Gender and stuff

Good question - if I understand it properly.

Gender roles are changing (in North America at least, if not world wide) anyway. Women don't stay home to cook and clean and mind the children any more. They are almost as likely to be out in the workplace. Many men I know do a lot of the cooking and cleaning. I've certainly always done the laundry and ironing. But I also cut the lawn exclusively when I was with my wife. She never did to my knowledge - that was my job.

So now that I'm in a relationship with another man, we've had to figure out who's going to do what. He's a better cook - so he cooks most meals. But he let it be known that he'd like me to cook once in a while too - so I do. We both share housework - although I do most of the ironing.

 

I really like this question because I have to think long and hard before answering it...

I've found (a little to my surprise) that being gay has given me a more "flexible" perspective on gender, maybe a little fuzzier than the harder lines I was taught in the straight world. I grew up in the presence of strong gender identity - for the most part men did this and acted this way, and women did that and acted that way.

I think in order to answer this question, I'd like to propose my own "work-in-process" hypothesis about gender roles and gender identity. I believe there are two quite different aspects to this question - the different roles that society expects men and women to have, and the proportion of "feminine qualities" found in a gay man and vice versa for a lesbian. I think these need to be looked at separately.

I find the gender roles as viewed by society to be easy to answer - roles are roles and they can be flexible. There are a number of tasks that need to be done in everyday life and that's regardless of whether the people living together are of the same sex. I love cooking, I know how to wash clothes and I can sew a button back on if I have to. Many years ago these might have been considered "woman's work" but I don't respect any such labels; things need to be done and someone has to do them. The same goes for changing roles in the modern straight world as Jim said - there are stay-at-home dads while mom is off at work. We've had to become more flexible as a society and that flexibility lends itself well to same-sex relationships as well.

The other part of this is harder to answer - whether or not a homosexual individual is more likely to exhibit behavioral characteristics of the opposite gender. If the stereotypes are true (and I've heard Chip say often enough that there has to be some truth behind stereotypes or they wouldn't be stereotypes) then it would strongly suggest that homosexuals are comprised of a "stronger blend" of traits of both sexes than straight people. In my "extracurricular" research I've found it interesting that some cultures consider homosexuality to be a hybridizing of the genders - that gay men have a "higher proportion of woman" in their constitution and vice versa for lesbians.

But that runs a little counter to my own personal experience. I don't find anything "feminine" about myself and I don't outwardly (or even inwardly) exhibit any characteristics of the opposite gender. In fact the only reason I know I'm gay is because I'm attracted to males and not females, and that one is obvious to me! And yet the "gay spectrum" goes into the realm of transgendered persons where this conflict between the genders is outwardly apparent. So I'm not sure what conclusion I can draw from this...

As for LGBT people understanding gender roles better than a straight person, I'd say yes, if only because at some point we all come to ponder what I've mentioned above. It makes us think more about it. Plus if there is some basis for the stereotypes, then it would suggest that there's a leaning of LGBT people towards exhibiting more traits of the opposite gender than the average straight person. And because that flies in the face of the conventional expectations of gender in the straight world, then we are forced to be aware of it by our "differences" from the rest of the world.

I'm not sure if that even made any sense... it's one of those things I still think about a lot as I make this journey "from straight to gay", and I'm not sure I've found any of the answers yet...