Trans/Genderqueer/Agender/Questioning Thread

Ha, she also noted that my nails are done and hers are not.

prob just jealous of your manicure

lol. My nails are a ragged mess because I was, erm, playing with power tools this weekend.

Have been noticing feedback loops, more, how gender expression in me comes out in relation to other people, or situations.

Like, I went to Homebase because I needed to buy some tools, and of course that means wandering up and down all the tool aisles just picking things up and going "Yes! I need an axe... don't know what for, but I definitely need... oh look, a set of wrenches. WANT. I don't even own a car but these look so great" and the like. And just feeling very kind of manly and macho and trying on leather toolbelts and oh yeah, this is great. I feel so ~masculine~ by which I guess I meant capable and physical and handy and great.

But how it gets you, the separation of gender roles, and on my way to the paypoint, I had to pass through a wall of cushions into the half of the shop that sold soft furnishings and home cleaning products and kitchenware and scented candles and something in the back of my mind just went "Whoops, nope! Not the section for you!" And I caught myself doing it, and just said, this is ridiculous. How do rubbish bins and teatowels have a gender? But of course, most of the people shopping in those aisles were women (sometimes men in tow) while the power tools section had been all men except for me, including the staff. But going on the side of the shop that was full of women felt like encroachment in a way that trying out all the screwdrivers hadn't.

So is that my gender, because I feel more comfortable in one section of the shop? Or is that just ridiculous and absurd, that the way things had been organised had been artificially gendered, and noticing that made me want to express one side more than the other? Oh, consumerist late capitalism, how I hate you! (New work gloves and better screwdrivers = ace, though.)

Also, fancying mostly men again this week, but feeling very gay while doing it. This could just be the men I am currently fancying (nothing makes me feel gayer than looking at pictures of Interpol. Nothing. Well, at least nothing I've done in about 7 years.) But also wondering if this is what causes my eternal fluidity. It's not just that my tendencies/preferences get overridden by an extremely attractive person of any gender (and yes, I said preference instead of orientation deliberately) but my feeling about mine own internal gender changes the nature of my desire. I don't feel like a girl fancying boys right now. Or even a non-gendered girl looking at boys I'd rather be. I feel like a boy fancying boys.

Oh, bodies. Why are you so confusing?

I totally relate to that. My girlfriend makes me feel totally femme and encourages me to explore that side of myself. (It was her, actually, who gave me the purple sparkly nailpolish my mom commented on.) We do a lot of roleplaying, and although she identifies as cis and femme, she usually takes the masculine role. I use the girls holding hands emoji a lot when I text her. Otoh, this other person I'm dating makes me feel very masculine, way moreso than I ever do these days outside of her presence. I'm still trying to figure out my difference in reaction to the two of them.

I think one of my first inklings that something was weird about my gender was when as a teenager I realized I had a very different relationship to girl-on-girl porn than my straight male friends. They enjoyed it in a voyeuristic way, but had difficulty inserting themselves into the scene, at least without a penis or penis proxy available onscreen, whereas I had no trouble identifying with the female performers.

That's very interesting, like your gender identity is fluid enough to change depending on who you are relating to.

Or maybe... I may be way out of left field here, but it's something I was thinking about.

Been reading a lot recently about the definitions of bisexuality - did I talk about this recently? maybe on this thread? I should check. Nope, doesn't look like I did.

How the "bi" in bisexual does not mean attracted-to-two-genders. It means two-orientations, both homo and hetero. Defining heterosexuality as being attracted to those broadly of-a-different-gender to you, and homosexuality as being attracted to those broadly-of-a-similar-gender to you.

But how does that pan out if you are genderfluid or bi/pan-gender, and have a monosexual orientation? Like, if you are attracted to "people-broadly-like-you" then would your gender fluidity orient the gender you feel towards the person you are with? So if you are with a very feminine partner, you will express very femme, while if you are with a masculine partner, you will express much more masculine? Does that make any sense?

When in the past I've dated more feminine women, I often felt very male in the relationship, but I was much more willing to let them dress me up in "girl-drag" and do my hair and make-up. (Even when I end up looking like Robert Smith.) I don't know if that's even particularly sexual, though, as I've let bandmates do it to me, too. I guess, though, I should be more honest about the quasi-romantic nature of bandmate relationships giving way to unrequited-romantic things, which puts a different spin on it.

It's complicated. I'm probably just really into looking at boys in suits at the moment because I'm feeling quite into wearing suits. There's always been this weird identification-desire thing for me, with wanting to be boys I also want to fuck. Why am I such a weirdo. Why.

Oh, I've totally got the wanting to be girls I want to fuck thing going on. But not so much with boys? I want to fuck them, but I don't usually imagine myself as the boys I want to fuck.

With the other girl I'm dating, it might be that she's so thoroughly femme herself that I can't really out-femme her (whereas my gf has more of a "hard femme" style), so I might as well go in the other direction? I dunno.

On a sidenote, my taste in guys has always run toward the femme side, albeit not absolutely. I guess I just tend to be attracted to femme people in general, regardless of their gender identity. I have this theory that people aren't really attracted to gender(s), as society generally thinks, so much as broad gender cues, but most people suppress their attraction to people with genders that fall outside of the one most closely associated the set of gender cues they are most interested. I guess this line of thought comes out of an epiphany I had a while back that if gender is a construct, then so must sexual orientation be.

I don't really identify as bisexual, as I find this term limiting in scope. Usually people use it to mean someone is attracted to just cis men and cis women, but I'm also trans and non-binary people so I guess pansexual works, but I'd feel like a total dork if that word ever came out of my mouth, so just simple "queer" it is.

*but I'm also attracted to trans and non-binary people

And on a related note, I'm suddenly feeling hella disphoric.

Bah, dysphoria is the worst. Sorry, person!

Yeah, I get that the bi- in bisexual is so indelibly associated with "bi" meaning "only 2 genders", but I'm just saying that the ~bisexual community~ (whatever that is) or rather, the definition has been updated to reflect the fact that trans people and non-binary people exist. It's trying to broaden a category, which is always a welcome thing.

Like, I'm not telling you how to identify; you're gonna use whatever words you feel fit you best. But "Bisexual" as a technical term, these days means something different than you're implying.

I dunno. I still feel completely uncomfortable using any kind of -sexual to describe myself because it's been so long since I had sex with anyone of any gender that I don't even know any more what sex would look like for me. (Seriously. It is at a point where it is just stupid, like a mental block. Like, last year I actually asked someone I thought was a friend to, y'know, just help me out so it wasn't such a big *deal* any more. But they freaked out and now... well, they are no longer even a friend. I think I've regressed back to a place of "never feel like I'm going to be comfortable asking anyone ever again" again, because that shit was really unpleasant, and that wasn't really a happy place to be.) So I kinda feel like it would be lying to use any kind of sexual identity except... non-binary. Could be anything. I'll know when it happens. If it ever happens, which it might not. The only thing I know for certain is I *don't* want to do the girl role in the relationship. I'm really done with that.

"Being attracted to" is another matter. I feel uncomfortable trying to generalise my/your experiences onto monosexuals, but yeah, what you describe sounds pretty OTM. I am definitely attracted to a certain set of visual cues, but yeah, during my "I am straight, don't you dare say I'm not, I'm a straighty mc-straight-person" years, if a person I had formerly been giving the eye to stood up and they turned out to be female, I would tell myself "Oh no, I am not attracted, that is a girl" even though clearly, I had definitely been attracted. It's more a question of looking at someone and just thinking "they look interesting" rather than having an expectation. (But that said, I never ever look at, like, super cis-het dudes and think "they look interesting." I think it is ambiguity itself that attracts me. But not always!)

love and good days to you folks. i feel this is an aspect of life i need to better understand.

Well, welcome and feel free to share your own story if that helps you to understand.

the half of the shop that sold soft furnishings and home cleaning products and kitchenware and scented candles and something in the back of my mind just went "Whoops, nope! Not the section for you!" And I caught myself doing it, and just said, this is ridiculous. How do rubbish bins and teatowels have a gender?

i think it depends on the rubbish bin, though tea towels definitely code as femme. But yeah, apart from the cleaning products, these are things I never buy, and I dunno if it's so much a gender thing, as what to me feels like a subset of female, the "suburban homeowning mom." But I also realize that I am fortunate now to live somewhere where there is a broad array of "acceptable female behavior and self-presentation," it definitely wasn't like that where I grew up, which is probably part of why my mother had to drag me (almost literally) kicking and screaming to buy my first bra.

See, I have this beautiful vision of a weird fragmentation/redefinition where "suburban homeowning mum" might be a gender but "urban, gender-non-conforming ex-tomboy who hated bra shopping" might also be a gender and there are dozens of genders, not 2 (or 3) but I get that's not really what you're talking about.

I guess I'm just kinda trying to examine this weird gendering of shops and products and how arbitrary it is, vs how "associated with different activities that men or women perform" it is. Because "Homebase" (I'm assuming this is a US conglomerate, giant DIY/home improvement/gardening centres) is a shop that is full of couples/families/mixed gender groups, but is coded "male". While something like "Ikea" (which is a hugely similar DIY home thing, but more furniture and less power tools) is also full of couples/families/mixed gendered groups but is coded "female". How on earth did these notions of the gendering of shops get into my head? How on earth did the notion that one side of Homebase was coded a different "gender" than the other side? Why am I drawn to one, and vaguely repulsed by the other?

Because I live on mine own, and I don't have "A Man" to put up shelves or do the soldering for me, I'm comfortable with - or even happy and proud - performing those roles to the best of my ability. (I really should take an electrical wiring course, this is how you do not electrocute yourself course to do the rest.) And I'm sure that men who live on their own do, also, somehow accumulate teatowels and washing up implements. "Living by yourself" is a pretty powerful way of erasing bullshit gender landgrabs. (Even *I* own teatowels, though my Mum actually bought them for me.) So *why* do I persist in seeing the "suburban mums" side of the shop as gendered, and why do I recoil from that side of the shop?

It's a dumb question, I guess. I am King of Dumb Questions. (But dumb questions are sometimes the only way you learn anything.)

See, I have this beautiful vision of a weird fragmentation/redefinition where "suburban homeowning mum" might be a gender but "urban, gender-non-conforming ex-tomboy who hated bra shopping" might also be a gender and there are dozens of genders, not 2 (or 3) but I get that's not really what you're talking about.

It is in a way! Like that's how I thought when I was younger, that I was some separate gender from the suburban homeowning moms and those in-training to be them. Now, I am comfortable enough being a "woman" -- and maybe some of this has to do with issues of "passing," I can "pass" and it is easier that way -- and there are women in my life who are more "butch" than I am, or they are about some things, though are more femme about others.

People Who Live In Suburbs: Classy, Icky, or Dudes?

(I am about to start a "passing" thread according to the old, old Greenspun-era "rule of 3" that it has come up on 3 separate threads now, therefore deserves its own thread.)

well BB, I don't really have a story, other than always feeling like a guy who likes guys. Kinda has gotten old at this point.

Everybody has a story! Whether that story is "I'm a guy who likes guys" or "I'm a girl - or so they tell me - who often feels like a guy who likes guys, when liking guys, which I don't always do."

Oh, and as if on cue (due to my prevaricating and carping and endless agonising on the other thread)! Juliet J is a fantastic writer; Aeon Magazine is a fantastic organ for long, thoughtful, interrogating longform pieces, and here are both together, talking about how the whole "before and after photo" phenomenon obscures the long and tortured process of becoming with a quick, easy narrative:

http://aeon.co/magazine/being-human/before-and-after-the-makeover-industrys-favourite-trope/

JJ is so lovely and so fucking smart.

*but I'm also attracted to trans and non-binary people

I find myself being MORE attracted to these people. I'm not sure why.... I'm sure if someone wanted to be mean and derogatory to me they might call me a "tranny chaser" or whatever.

I do believe there's a world of difference between treating someone's identity as a fetish and "like attracts like because there's so much less you have to explain to someone who already *gets* it".

Well obviously, cf: the "if people wanted to be mean and try and hurt my feelings" part. It's not some fetish, as far as I am concerned. If some TERF wants to consider my personal preferences a fetish without knowing me and kink-shame me it might make me feel pretty bad but then you gotta consider the source.

"like attracts like because there's so much less you have to explain to someone who already *gets* it".

Yeah, this is totally a thing and why I'm not interested in dating cishet women, even though I'm potentially attracted to them and they are potentially attracted to me.

Found this little quiz to be actually pretty interesting and good:

http://flexuality.wordpress.com/take-the-test/

Also came across this:

Inside Against Me!'s "Transgender Dysphoria Blues"

What a bullshit fucking test!

It came back and told me I was "probably polyamourous" - WHAT THE LIVING FUCK, fuck you, I have never been so offended by a result.

Being polyamourous is fucking lifestyle choice. Being able to be *attracted* romantically to women and men is no more indicative of polyamoury than being bisexual is.

What a crock of fucking shit.

Of their categories (and who the fuck has time for bullshit categories anyway, I'm just pissed off at this test right now, so fuck their categories) maybe Flexamourous and Metamorphic apply quite strongly. Though it told me I was "ambisexual" rather than "queer" but I just have such a raft of associations with the word "queer" because it's an identity that was always denied me by gays and externally imposed on me by straights, so who knows.

Oh, I am cross now, and need photos of Weimar Lesbians or Dirty Dronerock Boys with Koala bears to cheer me up. >:-(

And to make me even more grouchy today, apparently "trans*" as a descriptor is ~problematic~.

http://practicalandrogyny.com/2013/10/31/about-that-often-misunderstood-asterisk/

To which I really want to say... you know, "trans*" is the first time in my life that a (queer) community has widened itself out to actually include me. Most of my experiences have been of feeling excluded from both str8 and queer spaces bcz "not gay enough" vs "you don't look straight to me, are you sure you're not queer?" is a constant tension. And you birches wanna take that away from me? Basically: shove it.

I should really stop reading social media, huh. Especially Tumblr, I guess.

I dunno I got high polyamourous results too but I think it's because I've been in threesomes... (TMI?)

Oh, I figured it out later - they clearly meant something like "bi- or pan-romantic" meaning one was romantically attracted to both women & men, when they said "polyamourous" as if they didn't realise it had another meaning. On the blog they had "flexi-amourous" but clearly hadn't changed they survey reporting tool. Clumsy and poorly defined attempt at realising that sexual attraction is not always the same thing as romantic attraction.

"willing to have sex in threesomes" is not exactly the same thing as "polyamourous".

I really don't have anything against poly people & their google calendar lifestyles; I'm just seriously not built for that lifestyle. I find a relationship with even 1 person difficult & complicated enough. Why would I want to juggle several? If it works for you, more power to you. I just don't want to be called something I'm not.

(sorry that middle bit about threesomes should have a winky face; being quite light-hearted/jokey there)

I don't actually have the grit or perseverance right now to deal with the potential hassle it would incur to start an "I've come to hate my body" thread, for when you can't muster 100% positivity for whatever reason. But since I suspect my lack of positivity right now is mostly due to dysphoria, I'm going to talk about it here. If I'm going to end up talking to myself, I might as well talk in a place I'm on topic, I guess.

So I was talking about trying to feel more positive about mine own body by feeling more positive about a (male) person I really admire's body. Partly, because I'm often more able to accept or even crush on, in other people, things I cannot accept in myself. And partly because I don't know if I'm feeling dissatisfaction with my body for its fatness, or for its femaleness. These things are kind of tied up together in awkward ways. I know, looking at pictures of thin boys in suits, that even if I were male, I would never have *that* kind of body, I would just have my body with lumps in different places. I do, however, think that more variation is tolerated in male bodies, and my current mass would be considered way more normative or even attractive in a man.

It's hard, when the image of male beauty I've grown up with is tall, cadaverously gaunt floppy-haired dirty dronerock boys. But it's been kind of mind-opening to see a DDB I admire, growing into a larger body in a way that I find really beautiful. (Yes, I know all the arguments about hottness not being everything, like, conventional attractiveness can go shove it, but beauty, individual beauty, is really important to me. Don't care if that makes me shallow.) That I'm able to look at his body, with a mass probably quite similar to mine, and think that it is good, and attractive, and beautiful, and well... hott. I can look at his body with desire. And I'm trying to translate that, in my head, into "this means that my body is potentially desirable!"

(I *need* to be able to feel like I'm desirable again. This has been the thing that has been missing for too long, the thing I can't seem to surmount, in terms of having a sexuality again. It's not that I've tied my worth to my desirability because, y'know, fuck THAT. But I honestly don't think I'm going to be capable of having sex again until I feel like *I* fancy myself in some way, or at least conceive of myself as fancyable again..)

And I have always been really susceptible, not to peer pressure, but to pop star pressure. Almost always male pop stars. (Male pop stars, and early 80s Annie Lennox. I don't think she counts, for some reason.) I never gave a shit what the girls in 8th grade were wearing, but if Duran Duran wore it, I had to have it. And my Mum used to joke about this when I was younger, like... OK, I used to hate wearing glasses, and I would refuse point blank to wear glasses because glasses were ugly and uncool. So she said "Damn, I just *wish* that some pop star would appear who wore glasses, because then you'd wear yours!" And we laughed at this when I was a teen, but then low and behold, a couple of years later, a pop star appeared named Graham Coxon, and Blur were the coolest pop group in the UK, and Graham Coxon wore glasses, so suddenly glasses were cool, and glasses were hott, and I became a proud glasses-wearer, and started wearing my glasses every day.

Yes, I am that shallow and dumb and easily influenced by pop stars. I was when I was 15, and there's a part of me that will never *stop* being 15.

So I am just really hoping that the 15 y.o. in me can lookit this plump DDB and say "you know what? Plumpness is cool; plumpness is sexy. If he can rock it, I can rock it."

This is really only tangentially related to being genderqueer or whatever - except for the fact that I can only seem to accept my body by comparing it to men. Sorry for derailing, but I wanted to talk about that somewhere, and the Body Positivity thread really didn't seem like the place.

I can kind of relate to that too! I remember being 15 and wanting to look like Robert Smith. And now ... well, I feel like I wear my weight better than he does. (Vaguely shallow lol)

Haha oh god yes. I went through that, too. Like when I was in my mid/late teens and my Mum and then my girlfriend were trying to get me to wear some makeup and I so wasn't interested in wearing makeup like a girl, but it'd be OK to wear makeup like Robert Smith or Daniel Ash. Early goth was so fucking genderqueer, not just Batcave but lots of it.

xp I bet you wear your hair better too!

And I've just realised it wasn't even Graham Coxon who first made glasses-wearing cool, it was David J, I tell a lie! God I wanted to be him when I was 16. Ginger, too.

I bought hella clothes from the women's section and some dark lipstick while I was in Portland. The results are in wdyll.

Looking good, Rev. Think I've seen that photo before; did you post it on twitter?

Yahhhh, I did.

I took that test and came up with this:

http://i43.tinypic.com/21dpwk0.jpg

I'm surprised I scored so high for "heteroflexible" and "transitioning" and so low for "queer" and "versatile"

catching up on the caleb hannan stuff, pretty depressing that it happened at all let alone anyone rallying round that twat. we have a long long way to go pt 9348392

That whole mess has been angrily buzzing round my social media for a couple of days now, and I am just too afraid to even read the original piece. I keep thinking "it can't be as bad as it's represented as being" then reading the quotes and going "good fucking lord no." People are justified in their anger and their outrage at this utter douchebag of a writer.

So someone can out and then bully a trans woman to death? That takes a particularly revolting kind of human being. But then am I surprised that people can round their wagons and rally round the cnut and justify and defend the idea of bullying a person to suicide? No, I am actually not surprised. Human beings are capable of some despicable actions.

Has anybody else read this? It's really long but I found it quite interesting:

THE "EMPIRE" STRIKES BACK: A POSTTRANSSEXUAL MANIFESTO

i had never read this before but it's really excellent: http://pendientedemigracion.ucm.es/info/rqtr/biblioteca/Transexualidad/trans%20manifesto.pdf

oh lol xp

hah!

Hmmm, so my therapist who is supposed to be helping me work through my gender issues was completely unfamiliar with the term "cisgender" until I said it today. Awesome.

Has anyone else watched the Candy Darling documentary and if so was anyone else as disgusted by Fran Lebowitz as I was?