@VoxSomniator @typhlosion speak for yourself! my gender is what I am, /not/ how I perform it.

@frost @typhlosion I don't mean to speak for anyone, this is just one influential theory among queer gender philosophers.

@VoxSomniator @typhlosion *becomes a queer gender philosopher out of pure spite*

@VoxSomniator @typhlosion Like, gender is different things for different people. Saying "gender IS how you perform it, not what you are" is wrong, because my gender is not like that.

@VoxSomniator @typhlosion (If it'd been "gender as performance" or something instead of "gender is a performance" (implying it's by definition like that), I wouldn't be quite so bristly.)

(and sorry for being bristly, I just... yeah. It totally felt like a "gender is this by definition".)

@frost @VoxSomniator i think you might be taking my joke about barbie slightly too seriously

@typhlosion @VoxSomniator oh it's not about your barbie thing, actually! it's about vox's "gender is a performative construct" thing.

@frost i also think your going off about that was an overreaction, of a kind you often do when people use words in ways that don't precisely align with the way you use them. the way i see it this whole disagreement boils down to, essentially, semantics about the precise meaning and connotations of the concept of gender - you see it one way, voks sees it a different way, or maybe you agree but differ in how you express it, who knows. but it feels unnecessary to bare your fangs over it like that

@frost i'm getting irritated, and i feel like takiing the gloves off, so let's really break this down

let's start with voks' wording

> (author's note: performative here does not mean 'fake', it means gender identity is a thing a person *does* more than something a person just *is*)

you appear to be interpreting this as "gender is always a 'does' verb rather than an 'is' verb, invariably", and taking it as some kind of essentialist declaration. i think this is a misinterpretation of shorthand. when i read "something a person is" in the context of gender i tend to interpret it as meaning "some quality intrinsic to a person", i.e. referring to the gender essentialist viewpoint, that there is a Womanness or Manness or Whateverness inside everyone that then comes out in how they behave (this is bogus obviously and i dont endorse it)

in that light, my interpretation of what voks is saying is that gender is something you decide for yourself actively based on self-knowledge and experience (something one does), rather than something that comes out of some intrinsic quality (something one is). i believe this interpretation falls perfectly in line with your view, and hopefully you can take this forward and get into fewer silly arguments in the future

now, there also seems to be some ambiguity in how "gender" is being used, and that seems to be causing some friction as well

your interpretation of gender as it relates to your identity might not be defined by the performance of particular social qualities, but the larger concept of gender itself *is* a performative construct, in a general sense, in the same way money is - it's something we made up because of some sort of usefulness it has on a (normative) societal level. the concept of gender is deliberately very wishy-washy because it is literally just a sort of arbitrary way to sort people into categories and has no basis in physical reality, it only has meaning at all in the context of how people act and interact - that is, in society. that is literally the definition of a performative social construct

tl;dr "gender" does not necessarily mean "specifically your gender" and also please give people some benefit of the doubt before "becoming a queer gender philosopher out of pure spite" at strangers in my replies