queerbychoice | Gender Hypothesizing

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Gender Hypothesizing

If it were possible to get accurate statistics like this about the entire LiveJournal population, I obviously should, but I don't know how to do that so I'll just make do with the population of my own friends and friends-of lists. I'm sure the rest of you will let me know if your own friends lists drastically contradict my observations.

My friends and friends-of lists contain a huge number of people who have chosen to prominently label themselves as "girls" (or grls, grrls, grrrls, gurls, or gyrls) in their LJ usernames:

beatlegirl79,

cappucinogrrl,

dolphingirl99,

donutgirl,

ethosgurl,

final_girl,

grlfriday,

grrrlishgrin,

safetypingirl,

starstealingirl,

theory_girl,

wyntergyrl, and

zombiegirl.

There are no "boys" on my friends or friends-of lists who are prominently labeled as such in their usernames (though I know there are a few who used to be on my friends list -

devilboy77,

brokenboi and

johnnyboysriot come to mind, so it's not unheard of). Admittedly, there are about twice as many females as males on LiveJournal in the first place, and also about twice as many females as males on my own friends and friends-of lists, so that could account for some of the numerical imbalance. Still, that would mean that there should still be six males on my lists with "boy" in their usernames. There aren't. There are, however, three "men" on my friends or friends-of lists who are prominently labeled as such in their usernames:

oddmanrush,

piman, and

cinderellaman. Two of these three are FTMs (as is one of the three people labeled "boys" who I mentioned above). It seems reasonable to expect that being transgendered would produce an increased eagerness to prominently point out one's gender to avoid any confusion - but that doesn't explain away the apparent disinterest of males who were labeled "male" at birth in labeling themselves "male" in their usernames. All of the people on my lists who label themselves as "girl" (or any alternate spellings of it) in their usernames seem to be people who were also labeled "female" at birth (unless you're keeping secrets from me . . .).

And absolutely no one I personally can think of on all of LiveJournal has a username containing the word "woman," nor any spelling variation upon it.

There are also some instances of people on my friends or friends-of lists with obviously gendered words in their usernames (not proper names, I'm only interested in looking at words which seem to be there primarily to indicate gender, and people could be using a proper name in their username for a whole lot of other reasons):

baebutch,

dragkingbar,

dragkingvenus,

mobledqueen,

princesswitch,

transientdyke,

technodyke. All of these people are specifying either a female gender or a specifically female-to-male gender - unless possibly

mobledqueen intends the word "queen" to imply a male-to-female gender, but since

mobledqueen is (generally labeled as) female, that would make it really a sort of female-to-male-to-female gender.

Anyway. Theorization time.

Is there some good reason why people whose bodies are labeled "female" seem to be more invested in gender-labeling themselves than people whose bodies are labeled "male" are? What would the reasons for that be? And why does everyone choosing a female label choose a variation upon "girl" instead of "woman," whereas among male-labeled people, the "men" seem to slightly outnumber the "boys," or at least aren't obviously outnumbered by them?

For all you girl/grl/grrl/grrrl/gurl/gyrl people out there, why exactly do you label yourselves this way? Does it bother you that there is no comparable crowd of people naming themselves "woman" or "boy" or "man"?

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well, b/c it's the title of my book, which is about gender and horror movies -- the figure of the survivor who is inevitable female (but is a stand-in for an adolescent boy...)

well on the woman front, it's far more common for women to be referred to as girls than it is for men to be referred to as boys. for instance, a man might be really into a female of 25 and still say something like, "i like this girl" whereas a woman interested in a man of that age would be unlikely to refer to him as a boy.

i'm sure i have theories on the other issues you raised but it's 2am and i'm sleepy.

-ink

I suspect it has to do with the same reasons that most straight people don't identify by calling themselves straight, and most white people don't identify by calling themselves white. I suspect there are a lot more user names out there alluding to minority sexual orientation or ethnicity/race than those alluding to straightness or whiteness.

As for girl vs. woman vs. boy vs. man. I have some slightly different observations. I find lots of gay males especially use "boy," "boi," or somesuch in their usernames. Indeed, I have 2 people in my friends list with such names (some other groups I am a member of or know about use them), and no people with the other usages (although there are two that have "obviously gendered words").

Probably, though, a lot of reasons for both your observations and mine. Some popping to mind being that "girl power" is popular right now. Girl or boy imply youth, which is a commodity in today's culture. Boy may also be apposed to man as a way to indicate "Other" or "transgressive" masculinity rather than hegemonic "mainstream" or (hetero)sexist masculinity.

I believe that many of the people on your friends list are in their 20s. That means that the women may have grown up being influenced by 3rd wave "riotgrrl" feminism. Combine that with the later (and more media accepted) "girl-power" phenomena and I think you are dealing with a historical artifact wrt naming.

There have to be reasons, however, why movements took those names and got popular with those names in the first place; so I believe my same questions still remain equally relevant.

My guess there is that they used this term as a way of reclaiming power from a previously derogatory term, much like people using the term queer. "Girl" isn't as derogatory as "queer", but I think the process is similar.

I chose "grrl" because at the time, I was just starting to learn about riot grrrls. And when it comes to making screen names and user names and such, I just blank. cappucinolover didn't work, so.

I am not bothered in the least that there aren't as many people labeling themselves "woman" or "boy" or "man".

Hope I helped!

Why aren't you bothered? What do you attribute the imbalances to?

I'll just jump in because my email address is "scullygirl".. I got it when I was eleven, and didn't really consider myself a woman. My idol was Scully, so I was trying to convey that I was (hopefully?) a younger version of scully.

It's rather odd that there aren't more people calling themselves "woman" or "boy"... One would think 'boy' would be slightly more common that 'woman', just because the crows on livejournal is young... I certainly wouldn't expect there to be so few boys. It's probably because society expects even little boys to act more masculine than they may feel; boys have 'being a man' as a goal, some false standard to live up to, whereas for females, 'being a woman' is more of a defined term, beginning at menstruation.

If I ever make a new lj username I shall put Princess in it just to fuck with the whole system.

It could be that the people you associate with on lj tend to have, how do we say, different views on social roles? The guys on your friends list are not as interested in using stupid labels.

I dunno, from a bias viewpoint I always roll my eyes when I see a gender name. It just seems so boring and uncreative. But again, no real surprise there coming from me.

I really have no idea why this is. Why don't we see more people use their race? I guess some people do but it's not as common as girl/man yadda yadda yadda. No one has the name "whitegrrl" on lj nor a whiteman. Although there is a whiteboy and a whitegirl for the sake of fairness. There is no blackboy, blackgirl is located in Austria and blackman is located in Russia.

my online alias used to be cooshman, after a cartoon character i drew in eighth grade, a little kooshball dude, but i used to do aim and people assumed i was a guy and it made me annoyed... there was this girl i knew who had a really sexy screen name, it had scarlett in it or something, and i thought, the next name i have will be feminine and flowery and sexy. And, it turns out, impossible for anyone but me to spell.

I've been using wyntergyrl as my handle since I was probably 15. I decided to name myself after the song "Winter" by Tori Amos, becuase both the song and the season have a lot of personal meaning. At that age I was very depressed, struggling with my sexuality, self-mutilating, suicidal.... I identified very stongly with that song and so I adopted it. Sometimes I feel it's a wee bit juvenile, but I'm attached to it :) my hotmail account is soopahtoofbeavah and my AIM and yahoo accounts are named after Kilgore Trout.

I'm 20 now, going on 21, and I still refer to myself and most females in my general age range as girls. I don't often feel like a woman, I consider myself to still be a kid in many ways. "Woman" is to me a weighty and pondorous word like "lesbian" - it doesn't reflect how I feel and so I don't like to be called that. I'm gay, and I'm a girl.

I agree with previous statements that males are strongly encouraged to grow up and be "men" and so are less likely to call themselves boys as we are to call ourselves girls. Females are often treated by society as young and helpless, and we are also taught to obsess about our image, body, and sexuality. Phrases like "Daddy's little girl" comes to mind. I know that as a female I still have a lot of issues about myself becuase I've been trianed to see myself a certain way. I love my body and how I look, but I still catch myself sucking in my tummy and wishing that little bit of fat on my inner thighs would go away. Meh.

Also the terms I use to refer to people are very "young"... I feel about the word "man" the same way as I feel about "woman" etc. I use terms like guy, chick, boy, girl, partner, boyfriend, girlfriend, etc.

Looking at my friends list I have a gurl, a grl, a dyke, a boi, a mistress, a snoman, a queer, and a few male and female proper names.

Oi. Sorry, rambling again. But you make a good point!

i never even saw myself as labeled as a girl by that name,
because the name is mostly meant..i don't know if sarcastic is the right word..however...
i just liked to turn the 'girlish grin' phrase (implying innocence and weakness) into g'rrrr! lishgrin' (taking some of that weakness out of that).
i've had my journal for years, so i'm growing out of having 'grrrl' in my name,
yet i'm keeping it,
mostly as even more sarcastic,
because my face has seen twenty years ofthe world, yet people see me and treat me like a 'girl' because i look very young.

a lot of people, funny enough, were surprised to find out i was 'female'.
somehow they thought the username meant i was male.

i don't know.

I think it has to do with the fact that for women the male-supremacist ideal is the helpless, non-threatening, ready-to-please "girl"-child. For men, however, being thought a "boy" is a tantamout to emasculation -- it's "feminizing" which means "degrading" in male-supremacist lexicon. In the male-supremacist system, the ideal relationship is between man and girl, daddy and princess. Men, being enamored specifically with the "supremacist" portion of male-supremacy, don't want to be boys; boys are not patriarchs, they are not powerful -- men want to be powerful, dominant -- men want to be men, not boys. That's what I think.

~sapphiretrance

Thankyouthankyouthankyouthankyou for saying that! I'd been meaning to get back to this post for quite some time.

I used to always be known as donut, and it's still what I prefer. I picked donutgirl because donut was taken... and I thought donutgirl sounded cute and saucy and jaunty, which is how I wanted to present myself. I often wish now that I had picked a less gendered name, but I'm still not sure what that would have been... donutperson seems so dreary. Donutlover is incorrect. Thedonut seems forced.

I use girl to describe nearly all females, including my dead grandmothers. I use girl to describe anyone who cute, funny, a little mischievous, self-reliant... And I use boy or boi for almost every male I know, including my dad.

To me, the words Man and Woman imply authority, boring-ness, lack of sense of humor, self-importance... Anyone who describes themselves as a man or woman is not likely to be my friend. Also, I think man and woman are really ugly words. This is even more the case with words like womyn or whatever. I always figure any person who calls herself womyn is going to call me a bad feminist and generally try to make me feel bad about myself, so I stay away.

Interestingly, I am the only person on my friends list with a gendered name of any kind. 2/5 of my friends list is male.

I think people call themselves girl now because, for a while, feminists were insisting that girl was the worst thing you could call a woman. But those feminists came across as very humorless and man-hating. So people call themselves girl to distance themselves from that tradition of feminism - which isn't to say girls aren't feminists, they just tend to be a different kind of feminist.

I think people call themselves girl now because, for a while, feminists were insisting that girl was the worst thing you could call a woman. But those feminists came across as very humorless and man-hating. So people call themselves girl to distance themselves from that tradition of feminism - which isn't to say girls aren't feminists, they just tend to be a different kind of feminist.

Wow, this is full of shit. I'm so tired of "girls" acting like they are the first feminists.

I'm not sure that "acting like they are the first feminists" is quite the right phrase to sum up what she said, but I did find that statement of hers rather alarming myself.

Yes, you are absolutely right. It is not the right phrase. Care to sum it up yourself?

Challenge accepted . . . though I'll need a lot more than one sentence to be able to do it justice.

"But those feminists came across as very humorless and man-hating."

We have a situation where adult males of purely European descent all referred to themselves and expected to be referred to by women as "men," yet they continually referred to adult females of any race and to adult males of African descent as "girls" and "boys." (I'm using the past tense here because although the same situation still persists to this day to a humongous degree, it's possible to argue that the word "boy" is becoming slightly more commonly used in reference to adult males in a few social circles than it used to be . . . but the situation is still a very very long way indeed from being at all equalized.) Some of the females thus referred to expressed annoyance about that (as did many of the males of African descent).

These females are then accused of being "humorless." This accusation implies that there was something humorous about the situation in the first place. I see no reason whatsoever why women should be expected to find it humorous that the respect accorded to adults is being withheld from them.

The same females are additionally accused of being "man-hating." Now, I don't endorse hating people on sight simply because they possess penises, and to be fair, I have to acknowledge that I actually have met a few people in my life who did seem to hate people on sight precisely solely because they possessed penises. (Oddly, a fair number of the people I've known who did this have possessed penises themselves, which is a whole other complication. In many cases they wished, at least for some period of their lives, to get rid of their penises, but this again is a whole other complication.) However, nothing about the fact that a woman wishes to be recognized and acknowledged as a full adult who should be accorded all the same adult privileges as a male full adult in the least implies anything whatsoever about randomly hating people on sight just because they possess penises. This accusation is a classic example of the way that the word "man-hating" has somehow become synonymous with non-imitation of a doormat. There's a huge difference between being hateful and simply refusing to grant people permission to trample on you, and I have extreme difficulty believing anyone who claims not to see any difference between the two.

Oh, gag. That doesn't represent what I was trying to say at all. Also, I hasten to point out that I was trying to hypothesize why people started to call themselves "girl", myself included. I was not calling all previous feminists humorless man-haters, although I admit that if you read quickly, it might have looked like that. I was just saying that there was that perception - which both of you admit is true.

But this discussion really shows why I have aligned myself with "girl" in the first place: The people who describe themselves as "women" are quick to dismiss anyone with a different opinion as not real or serious feminists, as full of shit, as not respectful of themselves or those that came before them, etc. I can't live with so many rules, and frankly, I find them partriarchal in their own right. I'm sick of being thrown out of "club feminist" by womyn who do it better than I do. Equality will never be achieved until feminism starts accepting different perspectives and attitudes without calling them "shit".

If you'd like to discuss this without jumping to conclusions, I'm willing to try not to jump to conclusions myself.

I meant to imply that "girls" or "grrls" act like the fourth wave of feminism, not the first. But believe whatever you want, if it makes you feel superior.

I'm not sure how this response of yours didn't end up on QBC's list of comments, but it did end up in my in-box. Probably an LJ glitch.

Nothing makes me feel "superior". I never threw you out of "club feminist". Hell, I am barely identifying with the term "feminist" these days, but that's another story. I never said you weren't a real or serious feminist.

I think people call themselves girl now because, for a while, feminists were insisting that girl was the worst thing you could call a woman. But those feminists came across as very humorless and man-hating.

Even a slow read of this gives me the idea that you are tarring all women of a certain generation with the same brush. I'm willing to accept that is not what you meant. Please don't put words into my mouth or say that I've "admitted" anything.

I've been called a lot of things: bitch, cunt, slimy hole, manhater, feminazi, etc... Most of the time, those terms popped out when I was making fairly reasonable requests such as "No, I don't want to have sex with you." In a continuum, I'd say that "girl" isn't nearly as offensive as these terms.

For information porpoises, I am probably younger than that generation, but I'm not sure where all these lines dividing the "waves" of feminism are. I haven't read tons of feminist books. These days, I'm more likely to read things by third-world feminists or womanists. I'm working-class, and haven't had the best education in the world, and some of the books I've wanted haven't always been available via inter-library loan. I am not up-to-date with the latest feminist academic theory.

So, I have difficulty with the idea of "waves". I see a continuum of effort to better the lot of women and girls in the world (which outside of a minority of countries is pretty dire). I don't see dividing generations up into "waves" as being helpful, but more of a way to divide women.

My mother was one of the funniest women I've ever met. She had plenty reasons to hate men, but she didn't. She probably never read a feminist book in her life. I suspect she might be considered part of that "man-hating" generation. And yet, she was a feminist. She cried when ERA didn't pass. I felt bad for her, because she was getting paid less than a man doing her job would, and because her boss treated her like crap, talked down to her, and called her "girl". He called all the women in the office "girl", even if they were old enough to be his mother. It was one of his ways of keeping all the "girls" in place. If you haven't experienced this yourself, or seen it happen, then you might not be able to relate. Where I live, out here in the hinterlands of the US, that kind of shit is still alive and well.

My long, meandering point is that it appears you are stating all feminists were acting as if the word "girl" was the worst thing you could call a woman. There were, and always have been (as far as I'm aware) various schools of thought on feminism. I tend to identify more with working-poor, working-class, "third-world" and women of color feminists.

The people who describe themselves as "women" are quick to dismiss anyone with a different opinion as not real or serious feminists, as full of shit, as not respectful of themselves or those that came before them, etc.

You'd win more points with me if you'd refer to me directly, rather than throwing all women who refer to themselves as women into my hothead boat. No, I don't think that all women who have a different opinion than me are full of shit. Have you ever sat down with a woman who doesn't want to be called "girl" and asked her why? This is a good opportunity.

I reacted poorly to your useage of the term "manhater". That's right up there with "bra-burner" in my lexicon... it's another way to discredit feiminists in general, which is the only way I've ever seen it used. Like "feminazi". I've also seen women who call themselves feminists use the term to curry favor with men "I'm not one of those manhaters". More often than that is "I'm not a feminist, but..."

Oh, and "humorless". I think if I throw in "shrill", "in need of a good fuck" and "old maid", I'd have a full house.

I guess I'm just blown away that there is a perception by some younger feminists that an entire generation of feminist women were "manhaters" and "humorless".

I don't know the current statistics, but there was a time when most people into computers and "online" were male. I think the tendency to put a feminizing term in a user name is kinda like, "We're here on the computer, we're not guys, get used to it."

Well, if "jayelle" had been available, or if I'd gone with "heavymental" (which I strongly considered, but rejected 'cause my thoughts aren't always "heavy"), I wouldn't be in on this discussion. I chose princesswitch because I'm always being called a "princess" and because I'm a Witch. I wish now I'd thought up "thatdamnjayelle" earlier.

Of course, I also contemplated "girltrouble", which would have backed up your theory.

I don't know. I find what this society considers to be proper for "women" too confining. In girlhood, there are more possibilities. You think you can do anything, and the adults in your life think it's cute. Girls can be loud and obnoxious, play whatever sport they want, play dolls, whatever, without having to justify it (well, justify it *as much*.) Maybe a lot of the "girls" here are trying to reclaim a time before "socialization" kicked in?

Fwiw, my friends list includes

firewoman,

femmeboy,

sinboy,

uncledark, two people whose username indicates MTF but whom I will not out without their consent, and at least one username which suggests masculine gender in the non-English language from which it is drawn.

My main online name-- for e-mail and newsgroups and such, pre-LJ-- was A young Drew Barrymore.

Whenever my parents tell a story, if it involves a non-white person they explicitly state the ethnicity, even if it's completely unrelated. For them, white is assumed, the default. They choose to note anything other than the default and, more relevantly, they decline to note when something is the default. A lot of people, guys at least, have a similar view towards male.

Similarly, I've never felt any particular racial identity. I recognize that, in part, that attitude is a luxury of being, and having been, white. If I'd been told constantly that I were lesser because of my race, or my gender, or my sexual preference I suspect I'd either be self-hating or develop a strong desire to claim my race, gender, or sexual preference as an essential part of my identity.

woman is long. And we lack a credible feminine alternative to guy. Chick is probably the closest, though often viewed as offensive. Frankly, gal strikes me as more creepy and offensive. girl becomes the feminine guy-- to the day I die at 106 yrs old, any woman my age or younger will be a girl to me. Society stresses becoming a manly man for guys to such an extent that boy is often viewed as derrogatory.

It's a good thing I'm older than you, because calling me "girl" would provoke severe annoyance at you. For that matter, I'd advise you not to call anyone else over 18 a "girl" in my presence either, unless they themself first announced a preference for that word.

all one has to do to avoid it is ask me not to do so. ::shrug:: The word doesn't mean for others what it means for me, and I recognize that and respect others' objections to it.

I still lament the lack of a nice analogue for guy.

I lament that too, but I would not recommend defaulting to "girl" in the absence of specific objections voiced; I would recommend not using it unless specific permission has been given.

If we restrict ourselves to talking about straight people, I'd guess that females are more likely to be aware of how their being female has an effect on their identity and experiences than males are to be aware of how their being male has an effect on their identity and experiences. When we get into the queer or transgendered community, there's more of an equal footing.

My guess, and that of a lot of theorists who have made this observation, is that privilege is invisible. There was one theorist I read who told this little story of her students... a black woman and a white woman were getting into this argument over whether sisterhood crossed race lines, and the black woman asked the white woman, "what do you see when you look in the mirror?" and the white woman answered, "I see a woman." The black woman said, "here's the difference. I see a -black woman- when I look into the mirror." Then a random white male student interrupted and expressed surprise, because when he looked into the mirror, he just saw a generic person. The theorist used this story as an example of a trend she'd observed in society, and I agree with her- subconsciously in a lot of people's minds, there are "people," and then there are women, queers, and racial minorities. It's a set of assumptions that needs to be fought against.

my name is degrassi kid. i wonder how one would interpret that.

Meant to get back to this for quite some time. Interesting questions!

I see a lot of women calling themselves "girl" because I think they want to be seen as dainty, pink-loving, cutesie wutesis. Yeah, I have to admit to being a bit pissed off right now, but I keep running into this shit with a lot of women. "Oooh, I am non-threatening... I am a girl... tee hee... giggle."

I wish more "girls" would sit down and talk with older feminists. Any woman that uses the term "man-hater" is probably male-identified, as well as displaying major ignorance. Ooh, does this date me? I don't give a fuck. I didn't even know there had been a bloody "third-wave" until I got on-line. Hell, I didn't realize that the first and second waves had actually accomplished everything they set out to accomplish. I am sick and tired of women who are coasting on the advances that their great-grandmothers, grandmothers, mothers, and older sisters fought for taking it all for granted by being disrespectful.

Anyhow, I'm to the point where I am almost not calling myself a feminist anymore because I am tired of the way white middle/upper class women have hijacked the term.

Why I hate being called "girl" (unless I am in a group of close female friends)... it is STILL used by a lot of men as a way to talk down, to put in place. I STILL get shit from men when I tell them that I am a woman, not a girl (and I've been doing this since I was at least 21). For me, it's all about respect. I could look up the definition for "girl", but I think the first definition in the dictionary has to do with a female child.

I do feel differently about the term "grrl" and its variant spellings. I feel like it's a transformation... the operative word being "grr".

Back when I first got on-line, I learned the hard way that a gendered name got me lots of attention I didn't want from heavy breathers. I experimented with quite a few online nom-de-plumes over the years. What I found was that on IRC or any chat room with "private chat" functions, I got a lot less private messages when I was using an indeterminate name. "Compost" probably got me the least amount of attention of all.

There seems to be a Peter Pan thing going on with some early 20somethings that wasn't going on with my crowd when we were the same age (not that I've ever really had a crowd).

Then, there are the men my age who only date women who are much younger than them. I kicked one of those jerks off my "friends" list not too long ago. I've seen a lot of "girls" on his list congratulating him for his "openness" and "honesty" (which really usually comes down to his sexual interests... which usually involve women at least 10 years younger than him).

There are two "girls" on my list. One is a fantastic writer, which is why I put her on my list. The other followed me over from polymatchmaker, and I don't know her well enough to form a complete opinion yet. I have no boys or men, although I have some trans people, a crossdresser, and some gay men on my list. Lots of bi people. Some I'm not sure of.

I'm too tired to continue. If you'd like to carry on this conversation further, I'd be interested when I'm more awake.

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Gender Hypothesizing

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Warning: Rant ahead.