>> I don't quite grok what someone might get out of Being A Gender as opposed to Playing A Character With An Outfit <<
Let me take a shot from my own gender(queer) perspective, which has led me into a good deal of study here. I'll try to stay on topic, even though I might wind up rambling.
Your association of gender with cosplay ("Playing A Character With An Outfit") is quite accurate. Even supposedly gender-normative people often wind up performing certain aspects of their gender. So, regarding gender, even though not very many people talk about it, and many people go through life completely unaware of it, there is a distinction between what one does (expression) and who one is (identity). How much effort the expression is depends on how well-aligned one's expression is with one's identity, and how facile a performer someone is.
Measuring how much of this effort someone is expending appears to be a central human trait, as is favoring those whose expression does not seem to require much of this effort. So, broadly, the benefit of having a gender that one can Be is that one does not need to work as hard to affirm one's gender, and other people notice this and respond favorably.
The degree of importance of expression is culturally highly variable. hrj has written a lot of interesting posts that reveal how this has changed through history. Layered on top of that is that expression can provide both intrinsic ("this expression affirms my own identity") and extrinsic ("others' interaction with me when I am expressing myself this way affirms my identity") support. The relative values of those kinds of support are personal and wide-ranging.
OK, now I'll have a go at unpacking "Playing a Character With An Outfit". The tricky part is that there are actually (at least) three parts to this two-part-looking phrase, and they all influence the result. "Playing a Character" lines up with presentation: how one interacts with, and reacts to, others. Two categories I include in the "Outfit" are transient factors (things like clothing, accessories, hair style, cosmetics, etc.) which can be readily changed, and durable factors (like "public" body characteristics [I use "morphology"] and "private" body characteristics [I use "episiology"]). Then one could put things like tattoos and piercings somewhere in between. And there's a lot of often heated discussion about what to do about hormonal and surgical interventions used to modify durable factors. No matter how one breaks things down, the outfit definitely interacts with the presentation, most often unfavorably.
Now here's how I boil it all down these days. Everyone has a gender identity. Everyone's gender identity is different. Some gender identities cluster. Expressions that typically do not require much effort for people in a gender cluster are frequently culturally affirmed, and used to evaluate people for inclusion in, and rank within, that cluster. This process creates and defines a gender within a culture. Those expressions that align with someone's gender identity create a more direct experience than those that align less well and require performance to create an experience that winds up being filtered through the performance.
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dancing_serpent
Experience vs Performance
Date: 2018-12-08 12:08 am (UTC)Let me take a shot from my own gender(queer) perspective, which has led me into a good deal of study here. I'll try to stay on topic, even though I might wind up rambling.
Your association of gender with cosplay ("Playing A Character With An Outfit") is quite accurate. Even supposedly gender-normative people often wind up performing certain aspects of their gender. So, regarding gender, even though not very many people talk about it, and many people go through life completely unaware of it, there is a distinction between what one does (expression) and who one is (identity). How much effort the expression is depends on how well-aligned one's expression is with one's identity, and how facile a performer someone is.
Measuring how much of this effort someone is expending appears to be a central human trait, as is favoring those whose expression does not seem to require much of this effort. So, broadly, the benefit of having a gender that one can Be is that one does not need to work as hard to affirm one's gender, and other people notice this and respond favorably.
The degree of importance of expression is culturally highly variable.
OK, now I'll have a go at unpacking "Playing a Character With An Outfit". The tricky part is that there are actually (at least) three parts to this two-part-looking phrase, and they all influence the result. "Playing a Character" lines up with presentation: how one interacts with, and reacts to, others. Two categories I include in the "Outfit" are transient factors (things like clothing, accessories, hair style, cosmetics, etc.) which can be readily changed, and durable factors (like "public" body characteristics [I use "morphology"] and "private" body characteristics [I use "episiology"]). Then one could put things like tattoos and piercings somewhere in between. And there's a lot of often heated discussion about what to do about hormonal and surgical interventions used to modify durable factors. No matter how one breaks things down, the outfit definitely interacts with the presentation, most often unfavorably.
Now here's how I boil it all down these days. Everyone has a gender identity. Everyone's gender identity is different. Some gender identities cluster. Expressions that typically do not require much effort for people in a gender cluster are frequently culturally affirmed, and used to evaluate people for inclusion in, and rank within, that cluster. This process creates and defines a gender within a culture. Those expressions that align with someone's gender identity create a more direct experience than those that align less well and require performance to create an experience that winds up being filtered through the performance.