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I have a character who's biologically female and identifies as such but I imagine her as quite masculine as well. Apart from having short hair and maybe binding her breasts, what else could signify her gender presentation if clothing is mostly unisex in this society?

Both men and women typically wear tunics and gowns of many sorts. Pants are more of a lower class thing but again, they're worn by both sexes for specific activities.

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  • $\begingroup$ Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat. $\endgroup$
    – L.Dutch
    Jul 15, 2021 at 3:23

7 Answers 7

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A gender non-conforming woman does not have to look masculine. Breast binding, short hair, intentionally lower voice pitch, and other ways to create a more 'masculine' presentation are not really necessary. Especially, when you say that she identifies as a woman. It is 100% possible to be a gender non-conforming woman while looking very feminine.

Gender non-conformity can be limited to behaviour and personal goals. A woman who speaks like a man (be it a choice of words, intonations, topics, or style) will be perceived as masculine. A woman who exhibits other behaviours associated with men, but not women, will also be perceived as masculine. What are these specific behaviours depends on culture/subculture and particular social environment.

Personal goals can also reflect gender non-conformity. A woman who aspires to become a doctor in a society where all doctors are male will be perceived as someone who does not know (or does not accept, if you want to be kind) her place in society. She will also be perceived as masculine (in the sense that she is not feminine enough).

In many cultures masculinity is defined in negative terms: Someone is not masculine if they are too feminine. This is the case in Western cultures. A similar principle applies to women: They are deemed masculine if they are not feminine enough.

In order to make your female character masculine, you can simply make her not feminine enough. 'Not feminine enough' should be not enough in terms of cultural concepts of femininity of your target audience. Deviations from the in-world femininity may not be recognised as masculine traits by your audience if the concepts of masculinity and femininity in your world are insufficiently close to those held by your audience. The latter can be resolved if you have other characters commenting on how non-feminine your character is. However, it is a very superficial solution that may make your audience question the world rather than see your character as gender non-conforming.

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    $\begingroup$ This is right. Your world is not our world, where there are gender-specific costumes. It is safe to assume that the trappings of gender roles will be different in other ways. You will need to make clear in your fiction how the similarly dressed persons of your world distinguish gender, and then show how this particular woman does not conform to these expectations. $\endgroup$
    – Willk
    Jul 14, 2021 at 1:26
  • $\begingroup$ @Willk I think it is important to distinguish between 'in-world' masculinity and 'perceived by audience' masculinity. When you read 17-18th century fiction you might see a female character who exhibits 'in-world' masculine traits and behaviours. However, for us, modern people, these traits and behaviours will look 'normal' and not gendered at all (for example, attempts to establish personal agency). As a result, we will perceive the world as backward and unjust, rather than the character being masculine. So, if the goal is to show masculinity the author has to conform to audience ideals. $\endgroup$
    – Otkin
    Jul 14, 2021 at 19:57
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Language. For instance, among the Lakota people of the North American plains, the declension of words themselves signifies whether the speaker is male or female. Apparently, the movie Dances With Wolves is quite hilarious if this is your native language, because all the men in the movie are speaking like women should.

Subtle mannerisms. Females and males have different body language. The way you move your head, or walk, or your hands while speaking can all give off hints of what gender you are.

Word choice. Expressed interests. Cultural gender norms (girls wear pink, only women are nurses).

If the attempt is for her to pass as a man, then there are many many stumbling blocks, some of which will be obvious to her and others not. Some are so slight that it's perhaps true that no one realizes them, or could articulate what's wrong... she'd just come off as "unmanly".

And that's assuming that pitch of voice doesn't give her away.

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    $\begingroup$ A minor point, but apparently the claim about men in Dances with wolves speaking like women is untrue, at least according to this Lakota speaker: webcache.googleusercontent.com/… "Some critics of the movie say that the actors used wrong gender speech in their dialogues. This statement has become an urban legend both within and outside the Lakota society. As someone working with the language for almost three decades I did not notice any errors in the use of gender-specific words." $\endgroup$ Jul 14, 2021 at 10:27
  • $\begingroup$ Pretty much every Indoeuropean language (with the exception of English and Persian) distinguishes gender in some way (mostly adjectives) even in 1st person. Depending on the language, you have to be somewhat or very careful not to reveal your grammatical gender, and for some languages it is almost impossible. $\endgroup$ Jul 14, 2021 at 15:28
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Asides clothing, consider speech. This may sound nonsensical for some cultures, but in many places of the world men and women speak in different ways.

For example, in Japanese there are many ways to say the singular first person - in any Japanese course you learn that the equivalent for English "I" is "watashi". It is polite and formal. There is an informal manner which is "boku", but for grammatical correctness it should only be used by men. A woman using this would be a way to not conform to the norm.

In my own native language - Brazillian Portuguese - there is a very "common ground" way to speak, but there are also masculine and feminine ways to speak if you want to - including inflection, and words that only one or the other gender is supposed to use. Key word being supposed - LGBTQ communities have greatly transformed language in the last few decades, impacting the way straight people use some words too.


Other presentation points that often differ between gender roles include hairstyle and the way you sit. Menspreading is a regretably conforming behaviour for men in some cultures, but non conforming for women in practically every culture.


Last but not least, consider skills and activities. In Game of Thrones, Arya Stark was barred from training in archery for being a girl (she eventually got good at it though). IRL, in some cultures, being able to drink your blood volume in alcohol in a very short time without blacking out is considered masculine. We men also account for more than 99% of the cast of Jackass and the nominations of the Darwin Awards (the technical keywordry is "idiotic extreme risk taking behaviour").

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Appearance should not be your focus here, behavior should. This goes double if the character identifies as female (having a gender identity that does not match with physiological gender makes it more likely that an individual will actively seek to appear like their gender identity).

Clothing and style are at least partially personal, but a lot of what drives them is still practical considerations. As an example, these days people in the US associate spurs on boots with cowboys, but cowboys did not wear spurs to make a fashion statement or because they thought they were ‘cool’, they wore them because they were relevant to their occupation. Same for turnout gear for firefighters, fatigues for soldiers, and plate armor for European knights. You mentioned that the lower classes do tend to wear pants independent of gender, that sounds like it would be a result of a practical safety consideration. Maybe they go hunting regularly (pants would get caught on the underbrush less frequently than a skirt, dress, or gown), perhaps they work with lots of heavy machinery (again, less likely to get caught), or maybe only the lower class are warriors and soldiers (pants are simply more practical than a gown in combat).

Given this, figure out what this character does that’s ‘different’ from the norms for a woman of her social standing, and then extrapolate from there how her clothing would differ. Of course, there may be nothing different in that respect, in which case it largely comes down simply to language and behavior. Maybe she’s really assertive or really energetic compared to societal norms for a woman. Perhaps she’s an amateur entomologist, astronomer, or some other profession that is inconsistent with norms in that society for women.

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  • $\begingroup$ I got some useful answers here but maybe this was the most informative of them all. Thank you :) $\endgroup$
    – 1995inHUN
    Jul 14, 2021 at 16:37
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A gender non-confirming woman would be a woman who does things which are usually not associated with her gender in the society she lives in. (Or doesn't do things which people of her gender usually do).

She may be a battle facing soldier in a society where women aren't (think Jeanne d'Arc, or a Western woman before the 1990s). Maybe she owns a shop. Perhaps she is an unwed mother. Or she smokes a pipe (or cigars). Having multiple bed partners and not being shy about it. Not wearing a hat to church when all other women do. Etc.

Just think of anything in your society which is either seldomly done by women, and have her do it, or something which is done by most women (but hardly any men) and have her do that. The more things you pick, the less confirming she is.

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  • $\begingroup$ The "problem" is that women in this society have a high status even by modern standards so most of the things you mentioned are not really stigmatized behavior for women. Having multiple sexual partners, having children out of wedlock, and actually, it wasn't really atypical for women to own a shop even in real-life medieval Europe. That being said, many people have recommended prioritizing behavior over appearance and it seems like a smart advice. $\endgroup$
    – 1995inHUN
    Jul 14, 2021 at 16:34
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    $\begingroup$ As I said, it's up to you what your society looks like. But if the less difference there is between men and women, the less opportunity to be "non-confirming" (gender wise) there is. You got to have differences to be able to be non-confirming. $\endgroup$
    – Abigail
    Jul 14, 2021 at 17:11
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First ask what gender expectations are in your society

We only consider behaviour "gender non-conforming" if there are more-or-less-rigid conventions for how each gender should behave. This is where the whole "gender as a social construct" argument comes from.

Consider hair as a simple example. Men in Western Europe (and then in the USA) had a tradition of men cutting their hair short - to quote Bob Seger, "all the same old cliches, is that a woman or a man". But Sioux and Blackfoot men only cut their hair to express grief; Chinese culture had a tradition of not cutting their hair because it was seen as disrespectful to their parents; and for Rastafarians it is a tenet of their faith.

More significantly though, what jobs are traditionally carried out by men or women? In the USA and Europe, farmers tend to be men. In many South American and African tribes though, farming is a woman's job; men are hunters or herders. Childcare is usually led by women, but there are tribes where this is not the case. Western medicine has a strange division between overwhelmingly-male doctors and overwhelmingly-female nurses. Even more strangely, some highly physical aspects of medicine such as physiotherapy are overwhelmingly female, even though they have never formed part of the "caring-for-the-sick" role that tended to make nursing female-dominated.

And then there's cooking. In the UK it always used to be seen as women's work, to the extent that my all-boys school did not even consider offering cookery lessons until well into the 1990s, and then only because it merged with another school. And yet France has always had a long tradition of male chefs, and that tradition meant that most commercial kitchens in the UK were run by men, even at a time when schools actively refused to teach boys how to cook. That's an example of a society not even being internally consistent with gender expectations.

It goes back further than that though. There is substantial well-documented research that gender expectations are imposed from before a child is even aware of them. From birth, girls are overwhelmingly praised for how they look and how well they behave; and boys are praised for carrying out activities. Toys and clothes are gender-differentiated from birth too.

Gender non-conforming doesn't necessarily mean a girl wants to be a boy, physically or sexually. It can just as much be that a girl wants the opportunities which boys have and which are denied to her. Fewer activities are denied to boys, but they do still exist - male nurses and physiotherapists are still rare, primary-school teaching is overwhelmingly female, and it's virtually impossible to run a preschool simply because parents won't take their children to you.

If you've just blindly assumed that your society has the same gender roles as 19th-century Europe, you're probably not in a strong position to write gender. Clothing is a fairly superficial aspect compared to everything else.

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When adding male behaviors some cultures have some odd extras. One from my Irish (male only) relatives was that you could not have a friend you didn't get in a fist fight with them. Else you could not know what sort of friend they were.

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