Thank you Dr. Perlita for the explanation and citations. Very clear.
I would like to add one psychotherapist's point of view. Gender is a social construct that varies over time and across cultures. As far as I know, every culture has assigned gender roles, although some have more than two genders. I believe this is because our brains function by creating and following patterns of perceiving and patterns of behaving that are usually culturally consistent. We need patterns to function. Some people have more rigid patterns, and get very upset when something does not fit their patterns. Other people have more flexible patterns and can adjust more easily to change. Others have learned chaotic patterns and cannot function coherently. The fact of needing patterns is a biological need; it is how our brains function. I believe gender roles are an example of such patterns. Social content filling a biological and social function.
When I saw this topic, I had a little different interest than the direction this discussion has taken so far. For me, it is an issue of understanding what it means to me to be transgendered. Partly it touches my internal debate. One the one hand, my logical side argues that I was assigned a male identity at birth based on my physical morphology and chromosomes. I lived, more or less successfully as a male for almost six decades. It is not logical to think at this late date that I am really a woman inside. One the other hand, my intuitive, experiential side expresses the unhappiness I have always felt, the lack of fit. I experience "fit" when I wear women's clothes, and wear my (long) hair down. I feel comfort when I shave my legs (a totally cultural artifact). I love being called mam, and regret the frequent embarrassed follow-up of "oh, sorry; sir". And I felt such relief when I realized one day dressed in my male work "drab," that the clothes do not make me male or female. A woman could wear what I was wearing - was wearing what I was wearing. Gender markers invite others to identify me as male of female. I decide what I really am. But how? Why? Why am I not accepting the "logical" answer?
As a therapist specializing in stopping domestic violence and abuse, I also have spent a significant part of my life trying to "deconstruct" male behavior - especially the negative male identified behaviors of violence, destructive competition, bragging, dominance, and so forth. I have a career trying to help men (and women) stop being violent and abusive. I also try to help women (and men) stop being self-destructively co-dependent. Some of these problems clearly come from how societies and families raise boys and girls to be men and women.
So, eventually, I thought, "why would I or anyone want to be one of the violent self-absorbed and self-destructive limited people that men are taught to be - male privilege notwithstanding." I try to help damaged men (and women) heal and be less trapped in what they learned that does not work. And I try to make sense of my own dissatisfaction with being assigned maleness. After all, I was trying to be part of the solution; a different kind of male.
Alternatively, I appreciate what I have learned from my trans brothers who do not show the negative characteristics I associate with socialized maleness. Being male is not - per se - bad. The social stereotypes are not the core of maleness - whatever that is. Some people are "OK" with being male.
I think gender roles are social explanations and prescriptions for gender identity, but gender identity is not at its core socially determined.
If I have to stay male I will die. It is not me no matter what my body and almost everyone around me tells me.
So what is it in me that says this? What is this "not logical" drive? Why am I not alive in my "assigned" gender? It would be so much simpler. More logical and socially accepted, approved and so on.
From my perspective gender roles are all too real, too much of a barrier and a trap, too overwhelming even as I cannot accept them as valid, or accept living within them any longer.
So, back to the original question; do some trans-people over-do the gender role markers while they are learning their new behavior? I think over-doing is a natural part of learning a new way of being in the world. Gender role stereotypes give a "pattern-map" for how to behave for someone who was raised to behave differently. It makes sense people would over-do at first just as teenagers sometimes do. Later, with more experience it is easier to have the confidence to do what ever you want.
Sorry for rambling a little, but I really need to work this through. And thank you Violet for the original question.
Kendall
(a 61 year old child)
