Gestural Observations and Gender

When would I know enough to say I am informed enough to say?
There are cases where I’d like to strip back individual histories, hierarchies based on mentorship of respect, length of time in field, purpose on the oratory thrust, and say hold on a minute, what just happened there in that speech act?
Can I get a replay there?
The words “I disagree with person Y” came from 2 different presenters.
In one case the words were spoken with a smile, chin up, shoulders moving back and downwards.
In one case the the words were spoken the presenter shrugged on the word disagree and put chin and eyes downwards, as if in apology.
Want to guess the genders of each person?
Is that unfair?
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It’s hard not to think in terms of team. I flared at that (presented second here and occurred in linear time second). She negated what she just said, the disagreement of body language is heard stronger than words.
One is not one’s gender. It may be a “personality” thing, not related to gender and yet, how bang-on-characteristic is that behavior of a female?
I would have to do some hard number counting instances to correct or prove to my mind that I am not just confirming my bias.
Likewise with hand gesture. What happened there? Did it fall along gender lines?
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I was not watching for gender but explicit content, but then that is how such things perpetuate, never being “the real subject”, things not “being about” gender. The subconscious judgements are there at the back giving some weight.
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Even if a male and female utter the same words, with the same body language, is the imposed perception of intent and weight the same? Can a male and female utter the same? Or pitch is enough of a shift to change idea of meaning? Or intonation? Written syntax can sidestep the gender of the author to a greater degree.
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What existed in my perception? What distracted as a pattern?
For the gesture “open” a male opened his hands and they stayed at rest, the gesture formed and firm. A female flapped open, wrists loose and fingers waggling in a sort of stutter of emphasis.
Both effectively conveyed open.
What else did each convey? Only the gender of the speaker? Not that, but some emotional quality that was derived from the rhythms of speech of the larger utterance?
Are they variants that are gender neutral? Products of practiced performance versus nervousness? Some people when fatigued get more streamlined, more tight in body, others more frayed and ambiguous. Is this observed thing more a product of my fatigue than something about gender as practiced?
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When doing the 3-4 poems a day in April I noticed more feminist themes coming out, more bitter angles. I have 3 explanations of sources for that.
1) that I had nothing to say so relied on easy junk society stuffs one with of generalizations of victim oppressions of female
2) as I scrape away the superficial, the core anger of being excluded and systemically minimized as female is what remains as most potent
3) when I push myself I get cranky and take a dark view of what is innocuous, forming angry patterns that cause adrenaline surge to create a quick energy to feel better by harvesting own hormonal cascades
This may relate to perception skew or perception accuracy.
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Rather late in the game I noticed male and female presenters being introduced, with line of credits, but for males, the final word being and now, here he is: or here is Dr. so-and-so. The bios were consensually agreed on. By all means, say what you have achieved.
And yet, what to make of a couple females, unconsciously or consciously being introduced not just by that final gendered pronoun (of segue and further priming that our grammar does) nor by title of achievement, but by first name. Huh.
Wish I’d run the numbers over the nearly 40 introductions to get hard numbers on how that all broke down. Was it a very skewed pattern or did it just stick out in that case because I’m hypersensitive?
First name, it’s friendly, it’s approachable. It’s what one is comfortable with. It in one case was because, I’d guess the presenter and host were colleagues and that is how they thought of one another, as first-name basis, equals. But, in formal introduction of papers, as the final words, even if all the earlier run down lists books and titles, the final word, what weight does that set up?
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As I said, it’s hard to not think in terms of team. Remembering the terms of male privilege as set out by B. Deutsch

4. If I fail in my job or career, I can feel sure this won’t be seen as a black mark against my entire sex’s capabilities.

It is sexist of me, and reinforces the sense of gender weight to even see another female’s performance as impinging on what others will expect of me, yet, yet, yet.
People are not exclusively gendered, nor exclusively perceived at gendered but it modulates perception and display. We can’t bow to it as the only factor. It may or may not be a swing vote in any case.
What I saw could coincide with or be causal to gender.
I wasn’t watching for gender, just noticed it by the continual opposition to the one major female theorist and the general respect given to the various major male theorists. It’s an idea thing, not related to the gender of the person behind the idea yet, yet, at least the female’s ideas and name were being nearly as common as verbs in sentences. (yet, yet.)
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I was primarily looking to grasp concepts and meanings and examples of the literal subjects.
There was essentially no interruptions to count. That is often a quick, handy measure of power dynamics, of who is permitted to interrupt who. Still, I wish I could have another accountant mind that was watching and running accurate tallies of
– What are the ratios of female: male speech?
– Does it fit into reckoning of presentation the amount of skin shown by each by gender?
– What is the body language attentiveness when male versus female speaks?
– What is the success of female in getting message thru, even acoustically, compared to male?
When one speaks with confidence as a female, there is still the baggage of being haughty. But so much moderates and modulates that general statement. In an academic environment, the norms of gender or released more. One is expected to speak the register that is not male or female but a stylistic or information before individuality. One is a genderless conduit.
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Many male speakers used a larger box for communication, gesturing wider and higher and more in front than females who made smaller, abdominal flutters. The younger the female, the smaller the gestures. But, the younger the male, the smaller the gestures as well. Is it a matter of length of career? Or coloring of body language from communicative world outside academia?
The older the speaker, the more batonic the gesture to conduct meaning. The older the speaker, the more likely the person was to pause on grammatical syntax to parse breaks instead of on emphatic such as “such”, “so” “exactly”. Women and men seemed equally likely to use gesture that acted out the meaning, whether counting out sequences, showing travel from place to place or time to time or act out concepts like “inside” of fingers going into a cupped palm, or “showing” with a fingertips together flowering into open palm.
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There were elements which were utterly gender neutral. The females who spoke, I got the impression of being able to hold their own on panels, being asked equal number of questions, being as engaged. In the audience females were as likely to speak as males. Were as likely to moderate questions. Were as likely to silence a room to start, although so far as presence, males were more likely to get a silent room by just standing behind a podium and females had to speak there to get silence. But I have no counts. Perhaps that’s my impressionistic bias, and a matter of individuals. (who exist in gender).
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Am I to quibble? Am I responding to present?
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My own speech and postural habits are informed by what I feel I should do as a female. And doing the opposite on the continuum.
I spent time training myself to unlearn how to sit, walk, meet eyes. By religion and family and class I am to lower myself, take up minimal space. Quiet voice was praised because it is becoming to a female and the other roles of class and hierarchies. Voice coincides with gender and to a degree is related to gender as well. I could have taken that in any number of directions of obedience or resistances. My goal was to not be under the gun, but under the radar.
The rules and needs shift. Body habit shifts fairly slowly. It is a retraining of posture. I have traditionally braided my arms and legs to stand or sit. People with closed postures are hard people to communicate with. It is a good way to know when I feel insecure. My posture is my body talking to itself. Sometimes it snaps at itself as I suddenly groan and unfold all the crossed parts of body again. I have tried to minimize my space and insisted on sprawling. Both are the same dynamics. My box of speaking tends to be small. I have tried to widen this to mute the apology that smallness is.
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I am not terribly conscious most of the time of how I present.
I can sometimes forget I am female, a delightful thing since so much of my baggage about females is not a Jane-in-the-Box bearing truffles and diplomas.
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I have largely given up apologies littered thru my speech, and the default preamble of assuming I am bothering someone by speaking. It imposes a burden this habit.
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Still my body language has self-consciousness and self-cancelling and statements that denigrate my own statements even as I speak. It makes my meanings cluttered and subtext is don’t listen to me. Then I wonder why I am not heard.
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Many women preamble with qualifying statements such as I don’t know if this is important but…and weasel words that undercut their simple statements. Or women add more emotional loading, overstatements and spin to be more heard, but in effect gives a little boy blue effect so the subtext of threat is heard and the message of please listen to this thing which matters to me, is lost.
Instrumental speech then, is that inherently male? And richer thick text is more female or gender stereotypes and misjudgements inform the paragraph before.
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When I have seen photos I’m often surprised by my default hunch.
I feel defensive and reactive when I set out to walk alone. Not during the walk itself, but the conceptualizing of it. In part because family, friends, strangers have warned me for years against going out after dark. Or offered to walk me. Why? What informs that? Something personal about me as mousy and unaware, that I took as particular offer given to any woman?
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As a touchstone I remember in winter in Ottawa where walking an icy path by Craig Henry Drive, I scrambled out of the way of children and a dog. Likewise falling, tearing pants. Do I set myself so low that not only strangers who are adult but even dogs and children are higher than myself? I chastised myself in that moment and since.
If that memory doesn’t serve enough, there is a counterpart walking in Joshua Tree National Park in California and stumbling off path to make way for people coming, falling and splitting the knee of jeans, assuming that the other needed me to move, that all the accommodation needed to be on my side.
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When driving, driving tight with tight fists and shoulders makes for less motor control and less control of car. Oversteering causes accidents as well. To try to fit everything to a gender dynamic flattens data and write-off conceptual traffic that could could get us somewhere.