choose to use more words in the language. But quite frankly swear… Read more »
Is an excellent article, and I agree with most stuff. However, since you write gender neutral, I suppose, you could also write about the responses you get when people think you are male as well. As goes with the internet, most people feel compelled to write negative response, more than positive one, at least, that has been my experience. So, I am sure, when and if people thought you were a man, you have received some feedback as well. While it is great that you point out how hard women have it online, being a man doesn’t get you discount… Read more »
” For me to wear a dress was a joke, a debasement of my own masculinity. Because otherwise, who would want to be a woman?”
1) You were failing at being male (gender role policing)
2) You were pathetic-looking (culturally), if you also looked definitely-male while in drag – butch women get that crap too.
NOTHING there saying femaleness or feminity is bad or inferior.
If you’re a slave and you impersonate a slavemaster, you’ll be chastised for impersonating someone above your station. It’s not prejudice against slavemasters. It’s punishing the slave for taking liberties they shouldn’t have.
An excellent warning to all of us not to jump to conclusions about the people posting onto discussion forums (fora?). We can’t even know for sure that Nico is in fact male just because the article says that he is. There’s so much online that we just have to take people’s word about.
Isn’t the author a female? The talk of breasts, and vagina led me to think that, unless the author is a trans male? I’m so confused.
You’re right. I should have said cis-male. Of course, again, if the author claims to have breasts, then we have to take the author’s word for it….
When I read this, it immediately brought to mind an ongoing argument that I have had with my boyfriend about him using the word “girl” like it’s an insult to my son…i.e. “don’t be a girl!” The irony is – he doesn’t even know he is doing it or that the implication is that being a girl is bad. Which, maybe for a boy is bad…but I put my foot down and said..if you want to ask him not to cry or whine – say that…don’t use the word girl like it is an insult. I’m a girl and I’ve… Read more »
Anette, I had a conversation on Facebook the other day with a guy who used the word “c*nt” about anyone who is a terrorist. As in, “I don’t care what religion you are, if you’re hurting people, you’re a c*nt.” So I’m like, “might I suggest that if you’re going to describe the lowest human beings on the planet that you don’t use a word that alludes to women’s sexual organs? Try ‘asshole’, it’s gender-neutral.” I also explained that c*nt needs to become a purely sexy word and not a word equating “horrible”. He said he’d never thought of what… Read more »
In Australia we use the C*nt word often and I’ve never heard it refer to a woman’s bits, it’s always just a despicable person who commits a low act like cheating, abuse, etc. The first time I heard it referred to a woman’s bits is when an American friend was talking about eating her C*nt. When the word is used to refer to a woman’s bits, I find it an extreme turn off. I disagree that the word should be stopped, it has it’s uses that transcend female depending on where you are. I use the word quite often, just… Read more »
I don’t think we should call the boston bombers “dicks” either. I don’t like that the sex organ of one gender is used to mean “the worst of the worst.”
I think the word is super offensive. Especially since I like it as a sexy word. And it’s MY body being referred to. You know?
But when I say it, it’s not your body I am referring to, never has and never will be. Context matters, just like fuck you doesn’t mean I want to have sex with you but can mean I hate you, leave me alone, part of friendly discussion, etc.
Recently I’ve read some articles by women from the U.S and see them use the C word to refer to their vagina, it sounds sooooo weird and unsexy the way they use it because in Australia it’s used as an extreme word for asshole who is downright unmoral, like cheating on your husband/wife on the day after the wedding with their best friend whilst stealing all your stuff type thing. Abusers are C’s, etc.
Aussie female here – love dropping the C-bomb for comedic impact, don’t associate it with genitalia whatsoever but do prefer to use ‘dog’ when referring to a despicable person.
Also Annette – just quietly, women can pee standing up. Might not be able to write our names in snow, but can hit a target with practise. Ask Google how and look further than the websites encouraging us to buy funnel-like apparatuses.
Context is not a get out of jail free card. If the word originally referred to female genitalia and now you use it to mean “an extreme word for asshole who is downright unmoral, like cheating on your husband/wife on the day after the wedding with their best friend whilst stealing all your stuff type thing. Abusers are C’s, etc. ” you are linguistically connecting women’s genitalia with those negative connotations. It doesn’t matter if that’s how you intend it, that’s the fact of it. As a white person, I could NEVER use the “n” word and write it off… Read more »
Thanks for sharing, Nico!!
If you’re a Cincinnati native, we might be related 😉
Are you sure the frat boys weren’t just laighing at you because you were dressed as a woman & still had a beard? Remember the scene in the movie ” I’m gonna get you sucka” it was a fight scene in the cafe & they showed the black woman come in & they cut to a heavy set Mexican guy with a giant mustache? That scene was hilarious because the of how ridiculous the stuntman looked dressed as a woman with that much facial hair. Perhaps they just knew comdey gold when they saw it.
Jason, that’s exactly his point – the fact that you wrote “dressed as a woman” vs. “wearing a dress” indicates how lopsided the gendering of clothing is and how constrictive that is to males – we don’t say that a woman in slacks is “dressed as a man.” If those guys were in an elevator with a person with soft facial features and makeup, long hair, an obvious bosom, and wearing jeans, they most likely would not have so much as snickered. But a man in a skirt or dress is considered automatically to be “in drag.” Why do we… Read more »
This reminds me of the pronoun issue, that we use “he” or “him” when gender is unspecified. Does it mean that the masculine pronoun is more important, or does it mean that the feminine is too special to be used on a male? In the case of cross-dressing, might a man in women’s clothing be considered to be ridiculous because women are naturally more “beautiful” and therefore for a man to elicit that appeal is silly? Because in Western society, women are simply considered to be more physically attractive than men. Like the song goes, “A woman is a woman,… Read more »
Hi Nico, I just wanted to say that while I absolutely loved the content of this article and was very moved by your message, what I loved most was your style of writing. I loved that while the article was about mixed messages of gender and sexuality and the confusion and upset that that can cause people, throughout it you kept changing the way you represented your own gender and sexuality. That was impressive to me. Anyway, the way you think and express yourself is incredibly unique and inspiring, anyone who has you in their lives must count themselves very… Read more »
“I’m interpellated as “that girl,” “a chick on the internet,” “this whore” or just “some c*nt,” and my femaleness is never mentioned with respect. No one ever says, “O’ wise woman, thou hast shown me why fat-shaming is bad form.” They say, “Stop being so easily offended, bitch.” Femaleness is used to discredit me in a way that maleness is not. No one has ever said, “This guy is an asshole” or “Dude doesn’t know what he’s talking about.” Because maleness is our societal default setting, it’s never mentioned.” Speak for yourself. I’ve copped creep, virgin, basement dweller, loser, fattie,… Read more »
I agree Archy. But I think the reason behind this hostile internet environment, is the anonymity. People are anonymous and they can say and write whatever they want with little repercussion.
In the past I was against any form of censure and control of the internet. Nowadays, not so much. IMO the best way is to remove the anonymity making internet a more tame place. Ideal for hobbys, families, children, business etc. And on the other hand, giving darknet (the hidden underground internet) a more solid infrastructure and better and fast access.
The words girl, chick, whore and c*nt reference the female gender.
The words creep, virgin, basement dweller, loser, fattie, geek, nerd, asshole, and privileged do not reference gender.
That’s about where your logic lost me.
Many of them reference males only. Thanks for the dismissal.
I don’t think she is dismissing you, I think she is disagreeing with you on a point in your post.
That said, being a grouchy, smartass person, I’ve used all those terms to refer to men and women. (Except basement dweller. I’ve never called anyone of any gender that, but it seems like any one can live in a basement.) Which ones do you feel reference makes only? Just curious.
I think we get past the group vs. group mentality when we start realizing that whenever someone wants to express his or her individual self, he/she/it is expressing themselves and at the same time, analyzing, exploring, discovering, and living. Pair that with the knowledge that we are prone to mistakes and one must “fail to succeed,” and you’ll find that it starts with attitude. Not to say your attitude was lacking in positivity when you wrote your post, but it sure seemed that way. It’s a fight to not fight, and it’s hard as hell.
Well said, Archy. I always enjoy your comments. Incisive and to the point. To Kym: I see what your point is, and there is a little merit to it in a specific sense, in that some of Archy’s examples of name-calling are a LITTLE less gender-specific. But honestly, not much; women don’t get categorized as creepy loner loser virgins who are nevertheless privileged simply because of their sex. Women have their own issues, to be sure, and they ARE a big deal, but like Geico’s 15 minutes can save you 15%, everyone knows that. The fight against female oppression has… Read more »
Thank you so much for this, Nico! I’ve been thinking about this topic a lot lately. I generally like my name since it’s unique and a nod to my heritage, but I’m tired of the unpleasantness (which you described more eloquently than I can) that can come from the explicit femaleness of my name. It makes me sad that our society is set up to make a person feel that way. It’s also frustrating because a name is one thing, but in-person interractions quite another. As a petite woman, there’s not much I can do about my “dainty” appearance, and… Read more »
omg! Finally someone who appreciates Christina Hendricks like I do! Um, I’m sure there was more to your article…but that’s what I took away from it. 🙂
Naw, seriously though, great article. It brings to mind the Quentin Crisp quote from Celluloid Closet, “There’s no sin like being a woman,” when talking about Marlene Dietrich in Morocco.