Things I’ve Learned From Writing Under A Gender-Neutral Name [View all]

[redqueen]

This is one of the best things I've read all year. Someone posted a link in the giant thread about how bad men have it and how we women just don't understand. I clicked the link and read it after the thread was locked, and I searched but didn't find it again, so a hat tip to whoever posted this. Thank you!

(UPDATE: That hat tip goes to Tien1985, my new favorite DUer! )


He so brilliantly describes what is so losthesome about Katy Perry. I think I'm in love.

(To any potential jurors, please note he is not using certain terms to insult. He is referring to them in a discussion about their use and impact, thanks.)

Things I’ve Learned From Writing Under A Gender-Neutral Name
MAR. 3, 2013
By NICO LANG

...

But the comment I get more often than any other is people questioning my gender — which I often don’t make explicit. At first it wasn’t a conscious decision, but as someone who dabbles in dating columns, I noticed that respondents would automatically assume that I was female. They would look at my name, which could go either way on the gender divide, and check the female box every single time. Even in pieces where I did briefly bring up the fact of my assigned sex, the comment board would somehow miss that part. Any fact that didn’t support the discourse of my femaleness would be left out, not part of the dominant narrative of my gender.

...

This sort of thing happens to me all the time on the internet. When I’m writing a dating piece, commenters automatically assume that I’m a woman. If I’m writing on the Women’s section on Huffington Post, that makes sense to me—because the title of the section interpellates my gender. However, on Thought Catalog, my columns give the reader no marker by which to assume my gender, yet it’s projected onto my work in telling ways. That readers assume a dating columnist would be female isn’t a shock, because society tells us that women are supposed to be the only ones that obsess over a relationship and analyze everything to death.

...

But this question should be equally insulting to heterosexual couples, as it assumes total masculinity and total femininity. Being the “man” and the “woman” reaffirms limiting power hierarchies that we should be problematizing. We should be challenging what those terms mean and building a society where femininity is seen as strong and positive. We should all want to be the woman. Who wants to live in a society where little girls will grow up being ashamed of their gender and learning to hate other women, in order to externalize their own self-hatred? When we ask women to tear each other down, it’s because we’re asking them to be punished. It’s that Eve bullshit all over again.

...

Interestingly, the only time that my maleness comes into play is when respondents dismiss me because of my perceived sexuality. I interchangeably call myself bi- or pansexual, which really just means that application is open to all (especially Christina Hendricks), but my queerness usually gets coopted by the binary. I’m never silenced for being a “heterosexual male” but a “faggot” —another marker of feminization.

...

http://thoughtcatalog.com/2013/things-ive-learned-from-writing-under-a-gender-neutral-name/