Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with femininity

I'm kicking around a concept for a theoretical piece I hope to work on in the near future, dealing with the way "femininity" and the "female" category are conceived of linguistically. Help me find some empirical data!

parkbench — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 11:42:00 -0800

I'm kicking around a concept for a theoretical piece I hope to work on in the near future, dealing with the way "femininity" and the "female" category are conceived of linguistically. Help me find some empirical data! Thus, I want to look at everything from--

-1} "benignly" feminine morphemes, like feminine nouns in Spanish or Arabic; to

-2} idiomatic expressions that are ambiguously connotative of "femininity," like the syntactical habit in English (for example) of referring to countries, ships, and organisations with "feminine" syntax (thus "the ship's majesty reflected her righteous purpose," or the "benevolent womb" of "the motherland"--as opposed to the sagacious & stern "protective embrace" of "the fatherland"); to

-3} more directly identifiable conceptual assumptions about "the female essence"--the only case I can think of being the Japanese logograph "姦," meaning "wickedness" or "cunning," which is comprised of the radical signifying "woman" repeated three times, and is commonly known for its presence in the expression, "女三人寄れば姦しい," [おんなさんにんよればかしましい] which roughly means "wherever women gather, it is noisy [literally, "if there are 3 women, it is noisy"].

My purpose in all of this is to take a critical eye to the common-sense argument that such gender constructions in language are purely "neutral"--as they are arbitrary, symbolic constructions--and problematise it by addressing the very real assumptions & power dynamics inherent in any linguistic exchange, which in the face of arbitrary/"relative" symbolism nonetheless manage to actively cathect meaning, perspective, and oppression onto selfsame symbols, and insodoing reinforce (intentionally or unintentionally) broader cultural/ideological conceptions of women and "femininity" (think Althusser, Butler, etc).

As you may have already guessed, then, I want to accomplish this by demonstrating the continuum between the subtle and mostly inconsequential cases (as in case #1) to the more overt and problematic ones (as in case #3) with concrete examples for a robust comparative analysis. And as you can see, I have only a handful at my disposal.

So!

What I'm soliciting the askmefi community for is two things:

-1} compelling examples/cases of different languages which have constructions falling into these categories. Anything goes. Examples of languages that manage to address "femininity" even without strictly "feminine" grammatical structures (like English), or "rare" languages surviving among uncolonised peoples which defy or problematise my thesis with highly unique constructions, are welcome.

My realm of experience is mostly with english, spanish, japanese, arabic, and russian, so any insight into languages other than these will be extremely appreciated--though prominent/interesting/striking examples that I have completely overlooked in said languages are of course still very much welcome.

-2} any existing commentaries, texts, articles, authors who touch on this issue directly or indirectly which I can look into for further research.

Thanks so much for your time & patience. I know that might have been a lot to swallow. For any who are interested, if this ever comes to fruition I'll surely share it with the mefi community.

note: I am not looking for a peer review of my thesis. I'd love to talk about it to anyone who wishes, but if it's not too much to ask, please keep this thread to empirical examples and not a debate as to whether or not women are unfairly treated in society. thank you.

A male author entranced by women's "Little Things".

Tufa — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 17:00:31 -0800

A male writer wrote about his appreciation of "Little Things", all the small and entrancingly feminine knickknacks and accouterments women have that men do not. Things he had no idea what to do with, like, perhaps, an eyelash curler. Do you know who this is? I am trying to find the author and source.

Smooch mechanics

prefpara — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 12:48:04 -0800

How do you kiss? I would be surprised to learn that any real study of this has ever been performed, so I resort to polling the MeFi population.

When two people kiss, generally, one person kisses the other one's bottom lip and the second person is kissing the first person's top lip. Sort of. If that doesn't make sense, here is a... diagram:

p1.top.lip
(p2.top.lip)
(p1.bottom.lip)
p2.bottom.lip

So, in my limited experience, the guy kisses the girl's bottom lip and the girl kisses the guy's top lip.

Heterosexual MeFites: does this comport with your experience?
Other MeFites: do you observe any relationship between who kisses which lip and who is more "butch"?
Or am I weird, and everyone else just switches a lot?

I apologize if this makes no sense.

Mom, Dad? I don't even have a closet.

landedjentry — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 16:50:38 -0800

How to deal when family thinks you're in the closet? I'm a female in my early-mid 20s. I currently identify as straight, but not too straight (i.e., if I met the right woman, etc.). All of my past relationships have been with men. My sexual orientation isn't really the issue here.

My family, on the other hand, has lately been dropping hints that they think I've got something to hide. My stepmom in particular has been making offhand comments like, "oh, there are men out there...or not men, you know?" While mentioning to my dad I was going to go out to a bar with a friend, he asked me which gender it was (this never came up when I wasn't single). My dad's favorite sister has long identified as a lesbian so it's not an issue of tolerance, as far as I can tell. There are the ever-present family hangups at work here, I think, but for brevity's sake I'll leave them out.

Now, I'm not the girliest of all (traditionally defined) girls, by any means. I don't dress in a particularly feminine way, I tend to keep my emotions hidden, and I thought "Dirty Dancing" was a stupid movie. This is something I'm almost okay with (lousy cultural norms), but the sudden onslaught of if-you're-gay-you-can-tell-us comments has become exasperating and frankly, a little damaging to the ol' self-confidence.

Have you had this experience from friends or family? How did you respond? Most past questions I've seen have to do with discovering sexuality rather than loved ones' suspicions of your sexuality; again, I'm not too concerned with my identification.

Any and all anecdotes, stories from friends-of-friends, etc., appreciated.