Gender differentiation
According to Sharon Barnartt in her article "Deaf Women and Inequality in Educational Attainment and Occupational Status" in 1972 the majority of deaf and hard of hearing men and women worked in blue collar jobs (manual labor). This conflicts with her statistics on hearing men and women in that they mostly had white collar jobs (offices). This differentiation could contribute to how "feminine" versus "masculine" ASL is perceived because deaf and hard of hearing individuals were in very similar workplaces. Blue collar work is seen in the hearing word as more masculine. In 1990 there was a shift: men were more likely to have blue collar jobs and women were more likely to have white collar jobs. This is more similar to the hearing world but only in that the "harder" work is being done by the men. Pink collar work (secretaries, nurses, teachers, ect.) were not common for deaf and hard of hearing women. Barnartt contributes this discrepancy to the instance of excessive social interaction in those occupations. The dialect difference here could exist because of the work that deaf and hard of hearing people were prone to. The main issue with these kinds of conclusions is that they are far too general.
Arlene Blumenthal Kelly interviewed 5 deaf female ASL teachers in her article "How Deaf Women Produce Gendered Signs" and concluded that patriarchy is embedded in ASL because most male signs occur near the forehead and female signs occur near the chin which suggests subordination. Interestingly, there is no sign for patriarchy, rather the combination of MEN and OPPRESS were what these women equated to patriarchy. As of 1993 there were no signs for "gender" or "feminism". One of the most interesting parts of her article was when she noted that as of 2000, the Oxford English Dictionary (both in print and on their website) did not have any information on the history, development, or evolution of many ASL signs. Her overall conclusion is this: these deaf women view themselves as deaf. That their identities were not very important beyond that. Their status as women and the idea of being different from men, all men, was not something that had occurred to them before. They were deaf and they also happened to be women, not deaf women. This suggests that their language may not be different at all even though their gender identity is.
In my experience, ASL is not used differently for those who identify as men versus those who identify as women. This is very similar to English in that the language is taught to everyone in relatively the same way. My hypothesis about gender has been disproven then by these readings and instead the indicator might be who you are attracted to instead of how you gender identify.
Arlene Blumenthal Kelly interviewed 5 deaf female ASL teachers in her article "How Deaf Women Produce Gendered Signs" and concluded that patriarchy is embedded in ASL because most male signs occur near the forehead and female signs occur near the chin which suggests subordination. Interestingly, there is no sign for patriarchy, rather the combination of MEN and OPPRESS were what these women equated to patriarchy. As of 1993 there were no signs for "gender" or "feminism". One of the most interesting parts of her article was when she noted that as of 2000, the Oxford English Dictionary (both in print and on their website) did not have any information on the history, development, or evolution of many ASL signs. Her overall conclusion is this: these deaf women view themselves as deaf. That their identities were not very important beyond that. Their status as women and the idea of being different from men, all men, was not something that had occurred to them before. They were deaf and they also happened to be women, not deaf women. This suggests that their language may not be different at all even though their gender identity is.
In my experience, ASL is not used differently for those who identify as men versus those who identify as women. This is very similar to English in that the language is taught to everyone in relatively the same way. My hypothesis about gender has been disproven then by these readings and instead the indicator might be who you are attracted to instead of how you gender identify.