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From: andrews@ubc-cs.UUCP (Jamie Andrews)
Newsgroups: net.women
Subject: Re: what makes you feel feminine/masculine?
Message-ID: <32@ubc-cs.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 1-Oct-85 14:00:58 EDT
Article-I.D.: ubc-cs.32
Posted: Tue Oct  1 14:00:58 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 1-Oct-85 20:14:03 EDT
References: <248@ssc-vax.UUCP> <1944@reed.UUCP>
Reply-To: andrews@ubc-cs.UUCP (Jamie Andrews)
Distribution: net
Organization: UBC Department of Computer Science, Vancouver, B.C., Canada
Lines: 42
Summary: good question


Ginger Grover:
>I'll start.  Bubble-baths and slinkly lingerie make me feel
>especially feminine....
>Also, wearing a full, long skirt that rustles and swishes at
>the slightest movement....
>Laughing or crying for no earthly reason, but just because
>that's the way I feel.

In article <1944@reed.UUCP> suki@reed.UUCP (Monica Nosek) writes:
>Taffeta, lace, and high heels with silk stockings....
>... Chanel No. 5 or
>freshly clean skin....
>             ...  Great-grandmother's jewelery--especially
>amethysts--worn to bed.  Giggling for no reason at all but to
>giggle.  You know--girl stuff :-)

     I find this amazing, though not necessarily bad.  Here in 1985,
on a newsgroup devoted to women's issues, women are still talking
about pampering themselves, wearing traditionally women's things,
and being irrationally emotional as the things which make them feel
feminine.
     This makes me frustrated.  I would love to do just these kinds
of things too, and to feel as good about it as you women do.  (Yes,
including wearing skirts.)  But when I do anything like this, I feel
more or less of a sense of discomfort -- in part because of my
upbringing, but in part because even the women of today think of
these things as very feminine, and don't understand when I do them.
     I also can't feel good about doing traditionally masculine
things, because of the bad feelings I associate with "playing the
role".  About the only time I feel really masculine in a positive way
is when I look at myself in the mirror after a shower; and the only
time I feel really heterosexual (not the same thing) in a positive
way is when my body responds to a sexy woman.
     Am I alone, or do other men feel like this too?  I tell myself
that this is all I really need, but society has a big influence when
it says there's more to masculinity than this.

--Jamie.
  ...!ihnp4!alberta!ubc-vision!ubc-cs!andrews
"Autumn, to me the most congenial of seasons;
  the university, to me the most congenial of lives." -R.Davies


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