And one last thought, probably rather un-PC, but fuck those fascists anyways: in doing this today I realized that despite growing up with a brother and spending the better part of my life amongst guys since I find females mostly a pain in the ass and a waste of time with nothing interesting to say, it was interesting how stereotyped and one dimensional my first-thing-to-come-to-mind ideas of what would best signal “guy’s car” would be.
Granted, I’m going for faking a very specific brand of masculinity, the “Hulk SMASH!!!” kind, which is already a parody of sorts, but even so. No man I’ve ever dated has had bodybuilding magazines kicking around his car, but then as I said above, I like scrawny guitarist types, so if anything their cars tend to have Guitar Player kicking around and maybe random guitar picks.
But it does go to show just how deeply rooted and how pre-programmed by genetics and how stereotyped one sex’s notion about the other can be.
I guess the flip side of it is those guys with autogynephilia (and yes, those exist, I’ve run into a few over the years) whose notion of becoming a girl is that everything must be pink, everything must be frilly and sparkly, they must wear more makeup than Tammy Faye Baker, they walk like Peggy Bundy, etc. Basically a cartoon of femininity (I only know but one girl who goes that far in the frilly/sparkly/pink department, but even she walks like a normal human being and wears very little makeup).
Which is to say, even a tomboy like me has a female brain and doesn’t quite get the male brain, though I get it a lot more than some of my other female friends who had no brothers and who mostly worked in hen house environments.
Social construct, my ass. In 30 years we’ll look back on all this gender nonsense the same way we look at the multiple personalities and repressed memory from Satanic ritual abuse fads of the 1980s: absolute derision.
