I was talking with a dear friend about gender not too long ago, so how about a post about that?
Before delving into my thoughts on it, the above picture contains two characters I haven't mentioned before, Nova the fox and Vindte the cockatoo. These two, along with Carl, are relevant to today's topic because I originally created all three characters when I was exploring the prospect of being non-binary rather than specifically femme. Nova is agender while Vindte is genderfluid (and able to morph their body to match), so these two allowed me to explore the idea of having no gender or a lot of gender, respectively.
Carl was originally just some unspecified OC gender, allowing me to explore the prospect of still having some kind of singular gender while outside the boundaries of what most people think of when they think of "gender". But, as I think I mentioned, she gradually became a girl along with me... but I think she's still less inclined to "be feminine" than most of my other characters, regardless (unless it suits whatever interest she's indulging on any particular day).
Anyway, onto the actual thoughts.
What is gender? Webster's English Dictionary defines it as Well, I get the impression humans are collectively at a place where we've realized we haven't actually sorted that out as much as we could have.
To be blunt, I do think it started off by working to define a masculine and a feminine in regards to sex characteristics. The degree to which this was ever necessary is questionable, but power-hungry people will always do whatever they can to establish social hierarchies to their benefit, I suppose, and gender ended up being a particularly effective way of doing that.
Anyway, yadda yadda yadda, I think we all know about the problems with all that. Let's be optimistic and assume we eventually put those power structures behind us. Would this mean gender is now unnecessary? Personally, I don't think it would.
I compare the differences between genders to the differences between countries. Back when transportation was limited to walking and beasts of burden, there were physical barriers that kept different communities from interacting with each other--forests, mountains, oceans, what have you. In isolation, these different communities ended up forming their own personal cultures. Now that there's been a lot more globalization, making both travel and communication much easier, the physical barriers aren't really so relevant anymore... but does that mean the separate cultures are also irrelevant?
I don't think it does, and I don't think most others would either. Holding onto our individual cultures while working together helps us all in the long run. Similarly, ideas of gender may have been built off of physical limitations and societal biases that ideally wouldn't be relevant anymore, but nonetheless, they have formed subcultures and aesthetics that are still familiar and important to many, many people, and they still inform our images of who we are and what we're capable of becoming.
That said, I definitely don't believe in staying stuck as one thing if it makes more sense to become something new, and I definitely don't believe in a wholly binary system... already, different cultures have different ideas of what even "masculine" and "feminine" mean, and I'd also argue that even within one culture the definitions of those terms are fluid and subjective. On a personal level, I recognize and appreciate several varieties of femininity. Therefore, I see no reason why there couldn't be even more genders aside from masculinity and femininity, and there's no reason these all can't be blended together to various degrees, either.
So yeah, this comes back to the idea of being queer, where it's all about your individual personhood. Labels aren't relevant unless you want them to be relevant, and if you do, you can use existing labels or create new ones. I've found I do happen to like the label of "woman" for myself, but I feel looking at it from this broader perspective also makes it easier for me to accept everyone else as whatever they happen to be, in ways that still help me better understand who I am.
And what does femininity mean to me? I can say that cuteness and beauty play a big part of it, but I'd still need to define what those things mean, and I'm not sure how to do that (and I wouldn't even say that these traits automatically make someone or something feminine, nor does their lack make someone not feminine). "I know it when I see it" maybe feels more accurate, but is also ultimately unhelpful (and risks infringing on others' definitions of themselves).
It's maybe more accurate and useful to say that my perspective of women is informed by all the people I understand to be women. It's refined by where I see distinctions or overlap with those who don't define themselves as women. Since I'm still getting used to interacting with more queer communities on the whole, this image will continue to grow and change.
And as far as my self-image goes, I don't know that I could point to specific things in myself in order to proclaim "this is how I know I'm a woman". Rather, when I perform actions that I know are representative of who I want to be, I have discovered that I am much more comfortable and confident in doing those things if I view myself as a woman. And so that's what I do.
That's all the gender thoughts I have off the top of my head, but this probably won't be the last time I write about this. In fact, I'm planning on making a short followup post in order to help elaborate on my views of femininity.