Way back in the spring, I read a blog post by Christi Taylor about the Bem Sex Role Inventory. Developed in 1971 by Dr. Sandra Lipsitz Bem, it's a 60-item survey that asks you to rate yourself on a scale from 1 to 7 (never to always) on various personality traits like "sensitive to other's needs" and "willing to take risks." When you submit the survey, it take your input and uses it to give you kind of a "thumbprint" of your personality as masculine, feminine, androgynous, or undifferentiated, essentially based on cultural gender stereotypes.
Christi posted her score: 65 masculine / 76.667 feminine / 67.5 androgynous (all out of a hundred). At the time, I took the test to see where I fell on the spectrum, and got 55 masculine / 86 feminine / 70 androgynous.
Interesting.
Recently I was curious about whether my rating had changed at all in the past half-year, given the effort I've been making to be truer to my self and integrate the different sides of my personality. So, I went back tonight and took the test again. This time around I got 50.833 masculine / 82.5 feminine / 61.667 androgynous... so my rating was less than before, in all three categories! I can only guess that this is because I chose the more neutral options for a lot of the questions.
Obviously, this has very little to do with eternal gender identity, or even brain gender: it's solely based on how much we reflect the gender stereotypes of Western culture. So the fact that I don't strongly reflect the stereotype, male or female, doesn't surprise me all that much, nor does it upset me.
Actually, I think Christ set a good example here... He was kind, compassionate, always thinking of others, sympathetic, tender... a lot of the things on the Bem survey that feed into the "feminine" category. Likewise, He was always truthful, a strong leader, and was willing to take a stand: all masculine traits according to Bem. So, clearly, this is a cultural thing, and not an Eternal one. In fact, I'd go so far as to say if He were to take the Bem survey, I'm fairly confident His score wouldn't be 100 masculine / 0 feminine / 0 andro, but something closer to 60/70/80. So no matter what our feelings about our gender may be, patterning our lives after His, and not caring about how that may affect others' perception of our gender, is probably a good place to be.
I just retook it (being as honest as possible) and scored 50.833 masculine 86.667 feminine and 69.298 androgynous.
ReplyDeleteI really didn't think it would be that different after almost a year, but I bet I would get a different score on this thing every day because the way I feel about those qualities it tests on changes a lot depending on my mood.
Yeah,I'll bet you're right, mood probably does have a lot to do with it. I just thought it was interesting.
ReplyDeleteHmm... 55 out of 100 masculine points, 78.1 out of 100 feminine points, and 61.4 out of 100 androgynous points.
ReplyDeleteI think I'm starting to see a pattern emerging... :)
ReplyDeleteInteresting data point: I've been on hormones for 19 months, and have had three more years to unpack a lot of harmful internalized self-hate. Out of curiosity, I just retook the test, and got: 35 masculine / 92.5 feminine / 60.833 androgynous.
ReplyDeleteWow.