" Gender Blending Females: Women And Sometimes Men"
Devor, H. (1987). ” Gender Blending Females: Women And Sometimes Men”. American Behavorial Scientist, 31 (1): 12-40.
In the course of everyday life persons recognized as men are normally males and individuals identified as women are females. In some cases, in public interactions involving persons who are strangers to one another, females are addressed and responded to as men. Some of the females that this happens to are purposely attempting to be perceived and accepted as men, but there are also a number of such women who do not consciously intend to be thought of as men. I call the people in this latter group “gender blending females.”
Gender blending females are those people of the female sex who project gender cues that can be socially interpreted as sufficiently masculine to earn them the social status and some of the privileges of men.1 But, as gender blending females, they do not do so in a consistent or purposeful fashion. Among their friends and acquaintances, and to many strangers, they are clearly women. The intriguing aspect of their gender status is that they have clear female identities and know themselves to be women concurrently with gender presentations that often do not successfully communicate these facts to others.