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Veltzeh

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I think in Japanese there are similar rules regulating how men and women can talk to each other and to their own sex...
Well, I only read about it in Wikipedia, but I got the impression that the Japanese stuff is mostly a politeness issue more than gender, and females are expected to be more polite, but that it isn't so rigid as for example the English pronouns. The impression I got was that people might look at someone weird for not speaking like expected but not flip out and correct it. But I don't really know, it was only an impression by that one article. I should probably read more. X)

I did hear that in Russia (where for example feminine owning is different from masculine owning, kind of like in Italian I suppose) there hasn't been much movement for gender-neutral language. Otherwise I don't really know, but it would be interesting to find out, I suppose.

I meant "class" as a purely political category, i.e. the group of people that I get thrown into by other people, which, in my case, happens to be a group that is still being marginalised and discriminated against, so that, on a political level, I think it's necessary to stand up for one's rights as a member of that group.

I have sometimes felt more comfortable on certain message boards when people believed I was male, but that always made me feel like a traitor. I used to frequent certain forums concerned with technical stuff and simply everybody there was or seemed to be male. Letting them believe I was male, too, simply by not saying anything to the contrary, would sort of have confirmed the stereotype that women generally have no idea when it comes to technology, and I didn't want to do that.

But I've never told people straight away: I'm genderless. Do you normally get away with that? (I mean, people are probably going to respect that here, but on boards that are not in any way related to gender or sexual issues?)

Hmm, I know the "traitor" feeling though I think I've never experienced it in that way. Before, I just felt very uncomfortable around people if they thought I'm nothing but male or female.

Either way, as I now know much more about transgender issues, I generally feel like a traitor if I let anyone believe that I was either a female or a male! XD Not to mention mentally ill and otherwise uncomfortable. So every time someone somewhere thinks that I might be one, I go in and preach to them about genderlessness. Or just mention it. Or, if I know that I'll only be there for a fleeting moment, I just ignore it, get my business done and go on (this is what I usually do in real life, what with not looking outwardly ambiguous enough – it makes me repressed).

I don't know what "getting away with it" would mean in this case, but most people seem to either ignore it or accept it, some clearly accept it and some argue against it and try to find out what they think I really am. I usually like seeing the helpless ones argue because on the net I have the upper hand – nothing except my own view can be confirmed!

In one place I've even managed to make people call me by neo-pronouns (ey, em, eir) while elsewhere some people just don't (seem to) get it, even if I've known them for who knows how long (in that particular case I blame their language though). Elsewhere the issue could be bypassed.

Either way, I'm not in a whole lot of net communities to such depth that I could really say definite stuff.

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In one place I've even managed to make people call me by neo-pronouns.

Oh, I love that. I'm going to try that... :)

And it's true that one might have the upper hand on the net, where nobody can see you. But unfortunately most of our lives is probably still lived in the real world, and, like you, I couldn't really pull off the androgyny thing there... Doesn't your alternative life on the net make the real world and its limitations even harder to bear?

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But unfortunately most of our lives is probably still lived in the real world, and, like you, I couldn't really pull off the androgyny thing there... Doesn't your alternative life on the net make the real world and its limitations even harder to bear?
I'm working toward looking more androgynous IRL too. :)

I don't really know if the net makes the real world worse, but if it does... well, I can be happy on the net without excessive work and I don't see why I shouldn't pursue happiness in any way I can when it obviously doesn't harm other people. All my hobbies are ones I can do alone or on the computer, and what little I interact with the real world, well, it's almost ignorable anyway. XD

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Seattleoutsider

One of things I noticed when I went through a inbetween stage that I noticed people on street got really hostile to me because they couldn't figure out what gender I was. I had absolute strangers come up and ask me if I was male or female, like it was there business. Sometimes they were down right hostile because they couldn't figure it.

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Could one of you perhaps point me towards a decent f2m transgender forum or some other good starting point for research? I'd sort of like to check out the scene. But somehow I can find only m2f forums or forums in which people discuss how to turn oneself into a cliché most effectively... :roll:

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Seattleoutsider

I don't know what you mean by decent.

Yahoo groups had several. I quit going to them long time ago it got too much like flame and pissing contest for me. Its all pretty much cliche sterotypical male or female focus and the one's who are more gender outlaw it seems pretty dead or inactive.

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I don't know what you mean by decent.

Pretty much the opposite of what you describe. lol.

I was lucky to find a forum in another language, where people had intelligent discussions, and those who felt "100% male" and those who claimed a position between the sexes for themselves seemed to respect each other. Unfortunately the forum was closed a few months ago and I'm only able to see the archive. :(

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Could one of you perhaps point me towards a decent f2m transgender forum or some other good starting point for research?
Well, I came from LJ so I'll give you LJ links... ;) http://community.livejournal.com/ftm/profile and http://community.livejournal.com/transgender/profile. Maybe the ones that are "transgender" instead of strictly "ftm" or "mtf" have less stuff about conforming to one single gender role?

This person's homepage is a pretty awesome place for info: http://nbtsc.org/~ftmichael/

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Hey folks,

I've been wondering if there are many genderqueer folk on AVEN. I don't know if you all like that label, but I find it a useful umbrella term. Veltzeh, I identify with a lot of what you said about HOW you are asexual. I have also been fairly sexual (not sure about right now...I think different levels of hormones change my sex drive) without it being directed at other people at all. I've had sex with bio-males and bio-females and enjoyed much of it. But like you and seattleoutsider said, it's (sometimes/can be) more about sensation than sex itself. My partner (who is most defniitely sexual) said to me a couple of weeks ago, with mild disgust, "You don't even like sex. You just like pleasure." Yep, that's it. And I'd found (a) way(s) to make one into the other.

On a different note, I wonder how genderqueerness and asexuality might relate to each other...

One more thing: I salivate for a language with gender neutral pronouns. I just finished writing an MA thesis on how in English you have to talk about people with gendered pronouns most of the time and this reinforces the need for people to perfom binary gender. People feel entitled to know what gender (and there are only two choices) you are...it's moral. They are morally accountable if they can't talk about you as a gendered being, they hold you morally accountable for performing binary gender. That's part of what makes it hard to "get away with" genderqueerness/genderlessness. [i like that on this site you get to write in your gender (unlike so many places), and I wish you got to write in your a/sexuality too.] My favorite genderless pronoun set is ze/hir/hirself, which is the one Leslie Feinberg and Kate Bornstein both talk about in their books. I just really like the sound of the letter z.

:) logan

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Seattleoutsider

I think personally for me sex when it was pleasurable didn't have to do neccessary with gentilla but more to do with closeness and absence of physical pain due to be in altered state of mind. Which I find increasely more difficult to go to that place and I prefer being hermit these days and limited personal contact with others.. I don't have problem with the terms genderqueer but I don't know if I am comfortable personally with label. If I could wake up 100 percent physical male it would make my life whole lot easier and less complecated.

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What a long and bewildering journey it's been. If you ever want to go on the

AVEN chat room, just PM me.

Welcome to the forum, BTW. I think yu'll like it here.o

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  • 2 weeks later...

Was away there for a bit... I'm going to lie that I was "busy". :)

On a different note, I wonder how genderqueerness and asexuality might relate to each other...
People who aren't rigid about gender and sex also aren't rigid about sexuality? That's seems like a good hypothesis to me, heh.
People feel entitled to know what gender (and there are only two choices) you are...it's moral. They are morally accountable if they can't talk about you as a gendered being, they hold you morally accountable for performing binary gender.
So immoral! X)

That kind of expectancy is what makes the world such a shitty place nowadays. Even if they DID accept what one is now, for some reason they still need to know what was before. I wonder what the more conservative people would think of a transgender person saying that ey wasn't originally a female or male, but intersexed. I'd like to think "ultimate confusion" but then again, I probably value confusion much more than an "average person".

I've been thinking "transgender" is the umbrella term. Well, these terms sure haven't stabilized yet.

This isn't too much about the original subject anymore, heh. But hey, it's my thread, neener! :D

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Seattleoutsider

Its your thread you can post what you want. I thought about whether or not I should go back and delete what I wrote because anyone who googles this nickname will find all sort of juicy bits of my life but then I forgot I don't have my real name here. LOL then I realize I had avatar with it lol gotta go change it now! Enjoy my newest Art I made.

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ChildOfTheLight
Hey folks,

I've been wondering if there are many genderqueer folk on AVEN. I don't know if you all like that label, but I find it a useful umbrella term.

I sometimes use "gender-unusual" -- I like the sound of it better. But I like the sound of "androgyne" better than that, and it captures more specifically what I feel, that is, the concept of having both masculine and feminine identity.

Ultimately, though, I'm me, and I care more about people getting a sense of that than knowing exactly how I describe my gender, especially since I don't know exactly how to describe it. Besides, there's much more to identity than gender.

On a different note, I wonder how genderqueerness and asexuality might relate to each other...

That's an interesting question. People generally seem to believe that gender is set very early in life, or even in the womb.

But I would suggest that many more people have the potential to be genderqueer/androgyne/genderless than are, but that their particular gender-unusuality is smoothed out by the pressures in adolescence to be a certain way to get a boyfriend or girlfriend, among other things. If asexuals don't feel these pressures, or at least feel them much less, then certainly one would expect more of them to be gender-unusual in some way.

I know that I had feelings of and desires to express femininity back at least to when I was twelve and probably to when I was seven or earlier, but they weren't strong or lasting enough to change my identity yet. I dismissed them as fantasies or otherwise refused to acknowledge them; if I had more desire to be anyone other than myself, or if I felt I had to keep up a persona to get girls, I would probably still be doing that.

One more thing: I salivate for a language with gender neutral pronouns. I just finished writing an MA thesis on how in English you have to talk about people with gendered pronouns most of the time and this reinforces the need for people to perfom binary gender. People feel entitled to know what gender (and there are only two choices) you are...it's moral. They are morally accountable if they can't talk about you as a gendered being, they hold you morally accountable for performing binary gender. That's part of what makes it hard to "get away with" genderqueerness/genderlessness.

This idea seems like a bit of a stretch to me. I'd be interested to see how you argued for it, though.

[i like that on this site you get to write in your gender (unlike so many places), and I wish you got to write in your a/sexuality too.]

I like that too -- if you check my profile, you'll see I made good use of it.

My favorite genderless pronoun set is ze/hir/hirself, which is the one Leslie Feinberg and Kate Bornstein both talk about in their books. I just really like the sound of the letter z.

I don't like any of them, and don't think they'll ever make it into common usage. They're all planted out of nowhere. If it comes down to it, I settle for singular they. It's the worst alternative, except for all the others that have been suggested.

Grammatically lazy people and the pathologically politically correct are going that way anyway. I guess political correctness is good for something.

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I don't like any of them, and don't think they'll ever make it into common usage. They're all planted out of nowhere. If it comes down to it, I settle for singular they. It's the worst alternative, except for all the others that have been suggested.
Heh, that was my problem with many of the made-up singular pronouns in English. They sounded so fake... and most still do. However, damn I was glad when I realized that the set "ey, em, eir" is just "they, them, their" with the "th" removed! Makes it much more logical and all. Those are what I use nowadays. Derived from English and the respective plural pronoun set, they sound like real pronouns and work very well overall. :)

One of the problems with "androgyne", I think, is that it's derived from "andro" and "gyne", which mean "man" and "woman". I like using terms that don't imply binary gender, so I like things like genderless and epicine.

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But I would suggest that many more people have the potential to be genderqueer/androgyne/genderless than are, but that their particular gender-unusuality is smoothed out by the pressures in adolescence to be a certain way to get a boyfriend or girlfriend, among other things. If asexuals don't feel these pressures, or at least feel them much less, then certainly one would expect more of them to be gender-unusual in some way.

In some cases (like in my own) it might have been the other way round. Since I never developed a sufficiently one-dimensional gender identity, I've found it hard to relate to people in a sexual way, because sexuality is structured around gender in our society.

I don't like any of them, and don't think they'll ever make it into common usage. They're all planted out of nowhere. If it comes down to it, I settle for singular they. It's the worst alternative, except for all the others that have been suggested.

Grammatically lazy people and the pathologically politically correct are going that way anyway. I guess political correctness is good for something.

I use "they" like that. Of course, as a consequence, most people I talk to just think I "don't know grammar"... Unusual neo-pronouns have the power to disrupt ordinary gendered language and make people listen up and think.

One of the problems with "androgyne", I think, is that it's derived from "andro" and "gyne", which mean "man" and "woman". I like using terms that don't imply binary gender, so I like things like genderless and epicine.

I share your problem with "androgyne". Then again, "genderless" doesn't really describe all the possibilities there are, either. (I'm not sure I have really managed to "ban" all gendered structures of thinking from my mind. Gender does play a role even in my head, I suppose, in fragmented, displaced ways...) I think "genderqueer" is pretty good as an umbrella term. Ok, "queer" would do, too. But in ordinary language it's often thought of a synonymous with "homosexual", while genderqueer stresses the aspect of gender. I think it's a useful word.

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ChildOfTheLight
I don't like any of them, and don't think they'll ever make it into common usage. They're all planted out of nowhere. If it comes down to it, I settle for singular they. It's the worst alternative, except for all the others that have been suggested.
Heh, that was my problem with many of the made-up singular pronouns in English. They sounded so fake... and most still do. However, damn I was glad when I realized that the set "ey, em, eir" is just "they, them, their" with the "th" removed! Makes it much more logical and all. Those are what I use nowadays. Derived from English and the respective plural pronoun set, they sound like real pronouns and work very well overall. :)

I think I actually made those up independently, then concluded that they wouldn't work. Some stuff just doesn't sound right, but singular they has the same problem. I'd say they stand a much better chance than "ze" or "thon" or any of those.

In some cases (like in my own) it might have been the other way round. Since I never developed a sufficiently one-dimensional gender identity, I've found it hard to relate to people in a sexual way, because sexuality is structured around gender in our society.

They're structured around one another, aren't they? And if the assumptions supporting one disintegrate, both structures are bound to shatter. My idea was that asexuality erases one of the key ties most people have to strict cisgenderedness. But it could certainly work the other way around, as your experience suggests.

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Since I never developed a sufficiently one-dimensional gender identity' date=' I've found it hard to relate to people in a sexual way' date=' because sexuality is structured around gender in our society. [/quote'']They're structured around one another, aren't they? And if the assumptions supporting one disintegrate, both structures are bound to shatter. My idea was that asexuality erases one of the key ties most people have to strict cisgenderedness. But it could certainly work the other way around, as your experience suggests.
Ooh, ooh! We were just talking about this in LJ! http://community.livejournal.com/asexuality/397918.html

For me it went from gender to sexuality. I don't think that I ever really thought about sexuality too deeply before I'd done so with gender. Maybe it was because I didn't know what gender and sex meant and sexuality was structured around those by other people.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Hi there Veltzeh, I understand alot of your concerns too, especially the androgyne/genderless part. Welcome to AVEN.

Anywho I was trying to find an actual androgyne forum on the net, I'm in yahoo related groups and such, but I can't for the life of me find a real working forum. Maybe one should be made.

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I'm wordy too. A very good sign of an introvert is the amount of text ey can produce of emself.

Not necessarily. Only time I write a lot is when it is required or the topic of discussion needs thorough explanations.

I'm thinking I'll need to have sex with someone to decide whether I like it or not, but that's just me. For the most part I just am like that, need to try it before I have an opinion.

Someone posted on another section about "I don't need to hit myself with a hammer to know it will hurt" or something like that. Loved that. If you think engaging in sex with another person will help you decide, nothing wrong with that. Some need to experience things to decide whether or not they like it. I don't.

(I do think that the biggest turn-off in the "traditional relationship business" is the fact that it's so often presented as heteronormative (yes, even the non-heteronormative relationships).) I really don't think I'd want to experience anything like that. That'd mean I'm aromantic, right?

Probably. Don't worry too much about what it should be. Romance can be whatever you want. It is just a word.

Oh and by the way, welcome! :cake:

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