Last weekend, we were invited to take part of a great conversation on gender, sexuality, and exploring diversity in our writing. Dr. Paz Galupo introduced us to a gender map, which JP and Crys discuss in this episode. We highly recommend you go listen to or watch the entire conversation here: https://dialoguedoctor.com/2021/01/10/episode-24-gender-mapping-and-understanding-gender-diversity/
Show Notes
Many thanks to the wonderful crew who were part of the discussion led by Dr. Paz and Carin Galupo: Jeff Elkins, Mark Leslie Lefevre and Laura Humm. For more thoughts on the discussion and some other great writing podcasts, check out:
Mark Leslie Lefebvre www.starkreflections.ca and www.markleslie.ca
Dr. Paz Galupo http://wp.towson.edu/galupo/
Jeff Elkins (the Dialogue Doctor) https://dialoguedoctor.com and https://jeffelkinswriter.com
JP’s Gender Maps: Self / Characters
Transcript
Crys: Hello, friends. This is episode 25 of the Write Away Podcast, and it is January 12th, 2021 as we record this. I’m Crys Cain with my cohost JP Rindfleisch. How was your week?
JP: It was good. There was some madness last week, I think in the world in general. But I still was able to write every day and do that kind of stuff. So overall it was good.
Crys: I think I’ve blocked all political and economic things that happened in the last week from my brain until you said that. For those in the future, 2020 was an epic shit show of an election year and 2021 has slightly extended that. And that’s all I’ll say about that.
JP: There was a bar that 2021 was supposed to meet and it didn’t.
Crys: So we’re returning this year. We’d like a refund.
JP: Yeah. Oh well.
Crys: That’s all right. We will survive at the very least. Writing, work-wise, once again, I have no idea what I did. I do know that I wrote. I am going to be finishing my part of a co-written book today so that it can go to the editor in the next couple of days.
And last week. Yeah, I don’t know where it went and that’s fine. It was a really social week. That’s why I don’t really know where it went because I just had a lot of reconnections with people. A lot of really good meetings. I was completely socially burnt out by Sunday, and on Saturday we had a delightful three-hour conversation with Jeff Elkins, Mark Leslie LeFebvre, Dr. Paz and Carin Galup, and Laura Humm. And we talked about one of our favorite topics that we [JP and Crys] jibber jabber about constantly, which is gender. So if you were looking to avoid another gender conversation because we had one a few weeks ago, too bad.
We love this topic. And one of the things that Dr. Galupo shared with us was a gender map that she uses in her classes, in her research. And JP, you can probably explain it a little bit more succinctly than I can because I know that I’ll ramble on for five minutes and you might only ramble on for three.
So will you give us an overview of what the gender map is and what it is good for?
JP: Basically it breaks down the seven attributes that would identify gender and sexual identity. Those seven attributes are then mapped out into the sheet of paper and then people that complete this map create their little lines and squiggles and ranges to determine what their gender and sexual identities are.
I rearranged the organization of her map, hopefully she doesn’t hate me for it, but to try and create some type of an acronym, just to make it a little bit mentally easier for myself. And I call it serials, as in like serial fiction. And those seven attributes are assigned sex, gender expression slash presentation, gender role, gender identity, attraction, legal sex, and sexual orientation.
When we go into these definitions, assigned sex, that’s at birth what the doctors are determining your sex to be. This can be contested later in life, depending on chromosomes because obviously when we talk about chromosomes, everyone’s not being tested genetically to determine what your sex chromosomes are. Variations within the scale between male and female for assigned sex include things like intersex, Turner syndrome, Kleinfelters, et cetera. This also includes hormones, physical genitalia, et cetera.
Then we have gender expression and presentation. This is how you physically present yourself within society. This can include things like your posture, mannerisms, behavior, vocal pitch, hair length, nail length, clothing, makeup, accessories. It’s basically how the society has defined what gender is and how you are expressing your gender within that society.
Gender role is the society itself. How these activities that you take part in are gendered. The role you take when you interact with society that appropriately reflects who you are. So for example, in Western culture, American football is more or less considered a masculine sport. So partaking in that sport would attribute a masculine role.
Then we have gender identity. This is the sense of self regardless of external or physical factors. This would be, how do you speak to yourself? How do you relate to yourself mentally? Who do you wish to be ? Who do you identify with?
Attraction is who you are attracted to. This is not the same as having an intimate relation with someone. This more or less interplays with identity and orientation. People can have the same sexual orientation, but not the same attraction. It’s not always physical attraction. And so more or less, the question you’re answering is who are you attracted to?
Legal sex is determined by assigned sex in Western culture. But legal sex is your documentation. Unless it’s contested where you change this documentation, more or less, this would align with your assigned sex.
Lastly. Sexual orientation. So this is who you have an interest in a partner or partners. What those intimate relationships look like. And what attributes do you want from someone reflected within those intimate relationships? It also includes if you do not have attraction or interest in intimate relationships, which would then be asexual.
Crys: Yeah. This is the one on the map that has several definitions on a scale. For the most part, it’s a scale from, left being more masculine, and right being more female or feminine for the sexual orientation– and we will share these in on the website where you can download them– but it goes from heterosexual to bi, to gay/lesbian in the middle to bi to heterosexual. And it’ll make sense when you look at it.
JP: I think the two pillars on both sides are basically the archetypes of what we expect cis, which means heterosexual born female or male. And they present as those expressions. It’s the kind of archetypes of both male and female expectations within most societies.
Crys: I would agree with that. So our plan is to share our personal gender maps because those are going to be more complicated because we are real human beings, versus our character maps, which we are also going to share. And those are, they’re generally simpler for us because we’re only viewing the distilled expression of a human as portrayed in our fiction.
While we might explore complex expressions of gender and sexuality in our fiction, by default, characters that we create are going to be infinitely more simpler then human beings.
JP: I also think that these, the gender map and why I think we should be having this conversation when we create our characters, is it just creates that variation.
When we look at characters, we almost want to have a shorter range unless we’re making an explicit decision to broaden that because it helps determine whether or not a character will perform certain actions or how they present in society. That’s where I think that this gender map comes into really good play to figure out how to create this variation. Even among the otherwise defined same type of character, a straight male, you may have one that’s more takes on more of that feminine role in society.
Crys: It was really interesting to me as I did the map and JP is like, let’s do two characters. And I’m like, yeah, that’s fine. And then I did four because I realized how much insight it was giving me to my characters and to their relationships with each other.
let’s get into our personal maps. I will share my screen with you, JP. And if you’re listening, you can pull this up. I’m going to do my best to describe it verbally. This is my personal map and mine is in the order, the way that Dr. Galupo shared it. I downloaded my sheet from Jeff Elkins.
My assigned sex is female at birth.
My gender identity, a woman by default. This is a phrase my friend KT Strange used, in that I don’t particularly feel like I’m extremely womanly, but I don’t feel like I’m not a woman. I’m cool with woman, I’m going with that by default until experience in life tells me otherwise.
My gender expression is like in the middle, about a quarter line in from female to a little past halfway on masculine. And this is really funny. This is a realization I had going over these, in that in really hot weather, I dress really femininely because those clothes are more conducive to not overheating. And in cold weather, I get really excited about the masculine elements I can wear because there are layers and, I dunno. I like jackets and long sleeve shirts and pants, and you can be feminine with all those, but because I have the opportunity to dress with a slightly more masculine bent, I do. So that was really interesting to discover.
My gender role tends to lean midline feminine, to more masculine. And I don’t know, I just, I am in some ways the absent-minded dad. But I also wanted to put a dot really close to feminine because I am the very nurturing mother, but I’m also not a hoverer. I am a free-range parent in ways that make people uncomfortable. I let my kid jump off of high things. I let him climb trees without a lot of support.
My general thought is he needs to get hurt once so he knows not to do things. And that’s a much more masculine approach to things. Often more masculine in the way I approach work. I don’t know. I float in the middle there.
And then I have giant question marks for sexual orientation and attraction because I have only ever been with my ex-husband. And so I’m like, you know what? I’m not even entering into that realm. I have never had to examine this and I just don’t know. Because right now I don’t want anything. So we’ve got some giant questions, and that’s going to stay that way for a while.
And then my legal sex is female.
JP: Wonderful. I love this because it really shows like that variation even among yourself.
Because well, you on paper may look like a female heterosexual, you do take on more of those masculine roles in your daily life. And so writing a character like you would be someone who may be the mother of the family, but is the one that’s the mechanic, or the one that’s something along those lines that may be defined as a masculine role, but it’s more likely that in a relationship you would be the one taking part in that.
Crys: I am very drawn to distracted mothers in fiction.
JP: For me, I rearranged this to be the serials acronym. So there’s just a little bit of variation from yours.
But, assigned sex, male.
Gender expression, I just have a massive range that bleeds into feminine. This is how I express myself into the world. And this varies a ton. For example, I know that while I’m on this podcast and when I speak to friends, I have a vocal range that’s a little bit softer, a little bit higher. But when I’m in a manufacturing world, I bring that down and I monotonize it because I base it off of levels of safety and just comfort. Other things among this, I occasionally paint my nails. I occasionally have longer hair. And it just changes every day and it’s whatever I want it to be.
So that’s why I have such a broad range gender role. I lean more towards the feminine side on gender role. I’m in a homosexual relationship and I do tend to take on more of those feminine roles, if that would be considered the house to duties or whatnot. I guess that’s why I put myself in that range. I Just have slightly more interest in what may be defined as either more neutral or more feminine roles.
Gender identity. I lean more towards masculine. This is a little bit smaller of a range than gender expression and presentation, but it leans slightly over the neutral side to account for a slightly female or neutral identity. And then it goes more towards the masculine side for that.
Attraction. I near on the edge of both, but more or less my attraction is stronger towards male or men.
Legal sex, male.
And then sexual orientation. I put in the range of gay and lesbian, but on the borders of bisexuality, which would then include those sorts of questions as to like same concept as Crys. I’ve been in long-term homosexual relationships. If I wanted to explore that… I’m not going to limit myself.
Crys: One of the things that I wanted to point out is that when we say masculine and feminine, these are extremely societaly and culturally defined.
When we’re talking about these weird specifically saying the Western expectation of femininity and masculinity. And those change over time. The oft used example is whether pink is a girl’s color or a boy’s color. And when that changed, societaly. I don’t know, I’m going to go 1800s it was probably even early 1900s, pink was a red color, so it was for boys. And blue was a soft color and it was for girls. And then that switched at some point. I don’t know when, and now it’s the opposite and those are societal definitions. They have no intrinsic moral feminine or masculine quality. They are simply things that society expects to be feminine or masculine. So what we our defining is ourselves in our culture.
JP: Yep. I think too, based off of the podcast we had last time, we both kind of brush up against the idea of feminine and masculine as terms, but at the same aspect, our society dictates them.
And especially when we’re trying to use some sort of a tool to define our characters. It just, this is shorthand. It makes sense to you as, especially when defining characters or if you are trying to have a conversation with the general public.
Crys: JP, since you’re already sharing, do you want to grab your character sheet?
JP: Okay. All right. I did two characters on the sheet, and then ironically, I did two other characters, but I will just share these two. So in my story, it is an urban fantasy story set within Chicago. More or less, that’s all that’s needed to know.
I have one character, his name is Wil. He identifies as a homosexual male. He doesn’t really explore the feminine energy, however he does brush up against androgyny.
So with his SERIALS acronym, I have him as an assigned sex male. His gender expression floats between masculine and androgyny. Gender role is slightly closer to the middle, but it is still on the masculine side. Gender identity is between masculine and neutral. Attraction is men. Legal sex is male. And sexual orientation is gay.
And then I have another character. Her name is Alba and part of her culture, because in the story world, they came from another world, et cetera. But part of her culture is that everyone is non-binary as a default and then they can declare the identity later in life. So right now this character is exploring their femininity in this series. She is considered assigned sex female, and I did use she pronouns, however technically they would be they pronouns. Gender expression is neutral, leaning on the title side of femininity. Gender role is neutral. Gender identity is that neutral or non-binary. Attraction leans to women, but it also starts to lean into men. So it is a broader range than that Will character. Legal sex is X or non-binary. And then the sexual orientation is pansexual. So her current interest in people, if we define pansexuality, is basically anyone with a brain that is of legal and consenting age. So it doesn’t really matter what parts you have or how you identify, but it’s more of the mental connection that you have with someone.
Crys: Something I want to define about pansexual is it doesn’t mean that you are literally attracted to everyone, it is that you have the potential to be attracted to everyone. If you’re attracted to men, you’re not attracted to all men. Same thing with pansexual is that you have the potential to be attracted to any gender. It just depends on the person. Just the same way for anyone who is attracted to men or women.
JP: Exactly.
Crys: In doing this, did you discover really anything about your story or did it bring up things that you hadn’t thought about before?
JP: It did. So there was some pieces to this, and for those that can see, I also did two other characters, and this Flynn character is Will’s partner, and he is more expressive on the masculine side. So their relationship it helped me figure out who would take on the quote unquote feminine roles if they were pushed into having to complete those roles. So obviously they are in a relationship and if certain people don’t perform certain roles, then your house is going to be in disarray. It helps determine how they would interplay with each other.
And then with the Alba character. I wasn’t a hundred percent sure where I was taking her and this map helped me figure out where I wanted to take her journey. So I found it really useful in figuring that piece out.
Crys: I’m going to share mine. Everybody’s on one page. I have two antagonists listed here and I realized in doing this that while my blue antagonist is one of the characters that I’m most interested in, they don’t come in the first book. They are an antagonist in the past and they are an antagonist in the future. They are a looming presence in the background, but they are legally dead at the time of the first book.
That character, let me call them blue antagonist, is female. Gender identity is a woman. Gender expression is pretty solidly in the middle. Gender role to the masculine side of the middle. Definitely lesbian. Attraction to women. And her legal sex is female. She is a very cut and dried, possibly autistic character.
But her understanding of herself is very clear. She likes to have definitions and her definitions of the world don’t match anybody else’s. She’s got a God complex. What she says is law in her brain. And so her points are very salient.
My red antagonist is actually her, that is the antagonist of the first book, and that was actually her lover. And she’s also female, also her gender identity as a woman. She presents far more feminine, but her gender role is more masculine than her former lover. She’s also lesbian. Her attraction, though, is to both.
I say her sexual orientation is lesbian, but her attraction is to both… because her romantic attraction orientation is women only. She will use the fuck out of men and enjoy sex with them, but they are never anything more than tools to her. And her legal sex is female.
My protagonist is the red antagonist’s clone. So while they line up similarly on things, because they were raised differently and different times they fall differently on this list. She is female, but she leans more non-binary, but goes by she and they, and her gender expression is not quite as feminine as her progenitor’s but it’s still on the feminine end.
Her gender role pretty solidly in the middle, leaning a little feminine. She would define herself as pansexual and her attraction is to all. And I put her legal sex as female and clone, given this world.
And then for funsies, I put my Android in. And he has no assigned sex. He is agender. Presents more masculine. And like he’s literally straight down the middle except for the gender expression, which is a reflection of the time in which he was created. And also he was created by the blue antagonist and she wanted a dude to boss around. So yeah.
JP: What did you feel you learned from your characters by doing this?
Crys: One, the difference between the clones, and it was really helpful to figure out where they diverged on certain things, and to see that as a reflection of the different times that they grew up in. It also helped make a little bit more salient the romantic relationship between the two antagonists and how that might affect the future when blue antagonist comes back from the dead.
This is sci-fi, so that’ll be fun. And then it was just fun to see, okay, where would the Android fall in? It helped make everybody a bit more real in my mind.
Actually my protagonist, I had not figured out any of this really for her because her sexuality and romance do not play into the story I have for her in the immediate what I can see for her.
But I do know that her sister slash clone who is dead also– there’s a lot of deaths– was at least lesbian. Once I knew that clone progenitor was lesbian, sister’s lesbian, and I was like clearly they’re not straight. And so that was a logical kind of world-building exercise for me as far as the clones go.
JP: Yeah. I see this being helpful, even looking at this because yes, you have clones and yes, technically they meet all the check boxes when you consider assigned sex. And maybe even their sexual orientation, obviously you have some that lean differently, but I think that having these seven attributes allows that space and that room to figure out what identity this person has and how can that identity interplay with this one, even though they look almost the exact same.
Crys: Yeah. This is a blast. And I do think that it is something that I want to do with my characters more often. This is a side question, but how much character work do you generally do before you write, JP?
JP: I try really hard not to do a ton because I am really good at falling in the weeds. And this process took five minutes.
Crys: I’ve trained myself to not because of writing the pulp fiction romance, but I love exploring characters. That’s one of my joys in writing, and leaning into this, leaning into Jeff Elkins’ character emotion wheels, figuring out some tools that help me not get into the weeds but give me the depth that I really want to explore, like the starting seeds of things I want to explore. And it’s been a really helpful thing.
JP: Yeah, this is definitely one of those like shorthand tools I’m going to put it in my back pocket along with the crazy amount of tarot that I use to figure out characters.
Crys: So what should be our question?
JP: I’m curious on if anyone is going to use this gender map in the future, and maybe even if they’re willing to share either their gender map or kind of a range of the gender that they explore after looking at this. I’d be curious.
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