The internet is a veritable playground for fun little quizzes. Facebook introduced me to the quiz that informed me I should be a Motivational Speaker. Yeah, right. Motivate this.
If I were a character on the Walking Dead, I’d be Hershel. Correct me if I’m wrong—I haven’t watched the show for several seasons now—but isn’t Hershel dead? That kinda sucks.
Some really interesting quizzes though are those that use a variation of the BEM Sex Role Inventory to assess gender identification. I took one of the quizzes I found, and the results got me to thinking about a more common complaint that I read about women writers of M/M romance—that their guys don’t act like real guys.
How does a real guy act?
How does a real girl act?
I look physically like my biological sex is “supposed” to look. I dress, groom, and appear according to expectations for a female. I scored as androgynously as it is possible to be on the gender scale. What does that mean? What does it mean for guys who don’t act like “real guys”?
Biological sex does inform some of our behaviors—there’s no getting around that. Males and females process information and emotion differently. But—if you extract cultural expectations regarding behavior—these differences are not very significant. We are programmed to behave in certain, rather than other, ways.
The gender quizzes measure traits. Gender is a cultural construct. In order for the concept of gender to exist and have effect, it must be defined. Society—our heteropatriarchal society—has assigned certain traits to each sex. These traits aren’t perceived as existing on a continuum—although they do. Males are aggressive, confident, risk-taking. Females are communicative, compassionate, affectionate.
Are they? Always?
Our place on the continuum depends on our mix of traditional male and female traits. Arbitrarily defined as one or the other by society.
In my day job, I work with several hundred men who risk their lives to help others every day. They are aggressive, confident risk-takers. They also take care of people. They are compassionate, empathetic, and communicative. In between calls, they talk—translation: chatter—gossip, and complain about every little inconvenience known to man or beast.
Are they androgynous? Is it possible that they’re not “real men”? Is it possible that we don’t have to accept our assigned traits just because of our biological sex?
Wow—can we just be? Any gender? No gender?
Can an M/M story about a guy who loves to receive flowers from his boyfriend or husband and bawls when his feelings get hurt still be a “real guy”? Maybe not like you or me—or maybe exactly like you or me—but “real” anyway?
Wouldn’t it be fucking nice if we could just be who we are without caring about male/female checkboxes and where we all fall on the gender continuum?
I’d like it.
Finally. Fucking. Fabulously free.
