transward (imported) wrote: Tue Jun 23, 2009 11:52 pm
Go to
http://www.biomotionlab.ca/Demos/BMLwalker.html
click on the button "lines", then move the slider back and forth on the male - female axis. You should be able to see clearly what I mean about the angle of the forearm being a sexual indicator. And these indicators have been tested across a number of cultures.
Transward
I've conducted a poll with 26 replies so far. Out of 26 cisgendered physical males, only 3 have reported parallel arms while 23 have reported arms that taper out. One "taper arm" respondent wrongly clicked 'straight down'. I highly doubt that the angle of the forearm is an indicator, as is evidenced by the factual data.
The URL you've provided does not seem to be representative of the average person. The angle which the elbow is held out from the body or held in to the body seems overly eaggerated. I can see at least one reason for this. When subjects' movements are recorded in a controlled environment, movement tend to be unnatural and exaggerated. I suspect if there was some way to measure the walking posture of men and women under natural, non-lab conditions, or at least, not with their conscious awareness of being recorded, the variation would be a lot smaller than you'd realise.
Moreover, I noticed that they are interested in the link between biology and SOCIAL gender recognition, meaning how OTHERS perceive your gender by your biology, rather than how one perceives one's own gender by their own biology. This means that for a female gendered physical male, no matter how unbiologically like a female that person is physically, she will still perceive her gender to be female. I think the interpretation you've drawn from their research is the incorrect one.
Besides, you will have to explain how, I, who have not learnt, or ever bothered to learn, how to walk in a "female" way, have arms that taper out, or how 23 of 26 biological cisgendered males have this "supposed indicator of sex" marking them out to be female.
For anyone who is interested, I shall be posting up a screenshot of the poll results as screen-capped at 10.40am 23 June 2009 in a bit. The URL is as follows:
http://photos-g.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak ... 2264_n.jpg
Update: I have 30 replies now, with 27 cisgendered physical males reporting outwards tapering arms.