Sorting Gender / Expression


© Li Sam Writing. All rights reserved.

When we first meet someone, what registers initially is that person’s gender, no matter the setting or circumstance. I believe that means that the foundation of who we are—“our true selves”—is based on gender, whether we like it or not. And deep down this assessment is about perception, of ourselves and others.

But we can’t always trust our basic senses. For example, there are some people (many are children) whose gender we have a hard time deciding on, and some people we simply misperceive. Why does this happen? What or who is wrong here: we who do the assessing, or the person we somehow get wrong?

The illustration above shows three scenarios, with the horizontal green line representing a person’s true self regarding gender on three different levels. The variables are:

- Hearts: Representing self-perception, either boy or girl. To make it easy I have
   excluded anyone in-between here.

- Blue and pink triangles: Representing male and female emotions.

- Double arrow along the diagonal between male and female emotions:
   Representing the body.

The body in this illustration doesn’t have any specific gender; it can move along the line and tip in either direction, being or rather here making us look male or female according to the way we generally perceive a man or a woman to look.

In the first scenario the person along the line emits mostly male emotions that affect how this person presents him or herself. But some female-type emotions are present, making this person’s emotional self not entirely male.

One’s self-perception, represented by the heart, can be male or female, but in most cases someone like this person will perceive himself as male because of the mostly male emotions he emits. However, we can’t be sure, because there are girls with male-like emotions whom we call tomboys and women who present themselves as being more male than female.

Then we have this person’s body, which can seemingly randomly develop in any direction or in-between. The likelihood is though that we have, or perhaps rather we perceive a tilting to either side. But which side: self-perception or emotional expression? If both self-perception and emotions are considered male, then we could assume the body will develop in that same direction. However, we can’t be sure because of the transsexual phenomenon, and then of course there are intersex people who have problems balancing on that line in-between.

But the main question here is how we perceive a person along that line. Do all of us perceive people in the same way or differently? Does who we are as perceivers along this scale make a difference? I believe that in general who we are doesn’t make much difference. Somehow we perceive gender according to the other person’s body, looks, and voice, and really nothing else. Then, based on our perception, when we become confused we dismiss those who confuse us as being perverted, sick, or whatever label we can come up with to eliminate this confusion. In some cases people are even killed because we as perceivers can’t deal with all the gender expressions there are and their repercussions. What we never really think about is that it’s we who are responsible for the repercussions of people’s looks and behavior. Wouldn’t that make us the cause of a problem, not the people we judge?

So who are those “perverted” people, making life hard on everyone else? Well, according to the above illustration, no one is any more or less proper in gender than anyone else. We are all gender-wired from before birth, and there’s nothing sick about one’s gender. In fact, along the line, no emotion can be classified or diagnosed as being wrong for your gender. There will always be a person and a situation where any of a person’s emotions fit, with no confusion, as long as we are okay with the looks and general behavior of that person.

In uncovering these truths, we now enter the world of expectations. And it’s odd that we expect more of a person we like or are related to, and very much more of people we feel attracted to. So, suddenly here we are slipping away making gender something it’s not; it’s become something we expect, or worse, what we want people to be.

We need to be objective about this and not get confused by our own thinking. When you are confused by someone’s gender or suddenly surprised, open up your heart, breathe, and observe your own reactions. Try to note how, where, and when your thoughts defect and deceive you. What is it you feel? Because, basically, I don’t think anyone rejects anyone based on gender, so perceiving and sorting gender right (according to that person’s true self) does make a difference for all.

In the second scenario the person along the line emits male and female emotions equally, which affects how this person presents him or herself. Perhaps you might imagine that we would perceive this person as a mix of genders, with strange behavior and a confusing demeanor, but in fact this is not true. We mustn’t forget that it’s self-perception that’s at the heart of gender identity, and just as for the first scenario the body can go either way, stirring things up for us.

You might think of this scenario as being very rare, that probably you haven’t met anyone like that. But the illustration shows us something else. If gender is randomly assigned and linear, the vast majority of people would be more or less emotionally mixed. Rare would be stereotypes along the very top and bottom. As a society we think, “Now this can’t be,” and even if it is, we can’t allow that kind of truth to be apparent because it would be a threat to society and for the way we govern ourselves. So we reward those who fit the stereotypes and punish those who don’t to protect a common, average way of thinking, such as grouping (labeling) people apart so that they become stereotypes.

I believe the reason these mixed people don’t stand out in society is that their hearts compensate for the mixture; their self-perception makes up the difference so that this emotional mix doesn’t show. Try to think in terms of what would make perception turn one way or the other towards a stereotype. Is that line thin or broad—how much do you think self-perception could tilt that line in either direction, making a difference in appearance?

My guess is a lot, and that indicates that self-perception makes emotions corresponding with one gender emit much more strongly than the opposite gender’s emotions do. Even if the amount of male and female emotions are the same or to a degree weigh over the wrong way, our perceptions will compensate and influence our emotions so we balance out the way we feel we are.

Now, I think this green line across can be very broad, and our souls are capable of tilting this green path quite a lot. Most emotions don’t confuse or bother us at all within this area, even if we sometimes emit and respond wrongly. A man can be considered to be very kind and gentle without his masculinity being in question as long as he looks like a man, and a woman is “allowed” to act domineering as long she looks feminine. So if I look at society as I do today, this mixture can be immense without us even blinking. The only thing now making a mess is the body and what that tells us; one way will confirm gender compliance and the other, wrong way will cause us confusion.

It’s funny that our bodies can be made to look so different than they do naturally, and female makeup on a lot of men who dress and present themselves as women will fool us. Many of these young men can seem stunning as women, no problem whatsoever. So that line where we perceive what “you” represents, when we meet a person, can be, let’s say, equally tilted. And I would like to add: it can be tilted so that people perceive only what they see. For example, even if a person’s voice sounds different from a standard voice for that gender, that doesn’t affect the overall impression. What would confuse you would be if such a person tried to act according to her penis.

But she’s got what?? … You mean, he’s got a penis … you might correct with.

If you found out that a woman you know has a penis, would that new knowledge bother you? If it does, this is what I suggest:

Open your heart, scan your body, and breathe. Note that feeling of confusion. Try to observe the feeling spread and what emotions are evoked, and note the effect this has on you.

Does it tilt your perception of that person toward the opposite gender in an instant, or does it narrow or broaden your line of perception?

How would you like to respond? Does your will correspond with your feelings?

Consider not knowing with knowing. What would you prefer?

Consider if you didn’t know and everybody else did.

Consider if you knew: What actions would that generate? Would they be appropriate or not?

How would you behave in front of that person, or just if you were in the same room?

How would you like to behave?

This is hard to grasp the first time anyone confronts these questions, especially when it comes your way and you end up having to deal with it yourself without anyone other than yourself to blame.

Okay, the third scenario is very much like the first, but the other way around, of course. What’s interesting to note here comparing the two is how we perceive sissies versus tomboys, and more specifically, when women are considered to be tomboys (which is okay) versus when men are sissies (not okay).

Perceptions of gender in our brains sometimes can be like a fleeting ghost making life difficult. Sissies and tomboys are just labels, and those labels have nothing to do with gender at all. These are kids growing up expressing themselves emotionally, and that shouldn’t be mistaken as them acting like the opposite gender or otherwise disorderly in any way. For example, a person we would regard as a sissy can easily perceive himself as male, in fact very male.

In my illustration there is nothing that implies what gender a person is. It’s our hearts (our self-perception) that decide. Consider that we, the vast majority of us, all are a mix of emotions genderwise. What determines whether we are “right” or “wrong”? In the world of gender it’s our own perceptions, the perceptions of people we associate with, and societal morality that imposes the judgment of right or wrong.

We shouldn’t confuse how we perceive a person with who that person is.

What’s funny is that misinterpretation can occur all over the scale. Regardless of how male a person is—in all aspects—you can feel just one emotion that triggers a sense of difference. It can be the stark contrast for just a second that makes you confused, like something that person said, the way that person said it, or even just a glance.

The bottom line is that society affects us, and it’s vital to understand that it does, even unconsciously. I think it’s also vital to understand that the labels of tomboy and sissy don’t serve any purpose, really. They’re there merely as a way for us to explain our own confusion; we blame the person we don’t understand instead of investigating our own interpretations.

There’s a lot to gain by understanding this effect and how we in general react to gender. My experience is that it just takes a few seconds to overcome this confusion by welcoming that person’s personality as is. There is one exception, though, that this seminar will discuss further on: when the person you welcome pretends to be someone he or she is not.

Because the illustrations above are linear, that implies that equally as many people are spread out all over the scale. This in turn implies that gender could be random, a thought that is supported by the outcome that men and women are each represented 50% all over the globe. If that weren’t true, how would the representation look if there were something within us and our bodies that actually determines gender at birth? Would transsexualism and intersexualism exist?

What if gender could be affected by something that we were able to control; wouldn’t the population look quite different, then? Consider that people in various places around the planet are exposed to different environmental conditions. Also, if we could choose, wouldn’t some societies (parents) prefer boys instead of girls?

If gender and emotions were random, wouldn’t that explain how personally different we are? Not even twins are the exact same, even if they look alike. Even if their bodies are a perfect match, emotions and self-perception can be quite different.

So following a line across to meeting others like you, do you have an idea about who you would like to meet? And that person you most prefer, would that person like to meet you? We are not going to talk about attraction and sexual orientation here, not yet, anyway. That is about something else, and we will discuss that later on when we have an understanding about gender and are ready to do so. Instead, this is about where we meet. What makes us meet is what we will discuss more closely in the next entry.