Man up. There's a phrase.
Showing posts with label transgender. Show all posts
Showing posts with label transgender. Show all posts
Wednesday, 7 August 2013
Tuesday, 6 August 2013
In 1993, "50% of the women were scoring as masculine" on the Bem Sex Role Inventory...
Posted on 08:32 by Unknown
... "a 1971 survey that uses gender stereotypes to classify personalities as masculine, feminine or otherwise," which surprised Jean M. Twenge, who was a student at the University of Chicago and — we're told in this NYT article — a "Minnesota native and a childhood tomboy" who "had once planned on a career in gender studies."
I'm putting up this post because of the connection to the previous post, which I ended with a recommendation against seeing one's masculinity/femininity balance as any kind of a problem. Twenge took her research in another direction, and I wonder why she may have seen a career advantage in not delving into masculine and feminine stereotypes. In the constitutional case law that I teach, there's a very strong rejection of the use of sex stereotypes, but in the general culture, at least among elites, there's a lot of empathy for those who claim that their body doesn't match their psyche. But I think it's risky to point to that discrepancy. Who wants to step into that crossfire?
By the way, when I got to college, at the University of Michigan in 1969, we were given a bunch of tests, one of which gave a masculine/feminine score, and we were told all the scores but that one. The scores were reported on computer punchcards. We figured out how to read the holes on the punchcards and found our secret scores. I don't remember what I got, but the questions were such that the test was referred to as something like the "cooked carrots test," because a typical true/false statement was: "I like cooked carrots."
Dr. Twenge decided to dig up as many old studies using the Bem survey that she could find, average out their scores by year and chart them over time. “I found that across all the studies from the ’70s to the ’90s, there was a very clear upward trend in women scoring higher on this measure of stereotypically masculine traits,” she said.Twenge went on to use this method of studying generation change to focus on issues of self-esteem and narcissism, not masculinity and femininity. The article seems to attribute this shift on her happening to perceive that theme in the data. Much of the article is about critics of her methodology and what the negative dimension of narcissism really is. (Personally, I suspect that survey-takers get a higher score on a narcissism test because we used to get a stronger message that it's wrong to be selfish and "self-centered," so we self-assessed differently in the old days.)
I'm putting up this post because of the connection to the previous post, which I ended with a recommendation against seeing one's masculinity/femininity balance as any kind of a problem. Twenge took her research in another direction, and I wonder why she may have seen a career advantage in not delving into masculine and feminine stereotypes. In the constitutional case law that I teach, there's a very strong rejection of the use of sex stereotypes, but in the general culture, at least among elites, there's a lot of empathy for those who claim that their body doesn't match their psyche. But I think it's risky to point to that discrepancy. Who wants to step into that crossfire?
By the way, when I got to college, at the University of Michigan in 1969, we were given a bunch of tests, one of which gave a masculine/feminine score, and we were told all the scores but that one. The scores were reported on computer punchcards. We figured out how to read the holes on the punchcards and found our secret scores. I don't remember what I got, but the questions were such that the test was referred to as something like the "cooked carrots test," because a typical true/false statement was: "I like cooked carrots."
ABC News producer Don Ennis was happy you accepted him in transgender form as Dawn Ennis, but he's back to being Don again.
Posted on 07:33 by Unknown
... and hopes you understand:
Read the whole article at the link. There's some weird stuff about his mother giving him female hormones when he was a child to preserve his acting career, playing young. There are also photos of him as a man and in his female guise. I don't know his whole story, but I suspect there are males who have some effeminate traits that they ought to just accept as part of their individual identity. Maybe we should put more conscious effort into embracing men like this so they don't get the idea that drastic measures are needed to get to some stereotypical notion of normal. Let both males and females partake of masculinity and femininity in whatever proportion and balance feels normal to them. To regard an unusual balance as a problem is to reinforce stereotypes, as if stereotypes are good. But elsewhere in life, we reject stereotyping.
“I accused my wife of playing some kind of cruel joke, dressing me up in a wig and bra and making fake ID’s with the name ‘Dawn’ on it. Seriously” Ennis wrote....He claims to have had amnesia at that point:
“It became obvious this was not the case once I took off the bra — and discovered two reasons I was wearing one,” he said, referring to his hormone-induced breasts. “I thought it was 1999 . . . and I was sure as hell that I was a man,” Ennis said...
“Fortunately, my memories of the last 14 years have since returned. But what did not return was my identity as Dawn.... I have retained the much different mind-set I had in 1999: I am now totally, completely, unabashedly male in my mind, despite my physical attributes.... I’m asking all of you who accepted me as a transgender to now understand: I was misdiagnosed...."Let this be a lesson to... whomever the shoe fits.
“The new change I’m revealing to you today did not arise because I couldn’t hack it, or people wouldn’t accept the new/real/female ‘me,’ or I had trouble finding shoes that fit...”....
Read the whole article at the link. There's some weird stuff about his mother giving him female hormones when he was a child to preserve his acting career, playing young. There are also photos of him as a man and in his female guise. I don't know his whole story, but I suspect there are males who have some effeminate traits that they ought to just accept as part of their individual identity. Maybe we should put more conscious effort into embracing men like this so they don't get the idea that drastic measures are needed to get to some stereotypical notion of normal. Let both males and females partake of masculinity and femininity in whatever proportion and balance feels normal to them. To regard an unusual balance as a problem is to reinforce stereotypes, as if stereotypes are good. But elsewhere in life, we reject stereotyping.
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