1) When walking outside, I feel an obligation to hold my head up and to be upright.
Normally, I adopt whatever position takes the least energy, because I am so tired and it's hard to get around.
But if I think of myself as male, I feel like I have no choice but to stand up straight and keep my head up.
It's ok to look at the ground as a woman, but if a man were to do that, he would be a terrible loser, I think. Maybe I'm picking up on how showing dominance is more of an important thing for men?
2) As expected, I feel some restrictions on my expression of my emotions. But I didn't expect it to feel like this.
Before having tried restraining my emotions and my feminine expression ther, I used to see "emotional restraint" as an annoying thing that men did that made them less fun to be around but also more reliable in crises. I was seeing it only from an outside perspective.
But if I imagine following the emotional restrictions I imagine men obey (and mind you, I'm not even able to pull this off--I'm just imagining this):
It feels like being half-dead or being on tranquilizers. I feel an inhibition against doing the little playful things I do as a woman. It's like being in a loose straitjacket.
I feel required to be more cynical, withholding, and cautious.
I wonder what men would feel like if they imagined have female's license to emote. My boyfriend has said that he imagines it's very fun to be me.
3) Moreover, there are higher expectations for what I say or write. I can't just say anything; it has to be a
Here begin some more effects that I did not expect:
4) I sense that I need to be slower. I need to move more slowly, speak more slowly, and hesitate before doing things. I feel like leaning back in my chair (legs spread, of course) instead of sitting on the edge of my chair (I am not actually doing any of these things; just imagining what I would be doing if I were a guy).
It hadn't occurred to me, but I suppose that talking quickly and being eager and spritely is typically a female thing (not to be enforcing gender norms here--I'm just observing my own gender norms).
5) This one was the most surprising to me, but among the most strong. I feel a strong command to do less.
Components include:
-Write fewer things.
-Do only one thing for my work. Don't have much work besides my work.
-Have only one interest.
-Be "devoted" to a career, such as devoted to law or medicine.
Some of this might be what I imagine any other person would do, not necessarily a man.
But if I were to assume that these differences came from my ideas about men and not about other people in general:
-Perhaps I think that each act that a man does is more meaningful, so a man does not have to do as many things. In contrast, no matter how much a woman does, it seems like never enough, so as a woman I keep doing things maniacally.
-Maybe it's that I notice that men seem more cautious and less sharing. Since much of what I do is sharing, perhaps I feel like I should do less if I were to be a man.
6) So let me imagine being a man but having other aspects of my personality still similar. I'll imagine being a man with a personality sort of like mine.
What I feel like doing differently:
-Be more writerly. I guess I think of a man who's into writing as more pushed toward being a fiction or creative nonfiction writer.
Maybe it's easier for a woman to be "sensitive" and into writing without feeling pigeonholed into being an emotions-based writer (like, say, Jonathan Franzen).
-Read more fiction, more poetry. Hm, it seems like my ideas for what a "sensitive" guy should do are far more stereotyped and extreme than my conception of what a "sensitive" woman should do. Once again, perhaps I imagine that women are more free to be sensitive without it defining them.
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Origin: pua-celebrities.blogspot.com
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