Gender Quiz

[tylik]

sar_anon asked:

1) What is your Biological Sex
2) What is your Apparent Sex (Primary and Secondary sexual characteristics)
3) What is your Gender with Percentages
4) What is your Sexual Orientation with Percentages
5) What is your Gender Orientation with Percentages

(terms that he defined here. )

I ended up answering in essays (figures) so Craig suggested I might as well post it on my own journal as well.

It got me thinking about gender, anyway. I think one of the reasons I had trouble answering a lot of the questions is that I'm not at all sure what gender means. Certainly, it seems to mean a lot more to some people than it does to me. Many of the questions I answered for what I consider societal conceptions of gender, which I don't think are inherently meaningful.

On a personal level, I'm perfectly happy to say "I'm 100% female" but what I mean by that is that I'm female in terms of biological fact, and that I think definitions of female have to stretch to include me. I'm not saying I fit anyone else's notions of being female (in fact, in some ways I mean that as an attack on some people's notions). And I'm not sure if I have ones that are strict enough to be particularly meaningful.


1) What is your Biological Sex

XX

2) What is your Apparent Sex (Primary and Secondary sexual characteristics)

That's a little skewed. I have female plumbing, fairly agressively female breasts, the waist smaller than breasts or hips bit, finer textured skin, general female hair patterns... All on a skeleton that's on the tall side and definately very heavy boned for a chick, and with tendency to bulk up that's much more typical than a man.

So I'm clearly female, except in that smaller weaker bit. (Which is pretty important from a cultural standpoint.)

3) What is your Gender with Percentages

40%F 50%N 10%M ...maybe? It's pretty approximate. I don't find that standard conceptions of gender fit me very well. I don't think I'm "unfemale" as much as I often don't think of myself in terms of gender per se (my awareness of gender in some ways developed pretty late, I think). Mostly I think the societal gender norms are pretty screwy. At least for me. In many ways I'm as drawn to masculine archetypes as to feminine -- but it's less that I'm interested in being male (though it would amusing to try out, I'll give you) than that a lot of the "masculine" character traits fit. And so do a lot of of the "feminine" ones. Mostly I think the divisions are pretty silly.

As I've been dealing with some body image issues, I've found that it's often helpful to envision myself as male from time to time. But that's more that I don't fit into conventional female standards of beauty very well, and things (mostly around being too big overall) that aren't seen as appropriate for a woman are often seen as desireable in a man.

4) What is your Sexual Orientation with Percentages

Damn near 50/50. Changes with the weather, the phase of the moon, and who I've been with recently, so at any given time I may prefer one over the other, but ideally I like at least one of each. I keep expecting to fall at least a little to one side or the other of that fence, but I keep not doing it. (Which is kind of a pain, when the vast majority of bi women I know seem to be primarily straight, or at least give their straight relationships higher priority.)

5) What is your Gender Orientation with Percentages

Ummm... I am more likely to be attracted to tall, fine featured men, especially those with long hair. It's not an exclusive sort of thing, and it's not the most important thing, but maybe half of my male lovers fall into that catagory.

Wimps annoy the heck out of me.

Women... Well, I like long hair on women, too, but it's a lot harder to abstract a physical type. It is true that I have never dated a woman taller than me, but this should be no surprise. (I've flirted with one woman who is taller than me. Maybe more than one. Hmmm. I've only *met* a handful of women who are taller than me.) I'm attracted to obviously dykey chicks all the time (I'm thinking the short hair comfortable shoes and some obvious sign of queerness) but I'm never sure how much of that is that I'm likely to be interested in chicks who aren't straight! Smaller but definate breasts (but perhaps it's just jealousy?) I don't know!

Anyhow, no way am I going to try and abstract percentages from this.

I don't know how much it's about gender for me. I mean, clearly a little, but there are other things that are more important.