Feminism - Now with an extra helping of gender roles

[Weeping Sore]

no need to identify a priori certain tasks as 'masculine' and then impute masculinity to the persons performing them!

pooping is feminine because it's kind of like having a baby.

[Prince Alexander]

To address the main topic, I think that gender is defined by culture for the most part, and for the some part, with size.

Men, on average, are bigger and stronger than women, and this tends to make them more physically competitive, assertive, etc.

There is a myth of gentle giant, but a gentle giant is likely fat, slow and weak. Actual strong big people, are almost all quite dominant or even aggressive. I'm not super tall, but even at 6 feet and well built I feel dominant in most environments and get looks or attitudes of competition from shorter males. Because of natural sex-related gender differences (breasts, hips), and given size diff men tend to be naturally inclined to behave dominant(which leads to also being protective or dismissing, e.g. sexism) of women.

Considering I've been in the following anecdotal situations from my youth:

-A 14 yo girl was flat and with short haircut, I didn't know she was a girl even after a few days of camping with her, and didn't believe her when she told me. For the way she acted, I was 100% sure she was a boy, it wasn't masculine or anything, she basically looked like an average boy

-A taller athletic built girl took absolutely no shit from anyone and boys wouldn't ever bother her like they bothered other girls

-A boy played with girls all the time, then he grew up and they kicked him out

All of theses are kids examples, which I consider purest because kids are least shaped by gender culture.

You can observe size compeition in boy kids too.

-shorter boys try to bully taller/bigger boys to prove their place in the hierarchy

-everyone makes fun of crying boys, "what are you a girl"? This actually translates to "what are you, weak as a girl? You know girls are smaller and weaker, you should be strong because you were born strong."

-playing with girls is wrong because they are smaller and weaker, if you play with them you admit to being small or weak

-big strong boys are almost always the pack leaders/alphas. They typically have 2-3 boys who are just as strong but a little shorter, or short but violent ones as their lackeys/betas (I was one of these personally, our alpha was a full head taller than me).

Because playground/middle school is hardly a representation of adult life, of course rationally we know that size is largely irrelevant. Most of powerful people out there come in a variety of sizes and backgrounds. But then we also have to consider that most of culture's values are constructed. Does short tom cruise really matter as an actor in a room full of huge tall firemen?

tldr: I think physical size and strength has a huge impact on gender behaviour naturally, and is unrelated to culture shaping gender.

[Lily Valley]

Next up: Our phrenology expert will weigh in on this important issue.

[sologdin]

I'm going to open a phallology clinic, whereby genital measurements are used to deduce moral complexion and gender ideology.

[kungtotte]

What will be the primary factor, sologdin? Texture? Topology? Hue?

[sologdin]

I leave that to the clinicians, whose professional expertise can't be overstated, and who have developed a number of organic orifices specifically suited for phallological assessment.

[Weeping Sore]

I leave that to the clinicians, whose professional expertise can't be overstated, and who have developed a number of organic orifices specifically suited for phallological assessment.

I think the orifices have razorlike concentric dentata that constrict like a camera aperture; the apendage is then evaluated by dead weight.

[Forbidden]

To address the main topic, I think that gender is defined by culture for the most part, and for the some part, with size.

Men, on average, are bigger and stronger than women, and this tends to make them more physically competitive, assertive, etc.

There is a myth of gentle giant, but a gentle giant is likely fat, slow and weak. Actual strong big people, are almost all quite dominant or even aggressive. I'm not super tall, but even at 6 feet and well built I feel dominant in most environments and get looks or attitudes of competition from shorter males. Because of natural sex-related gender differences (breasts, hips), and given size diff men tend to be naturally inclined to behave dominant(which leads to also being protective or dismissing, e.g. sexism) of women.

Considering I've been in the following anecdotal situations from my youth:

-A 14 yo girl was flat and with short haircut, I didn't know she was a girl even after a few days of camping with her, and didn't believe her when she told me. For the way she acted, I was 100% sure she was a boy, it wasn't masculine or anything, she basically looked like an average boy

-A taller athletic built girl took absolutely no shit from anyone and boys wouldn't ever bother her like they bothered other girls

-A boy played with girls all the time, then he grew up and they kicked him out

All of theses are kids examples, which I consider purest because kids are least shaped by gender culture.

You can observe size compeition in boy kids too.

-shorter boys try to bully taller/bigger boys to prove their place in the hierarchy

-everyone makes fun of crying boys, "what are you a girl"? This actually translates to "what are you, weak as a girl? You know girls are smaller and weaker, you should be strong because you were born strong."

-playing with girls is wrong because they are smaller and weaker, if you play with them you admit to being small or weak

-big strong boys are almost always the pack leaders/alphas. They typically have 2-3 boys who are just as strong but a little shorter, or short but violent ones as their lackeys/betas (I was one of these personally, our alpha was a full head taller than me).

Because playground/middle school is hardly a representation of adult life, of course rationally we know that size is largely irrelevant. Most of powerful people out there come in a variety of sizes and backgrounds. But then we also have to consider that most of culture's values are constructed. Does short tom cruise really matter as an actor in a room full of huge tall firemen?

tldr: I think physical size and strength has a huge impact on gender behaviour naturally, and is unrelated to culture shaping gender.

Unfortonately, males have this emotional castration put on them, and I think feminism helped relieve that a little... we are emotional beings, deal with it. Why are women allowed to cry, and men not? Its just idiotic. And it isnt a sign of weakness even, we all have emotions, it's just that men typicaly repress them.

[Kalbear]

Again this shows a very US centric viewpoint; other cultures have significantly different gender differentiations that have very little to do with things like 'size'.

[sologdin]

our clinicians can assess for metrics other than girth, length, mass, if you so desire, and can afford the fee.

[Lily Valley]

Unfortunately Kal, you can't blame PA on the United States. I .would also like to take this opportunity to smugly point out that the need for better science education is not just a problem in the US.

On topic, I'd also like to point out that PA appears to truly believe that being big, strong and "dominant" is essential to masculinity and leadership. I could not have written a better example of how sexism and rigid gender roles hurt men.

Solo, didn't they close a clinic like this on Canal Street? IIRC, it was wildly successful. Whatever shall you do with all that pesky money?

[TrueMetis]

Unfortonately, males have this emotional castration put on them, and I think feminism helped relieve that a little... we are emotional beings, deal with it. Why are women allowed to cry, and men not? Its just idiotic. And it isnt a sign of weakness even, we all have emotions, it's just that men typicaly repress them.

I do recall reading about a study that said men cry less being a cross cultural thing. Though at the time I didn't get the chance to read the actual study so it could have been a crap study. Still it wouldn't be to terribly surprising if something like crying was different between men and women even outside cultural expectations.

[Larry of the Lawn]

pooping is feminine because it's kind of like having a baby.

WS, I kind of love you.

To address the main topic, I think that gender is defined by culture for the most part, and for the some part, with size.

Men, on average, are bigger and stronger than women, and this tends to make them more physically competitive, assertive, etc.

There is a myth of gentle giant, but a gentle giant is likely fat, slow and weak. Actual strong big people, are almost all quite dominant or even aggressive. I'm not super tall, but even at 6 feet and well built I feel dominant in most environments and get looks or attitudes of competition from shorter males. Because of natural sex-related gender differences (breasts, hips), and given size diff men tend to be naturally inclined to behave dominant(which leads to also being protective or dismissing, e.g. sexism) of women.

Considering I've been in the following anecdotal situations from my youth:

-A 14 yo girl was flat and with short haircut, I didn't know she was a girl even after a few days of camping with her, and didn't believe her when she told me. For the way she acted, I was 100% sure she was a boy, it wasn't masculine or anything, she basically looked like an average boy

-A taller athletic built girl took absolutely no shit from anyone and boys wouldn't ever bother her like they bothered other girls

-A boy played with girls all the time, then he grew up and they kicked him out

All of theses are kids examples, which I consider purest because kids are least shaped by gender culture.

You can observe size compeition in boy kids too.

-shorter boys try to bully taller/bigger boys to prove their place in the hierarchy

-everyone makes fun of crying boys, "what are you a girl"? This actually translates to "what are you, weak as a girl? You know girls are smaller and weaker, you should be strong because you were born strong."

-playing with girls is wrong because they are smaller and weaker, if you play with them you admit to being small or weak

-big strong boys are almost always the pack leaders/alphas. They typically have 2-3 boys who are just as strong but a little shorter, or short but violent ones as their lackeys/betas (I was one of these personally, our alpha was a full head taller than me).

Because playground/middle school is hardly a representation of adult life, of course rationally we know that size is largely irrelevant. Most of powerful people out there come in a variety of sizes and backgrounds. But then we also have to consider that most of culture's values are constructed. Does short tom cruise really matter as an actor in a room full of huge tall firemen?

tldr: I think physical size and strength has a huge impact on gender behaviour naturally, and is unrelated to culture shaping gender.

I'm going to disagree with this. While kids might have fewer preconceived notions of gender, they're under more pressure than any other age group to conform to specific ideas of masculinity and femininity.

Again this shows a very US centric viewpoint; other cultures have significantly different gender differentiations that have very little to do with things like 'size'.

LOLsmallcountries

[Castel]

sigh, nvm.

[Lyanna Stark]

Weeeh, 5 minutes to post something! :p

Interesting that you pointed to Peeta as an odd gender-role choice, because I think it goes double for Finnick, who really was the opposite of the man-with-tits archetype. Finnick seemed like a woman written as a man. He's always described as beautiful, and when he's introduced, Katniss is quite wary of his charms. But during the games, he is always in a supporting role, in spite of being the biggest and strongest. It is later revealed that his one true love was being held hostage by the Capitol, and that he was blackmailed into providing sexual services to the elites (which probably included men). Once his love is rescued they are happily married, and he fades into the background as a supporting character.
Does anyone else agree that this seems like a role that is typically filled by a woman? I feel like he was sort of the embodiment of a lot of feminine gender roles in a way that is rarely seen in a straight male character. That's not to say that he was a bad character, any more than man-tits character is necessarily bad, it is just an usual reversal.

I think you're right in that Finnick's character is put in a place which may traditionally be occupied by a female character, especially as he was traded for sexual services and gets back at people (mostly President Snow) by using their secrets against them, so sure, so far I think so. However,

He also dies heroically in the last novel so that Katniss can go on, while leaving the pregnant wife behind, so there he kinda falls back in a traditional male hero role

so I think for him, it's just that he's just not limited to one, but like a lot of the other characters manages to subvert some gender roles while sticking to others, making for a more interesting mix.

When it comes to traditionally male characters I guess Gale stands out as being a pretty close match, as I really don't see him as subversive at all. I guess in Finnick vs Peeta, it's probably partly based in that we know more about Peeta, and how Finnick comes across as the more martial and deadly. We also have Peeta being portrayed as the more compassionate, more collaborative self-sacrificing character, and in many ways seems to take Prim's role from "Catching Fire" and onwards in that Katniss focuses on "Person X needs to survive and I need to save him/her" and it goes from being Prim in "The Hunger Games" to Peeta in the later novels. If you look at other things he does, as well, he bakes, decorates and is an artist, which are traditionally very feminine pursuits. (While Katniss' prefers to hunt.)

In general I think quite a few characters in The Hunger Game trilogy manage to encompass a pretty decent amount of non-stereotypical gender roles for such a limited narrative (I actually hate both First person AND present tense narratives in general :lol: So I liked the novels despite how jarring that was to read for me.)

Re: the heitght issue: there are probably quite a few reasons for going for higher men, but the one that immideately springs to mind is that there is a height difference on average. Hence, you would expect that 'guy taller' would become the statistical norm. I can see this helping shape expectations so that over time, it would be seen as the way it should be.

Even though there is a height difference on average, it does not explain why women are so extremely conscious about height differences either. There seems to be some mechanic at work that is not explained by statistics.

[Lyanna Stark]

I've got to admit I hadn't really thought about that aspect of Peta and Katniss' relationship before now. The relationships in the hunger games pretty much universally annoy me but that aspect is well done.

The relationships I found almost the most fascinating piece since they're so..unusual? Kinda strange? Paranoid? Broken? Lots of words come to mind, but I liked them for different reasons, one of the main ones being that Katniss never mopes about "Oh woes my broken heart" ever. It just doesn't even enter her mind, not once. She's got a prioritised list and survival of her and the few people she cares about seem to inhabit the first hundred or so places on that list. In my mind I compared her to Bella from "Twilight" who spends something like 80% of her time being miserable about being unpopular or about being in love with a sparkly vampire. When Imminent Death is imminent, she just sort of welcomes it, as a sort of sacrifice. Her sparkly boyfriend is stalky and broody and shows off his Manliness by being rich, super fast, super strong and about a million times better at everything.

"Twilight"'s take on the love triangle is also quite dull, as Jacob never stands a chance and it's broadcast clearly from the very beginning. But at least it creates Brooding, Sadness and Emo.

The Hunger Games love triangle is handled completely differently in that for one, there is just not that much brooding and emo over it. The Sadness and Emo are normally directed at more serious stuff, like deaths of other Players, friends or family. It kinda happens in action, as it were and there's no "fighting" about the girl or anything.

I think one of the articles also went in to how it was love by choice, or love by action, which I think is a good description. It wasn't just some hormonal thing, or like most romance novels tend to do with relationships "and they found each other hot" as an explanation for every single relationship ever. Here it takes almost two novels for Katniss to even describe Peeta in terms of good looks, and once he has been hijacked, he comments that she's not very pretty at all. Gale and Finnick you can pick up on being traditionally beautiful, mostly based on how others describe them (as being "camera ready" for instance) but the variation in how Katniss and Peeta describe each other follows their emotional attachment instead.

A fair distance from a lot of common romance tropes which for instance a lot of Urban Fantasy, including Twilight, seems to suffer from.

(As a side note, it made me LOL when I thought of the ship-name for Katniss and Peeta. Of course there is a prettier official name (apparently. and yes I googled this!), but still, it made me five years old again. :lol: )

To loop back around to why I don't like the conflation in the jezebel piece, the argument being made about how Katniss gets to express different gender with different partners isn't even referring to her gender expression. She is always a feminine woman, even in her arena outfits I very much read her as feminine (granted this is based on jlaw, not the book) and this doesn't change with either of her partners. Likewise Peeta never strikes me as feminine in his expression. What the piece is actually referring to is the gender roles manifested in the relationship, and these absolutely are flipped from the norm with Peeta.

I also agree with you that there is a bit of a sense through it that embracing nonbinary is superior to being binary, and I think I recall Serano talking about this sentiment within queer feminist circles a fair bit in whipping girl. I find any movement like that to be ridiculous, it's supposed to be about empowering people to be themselves, not to just conform to a different ideal. For someone non binary then absolutely they should be far freer than is possible in todays society to embrace that and live it. In contrast I'm very much a binary identified woman, and a feminine one at that, telling me I can't be like that is no better than the current situation of denying non binary individuals their identity - any solution that trades the current problems for new ones is a short sighted one I'm not interested in.

I think you make some really good points (and I love Serano, I do, I do), just wanted to comment on the last that yes, what is flipped are the gender roles being flipped and not the gender expression. The point about the Jezebel piece conflating gender expression with gender roles is also a good one, I and also feel it makes it all seem very....static? restrictive? Like, you can't change yourself, it depends on your partner who you can be? I dunno.

Like you, I picked up on it and thought of Serano regarding the notion that nonbinary is superior to binary. It also feels like more of the same restrictive stuff. To me at least, one of the goals of feminism needs to be that we should be allowed to be who we are without lots of labels and strings attached to everything.

[Gneisenau]

It could be circular. Tall men have better self esteem getting them more dates, but they have better self esteem because they get more dates.

Is the idea of women and men preferring the guy to be taller a western thing ? I remeber on an Asian dating show where a women (who was a basketball player) preferred a mate's height to be at least 190cm (she was 195 cm) so she wasn't that troubled about being taller

[Glaurung]

Further, another article points out that the movie adaptations of the books are totally unapologetic about the fact that Katniss is taller than Peeta. So not only is Katniss portrayed as more badass than Peeta, she's also taller. This is not explained or lingered on in the films either, it just is. The article made me feel kinda bad for always going for taller men, on the other hand as I am nearly a dwarf myself (5'4) it would leave me with a very small (no pun intended) sample if I tried to find someone even shorter than myself. In any case, it is an interesting thing to consider. Why is it that women are so height conscious? I remember lots of my tall friends constantly wearing flats and walking hunched over. (Hopefully this won't entice an avalanche of Evo-Psych explanations of cavemen preferring to drag only short women to their lairs :P )

Well..in the books, Peeta is a very large man. He wasn't cast well in the movie. In the books he would have dwarfed Katniss.

I know you don't want to get into the whole evo-psych thing, but the reason women generally prefer taller men is largely biological in nature. Humans are nothing more than smart animals. The female of most species tend to go for the stronger male as it means they'll have stronger offspring. Height is a characteristic of strength. Female primates sought out males who were stronger who could protect them and hunt for them, and height is again, a characteristic of strength. Over time choosing these characteristics turns them into physical traits that instinctually attract the female. Women may not need men to hunt for them or protect them anymore, but you can't undo hundreds of thousands of years of evolution over a few decades/centuries. Opposites generally attract, and feminine seeks out masculine, and height is generally a masculine feature. Women may want to feel feminine due to social pressures and if they feel like they're too tall, they may seek out a taller guy to make them feel feminine. I know my ex did this with me, she was 6'1" and I'm nearly 6'4" and she told me that she didn't feem comfortable dwarfing men, so she only dated guys who were taller. At the same time, men often feel less masculine and dating a woman who is taller may make them feel less masculine than they already feel, so they will seek out shorter women....so women may feel like they are less attractive if they are taller than other men. Those last two are social constructs/gender roles, so the answer is two-fold like most things, there isn't a single cause. Biology plays a huge role though.

As for Katniss herself...I'm not sure she's really gender bending. She's feminine in my eyes. She's a normal woman in most aspects. She's a badass and takes care of her family, which may not be a traditional gender role, but I think this was forced on her more than a lifestyle she chose. When her father died, her mother became worthless and it fell on Katniss to take care of them. She took the hand she was dealt and made the most of it.

[MinDonner]

We need to get some sort of Science! award set up in here.

[Lyanna Stark]

Well..in the books, Peeta is a very large man. He wasn't cast well in the movie. In the books he would have dwarfed Katniss.

No he isn't, that's Gale. Peeta is initially described as of medium height and stocky (reference). Gale is the more than 6 feet tall dude. The reason Peeta is taller than Katniss is that she's (in the novels) described as short and small due to malnourishment. It's only in the movies that Peeta is shorter.

Those last two are social constructs/gender roles, so the answer is two-fold like most things, there isn't a single cause. Biology plays a huge role though.

Obviously nobody is looking for a single cause for anything, but the fact that the statistics are so off, and women frame their feelings of going for taller men not as "I am attracted to taller men" but that they themselves feel clumsy or "unwomanly" if they pick a smaller guy tells us something else: this is not about attraction really, the issue lies in how women think they are perceived, socially. I can testify to this myself, actually. Especially with social pressures to be slim, the worry is not that "this guy is not attractive to me" but "how will I look next to him? like a huge blob?".

There are lots of stuff out there coded as either traditionally feminine or traditionally masculine which has very little or nothing to do with biology and lots and lots to do with culture and social structures. Take skirts or dresses, for instance.

As for Katniss herself...I'm not sure she's really gender bending. She's feminine in my eyes. She's a normal woman in most aspects. She's a badass and takes care of her family, which may not be a traditional gender role, but I think this was forced on her more than a lifestyle she chose. When her father died, her mother became worthless and it fell on Katniss to take care of them. She took the hand she was dealt and made the most of it.

She inverts gender roles, as in her pursuits are not traditionally female and more specifically the dynamics in her relationship with Peeta are often reversed. While she does not choose to take care of her family, to hang on to Peeta is absolutely a choice she actively makes.