What I find interesting are people who “break out” of their gender-roles only to fall into conforming strictly to whatever the new one is: boys wearing skinny-jeans and deep v-necks and girls wearing their grandfather’s shoes (or ones they bought at a thrift store) and carrying a briefcase. In a sense, a man wearing women’s clothing isn’t that much different than him dressing like a goth or a punk. Gender is just the last of the great wearable ideologies to have been opened up to being monkeyed with. But we’ve now reached the point where we seem to have already entered a post-gendered and weirdly more ideologically driven world of cultural symbolism in which it is important to be seen to be breaking gender conventions (transsexualism, metro-sexuality, men’s make-up and skincare, and the skinniest skinny-jeans you have ever seeny-seen). So, in a way, the more radical act has become to rationally accept the chains by which you are fettered and break out of your comfort zone by staying exactly where you are.
Or, you know, find other gender-related things to not accept. When I was looking for a copper rod (to cut into some pieces for electron microscopy), the sellers looked at me like I was weird or something. Later, the guy who cut it for me didn’t want my money on account of me being female (but I threw it at him and escaped). And before that, the lady in the pawnshop where I tried to pawn it to get some urgently needed money to commute to work, was completely thrown (I guess they didn’t want copper much). All of these occasions were rather outside my comfort zone, but I do not see why I should not have done it.
Later, the guy who cut it for me didn’t want my money
specifically on this example; I would suggest that if you were only getting a few really short cuts it’s almost not worth the effort to charge.
For all of 5 minutes of work; factors like; accounting and working out a price and finding change and anything else involved in the transaction is not worth the effort involved. I have had similar experiences getting pieces of wood and glass cut on the fly, and people are generous enough to not charge. Was the person explicit about your gender? (even if they were, they could have been explicit about another person’s “great hat” or, “young lad”, any excuse to do someone a favour could be possible)
No, it actually took more than half an hour and about 90 cuts, and they said copper was far more viscous than the usual stuff they dealt with; and he said “I don’t charge women.”
Although yes, I believe he was being generous, and we did laugh when I was running away. It was just that after being invited to coffee at the market, I would rather we laughed over something else.
Presumably you were buying a copper rod because you needed a copper rod, and you had no choice but to be gender-noncomformant if you wanted one. It’s not as if you had an option to pick gender conformant scientific equipment and non gender conformant scientific equipment and deliberately picked the noncomformant one.
Also, there’s a difference between being considered unusual and being considered socially weird.Last time I ran into someone riding a horse on a city street I’m pretty sure I stared at him for a while—but that was because you don’t see many of those, not because I thought that someone who rode a horse in the 21st century was violating a taboo.
Ah, but the gender-conformant thing in the Department where I was a student would be to have a man buy a copper rod. Which seemed to be the understanding of all those people. One of which offered to buy me coffee. But he was drunk, so there’s that.
Generally, yes, I think it best to just disregard gender-conformity, but in a non-obvious way (for example, many women have backpacks, and many women do think handbags more feminine, and I have been advised to have a handbag, but nobody really would go to the trouble of making me do it. I had thought that small task would be just as neutral.)
What I find interesting are people who “break out” of their gender-roles only to fall into conforming strictly to whatever the new one is: boys wearing skinny-jeans and deep v-necks and girls wearing their grandfather’s shoes (or ones they bought at a thrift store) and carrying a briefcase. In a sense, a man wearing women’s clothing isn’t that much different than him dressing like a goth or a punk. Gender is just the last of the great wearable ideologies to have been opened up to being monkeyed with. But we’ve now reached the point where we seem to have already entered a post-gendered and weirdly more ideologically driven world of cultural symbolism in which it is important to be seen to be breaking gender conventions (transsexualism, metro-sexuality, men’s make-up and skincare, and the skinniest skinny-jeans you have ever seeny-seen). So, in a way, the more radical act has become to rationally accept the chains by which you are fettered and break out of your comfort zone by staying exactly where you are.
Or, you know, find other gender-related things to not accept. When I was looking for a copper rod (to cut into some pieces for electron microscopy), the sellers looked at me like I was weird or something. Later, the guy who cut it for me didn’t want my money on account of me being female (but I threw it at him and escaped). And before that, the lady in the pawnshop where I tried to pawn it to get some urgently needed money to commute to work, was completely thrown (I guess they didn’t want copper much). All of these occasions were rather outside my comfort zone, but I do not see why I should not have done it.
specifically on this example; I would suggest that if you were only getting a few really short cuts it’s almost not worth the effort to charge.
For all of 5 minutes of work; factors like; accounting and working out a price and finding change and anything else involved in the transaction is not worth the effort involved. I have had similar experiences getting pieces of wood and glass cut on the fly, and people are generous enough to not charge. Was the person explicit about your gender? (even if they were, they could have been explicit about another person’s “great hat” or, “young lad”, any excuse to do someone a favour could be possible)
No, it actually took more than half an hour and about 90 cuts, and they said copper was far more viscous than the usual stuff they dealt with; and he said “I don’t charge women.”
Although yes, I believe he was being generous, and we did laugh when I was running away. It was just that after being invited to coffee at the market, I would rather we laughed over something else.
Presumably you were buying a copper rod because you needed a copper rod, and you had no choice but to be gender-noncomformant if you wanted one. It’s not as if you had an option to pick gender conformant scientific equipment and non gender conformant scientific equipment and deliberately picked the noncomformant one.
Also, there’s a difference between being considered unusual and being considered socially weird.Last time I ran into someone riding a horse on a city street I’m pretty sure I stared at him for a while—but that was because you don’t see many of those, not because I thought that someone who rode a horse in the 21st century was violating a taboo.
Ah, but the gender-conformant thing in the Department where I was a student would be to have a man buy a copper rod. Which seemed to be the understanding of all those people. One of which offered to buy me coffee. But he was drunk, so there’s that.
Generally, yes, I think it best to just disregard gender-conformity, but in a non-obvious way (for example, many women have backpacks, and many women do think handbags more feminine, and I have been advised to have a handbag, but nobody really would go to the trouble of making me do it. I had thought that small task would be just as neutral.)