What Even Is Gender? by R. A. Briggs & B. R. George

Author:R. A. Briggs & B. R. George
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor and Francis
Published: 2023-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

3.3.2.3 Feels About Multiple Things

Consider a butch lesbian whose emotional investment in her Carharts and flannel shirts is very much about wearing them as a woman; is this a matter of category-feels or behavior-feels? What about a cisgender man with gynecomastia, whose distress at his breasts is specifically distress at being a man with breasts; is this a matter of category-feels or biology-feels? Or consider anyone (in any gender category) who specifically delights in the way their twirly dress pairs with their facial hair; is this about behavior-feels or biology-feels?

We’ve allowed for norms that connect multiple traits, but so far, every example of a gender feel we’ve considered in detail has been about a single trait. It’s possible that an attitude could be irreducibly about multiple traits, like the ones in the previous paragraph – perhaps even arbitrarily many traits. Recognizing this possibility lets us name new, mixed kinds of feels, such as category-behavior feels (for example, wanting to appreciate the beauty of fashion design as a man) or biology-category-behavior feels (for example, a commitment to performing one’s own form of womanhood by enhancing one’s strong jawline with dramatic makeup).

How we think and feel about one trait is entangled with the other traits that often provide its immediate context. We might feel that one trait flatters or reinforces another or revel in a sense of willful gender-fuckery or transgression. Any gendered behaviors, sexed biological traits, or gender categories may have personal significance that allows them to serve as personal invocations or reminders of other traits, and we think that recognizing gender feels about multiple traits is a promising way to represent this kind of personal significance. So although we’ll continue to write in terms of behavior-feels, biology-feels, and category-feels, we recognize that the underlying reality is probably more complicated than that.

In the next chapter, we’ll have more to say about the personal significance of gender feels. We’ll argue that this personal significance cannot be reduced to internalized sexism, and that our default, when assessing whether someone has the gender feels they claim to have, should be to take them at their word.

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