I love reading your sex and gender theory/gender performance and the psychological elements of fetishes (esp. you own). You talk lots about femme and masculinity, and I was wondering if you have a working definition for those, like in your own terms?

Well, basically I believe they are a bunch of unrelated stuff society has decided to go together, but like money, these constructs are ones made real by collective belief (real in the sense that choosing not to believe in them as an individual won’t end their effect on your life)

Femininity is shit we’ve decided is feminine for some reason because apparently pink, and dolls, flowers, and interior decorating and sewing and cooking and makeup and nurturing and romance novels and shopping are somehow related 

Masculinity is whatever shit we’ve decided is masculine, because apparently yard work, home repair, assertiveness, the color blue, squares, science, action movies, and combat are somehow related.

Femininity and masculinity are social constructs and the elements they’re created from aren’t actually tied to one another or linked to one another in any way, one can have all of both, none of both, some of each, all of one, but it’s just random traits we’ve assigned meaning to for… IDK reasons, and have generally decided that masculinity is superior to femininity because of patriarchy probably.

I mean honestly I feel like war and emotions should probably go together if we’re going to categorize things and housework and home repair are probably things that should be categorized together rather than apart, and like flowers and yard work probably belong in the same category… 

but of course these categories make no real sense, except that masculinity seems to have oddly ended up claiming pretty much all positions of authority, and femininity has ended up getting pretty much all positions of sacrificing your own desires for the desires of others and isn’t that funny?

Like the definition of masculinity is like: Positions of power, a bunch of random shit, the use of force, being considered competent when it comes to making important decisions and incompetent when it comes to making uninteresting domestic decisions, self sacrifice when it’s big, dramatic and heroic.

Femininity is like: Self sacrifice when it’s drudgy and unglamorous, passivity, drudgy domestic duties, a bunch of random crap, pretty stuff so maybe you don’t feel so bad about your lot in life.

Which is interesting isn’t it?