::: spoiler im kinda rambling idk im sorry i feel you quite a bit, your words make sense, but i also just woke up from a nap and hopefully i make sense

idk what I'm saying

For someone who doesnt know what shes saying your words make a lot of sense!

I have a long history of thinking gender roles -- that is, "I am a boy so I must do this, I am a girl so I must do that" were complete and utter bullshit because there's no sensible basis for them. People are people and can do what they want, obviously.

They are bullshit. To my eyes, the gender system functions a bit differently tho (and like, also want to say i could be so fucking wrong here like please dont take me as an authority on any of this). I see it as arising more as i do this labour, which gives me an identity facet i will call "boy". I am a boy. I have a penis. When baby have penis i call it boy. It is a boy so therefore it shall do this labour. And i draw it back to what i view as the only biologically neccessary division of reproductive labour: in order to physically reproduce, someone has to impregnate, and someone has to be impregnated(and gestate, etc.). Most of the labour division is bullshit, but that one is directly dependent on physical characteristics. Hopefully thru technology we can leave that division behind too. The more we can destroy gender the more we can be free to just exist as we naturally want to exist, and genders can become more akin to subcultures than strict social organizing dividers and tools of oppression.

Now, the first two roles are often genderized as womens' work, while the latter two are genderized as mens' work? But I don't believe any of those roles are actually gendered.

Yeah! So like, to my eyes they shouldnt be gendered, but they have been and so that becomes the system we have to work within. I guess to share from my life: to the cishets i will always be a trans woman, but to my friends or on here, i can carve out areas where i dont have to be "a woman" in the sense of the reproductive labour i do because that labour isnt gendered. Like here i use it/its and pup/pups because i dont want to be a woman-with-a-capital-W here. I have different genders in different spaces, and theyre all me, and theyre all the same and different. I am still a woman, im just also not a woman at the same time (ik it doesnt make sense im sorry). Im pretty privilidged to have such spaces as this and such friends. In such spaces, the definitions of woman and man become much more self-applied and seem to mostly derive from the cultural actions rather than reproductive labour. The labour aspect also forms differently in different subcultures; one of my friends views womanhood as very much a thing of strength and protection rather than weakness and being protected because of where and how she grew up, and what she wants womanhood to mean. Like, its a dialectic between the culture of a gender (the markers, the laws, etc.) and the labour divisions, and both of these take part in creating gender. Idk i feel like im spewing nonsense here

I guess what im trying to say is that our understandings of womanhood have the hegemonic components that are passed down thru the hegemonic culture, but also the "real" or directly observed components that derive from what we and those around us have to do to survive and what we want to do with our lives. And they each shape the other.

And that separate thing has to do with some physical feelings regarding what changes puberty wrought upon my body and some emotional feelings about how people have treated me by lumping me in with the category of Men (Man as the oppressor) even while simultaneously observing that I am very very different from others in that category.

Maybe it's also complicated by the fact that if I could be magically thrown into a cis woman's body I'd keep acting largely the way I do now. The only thing that I think would change is I wouldn't feel these twinges of dysphoria and (I hope) people would treat me differently, but I'm also aware that since women get systemically oppressed to shit I'd be trading one set of problems for another.

So, i feel this quite hard. Growing up the school i went to around when puberty hit tried very hard to teach us about misogyny. It wasnt explicitly terfy, but it was pretty steeped in "men=opressor woman=opressed". Being a repressed trans girl in that environment wasnt great... I was very different from the other boys (and they saw this and made sure i knew it). I already hated my body and especially my genitals, but all of their bs they applied to me was just icing on the cake.

And like, abolishing the divisions of labour is wonderful! But it doesnt change the physical issues i have with myself. And similar to you i would keep acting the way that i do, because the way i act is not gendered. It becomes gendered by others when they see a person in a skirt doing it, but it alone isnt gendered. Driving my friend to doctors appts? Not a gendered thing. Cooking? Not a gendered thing. Until others observe it and then it becomes gendered. People took my cooking much more seriously and thought it tasted better when i was seen as a man, and when seen as a woman it becomes seen as lesser, or expected. Or like, the way i walk gets gendered as feminine, and either praised or derided based on how the observer genders me. (It was actually something i worked really hard to suppress (among other things) growing up cause i associated it with the mocking and the hitting and the slurs. Part of coming out meant no longer policing my mannerisms or how i move thru the world, and just acting more "naturally", which is in some ways "feminine" and in some ways "masculine", but those divisions are applied to me generally, or are divisions ive reproduced internally. Everything i do is womany cause im a woman, but also im not a woman (ikikik its confusing and it makes sense in my head but idk how to make it into words that make sense)).

Ultimately gender systems are pretty silly and it sucks that we have to exist within them. Sorry for going on so long, i am nothing if not a windbag lol.