my gender is ¯_( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)_/¯
Very truthful
Tag: gender
It’s interesting how most reblogs of my post yesterday seemed to latch onto the hug angle, when I definitely don’t consider that the most salient part of what I was saying.
What I think is much more integral to the entitlement paradigm I proposed is the *emotional* intimacy. I’m talking about the subjects that women are assumed to want to engage in by virtue of being “one of the girls”. I can’t even tell you how many I’ve been in a group of women I don’t know very well and someone has started talking about her period, or her body issues, or some other very personal thing I’m supposed to be interested in because we share the same anatomy. You know the part in Mean Girls where Cady is expected to share something she hates about herself? Yeah, that really does happen. It’s bonding by struggle session.
And this structure has been imported to much of feminist activism. This makes sense; a movement organized mostly by women will likely incorporate feminine norms. It’s also probably a net good. I don’t want to dismantle this structure at the expense of people who find it helpful. What I want is to point out that it’s an axis of conformity that many women don’t even consider that they might be enforcing. It is a competing needs issue, and the people whose needs compete with it are often marginalized in some way.
So much of feminism spins on this explicitly confessional axis. Everyone talk about your assaults, everyone talk about your body issues, everyone bleed all over a room of strangers so that their consciousness may be raised and sororal bonds reiterated. I don’t have a problem with environments like this *existing*, but I have a huge problem with how they’re implicitly and often explicitly assumed to be “safe”. “It’s okay, it’s just us girls. We’re here to support you.” There’s no explanation of why exactly I should accept support from people who are strangers in every aspect but their gender. The intimacy is assumed. And yeah, that’s a pretty significant form of entitlement! I don’t think it’s meaningfully different from the entitlement that some men express toward women’s sexuality: it’s assuming access purely on the basis of gender. It’s just that the one is called a violation while the other is called a sisterhood.
I’m pretty sure this is where “put your marginalization in your about and cite your traumas to prove you cope ship” comes from, too.
Girls are trained from a very young age that privacy is mean.
Holy shit, this.
I wish we had a female “lone ranger” archetype. When men abandon society to Do Their Own Thing, we don’t say they’ve betrayed the brotherhood.
“Don’t say you’re not like the other girls.”
Even our cultural images of “independent women” still praise relying on other women.
Honestly, I’ve always kind of identified with that Jamie Lannister Game of Thrones quote. “There’s no men like me; there’s just me.” It’s meant to be this supremely arrogant boast, but it’s also the character articulating his profound loneliness. And, like, as someone who’s had the whole “twice exceptional” thing (yes I’m getting a doctorate; yes I’m hella neurodivergent) I really GET that. But that’s not something a female character could EVER say, except maybe as a cackling villain.
Honestly, I feel like you and me and @prudencepaccard are this…Axis of Loners in a way that’s rarely portrayed (outside of cackling villainy, as you say).
#yes this#it’s not just about the hugging#I don’t usually actually mind hugging so much#I do mind being put on the spot by strangers to talk about my deepest passions and fears#much more than I mind having a stranger touch me uninvited (non-sexually)#frankly I think I’d almost prefer to have a strange dude grab my ass#because at least in that scenario I’d be reasonably justified according to social norms in slapping him silly#vs being assumed to be ‘the bitch’ because I don’t want to display my emotional innards for the world#(sometimes I do want to do that but only on my own terms and not as an expectation)
@lenyberry confirmed for Getting It
Gentle yet firm reminder that you don’t have to be trans/nb to have a complicated relationship with gender
This post isn’t meant for radfems who want to delegitimize the struggles of trans people
“Alex they’re mushrooms” is the new “Harold they’re lesbians”
One of the worse aspects of tumblr discourse is the separation of gayness from innate gender nonconformity
Gay people have a long and weird historical relationship with gender that’s been completely wiped away with identity politics
The assumption that any deviation from cis-ness is trans-ness is separating gay people from a historical relationship that gay culture grew around.
This isn’t to say that us cis lgb people aren’t cis/don’t have cis privilege because that’s not true.
What I’m saying is that the history is more complicated than that and attempting to remove an important aspect of gayness from gay people is dangerous for gay youth especially because our connections to our history are so thin at the tail end of the AIDS crisis.
This is OK to rb
Gender crits fuck off
(i mean this is why it’s so fucking hard to find record of trans people in history, historically sexuality and gender identity were so tightly-bound to heterosexual norms of expression – ie femininity in gay men and masculinity in gay women – that it’s hard to say with any degree of certainty whether someone who claims they were a “man’s soul in a woman’s body” means “trans and straight” or “gay woman trying to explain her attractions in the language of the time”, innit)
oh, are you nb? (sorry if this is weird, im agender and its weird to meet other nb ppl that don’t share the radical mindset of the other ppl on this site)
I… don’t know what I think of gender. So I pretty much don’t contradict anyone who decides anything about me (which is fascinating, because I either have cis privilege or not depending on who is looking at me. I am quantum gender physics!)
Basically, I have body dysphoria but unlike a lot of people who do, I don’t have a male gender identity. I have no idea what feeling like a man feels like, or what wanting to be called something other than female because it’s soothing feels like (I don’t like this body but that doesn’t make it male, imo), but I have every idea what “why is my body so lumpy” and “I can only modify my body so much through exercise and I don’t have much time even for that” feels like.
I’m not sure what being a woman feels like either. If it’s “not being startled by she,” holy shit, I guess I feel like a woman.
I do not know what I would think of gender if I ever took T and found it useful for easing my discomfort. I do not know if I would know what being a man feels like, even then.
The only term I know that seems to encompass this is nonbinary, but I have a lot of issues with that term as well.
I … this, oh my god.
I get called “sir” every so often instead of “ma’am,” which always feels sort of like an accomplishment – as if getting called “sir” enough times will unlock some sort of Guess My Gender achievement – but I’m not trans enough to be trans and not cis enough to be cis and mostly I’m just confused, which is REALLY FRUSTRATING WHEN YOU’RE OVER 40.
+1 to everything here. at least, not the bit about occasionally being guessed m, more’s the pity, but I reblogged this from that comment anyway due to the bit about how wrangling this over 40 is extra hyper ultra special bullshit.
the thing about “nonbinary” as a proposed solution to this riddle is there isn’t a there there: there’s not a well defined normative nonbinary position to transition to.
and that’s difficult for anyone at any age.
but it is beginning to be less true for people in their teens and 20s. there are clearly others like you, more and more are articulating it to themselves and speaking up about it, they’re not even hard to find any more, so, like, there is an emerging way of being This?I mean the map is a sketch on a paper napkin and the path isn’t paved and well lit yet, but there is a map and a path and a nascent destination. it’s not easy, it’s a bit like being gay in 1987 maybe in that you have to proactively make the effort to carve out a space for yourself, like, probably you’ll want to move to the Bay Area or equivalent to optimize for authenticity and happiness, but at least that exists as an obvious and theoretically feasible course of action.
at my age? um. I realize it’s not technically true I’d be the only one, here is this nice commenter for instance, but it feels like it. there’s no go-to subculture, community, cohort, with visible people like me in it. it’s hard to envision finding a hearth, refuge, support, role models. it’s not that the path is an unpaved trail but that there isn’t any path, it’d be me and my machete and my willingness to go out on a limb all alone and make myself ridiculous and difficult and vulnerable. it’d be leaving point A and striking out into dangerous terra incognita without even having much reason to believe that there’s a point B out there to get to. one might have to make one’s own point B from scratch. and I’m so tired as it is. and is there any actual benefit? if so, Is it enough to outweigh all the risk and trouble? it’s very unclear.
(don’t get me started on the difference in sunk costs and investment in existing life, career, etc at 45 vs 25. there’s more to lose by upending the applecart, and not just affecting oneself.)
so when I think about identifying as nonbinary, it feels more accurate than most anything else, yeah, but also sort of pointless. and arduous. and less like the solution to anything than like a new pile of hard problems.
The Independent reports on the Gender Recognition Act reforms more inclusively
[Link]
The Government is reportedly planning to reform gender identity rules to make it easier for people to choose their own gender in law.
Under plans being considered by ministers, adults will be able to change their birth certificates at will without a doctors’ diagnosis, while non-binary gender people will be able to record their gender as “X”.
The Sunday Times reports that changes will be included in a planned Gender Recognition Bill, set to be published in the autumn.
As part of this consultation, the UK government has a survey that is open to all UK LGBTQ+ people until October 2017 – click here to take part.
This is HUGE. :O
Controversial opinion:
Geekiness is neither feminine nor masculine. It’s neotenous, or genderless. There’s a cluster of people who read more as “little kid” or “robot” or “serious, sexless nun/monk/scientist” than as “man” or “woman”.
There is a cluster around science/tech, introversion, neoteny, a particular kind of gender weirdness, and some flavors of autism. The geek stereotype is based on a real kind of person. I am that kind of person.
I actually like being that kind of person. Sometimes it means I Fail at Girl, but mostly it feels natural and good.
I get the sense that society has gotten way more interested in gender, and assigning genders to everything, and arguing about gender. And that’s good on net, because it results in more freedom for LGBT people. But also…the pinks are pinker and the blues are bluer, y’know? Marketing has gotten more gendered, and that includes the marketing of “content.” Everything you read is either marked blue or pink. It wasn’t, in the 90’s. Tech is marked “blue” now , and it didn’t use to be.
Feminism is very pink these days. 70s feminism had women who looked and talked more like me. Judy Chicago was dinky and Jewy and nerdy and slightly butch. She would have been easier for me to make friends with than most of the feminists I read on Tumblr.
I see people who are my kind of people, who are in the cluster, and they primarily talk about it as a “trans” thing or a “disabled” thing. What I see is a type that includes some trans and disabled people and some who are neither, but all of whom have some of this weirdness regarding gender and thinking style (and interpret it/react to it differently.) There’s a “geek phenotype”, so to speak.
Contemporary culture doesn’t really allow you to talk about that. “Geek” is defined to include everyone who likes Marvel movies. When you try to talk about the specific thing that is Our Kind Of People, you get accused of being insular. Or people say “oh you mean autistic” and it turns out that there’s overlap but there are lots of autistics who definitely aren’t “geek phenotype”. If you claim “there are more men than women who are phenotypically geeky”, you start being suspected of sexism. So you can’t really talk about this cluster that everyone knows is more-or-less real.
I mean, there’s a “nerd accent.” We’ve all heard it.
What *is* it that prevents us from identifying as a group?
I am… not that type but have known tons of people who are and at times hovered near social circles with a lot of such people in them and emulated elements of it. I don’t know how much of the above observations I believe or don’t believe – by which I mean I literally have no opinion because there’s a lot I don’t know. But I think I know what general type of person is being described.
Something that is not directly related (or may be, but not sure), but for some reason I kept thinking while reading this:
I have long observed that there is one set of traits that is read in two supposedly opposing way depending on context. In some contexts it’s read as like the super-genius uber-geek. In other contexts it’s read as retarded. (I’m using that word, no matter how offensive it is, because I don’t mean intellectual disability, I mean an idea in people’s heads that correlates with the idea of ‘retarded’ most people have. An idea closely related but not identical with intellectual disability. Just as ‘genius’ is an idea in people’s heads related to the idea of high IQ but isn’t identical to it at all. If I meant high IQ and low IQ I would’ve just said those things.)
The common denominator is autism. These are traits of voice, appearance, habit, and mannerisms that are absolutely identical to each other and it is only context clues that make people sometimes read them as one thing and sometimes as another.
Like I was trying to describe möbius mouth (one of the earliest ways to screen for autism in infants, and something that usually persists for life, and part of the stereotype-that-goes-both-ways) to an MIT professor, and she couldn’t see it as an unusual expression because it’s so damn common at MIT.
And that thing is related to the geek phenotype thing. As in, the geek phenotype thing is like… one of several things that can happen in a lot of autistic people and some other neurodivergent people, that causes a couple different stereotypes in people’s heads to form, and which one they see depends entirely on context. There are other things besides the geek phenotype that can be read in a similar polarizing way. I’ve been able to notice this contrast because I have been seen as gifted and put into gifted programs, and I’ve been seen as developmentally disabled and put into DD programs, and I’ve watched the way utterly identical behavior is treated as opposites within these two contexts.
Explaining to an MIT professor why I was terrified to lie down on the floor… she acted like my ideas came from outer space. I’d seen people get the crap beat out of them and tied to tables for lying on the floor not bothering anyone at all. Apparently lying on the floor is socially acceptable at MIT. I felt so horribly out of place there – like I was an infiltrator who would be revealed to be not as smart or useful or interesting as they thought I was. The last time I was on a university campus, several people with a lot of authority told me I didn’t belong on a university campus at all. And then the professor took me to a neighborhood of a type I have been thrown out of for walking alone. I couldn’t explain any of this to anyone and still can’t entirely. It has to do with experiences that have shaped me on levels I can’t describe without any conscious awareness until events like this brought them up. Emphasized the most emphatically because the day before MIT I was at an amazing DD self-advocacy conference where I felt a sense of belonging and rightness i’d never felt anywhere, and the contrast kept piercing my heart into pieces. I kept trying to get them to be as interested in the experiences of people with intellectual disabilities as they were in the experiences of autistic people, but it wasn’t happening, they kept asking why, I couldn’t explain, but I felt that out of loyalty to the people who have made a place for me in their lives in a way others haven’t, I needed to say “You’re overlooking people with valuable perspectives.”
And I know that’s way off on a tangent from the OP. But somehow this ‘geek phenotype’ thing reminded me of one of many different ‘phenotypes’ that are read in supposedly-opposite ways (’genius’ and ‘retarded’ are ideas most people refuse to combine) based on identical behavior in shifting contexts. Which led me to my own experiences being read both ways, and once read one way people refuse to read you the opposite way, most of the time. I find both ways dehumanizing and inaccurate.
If there’s a ‘geek phenotype’, there are… other things, too. Whatever I am, overlaps heavily with some autistic people but not others, like the geek thing, and also overlaps with a lot of nonautistic but usually neurodivergent people, including often people with certain kinds of epilepsy, certain kinds of intellectual disabilities, and certain things that don’t have official classifications as of the moment. I can’t really describe it I just know it when I see it. And for whatever reason we seem to inspire very polarized ideas in other people, and we also seem to be unable to fit into any of the common categories people create, not just a little unable to fit but a lot. Like functioning labels apply to nobody, really, but for us we completely break the concept to pieces in a very visible and unavoidable manner, and that invites hostility and suspicion from people invested in the categories existing. Some people try to shove us into one or another but when we don’t fit we get blamed. And sometimes we try to shove ourselves into one or the other but it never works no matter how hard we try, and the not-working is unavoidable it’s not something we can avoid confronting for long at all. (Like, some people it takes work to say why they don’t fit, we just flagrantly don’t fit in ways that become obvious quickly if not instantly.)
Anyway, I hope the OP doesn’t mind a zillion tangents like this, these things are just where my mind went.
regarding the weirdness of gender and thinking style as a coherent phenotype…. consider consuming THIS blog post
On privilege, community, and being a non-passing trans man
One of the hardest things about being a trans man was coming
to terms with the fact that I’m unlikely to ever pass as male. Even after 4+
years on hormones, with a crop of chest hair that will soon rival your hairy
uncle’s, I’m still consistently misgendered by strangers. It’s something that trans
male support spaces never acknowledge, because no one wants to start HRT if
they’re afraid they’ll end up… like me. It’s also not acknowledged in activist
spaces, because trans men who continue to experience misogyny are an
inconvenient snag in the anti-TERF discourse that says identity is everything. However,
I’ve found a lot of support from trans feminine people who also think we need
to deal better with nuance! Trans inclusive feminist is strong enough to cope
with our messy lived experiences, and it needs to do so if it wants to survive!For a long time I just shut up and dealt with this alone. I was afraid to post
about my experiences on Tumblr because things can get nasty when you get called
out for bucking dominant social justice narratives. I certainly wanted to be aware of my
privilege! Maybe I just needed to shut up, to listen. So I did. And eventually,
I learned that the popular narratives are just too simplified to be useful for
folks like me. My existence is too messy, too complicated, and so I’ve been erased. This isn’t ok.Sometimes I tried to talk about my problems it in trans
spaces, but trans men by and large don’t have the tools to talk about the
psychological effects of not passing. We don’t teach each other these skills because it requires us to confront extra layers of internalized transphobia. Instead, I just got unsolicited passing
tips and instructions to just “wait a bit longer.” Eventually, after years of
transition, I was too ashamed to show up to trans spaces and admit how long I
had been transitioning. It caused me a lot of pain and isolation. It still
does. Feeling excluded from cis society, feeling shoved under the rug in trans
spaces like a “failed” trans man, having my perspective erased in community discourse. And all the while, I navigate public space knowing that people
see me as a “woman” with obvious male secondary sex characteristics. Even with
my various other privileges, it limits my ability to travel and to participate
in public life.So here’s a bunch of tips based on my experiences. It’s geared toward 1)
transmasculine people who don’t “pass” and 2) cis people and “passing” trans
men. (I’m not addressing transfeminine people mainly because I’ve not had major
problems with transfeminine people re: this stuff, plus it would be kind of
fucked up to ask them to do emotional labor for trans men when they are already dealing with an intensified version of this problem themselves.) Some of this is
applicable to AFAB nonbinary folks generally, but I’m focusing on my own
experience as a (nonbinary) trans man because I have never seen this issue
talked about from that perspective.**Also, disclaimer! I know the word “passing” is
problematic. Not only does it have connotations of deception, but it also implies
that people like me are “failing.” I’m aware of this.**
So my words to trans men and transmasculine folks in similar situations:
- Not every trans man will pass after a certain
amount of time on T.- This does not have to be the life-ruining nightmare
you think it is. I promise. You can have a job, you can make friends, you can
learn to look strangers in the eye, and it will become easier to deal with
misgendering over time. Various other life circumstances and intersecting
oppressions will affect this, of course, but please don’t underestimate your
ability to deal with this particular problem! You deserve better.- Despite the obvious drawbacks, there are some pros
to not passing! Even if you really
didn’t want to end up this way, it’s still freeing to realize that this is your
life now. You don’t have to wait for some distant post-transition day to start
doing the things you want to do, such as dating or making new friends.- Other pros: It means you never have to worry
about disclosing to your friends. It also makes it really easy for other trans
folks to recognize you, which can be great for building community. Plus, a
recognition nod on the train is sometimes really reassuring.- You may end up passing in the end! Maybe you can’t
let go of that hope, and that’s ok.- Don’t get too hung up on Tumblr discourse, most
of which is oversimplified and unnecessarily polarized. Don’t let people, especially cis people, tell you that you
are not experiencing shit that you are Measurably Definitely Experiencing, such
as sexist harassment.- At the same time, pay attention to the ways in
which your life is getting easier. For example, compared to when I presented as
a femme woman, (or even a pre-T gender nonconforming person,) I’ve noticed that
people perceive me as more confident—and therefore take me more seriously—just
because my voice is lower. I’ve also stopped experiencing sexual harassment
entirely.*- While male privilege has a lot to do with how
people see and treat you, don’t forget about the psychological impact of
identifying as male, and how that affects your experience. It was easier for me
to go through transition knowing that people perceived me as transitioning into
strength, assertiveness, etc. Trans women don’t have this. On the other hand, don’t let people gaslight you into believing that this psychological impact is the same as the privilege cis men experience.- And—this should go without saying—work on being
a better ally to trans women. Though trans men experience violence at higher
rates than cis people of either gender, trans women experience more. LOTS of
trans women have experience with this not passing thing, too! Trans men and
trans women can have strong friendships and learn from each other.- Also do as much as you can, learn about
other intersections of privilege and oppression. Race matters, class matters.
Listen when you are called out.Advice for cis folks and “passing”
trans men:
- Do not give unsolicited passing tips. A trans
man talking about his feelings re: passing is not necessarily looking for tips
on how to change his appearance!- Try not to make assumptions about how long
someone’s been out as trans based on how well they pass.- Be careful with narratives that assume all trans
men can be read as male with HRT. Bodies don’t react to testosterone the same
way. Older trans people exist, as do people who can’t tolerate long-term HRT
for health reasons.- Related to #1: Don’t assume that being visibly
trans either is a 1) temporary or 2) desired situation for trans men.- Do not deny the lived experiences of non-passing
trans men in order to win an argument. It’s simpler and easier to argue that trans men are men and men have male privilege, period, but it’s not
entirely true. Flawed logic like this does little to further trans rights in the long run.- Related to the above: don’t assume that trans
men and trans women’s experiences are opposite. Trans women have male privilege
violently stripped away from them when they come out as trans, and frequently
experience shame and marginalization before that. This does not mean that trans men never internalize misogyny, or that we
stop experiencing it the minute we come out as male. The patriarchy is more
interested in keeping people out of privileged positions than it is in welcome
people into them.This is a post I would appreciate people
sharing, because even though I’ve been out as trans for over 5 years, I still
haven’t been able to connect with many trans men of similar experience. I’d
love to make those connections, even online. I know this is not a common
outcome of medical transition, but people like us don’t need to be shoved to
the background or made to feel ashamed. We deserve to have our voices heard.I’m also interested in feedback from folks who have points to add or points of criticism. Like I said, I’ve been isolated in my ability to talk about this, so I’m sure my thoughts are not perfect. However, I won’t engage with personal attacks, especially not from cis folks.
*Note: this gets into the “masculine privilege” argument
that is another Tumblr mess. While I think masculinity is privileged, gender
nonconformity definitely isn’t, so you can’t neatly apply these concepts to
people who are read as women. But that doesn’t mean you can’t notice and speak
about patterns. Your contributions to this can be valuable.Ohh, this is really well written, op! It also makes me sad how we fail each other and fail people in our communities, when they fall outside the well-beaten road 😦
I’m starting to notice that when white trans people talk about decolonizing transgender they mostly talk about the many pre-colonial genders that once existed, describing them in a fascinated-but-unemotional anthropological style and engaging very little with the modern reality of trans people of color aroound the world.
Whereas when trans people of color talk about decolonizing transgender they talk about the personal struggle of finding your identity in a world where 99.9% of the material that’s supposed to be for you is written assuming a white western gender identity and every time someone asks you how you identify you’re forced to choose between doing hours of education work or naming a white western gender identity and if you try to explain yourself to your family they may start seeing you as a westernized other because the knowledge they once had to accept and honor you has been destroyed by the white man.
So I feel a bit queezy when I see a lot of those anthropological style “did you know some cultures have 5 genders!” articles that do not acknowledge the pain and trauma of colonialism in any way. There’s something there that turns the lives and genders of people of color into entertainment, amusing ‘did you knows’ with the pretence of progressiveness.
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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