Quote:
Originally Posted by Heart
I know quite a few handsome women and beautiful butches. Yum.
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Exactly.
Hiya Heart.... Your post made me think about how the use and misuse of language shapes our self-concept, and our understanding of ourselves in the world, in overt and covert ways.
Gender training starts at birth. A zillion old and new studies confirm that: Boy and girl babies are spoken to and treated differently, described TO themselves differently, by care givers and the world around them. This profoundly affects self-perception; our understanding of who we are in a gendered world.
I often wonder how I might have evolved had I
not been tagged a "tomboy" in childhood. I suspect I would have been spared certain inorganic experiences and freed to explore others that were more organic to me.
We become unwitting (if not witting) agents of dominant culture constructs/values when we use it's language to describe ourselves and one another.
As always, thanks for the thought provoking post, Heart.