Gender: People took the dimorphism found in the very good sex God created, and iterated upon it for thousands of years, and now guys are allowed to wear polo shirts and girls are allowed to wear eyeliner. Gender is made up, and changes from place to place and time to time. Our gender is the first impression we give of ourselves, and it’s extremely malleable, we can do with it as we will.
I don’t think this truly gets at the essence of what gender is, at least in my own experience of it. What you’re describing here feels like a combination of gender expression, and also the societal expectations built around gender. For me at least, my experience of gender lies somewhere below those things. It interacts with both of them, but it isn’t either of them.
The way I put it is like this. If I was raised on an island of men, and had never met a woman, nor even had the concept of gender expression, I’d still feel something. A sense of not being the same as the people around me. It wouldn’t manifest through expression, and it wouldn’t manifest through cultural definitions of gender, because I wouldn’t have those concepts. There would be a nameless something though, that I lacked the words to describe, that would exist even in that scenario, and that is where my own experience of gender lies.
I don’t think this truly gets at the essence of what gender is, at least in my own experience of it. What you’re describing here feels like a combination of gender expression, and also the societal expectations built around gender. For me at least, my experience of gender lies somewhere below those things. It interacts with both of them, but it isn’t either of them.
The way I put it is like this. If I was raised on an island of men, and had never met a woman, nor even had the concept of gender expression, I’d still feel something. A sense of not being the same as the people around me. It wouldn’t manifest through expression, and it wouldn’t manifest through cultural definitions of gender, because I wouldn’t have those concepts. There would be a nameless something though, that I lacked the words to describe, that would exist even in that scenario, and that is where my own experience of gender lies.