I have a question for people here? Let me explain more... i am a genetic girl and i have always been girly, ever since i was little i gravitated towards feminine things you know the usual, fairy cakes, dresses, easy bake ovens, barbie dolls... this would seem normal to most people since they expect girls to like these things.. when i was little i played with dolls, did ballet and liked pink but it was mostly because that is what i like i never felt like these things were pushed on me by my parents or other members of society and i didnt like them because i felt like that is what i was expected to like. I believe IMHO that these things are more naturally inclined than socially constructed.. in my experience i like being feminine because that's just how i am and i had never really thought about the possible role of society in gender roles until my aunt came out as transgender than i was introduced to a whole other world of people with different views and opinions... i am in a band with 5 guys- all very masculine and apart from that it's a metal band a music genre that is almost completely a male dominated genre... but i dont get treated like i am just the girl in the band,,, maybe in the beginning i was treated differently because i am a girl but now i dont.  they treat me as their equal and most people dont criticize me for being in a band and playing in a genre that's
"supposed to be for guys" there are some people who tell me things like "go back to the kitchen" and old lame jokes like that but its less frequent.... there are people who expect me to look and act more masculine just because of the music i like but what comes naturally to me is being a girly girl, some people thought that being surrounded by an army of sweaty boys in a music genre "fueled by testosterone" that i would change.... just like some people (such as my aunt) think that joining the army or doing something else masculine is going to change who they are inside... which has nothing to do with society but just who they are... So is it fair to say that all or most"gendered interests" are all constructs or just natural?

Some people make it seem like you can get "raised into" interests but honestly that doesn't seem realistic to me... with things, you either like them or you don't. I never got into masculine things, whether they were pushed on me or not. I played barbies and house with my sister even though I was a "boy", I never liked the army men and GI Joes that the boys across the street were obsessed with. I never wanted to join sports teams or play football at recess even though all the boys were doing it. I never wanted to join the army or collect weapons or talk about cars or... I don't know, just all those things that people would have expected me to have some interest in. All that ultimately happened was I just didn't like doing masculine hobbies and I didn't fit in with boys or learn to "be male". That is all a foreign world to me.

I don't think you can just force a different gender and different-gendered activities on someone. So I don't think gender is just a social construct. And if you could raise someone to actually like being the wrong gender, nobody would need to transition. Well, that's clearly not the case. 

gender is born-in but social conditioning/nurture can stifle or modify it so much that it cannot ever be let out.

enjoy your music and be as girlie as you want.

I think women are affected by social conditioning more than men because of how their brains tend to work. Like in the example you stated, why are there hardly any women in metal bands, and if there are why are they almost always vocalists? Can they not play instruments? I've not seen many decent girl guitarists aside from Lori Linstruth and a couple others on Youtube.

I believe the whole idea of men being the voicepieces of "logic and reason" is partly true, because from my experience their interests are much broader than your average woman's. I never allowed my mum to condition me as a child, I did what I wanted and what I wanted was in no way influenced by media/parental conditioning, but rather through awareness of different subjects and notions. No doubt I listened to my mum, but I took what I believed was right (or was naive about and possibly later changed) and disregarded anything I didn't agree with.

Gender is very much a biological contruct, in the sense that a person's behaviour is determined by how their brain is wired, and male/female brains differ. The spectrum is however rather fluid and can overlap at any time. The same theory can be applied to different species/sub-species of animals etc... but it's one of those subjects that better kept simple rather than overcomplicated.

Like others, I also don't think that "gendered interests" are purely social constructs.

For example, there isn't really any stigma associated with girls doing engineering where I am (in contrast to, for example, boys playing with dolls or girls playing in bands). But still, few girls seem interested in engineering, even though there is no social pressure that keeps girls away.

I have just returned from a second retreat on Gender and Sexuality Diversity, where this was one of the things discussed. 
One of the conveners , Mani Bruce Mitchell is an Intersex person, and has written extensively, and made several films on the subject.  She (current preference) is able to hold both male and female identities at the same time, which is supposedly impossible, and sees them as distinctly different core identities.

There was also a documentary shown which looked at the results of the treatment model invented without any supporting evidence, by Dr John Money, that imposed a nurture-only regime on many children worldwide.  All the evidence shows that this was a total failure that has traumatised the children it was inflicted on. 

There are plenty of transsexuals here who have suffered a non-surgical version of the same idea, who would agree that you can't "make" someone be who they are not wired up to be.  Society can form how we perform the gender roles we adopt, but not specify which gender we identify as.

That's my two bobs worth.

Karen.

PS. If you are straight, then being in an environment full of masculine guys should be nearly as much fun as shooting fish in a barrel!!

That one of those mixed bags.  There will be a large list of things you can be interested in.  That just who you are, how your wired.  Then from there it's a matter of what you are exposed to.  But if it's not on the list of things your predisposed to, it won't take. 

I feel strongly about that because well  I wasn't just exposed to manly things I was pushed to them and I even tried to force my self to them.  But I'm a girl deep down.  I like girlly things.  I do have some very tomboy interests.  But that's because the things a person is predisposed to be intrested in is a much bigger list then you think.  But on the whole my interests are mostly "Girly"

You picked a really good place to ask because most of the people here have tried to like things there not intrested in.  So we totlaly get how you can be girly and like metal. 

Jennifer

Quote from: 8888 on November 30, 2011, 05:05:49 AM
I believe the whole idea of men being the voicepieces of "logic and reason" is partly true, because from my experience their interests are much broader than your average woman's. I

Smooth non sequitir, Mr. Logic And Reason 

And how many interests does the average guy actually have? Not that many. 'Cause average people have an average number of interests, male or female. Call of Duty and sports cars are not more legitimate interests than fashion and chick flicks.

Quote from: pretty on November 30, 2011, 03:46:59 AM
I don't think you can just force a different gender and different-gendered activities on someone. So I don't think gender is just a social construct. And if you could raise someone to actually like being the wrong gender, nobody would need to transition. Well, that's clearly not the case. 

I didn't transition because I wanted to do feminine things. I could have been a feminine bloke, they exist. I transitioned because my body was wrong. Two completely different concepts.

Quote from: Sarah7 on November 30, 2011, 01:22:48 PM
I didn't transition because I wanted to do feminine things. I could have been a feminine bloke, they exist. I transitioned because my body was wrong. Two completely different concepts.

do you have BDD?

Quote from: pretty on November 30, 2011, 01:53:07 PM
do you have BDD?

Not really. BDD is a preoccupation with imagined or trivial defects of appearance. My defects were/are pretty definitive.

You just nailed it, for me it was just natural but playing with Barbie dolls was a terrible thing in the eyes of my parents so they beat the crap out of me to make me a man.
I could only be myself in stolen moments when i was alone.
The girly things were natural, so when I was old enough to make things right I just did, since than I can be my natural self without disturbing anybody.

I totally agree with you Marta, i was always inclined to girly things naturally...

Quote from: justmeinoz on November 30, 2011, 05:17:49 AM
One of the conveners , Mani Bruce Mitchell is an Intersex person, and has written extensively, and made several films on the subject.  She (current preference) is able to hold both male and female identities at the same time, which is supposedly impossible, and sees them as distinctly different core identities.

Oh, we can do that to an extent.  We discovered that the gender of our personalities is partially mutable, but we don't play with this fact too often because it makes us uncomfortable if we are in our "opposite gender" for too long.  We  have six female personalities and two male personalities, and most of them have been genderswitched at least once.

We wouldn't really say that our opposite genders are different identities, per se.  But, they are different from our normal selves.  It changes the way we feel about ourselves, and often how we relate to others.  In at least two cases, our opposite gender identities have actually changed our interests in some way.

Normally, we don't really identify with a gender when we are presenting together.  Even though the majority of our personalities are female, our male personalities are very strong.  Our fifth personality actually prevents us from being too feminine, as it makes the guys uncomfortable.  Number Five is the one who sort of regulates what everyone else does.  He won't let us be too feminine because it embarrasses the guys, and he helps us control our second personality when he gets too rowdy.