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Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.

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Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff Mom never told you?

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Speaker 1: From House top works dot com. Hey, welcome to the podcast.

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Speaker 1: This is Molly and I'm Kristen. Kristen. Let's discuss gender

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Speaker 1: neutral pronouns things you're English teacher, never told you? Yes,

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Speaker 1: because usually we refer to people as she, he, him, her, yeah,

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Speaker 1: and then sometimes when we get plural, we go they

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Speaker 1: them gender neutral right there. But if you're just talking

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Speaker 1: about one person, what should you say when they do

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Speaker 1: not clearly identify with one gender or another. Well, Molly,

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Speaker 1: we have a set of gender neutral pronouns. Instead of

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Speaker 1: saying she or he, you would say z. And instead

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Speaker 1: of saying her or him you would say here, so

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Speaker 1: you'd say z went to hear bedroom. Yes. Now, are

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Speaker 1: we just being goofy with the English language for the

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Speaker 1: fun of it? No, this is relevant to the story

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Speaker 1: we're about to discuss and our topic at hand, because

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Speaker 1: we were inspired to do this podcast by a news

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Speaker 1: story that came out on March twelve, two ten Sydney

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Speaker 1: Morning Harold, which to describe the story of a person

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Speaker 1: named Nori who became the first person to receive a

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Speaker 1: legal document that said sex not specified. Instead of having

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Speaker 1: the female or the male box ticked off, instead it

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Speaker 1: said not specified. Yes. Nori basically provided adequate medical documentation

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Speaker 1: to the New South Wales government so she could request

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Speaker 1: a new certificate from the Registry of Births, Deaths and

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Speaker 1: Marriages that in the box for gender said sex not

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Speaker 1: specified because Nori identifies here's self as neither male nor female.

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Speaker 1: Nori was born as a boy and later was castrated

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Speaker 1: and then went on hormone treatments, but then stopped taking

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Speaker 1: hormone treatments because Z wanted to just live life naturally,

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Speaker 1: I guess. In an article for written for The Scavenger,

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Speaker 1: Z says that quote, I haven't taken hormones for about

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Speaker 1: twenty years, preferring my body and my brain to be

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Speaker 1: as they are naturally, without being dependent on externally supplied

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Speaker 1: hormones or plastic implants. Happy to be androgynous and to

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Speaker 1: be seen as such. And Nori also goes on to

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Speaker 1: say that getting the gender not specified label is actually

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Speaker 1: just logistically easier because if Z identifies as female but

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Speaker 1: someone mistakes Nori as male, then their problems and then

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Speaker 1: vice versa, because if you look at a picture of Nori,

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Speaker 1: it kind of is a toss up into terms of

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Speaker 1: you know, if you would immediately, you know, just from

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Speaker 1: gender ques say think oh male or female? Right, And

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Speaker 1: like let's say they're Z's traveling and you know you've

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Speaker 1: got the passport and it says one thing, but it

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Speaker 1: looks like another. That's sort of the problems you were saying,

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Speaker 1: Z was saying, And um, I mean, it's gonna be

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Speaker 1: an adjustment to fix the pronouns. But what And Z

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Speaker 1: thinks that more people will want this designation, particularly if

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Speaker 1: they're trans sexual, perhaps transitioning from one gender to the other,

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Speaker 1: but also just because of the way women are discriminated

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Speaker 1: against in culture. Now, this is an argument that I

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Speaker 1: have personally a little bit harder time swallowing, because I

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Speaker 1: just I don't know if we could ever get to

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Speaker 1: a society where we wouldn't want where some people wouldn't

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Speaker 1: want that specification. But it is interesting to think about

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Speaker 1: going to a bar and Christ and I know you've

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Speaker 1: experienced this. You've got your your female driver's license, and

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Speaker 1: then you order the very masculine scotch and soda and

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Speaker 1: as I'm smoking a cigar. I mean, there are ways

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Speaker 1: in which we are unconsciously and consciously embodying gender norms

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Speaker 1: that make people hold certain perceptions of us. Yeah, I

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Speaker 1: will say, like going to the bar. Example, if I,

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Speaker 1: let's say I'm out with a fella and he wants

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Speaker 1: to buy me a drink, and when I tell him

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Speaker 1: I would like a Jamison on the rocks, he's you know,

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Speaker 1: sometimes it's a little he doesn't expect that, you know.

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Speaker 1: And if he he's already bought me a zema, I

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Speaker 1: always want to say. In contrast, if he likes zema,

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Speaker 1: or if he likes an Apple teena or something like that,

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Speaker 1: we would say, oh, what a good man exactly. Um,

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Speaker 1: which is going to bring us to our discussion, Not

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Speaker 1: that we're comparing Nori's plight with cocktail ordering on a date,

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Speaker 1: but it's going to bring us to this discussion of

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Speaker 1: androgyny our topic for the day, right, because it's all

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Speaker 1: has to do with the social construct that is gender.

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Speaker 1: We're not talking about biological gender. Whether you have a

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Speaker 1: penis or a vagina, is all about the idea of what,

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Speaker 1: in society's eyes it means to be a male or

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Speaker 1: a female. Right now, the definition of androgyny is a

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Speaker 1: blending of what is considered to be a female or

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Speaker 1: a male within a single individual, so that they display

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Speaker 1: both stereotypically male traits and the stereotypically female traits in

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Speaker 1: earlier world. In other words, a girly man who you know,

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Speaker 1: may be able to hunt a bear that seems stereotypically masculine,

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Speaker 1: but also enjoy a nice, nice appletine at the end

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Speaker 1: of the day. Yeah, and this should be distinguished from

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Speaker 1: inter sexuality, which Molly not have talked about before, which

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Speaker 1: has to do with your biological sex. When the your

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Speaker 1: your physical makeup doesn't distinguish you as male or female,

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Speaker 1: that's a separate issue right now. I think that a

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Speaker 1: lot of people when they think about androgyny, they think

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Speaker 1: about a physical appearance of androgyny, which is why it's

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Speaker 1: so important to separate it from sexuality, because think of

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Speaker 1: some of our pop stars today. We've got Adam Lambert,

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Speaker 1: we've got Lady Gaga. In earlier times we had people

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Speaker 1: like David Bowie. In fact, I even read one argument

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Speaker 1: that Michael Jackson was one of the first androgynous superstars

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Speaker 1: because he really didn't know where he where he stood.

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Speaker 1: So all of those performers really have physical markers that

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Speaker 1: you can tell that they're playing with gender. But we're

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Speaker 1: going to talk about the actual like blending of female

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Speaker 1: male and personality, we'll need to talk about psychological androgyny

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Speaker 1: right now. When we talk about psychologically androgyny, we would

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Speaker 1: be remiss to not mention a pre famous researcher named

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Speaker 1: Sandra Bem, and in nineteen seventy one she developed something

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Speaker 1: called the Bem Sexual Inventory because she basically wanted to

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Speaker 1: create some kind of scale for measuring androgyny. And it's

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Speaker 1: basically the set of traits that are considered stereotypically masculine, feminine,

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Speaker 1: and then gender neutral. And depending on how a person

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Speaker 1: identifies with each of these trades, UH determines where they

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Speaker 1: fall on this sexual inventory scale. Right, And it was

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Speaker 1: really interesting to me to read a little bit about

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Speaker 1: why she developed this. It came out of sort of

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Speaker 1: the feminist movement, and she had feminist convictions, and she

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Speaker 1: writes about how women were afraid to express anger, assert

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Speaker 1: themselves essintially without adopting some of these stereotypically masculine traits,

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Speaker 1: feminism would go nowhere. So let me read off a

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Speaker 1: few of these traits on the scale. Masculine items include

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Speaker 1: self reliant uh defends own beliefs, independent, athletic, assertive, strong personality, forceful, analytical,

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Speaker 1: willing to take risks, mixed decisions, easily, self sufficient, dominant, aggressive,

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Speaker 1: acts as a leader, competitive, ambitious. I mean, I described

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Speaker 1: myself as a few of those things. I would like

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Speaker 1: to be a few of those things. Exactly. That's what

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Speaker 1: she was saying is as a feminist, you would never

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Speaker 1: able to move forward and be truly equal until did

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Speaker 1: some of those things. Now, if you're feminine, the feminine

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Speaker 1: i'ms on the scale are yielding, cheerful, shy, affectionate, flatterable, loyal, sympathetic,

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Speaker 1: sensitive to needs of others, understanding, compassionate, eager to soothe,

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Speaker 1: who hurt feelings, self spoken, warm, gullible, childlike, does not

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Speaker 1: use harsh language, loves children and gentle Well, I think

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Speaker 1: I might want to identify with them first less anyway,

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Speaker 1: that's that's sort of gonna be. The trick of the

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Speaker 1: day is to figure out what this scale really means,

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Speaker 1: because essentially, people who identified with things from both lists

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Speaker 1: as well as this list of neutral things Um, if

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Speaker 1: they if they identified strongly enough most of the time

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Speaker 1: with things from both lists, can them consider that person androgynous,

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Speaker 1: meaning they encapsulated both male and female traits. And all

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Speaker 1: sorts of statements were made about how androgynous people were

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Speaker 1: probably set up to live the best life possible because

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Speaker 1: they could take on any job because they had both

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Speaker 1: that nurturing side and uh, you know, the determination to

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Speaker 1: get things done, and they probably have better relationships. Um,

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Speaker 1: there's been uh studies about weather androwsy and as people

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Speaker 1: are more creative because they can be expressive but also imaginative. Well,

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Speaker 1: and Bem was trying to make a point I think

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Speaker 1: when she developed this sexual inventory, because she said, and

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Speaker 1: this is a quote from her, I took for myself

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Speaker 1: the feminist goal of trying to gather the relevant data

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Speaker 1: of trying to demonstrate empirically the traditional sex roles did

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Speaker 1: not restrict behavior in important human ways. And so it

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Speaker 1: seems like it was almost, uh, you know a way too,

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Speaker 1: I guess, kind of prove that, you know, you don't

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Speaker 1: need to identify as solely masculine or feminine. And especially

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Speaker 1: because this ties in so much with second wave feminism,

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Speaker 1: like you mentioned, there was a lot of related research

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Speaker 1: that came out of this as well well. I think

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Speaker 1: it's one of the most cited methodologies for determining where

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Speaker 1: someone falls on a gender spectrum, maybe of all time. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know much about the gender spectrums,

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Speaker 1: and I'm gonna go ahead and make a statement as

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Speaker 1: bold as that. It definitely seemed like from my research

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Speaker 1: it has been used to the point that it surprises

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Speaker 1: bem how much has been used. Um And because it

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Speaker 1: has probably been so widely used, it's also come under

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Speaker 1: a lot of criticism as well, questioning whether or not

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Speaker 1: it's really testing androgyny and whether or not we it's

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Speaker 1: really just reinforcing normative stereotypes of what it means to

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Speaker 1: be male, female androgynous. And I think that you could

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Speaker 1: probably tell from some of my my intonations, Kristen, that

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Speaker 1: I wasn't I wasn't thrilled with some of the feminine

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Speaker 1: ideal traits. I mean, I would like to be sensitive

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Speaker 1: to things of others, but I don't really want to

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Speaker 1: be described as gullible necessarily. I don't think that females

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Speaker 1: have some sort of um domain on not using harsh

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Speaker 1: language because Kristen's got a mouth like a sailor. Hey, now, well,

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Speaker 1: that's also one reason why some researchers have tried to

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Speaker 1: refer to these masculine feminine traits instead of going back

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Speaker 1: to masculinity femininity, aligning masculine terms with instrumentality and more

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Speaker 1: feminine terms with expressiveness, and some of even wanted to

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Speaker 1: use a genic and communal to distinguish between them. But

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Speaker 1: I still have a problem with dividing these terms up anyway,

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Speaker 1: because you're never going to be able to fully divorce

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Speaker 1: instrumentality and expressiveness for masculinity and femininity, which is always

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Speaker 1: going to lead you back to gender stereotypes two sides

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Speaker 1: in the same coin, and keeping us Yeah, we're still

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Speaker 1: checking off a certain set of characteristics that supposedly defines

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Speaker 1: who we are and the type of person we are

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Speaker 1: and how we relate to other people. So with all

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Speaker 1: of this research about androgyny, it kind of makes me

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Speaker 1: wonder whether or not it's even that progressive. So despite

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Speaker 1: the fact that Ben wants to make this sort of

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Speaker 1: a feminist rallying point, you know, as soon as she

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Speaker 1: puts it out, a scholar named Daniel Harris comes out

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Speaker 1: and says that she is, you know, undermining feminists in

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Speaker 1: this way because it's still allowing men to co opt

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Speaker 1: good traits, whereas you know, the women will still be

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Speaker 1: out of sink essentially if they adopt the masculine traits

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Speaker 1: right there, still having to disown parts of themselves. And

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Speaker 1: he even goes far as to describe androgyny as a

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Speaker 1: sexist myth because kind of like what I mentioned before,

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Speaker 1: like in his eyes, it's still all came back to

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Speaker 1: this sexual polarization that didn't benefit women in the long run.

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Speaker 1: But the interesting thing is if you look at studies

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Speaker 1: since then that evaluate people who have these collections of

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Speaker 1: what we would consider to be psychologically androgynous traits, the

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Speaker 1: benefit does seem to fall more to the women than

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Speaker 1: the men. It seems more socially advantageous for a woman

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Speaker 1: to exhibit more androgy illustrates, i e. Adopt more masculine

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Speaker 1: traits than for the men out there. For instance, there

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Speaker 1: was a pretty extensive article in Psychology Today about the

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Speaker 1: concept of androgyny, and it points out that um psychological

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Speaker 1: masculinity has always been correlated positively with creativity in both

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Speaker 1: men and women, but psychological femininity had negative associations and

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Speaker 1: creativity for both men and women. So then it kind

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Speaker 1: of brings up the point to if we keep coming

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Speaker 1: back to these masculine and feminine terms, you know, it

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Speaker 1: seems like the masculine ones by and large are going

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Speaker 1: to be favored no matter what um over feminine ones,

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Speaker 1: because if you just think about women in the workplace,

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Speaker 1: kind of the most successful ones kind of have to

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Speaker 1: adopt a little bit more of a masculine persona, whereas

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Speaker 1: of the typical man was to adopt a typical female characteristics,

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Speaker 1: you know, he he might not benefit from it. So essentially,

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Speaker 1: despite the fact that it all comes down to psycho

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Speaker 1: logical traits, it's really it's not helpful, you know, is

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Speaker 1: that what we're saying with us? I think that that

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Speaker 1: might be an argument that we are putting out there.

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Speaker 1: You know, I don't know that we can necessarily, you know,

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Speaker 1: we aren't the we aren't the experts. But from reading it,

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Speaker 1: it doesn't seem like it's said helpful. So I think

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Speaker 1: what's difficult to swear with is that when you read

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Speaker 1: about the spectrum and how it's used, androgyne is ideal.

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Speaker 1: You know, it's just it's the best way you could

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Speaker 1: make your way through, especially a male dominated world, just

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Speaker 1: by becoming more masculine. Well especially well if you look

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Speaker 1: at if you take up the positive masculine traits, because

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Speaker 1: they we did come across one article where you could

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Speaker 1: definitely be negatively androgynous if you take what's that, what's

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Speaker 1: an awful male traite, aggression, aggression, if you take aggression,

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Speaker 1: and then likely yeah, you could definitely be negatively androgynous.

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Speaker 1: And um, but it seems if you take the best

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Speaker 1: of both worlds and that's just the way to be,

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Speaker 1: which does support Norri's case that you know, you would

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Speaker 1: you would have advantages in the world that you wouldn't

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Speaker 1: have if you were just male or female. But I

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Speaker 1: think the word androgyny has become so associated with physical

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Speaker 1: markers that it's very difficult to tell someone that androgyny

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Speaker 1: is an ideal if you can accept that, if you

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Speaker 1: can get away from you know, as we talked about

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Speaker 1: this sexist myth that you should be even thinking about

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Speaker 1: what a feminine or a masculine trade is in the

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Speaker 1: first place. But because physical gender is such a marker

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Speaker 1: to us, um, then androgny I think can start to

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Speaker 1: become very troublesome to society, to some people in society

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Speaker 1: who can't handle the fact there might not be a

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Speaker 1: gender marker for every person. And I also question kind

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Speaker 1: of the importance, I guess, of all these androgynous you know, characteristics,

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Speaker 1: psychological characteristics, because it seems like the thing that people

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Speaker 1: are more curious about is sexuality more than whether or

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Speaker 1: not someone is childlike or you know, gullible or aggressive

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Speaker 1: or whatever. You know, when you see um like okay,

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Speaker 1: for instance, when Adam Lambert was on American Idol, everyone's

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Speaker 1: question wasn't whether what Adam Lambert was like, what his

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Speaker 1: personality was like off stage, It was who he went

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Speaker 1: home with at night? Right, you know, does he like

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Speaker 1: boys or girls? Are both? Or how he dressed? Yeah,

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Speaker 1: So that because it's become so blurred, I think androgyny

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Speaker 1: is a really loaded term that's not very useful anymore,

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Speaker 1: despite the fact that in the world of psychology it

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Speaker 1: did have sort of this ideal status. But physically, UM,

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Speaker 1: I found this one study from new scientists that I

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Speaker 1: thought was pretty fascinating, where um, some researchers from the

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Speaker 1: University of Connecticut made all these computer avatars UM and

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Speaker 1: some were very gendered, some were just like catch up

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Speaker 1: bottles with faces on it, and then some were sexually

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Speaker 1: androgynous in the physical appearance. And the people who used

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Speaker 1: who interact with the avatars were asked to rate how

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Speaker 1: trustworthy the people using the avatars were, and by and large,

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Speaker 1: the catchup bottle was not very not very trustworthy, by

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Speaker 1: the way to never trust the bottle of ketchup um.

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Speaker 1: But androgynous avatars were far less trusted in the Internet

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Speaker 1: world than the gendered avatars. So I think that that space,

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Speaker 1: the fact that when a lot of people can't have

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Speaker 1: that physical marker that gives them the reassurance that this

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Speaker 1: is a manner, this is a woman, And I think

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Speaker 1: that's what makes you know, a lot of people uncomfortable

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Speaker 1: with someone like Lady Gaga. But I think it also

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Speaker 1: is part of what makes them alluring sexually exciting, because

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Speaker 1: you're not sure there is a little bit of that,

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Speaker 1: you know, forbidden territory. I don't know what, you don't

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Speaker 1: know what's going on necessarily exactly. But for some people,

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Speaker 1: more conservative people, I would think it would be a

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Speaker 1: lot more troublesome. And you know, the researchers basically said,

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Speaker 1: if you want to be trust on the internet and

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Speaker 1: you're not Lady Gaga who's got a platform and you

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Speaker 1: know sort of you know, acceptance just because she's famous,

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Speaker 1: if you're just someone in the world, that it's almost

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Speaker 1: like you do have to identify with the gender, and

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Speaker 1: that's what people like Nori are trying to combat. So

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Speaker 1: we've told you guys what we think. Now we want

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Speaker 1: to hear from you. Do you think that Nori's androgyny

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Speaker 1: is going to possibly become the new model? Do you

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Speaker 1: think that we need to reinforce you know, our physical

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Speaker 1: markers for gender, social markers for gender. Do you think

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Speaker 1: that it matters at all? Is andrown? The ideal isn'trojny

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Speaker 1: the ideal? Let us know mom stuff and how stuff works.

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Speaker 1: Dot com is our email address. Send us an email

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Speaker 1: and you'll probably get a response, all right. First email

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Speaker 1: today is from Caroline, who wrote about our Ballet and

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Speaker 1: Racism podcasts, and she writes, I wonder if I'll be

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Speaker 1: the only one to write in to say that she

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Speaker 1: grew up ignorant of the racism issue in ballet. Do

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Speaker 1: the Babysitters Club books. I was a big fan of

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Speaker 1: Jet see the eleven year old ballet obsessed Babysitters Club

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Speaker 1: member who was often pointed out as one of the

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Speaker 1: only people of color at Sunnybrook Middle School. But I

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Speaker 1: can't recall any stories that dealt with race with regards

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Speaker 1: to her dance performances. Maybe that's because she was eleven

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Speaker 1: and non adult ballerina. But now I'm left feeling like

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Speaker 1: Anna Martin, or rather her army of ghostwriters, missed an

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Speaker 1: opportunity for yet another very special episode book. All right, well,

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Speaker 1: I've got another email here about the exact same podcasts

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Speaker 1: on ballet, and this comes from Aaron. She said, I

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Speaker 1: wanted to let you know it's not just ballet that

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Speaker 1: has racial discrimination issues. Recently, I did a performance with

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Speaker 1: an Indian dance school here in America. I was shocked

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Speaker 1: to see the makeup situation backstage. Many of the darker

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Speaker 1: skinned Indian girls were being given a lighter skinned look

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Speaker 1: using bass. Honestly, many of these girls were given skin

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Speaker 1: tones that were almost white. I was dismayed at the behavior,

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Speaker 1: and many of the girls were beautiful as they were naturally,

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Speaker 1: and felt like we were giving the wrong idea to

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Speaker 1: these very impressionable teenagers. I just wanted to let you

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Speaker 1: know with it whiteness isn't only sought after for ballet

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Speaker 1: or from Americans. And one more quick one from Laura,

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Speaker 1: who points out that it's not just ballet either. She writes,

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Speaker 1: I figure skate, and there seems to be the same

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Speaker 1: problem with diversity on the ice. I only know one

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Speaker 1: or two black figure skaters at my rink, and the

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Speaker 1: rest are mostly wider Asian. Even if you look at

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Speaker 1: famous skaters, if you are black or Latina. I don't

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Speaker 1: know if this is because of discrimination, lack of interest, cost,

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Speaker 1: or what, but I started thinking about it as I

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Speaker 1: listened to your podcast. It would be great if there

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Speaker 1: are a bit more diversity in these sports. Girls would

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Speaker 1: have positive role models encouraging them to get active and

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Speaker 1: have fun. So there you have it, And again, if

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Speaker 1: you wanted to send us an email, it's mom stuff

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Speaker 1: at how stuff works dot com. During the week, you

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Speaker 1: should head over to our blog it's called how to Stuff.

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Speaker 1: And if you would like to learn about any topic

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Speaker 1: under the sun, you can go and visit how stuff

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Speaker 1: works dot com for more on this and thousands of

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00:20:57,760 --> 00:21:01,840
Speaker 1: other topics. Because at how stuff works dot com want

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Speaker 1: more house stuff Works. Check out our blogs on the

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Speaker 1: house Stuff Works dot com home page. Brought to you

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