My fiancee and I find it hilarious how we have traded nearly every externalized gender stereotype and role, while at the same time being quite certain of our gender identities. In many ways, its the basis of our relationship–that I’m not like other guys, and actually have a degree of emotional intelligence and theory of mind (and the fact that I’m a damn good cook doesn’t hurt either).
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But what if I’m a lime in a coconut?
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Nonsense! Their knife-missile partner would be lecturing them about breaking cover on the control-group planet.
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That’s everything isn’t it? Nothing has innate meaning. Sometimes people identify as or with a certain gender, they don’t stop to think about the meaning you have. Anyway, finding out a books author’s gender is not impossible, and as characters in a book are only ever described using words, its usually made clear when a character is a man or a woman, it will usually be very explicit.
Look for instances where a male author writes a character, who he will explicitly state is a woman, and take note when that type of character usually has no personal motivation or whose presence only serves as the catalyst for the main character’s own motivation (Abnegated wife, dead mother/wife/daughter, damsel in distress, etc)
If you’re looking for objective meaning, NOBODY’s going to be able to help you. That seems to be a categorical error all its own.
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That must have been an interesting date.
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I dunno, it seems deeper and more fundamental than fruit preference.
Where does the “X” and “Y” chromosome differentiation come in, you know?
Flipside: social roles are basically just societally convenient constructs, in my opinion.
So you’re kinda smart and kinda connected to yourself in a useful way…and you can cook?
Bro. Bro, I’m willing to take any odds that your partner likes you for far more than that and it’s not nearly so simple lol
i thought it was more like he was being a satirically funny richard bach with just enough bitter coating to disguise the sugar pill. on the other hand, “jitterbug perfume” holds up extremely well.
Yes, but this isn’t the gushing-about-your-SO thread 
the main point of my comment was that we’ve basically swapped most of the “conventional” gender roles, yet still identify as our gender identities. (I will happily gush about my SO over in the Victory! thread)
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I didn’t mean “a Z person” as in preference, but as in identity. As in “which species of hominid are you?” But I think that identity is an extremely fickle, porous, and discontinuous thing.
During actual reproduction, as I was saying. When you aren’t making babies with someone, their chromosomes aren’t part of your world. There are countless differences and distinctions between people, but I am fairly certain that people just latch onto those which are easiest for them to see as being somehow more significant. Such as skin color, height, facial features, etc. Why doesn’t blood type count? Because it doesn’t look like anything.
Which begs the obvious question - convenient for and constructed by whom? In a hierarchical society, most things are arguably not organized for the benefit of the average person. So why cooperate with societal structures which one has no stake in?
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Other possible examples of the genre: “The Desert Peach,” “A Distant Soil.” What have I missed?
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Yup, that’s pretty much exactly why I throw books at the wall so hard it leaves dents
Wait a minute…
Meta:
Drew Mackie’s video above, remixing the homoerotic glory of 80’s anime Saint Seiya, is your shot. Meg Elison’s short story at McSweeney’s, “If women wrote men the way men write women”, is your chaser. (Previously)
(Emphasis mine.) Then we get this old post out of the ether (I’m assuming that was the order) :
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*lolz
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I learned all I needed to know about gender roles from Kurtis Blow:
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Yeah, but just watch out for the grapefruit people: they’re not only strangely respectable, they’re respectably strange as well (especially the ones who prefer unsweetened…)
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They sound dangerous.
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