My Gender is Confusing

[HelloMyNameIsHuman]

Hey all, my name is Ryan and I was AFAB. All my life I've been told im a tomboy but now im beginning to think it is more than that. I have a few transgendered friends and their new lives seem sooo amazing they are so much happier being who they want to be. Me on the other hand have very conservative grandparents/parents, and a boyfriend who told me last night that I was just a tomboy when i mentioned I might not be cisigendered. Anyway I guess what im confused about is what my gender actually is. As of right now I dont have a strong desire to physically change to become a man, but I do dislike my female body and hate to see my breasts, I wish I was flatchested but genetics suck sometimes :P. I can't stand makeup, dresses, doing my hair, or painting my nails, its not me no matter how hard everyone wants me to do it. I have also had strong male hobbies all my life (hockey, snowboarding, fishing, mechanical things, working on my pickup truck, baseball etc) not that that means anything but I am always considered "one of the guys" when hanging out with male friends (which make up almost the entirety of my friend group). I also prefer they/them pronouns and the male version of my name and I have been dying to cut my hair short but face a lot of backlash from family and boyfriend if I do so I have been holding off. oh and my clothing style is a baseball cap everyday no matter what with a pony tail out the back, hoodies or plaid shirts that dont show off my boobies, and baggish jeans with sneakers. 

 

I guess thats pretty much me and I guess my real question is am I transgendered? A demiboy/girl? What even is the difference between demiboy and demigirl? I have been told my a friend I could be either or. I guess I am just really confused and I love to have a label, it helps me find inner peace I guess. Thanks all advance and sorry for this random collection of my inner thoughts 

[cinary]

Hi

 

Well, I might be unhelpful but I'll tell you what worked for me. I've just opened a long list of genders and read the definition of each and every one. And when I found agender I was like "Thats's me! This one!". So, yeah. And this might not happen to you, but there are a lot of genders that match what you said so I'd suggest just looking them all up for now. 

[Rynn]

Well, what worked for cinary didn't work for me at all, so to each their own I guess

 

1 hour ago, HelloMyNameIsHuman said:

As of right now I dont have a strong desire to physically change to become a man, but I do dislike my female body and hate to see my breasts, I wish I was flatchested but genetics suck sometimes :P.

Sounds like it could be dysphoria, but if you don't want to 'become a man' maybe you're some sort of non-binary? Non-binary still falls under the trans umbrella so if that's the case you'd still be trans.

 

1 hour ago, HelloMyNameIsHuman said:

I can't stand makeup, dresses, doing my hair, or painting my nails, its not me no matter how hard everyone wants me to do it. I have also had strong male hobbies all my life (hockey, snowboarding, fishing, mechanical things, working on my pickup truck, baseball etc)

All of that is about gender expression, not gender identity. Anyone, regardless of gender identity, could say exactly that.

 

1 hour ago, HelloMyNameIsHuman said:

I also prefer they/them pronouns and the male version of my name and I have been dying to cut my hair short

Maybe start by cutting your hair shorter step by step? Just cut it a couple of inches shorter soon, then a couple more a bit later, *repeat* until it's the length you want it at.

Just take it slow. Maybe don't come out until you're really ready to. Especially if you expect a negative reaction it's important to be well prepared and have resources and answers ready in case they start asking probing questions or they start doubting your experiences. 

 

1 hour ago, HelloMyNameIsHuman said:

What even is the difference between demiboy and demigirl?

A demiboy is someone who identifies partially as a boy and partially as something else. That something else can be a girl, or it can be agender. 

 

You could also be genderneutral, agender, bigender, genderfluid you name it. 

 

This explanation I wrote in another thread won't go into all of those specific labels, but it might help you understand the difference between gender identity and gender expression. I don't know, maybe it'll help you:

Spoiler

What is 'transgender' and 'non-binary'?

Basic definitions & explanations

First of all, this is the first definition of transgender that pops up in Google, written by a transgender author:

 

Transgender:

Denoting or relating to a person whose sense of personal identity and gender does not correspond with their birth sex.

 

But what is meant by 'sense of personal identity and gender'?

• Sex is whether you’re biologically male, female or intersex.
• Gender is psychological, not biological, and should be separated from sex entirely. From here on, I’m going to leave sex out of the equation.
• Sexual orientation is even less relevant to this conversation. It's who you're attracted to, not who you are. I'm leaving this out of the equation too.

There are a lot of different aspects to gender.

• Gender roles/norms/expectations are unwritten rules society has for how men and women should behave. (Men can't wear make-up. Crying is for girls. Women shouldn't be too assertive.) These are not part of an individual's identity. They are part of a society's culture.
• Gender expression is what your gender appears to be to other people. (Includes gendered things like clothing, colors, make-up, mannerisms, tone of voice, way of walking, gestures while talking, how intensely emotions are expressed etc)
• Gender identity is a very complicated concept and it is the core of what we are talking about when we’re discussing trans issues. Before you can know what ‘transgender’ is, you need to know what ‘gender identity’ is. 

So there are a lot of theories on what gender identity is, and these two here are the most relevant to our discussion:

 

First you've got the (in my opinion outdated) theory put forward by Judith Butler, Simone de Beauvoir and the like. They resist the idea that any aspect of gender identity can be innate. As de Beauvoir says "One isn't born a woman, one becomes a woman." This basically means that you feel like a woman because it's what you're used to. You behave like a woman because that's what's socially acceptable. In this view people act how they're supposed to act according to the gender roles in their culture. The constant repetition of doing what they're supposed to do gets etched into their brains and becomes their gender identity. For Butler and de Beauvoir, gender identity is the internalization of culturally imposed gender norms and expectations.

 

Then there's a newer theory about gender identity. This one builds on the first one and accepts it as partially correct, but asserts that gender identity is also partially innate. If it wasn't, then it would logically follow that trans people simply can’t exist, because your gender identity would entirely depend on what you were raised to be.

Joan Roughgarden, a transgender evolutionary biologist who wrote a whole book on the science of lgbt identities, is a proponent of this one. According to her, ‘gender identity’ is a deep-seated sense of self that's been established from the time you were born. In her book 'Evolution's Rainbow', she writes:

 

I envision gender identity as a cognitive lens. When a baby opens his or her eyes after birth and looks around, whom will the baby emulate and whom will he or she merely notice? Perhaps a male baby will emulate his father or other men, perhaps not, and a female baby her mother or other women, perhaps not. I imagine that a lens in the brain controls who to focus on as a “tutor.” Transgender identity is then the acceptance of a tutor from the opposite sex. Degrees of transgender identity, and of gender variance generally, reflect different degrees of single-mindedness in the selection of the tutor’s gender. The development of gender identity thus depends on both brain state and early postnatal experience, because brain state indicates what the lens is, and environmental experience supplies the image to be photographed through that lens and ultimately developed immutably into brain circuitry. Once gender identity is set, like other basic aspects of temperament, life proceeds from there.

 

So a cisgender female baby instinctively emulates women, a transgender baby with a female body instinctively emulates men, and a non-binary baby instinctively emulates both. Simple. 

 

The innate part of gender identity is the part that decides which of the two genders (or both or neither) you will instinctively emulate during your life. The behavior of that group of people then supplies you with the learned aspect of your gender identity. So the innate part tells you which gender(s) to imitate and the learned part is what kind of behavior you're actually imitating and internalizing.  

 

Gender identity as Roughgarden describes it, is a deep-seated, immutable sense of belonging or kinship to a gender (either to the social construct or to the group of people). A sense of "I belong with those people, or the other group, or maybe both or not really with either."

 

You can't change this sense of belonging by raising someone differently. There have been cases where a doctor made a mistake while circumcising a baby boy and accidentally cut of the entire penis. For example, there’s David Reimer. That boy was raised as a girl instead, from birth, but still always felt like a boy. They had to tell him when he was 14 because it was just not working.

 

Gender identity is at least partially innate and biological, not just cultural, so the argument that your gender identity can't be anything but 'man' or 'woman' because that's the only two genders that exist in our culture is not applicable. Gender identity =/= gender as a social construct. Gender identity is to which degree you instinctively identify with those two culturally established genders.

 

 

My guess is agender people don't feel at home in either group, genderfluid babies could emulate their dad during some activities (like boxing) and their mom in other situations (like socializing), and neutrois people sort of feel stuck in between the two groups, but I don't know. The only way to know is to ask them. Our neurobiology science skills aren't advanced enough to read people's minds yet.

Gender Identity versus Gender Expression

Yes, of course everyone has a feminine and a masculine side, but that's not what we're talking about here. For example, a man can be feminine, he can like wearing make-up and dresses, talk in a stereotypically feminine way, and still identify as a man. Is his feminine side a 'deep-seated sense of identity', 'a cognitive lens that determines which gender(s) a baby will emulate from the minute they're born'? I doubt it. I think it's gender expression, not gender identity. For a nonbinary person, that's different.

 

A nonbinary person is not someone who simply dislikes the gender role they're put into. A guy who likes to break gendered expectations by wearing dresses is a crossdresser, a drag queen or a gender-nonconforming person, not a nonbinary person. Those are terms for people who have non-standard gender expressions. A nonbinary person is a person who has this innate, deep-seated, unchangeable sense of belonging to both genders, or to neither. If their body or the social role people ascribe to them doesn't line up with their inner sense of what they are, this leads to dysphoria. Dysphoria is an integrally important sign of ‘transgenderness’. Its opposite is gender euphoria.

 

Gender dysphoria is either a feeling of discomfort/distress with gendered aspects of your body (meaning you'd feel a need to change your body = transition) or a feeling of discomfort/distress because of what gender people perceive you to be (meaning you'd want to take steps in order to be perceived differently = transition).

Gender expression includes gendered things like clothing, make-up, mannerisms, tone of voice, way of walking, gestures while talking etc.

The innate part of gender identity doesn't have anything to do with any of those things.

Are NB’s trans?

(NB = Non-binary, also called enby)

 

                                                                Trans people

                                                       ↙                                  ↘

                                    binary trans people                nonbinary trans people

They're all trans.

 

Nonbinary people can transition, so even if you were (in my opinion incorrectly) basing your definition of ‘transgender’ on whether or not transition is possible, you still wouldn’t have a reason to say NB’s aren’t trans. NB’s can transition medically (through hormone treatment and surgery) as well as socially. Social transition isn't easy. It should be taken seriously. http://gender.wikia.com/wiki/Social_Transition

 

An NB transitions for the same reasons a binary trans person transitions, in order to have their body reflect their inner selves more, and in order to be perceived differently. It's true that in this culture NB's won't 'pass' as their true gender, because not enough people know that nonbinary identities exist, so they won't automatically recognize someone as 'Oh, that person doesn't look quite male or female, they're probably nonbinary,' as they would (most of the time) correctly recognize a woman to be a woman and a man to be a man. However, that's a problem with our culture, not with nonbinary people.

 

'Binary trans' and 'nonbinary trans' are two different types of being trans. If individual nonbinary people don’t identify as trans, then there's probably a personal story for why they don't, or maybe they just aren’t aware that nb’s are trans, or maybe they’ve made the common mistake to confuse gender expression with gender identity and they’re actually gender-nonconforming. You won't know until you ask them.

 

NB's not identifying as trans is kind of like black feminists not identifying as feminists. Some black feminists don't identify as feminists because they don't feel represented by white feminism. They feel white feminists aren't committed enough to ending all forms of oppression, instead of just to ending sexism. I believe they call themselves womanists. They're feminists, but refuse to identify as such for personal or political reasons.

 

That's what it's like with nb's too. They're trans, but some refuse to identify as trans for personal or political reasons. These reasons are very diverse.

 

[The_Reluctant_Dragon]

My gender is so dang confusing too. If you feel like a lot of labels work for you or none of them really apply, just use trans, genderqueer, non-binary, or non-conforming. That’s what I’ve been doing. I would go by Non-Binary or Non-Conforming just for convenience. Or, you can go by the gender you feel the majority of time. Like, if that gender always stuck with and the others have just been brought up. I’ve felt like I was agender, demiboy, greygender, libramasculine, neutrois and maverique. But, most of the time I feel like nothing , so I go with agender, even though there have been moments where I’ve felt differently. See if trans, genderqueer, non-binary, or non-conforming works for you. It’s your choice.

[Angelnoir]

When I was younger I didn't like my breast either, I hid them and to this day, I sometimes do that. I also have conservative family which would rather see me put on make-up, wear skirts, do my hair, paint my nails...etc. I have male hobbies, always connect more with males and I like hearing the more neutral/male version of my name. My dressing style is quiet masculine, too.

 

Having said that, gender is the social construct. 

Maybe, nowadays women and girls and thus feminity is supposed to be all that: long hair, make-up, skirts, shopping, ...etc. So what? 

What is femenine and what is considered masculine (thus gender) changes from place to place and from time to time in history and across the world.

Don't think so much about "if" you feel masculine or feminine. We could say other people might see you as more masculine or more femenine. But that doesn't matter.

What matters is that you do you. You do what you want, cut your hair, do sports, don't wear make-up, wear baggy clothes. Doesn't mean your gender is this or that.

Define your gender for yourself. If you say, well I'm afab and I do those things and not others. Then do that.

Maybe you can redefine what it means to be feminine in this time and in your place. And then one day femeninty will be defined by not wearing make-up, not having any type of done hair, wearing pants, not painting your nails..etc or maybe all of the above. 

And you see your transgender friends, and they are happy because they can do what they want. Do what you want, too. And if this means you have your afab body, then that's that. Don't let yourself be defined by the constraints of society or your social environment. 

There are plenty of afab women and girls who do and dress and be and act "masculine". They probably don't even think about whether they identify as this or that. Not all people do. So, just be yourself and do what feels good for you.

 

[K.I.N.G]

The difference between demi boy and girl is that a demigirl is when you're in either a stationary or fluctuating position between feeling agender/genderless  to felling or identifying more with femininity, vice versa for demiboy except you're more between male/masculinity to agender.

 

Personally though I've always looked at gender as a feeling or emotion so maybe try and focus in on the way you feel about yourself and how society sees you - example: do you mind when people see you as a female?

 

Maybe if you identify more with masculinity you could be transmasculine opposed to actually feeling like a boy?  Just experiment and see what makes you feel comfortable. Good Luck!

 

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