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What it feels like to be trans, genderqueer or genderless


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mad_scientist
Little bit of my dairy for today. I don't keep a dairy, except at times when I feel like writing.
Gender-queer is such a funny word. Like we're 'different'. Well, isn't everyone? No one fits all the norms. Everyone is queer in some way.

I'm pretty crazy sometimes, but other days I'm pretty blank. I try to label my gender at times, but it changes like the weather. I'm gender-independent, gender-dynamic, gender-jumbled, gender-mobile, gender-free, gender-uncommited, gender-chaos.

might put it in my sig. feels like 'me'.

Gender-dynamic is the greatest term ever.

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  • 4 weeks later...
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lostconfused

I couldn't get this stuff out of my head until an FTM person I met on another board essentially ask why I need to define it; that I am "me."

Brilliance.

So I am genetically female, but free to be anything at any moment, or nothing, as I seem to prefer. Definitions are boundaries, and I have enough of those. If I had to pick: Agender, but I don't have to pick. I can just be free, be me.

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I am whatever I am at any given moment, and I do not require a label or a box. I will accept that society wishes to label me for their own comfort, so I will check the little box marked "F". But I will find amusement and pleasure in the confusion I can cause, all those endless questions in Japan of "Are you a boy or a girl?" or "This is the women's toilet!". For me, the moment I cut my hair short and more fully blended my appearance into androgyny I felt infinitely more comfortable and more confident. I know my body is not what I need because it's telling the wrong story to everyone, but I choose to alter that story on my own whims. I have never been a girl, a lady or a woman, and I know I never will be. But I also know I am not a boy or a man, and I do not wish to be. I am more fluid and unpredictable than that. So one day I will wear a tight shirt and the next I might wear a man's dress shirt, and I will almost always wear trousers and sneakers and never let my hair grow out and secretly want to wear men's clothes more than anything else, whether in a play or at a con or for Halloween or at any other time a costume might be appropriate. And I'll continue to find other androgynous people sexier than any others and want to find them and identify with them even as I make friends and appreciate the men and women in my life.

It's like knowing I'm not fixed or stable and finding that the most wonderful thing in the world.

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Mr. Ten Below

I'm agender, which for me means a lot of completely incurable dysphoria. I don't want to look like a woman, but I don't want to look like a man either. I don't even want to look like a cross between a woman and a man. My ideal body would be straight and flat, no hair, no genitalia, no distinguishing features at all. My ideal body would actually be kind of like a tree... heh heh.

I could try to build an agender appearance but then people would stare and try even harder to find a box to check. I don't want to confuse people; I don't want to stand out. So I choose a box for them. I leave my hair long and it puts me in the "woman" category even though I wear all men's clothes and I walk like a man and I speak with male inflection. As long as people have this desire, this need, to put everyone into one box or the other, I will never live comfortably in the world.

That's all very emo, isn't it? I actually love having no gender. It feels great to opt out of this massive rigid system that traps a lot of people into thinking they should do certain things or think in certain ways just because people call them "he" or "she". I'd choose a different body shape any day, of course I would, but I wouldn't choose to be anything but genderless.

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Guest member25959

Well, nongender, or genderless, its a bit hard to explain. Its just like, not feeling like a boy or a girl mentally or physically sometimes. You just, feel asif you don't fit into the male, female or other category.

You feel asif you don't want to be either gender aswell, you generally look at the bad sides of each gender. Just like 'Hey, i'm not male, but i'm not female either'.

Gah, i hadn't realized how hard it is to explain.

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  • 3 weeks later...

I am not trapped in a woman's body. I am a man; this is my body; therefore it is a man's body. That is how I feel.

I have insisted on who I know I am since I was in preschool. That others see this body as female is their problem, yet growing up I often wondered what was wrong with me- why I didn't match. I wondered if it was part of a mental disorder or a deeper psychological problem. The fact that I have been much calmer and happier on testosterone suggests to me that it was an organic disorder.

As I had a somewhat virilized body and because of my autistic mannerisms (I have a dx of Asperger's), I have passed as male for more than 15 of my 20 years. When I got bloodwork to start taking testosterone, my levels were already outside the female range. I have been injecting testosterone for a little under two years.

I am not always thrilled with my appearance, but I like it well enough. This body does have what are usually seen as female bits- but very few people see them as female on me.

FIVE YEARS LATER...

At this point in my life, I feel that my transgenderness is mostly tied up in my experience of being stealth- in the telling/ not telling. In the hesitation to share a past when that sharing has such large potential for disaster. I feel isolated.

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I feel pretty male. I don't think I would ever have a sex change, but I've been known to say that making out with men and just being physically intimate with a man seems "gay". Even though I'm a woman, I do feel quite like a man and it's frustrating because I'm always treated differently by my male friends. They always end up developing a crush on me or something when really all I want to be is 'one of the guys'.

I've developed an emotional fondness for several females, and have never been able to establish that for a male. It's just not the same. I don't feel like I am a gay one- I mean, I am asexual, on top of all of that so I don't feel inclined to go about and do sexual things with people. It's just that, growing up, I never wanted to be married, have a husband, be a princess-- any of those female things. I just imagined living in a studio apartment by myself, taking care of myself, being independent.

All of these females wear makeup and put a big emphasis on looking good--- and for what? Because it's fun? My masculinity is one HUGE reason why my sister and I who three years younger, don't get along. She's always asking why I don't do that, and trying to convince me I should be more female. Well, that just isn't who I am. I'm also tired of people assuming that I am heterosexual because I do not like men in a sexual way. I don't even like females in a sexual way, the only difference is I am able to become emotionally closer to females as they make me feel more masculine, whereas with a dude it just doesn't feel right.

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PhantasmalGirl

Hm.

I think I'm a "switcher". I don't really want to call it anything else, mostly because I'm too lazy to look it up, and technicalities and I only get along under certain circumstances.

On general principle, I don't really like gender, and sometimes I get really freaked out over the fact that I have one. I'm just in the belief that it's kind of awful. It might be because it's a really inappropriate way of categorizing people within society, because sometimes it does. not. work. But there are also personal ties to the issue, like the fact that I'm just really not comfortable being in a body assigned to gender. Androgyny doesn't really cut it for me, because it still leaves people with the opinion that I'm one, or the other, or have been in the past/will be in the future.

So I guess I just switch instead. I have fairly feminine features, but I'm also really really good at being a guy. I've been told that I'm really really good at being a guy, by other guys. I could have long hair and pull off being a guy, but it's hard. >.< I can't get rid of my chest, as much as I would love to - and I it's a lot of effort to get the proper kind of comfortable binding that will do it temporarily. (However, apparently if you bind your chest enough, you can develop cysts and the doctors will remove EVERYTHING. But that's painful.)

I don't really care how people refer to me (it's mostly as a female, or as "kei", as most of my friends have confessed to not knowing how to describe me beyond my name), but as long as they don't see as strictly female, I'm okay with it. I can switch between a distinctly "male" attitude and a distinctly "female" attitude no problem. I spent about seven or eight years as a male, from my entering of school right until the end of grade six, and from grade nine on I've just been switching back and forth almost weekly. My parents never looked the other way, and my mum had a great time of it when people would ask whether I was a boy or girl. I got a friend of mine into some pretty nasty scrapes about my gender though.

Idk. I like being both.

And most of my friends are gay, hippies, or both, so they don't really give a sh*t about my apparent inability to stay put. I was rather impressed when I didn't actually have to tell them about it, they just mentioned it in passing once or twice.

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Since gender and sex are the same thing to me, I think these issues are the hardest to understand for people like me.

How does it feel?...

It feels like I'm a person/soul in a female body who makes practical choices about what I want.

I wish I had flat boobs because it would be more practical. I don't want a penis because I don't want testes hanging inbeween my legs getting in the way.

I've been thinking how much I'd like to be physically intersexed...yeah like Caster what hir name.

Then I think...hmm even if that is probably the best physical body except being socially ostracized could be bad.

I wondered, why would anyone ever want to become a MTF?...You got the higher position in life, who jinx it by becoming a second class citizen. Must be because that dangly thing in between their legs got too annoying and they want a vagina.

Ok, I guess I can understand that, I like vaginas, they get in the way less.

As for transgendered people. I thought you changed your gender out of practical reasons.

I put a "transgendered" person into my storyline Only to find out later that I what I considered being transgendered wasn't the conventional defination.

In my storyline, my char decides that after suffering from sexism , they now want to change their gender. So my female char gets surgery and becomes a FTM.

I'm thinking here...I guess it's just as well that I tend to keep my storylines private.

I guess this is why I'm an artist and not a writer.

Anyhow, I know about gender idneties now, even if I don't fully understand them.

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Since gender and sex are the same thing to me, I think these issues are the hardest to understand for people like me.

How does it feel?

You might want to reread my post: http://www.asexuality.org/en/index.php?s=&...t&p=1289506

I wondered, why would anyone ever want to become a MTF?...You got the higher position in life, who jinx it by becoming a second class citizen.

Actually, it's mostly the masculine men who get privilege. Though I present as male, I find that people treat me like a girl my age (minus the guys wanting to have sex with me), for better or worse. Male privilege is not an all-or-nothing thing; there are degrees of it. The more male you are, the more privilege you have. Have you ever noticed that the women with higher positions in life tend to be more masculine?

Must be because that dangly thing in between their legs got too annoying and they want a vagina.

Ok, I guess I can understand that, I like vaginas, they get in the way less.

That may be true for some people, but for others, it's not about penises or vaginas at all. There are transpeople who keep their birth genitals.

In my storyline, my char decides that after suffering from sexism , they now want to change their gender. So my female char gets surgery and becomes a FTM.

This is not the reason people transition; after all, if that were it, there would be a lot more FTMs in the world. A masculine lesbian tried it, but one day had a nervous breakdown and found that she could no longer live as a man; she learned that she fit on the boundary between male and female. For the full story, read Self-Made Man by Norah Vincent.

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Since gender and sex are the same thing to me, I think these issues are the hardest to understand for people like me.

How does it feel?

You might want to reread my post: http://www.asexuality.org/en/index.php?s=&...t&p=1289506

I wondered, why would anyone ever want to become a MTF?...You got the higher position in life, who jinx it by becoming a second class citizen.

Actually, it's mostly the masculine men who get privilege. Though I present as male, I find that people treat me like a girl my age (minus the guys wanting to have sex with me), for better or worse. Male privilege is not an all-or-nothing thing; there are degrees of it. The more male you are, the more privilege you have. Have you ever noticed that the women with higher positions in life tend to be more masculine?

Not really, mostly I've noticed it's the wealthier ones. Lower middle suffer the worst of the sexism IHO.

Must be because that dangly thing in between their legs got too annoying and they want a vagina.

Ok, I guess I can understand that, I like vaginas, they get in the way less.

That may be true for some people, but for others, it's not about penises or vaginas at all. There are transpeople who keep their birth genitals.

I know that now, at the time I didn't.

In my storyline, my char decides that after suffering from sexism , they now want to change their gender. So my female char gets surgery and becomes a FTM.

This is not the reason people transition; after all, if that were it, there would be a lot more FTMs in the world. A masculine lesbian tried it, but one day had a nervous breakdown and found that she could no longer live as a man; she learned that she fit on the boundary between male and female. For the full story, read Self-Made Man by Norah Vincent.

Yep, that was my point. That my char from my storyline came from the time before I knew about gender idenities and got more info about being transgendered. My storyline is not something recent, I've been working on my series for a couple of years now. I build on it as I go along.

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I wondered, why would anyone ever want to become a MTF?...You got the higher position in life, who jinx it by becoming a second class citizen. Must be because that dangly thing in between their legs got too annoying and they want a vagina.

First- No one chooses to be MtF, and you also can't choose your dysphoria- for some people, being treated as a girl is enough, for others how you're treated doesn't matter it's all about how wrong your body feels. If having breasts or not having breasts causes you severe depression, there's really nothing you can do but fix your body. I've got bodily dysphoria, and

I've tried everything to treat depression- nothing works. When something ruins your quality of life, why wouldn't you try to fix it even if you know it'll mess up your social status?

Yes and I understand that more now. However I'm sure you can see how someone with my beliefs would see things this way before I learned other people have gender identities.

Second- A masculine male is probably treated better in this world, I agree. But once you stop being masculine- you slip off that pedestal and find yourself falling pretty damn far.

A guy can get fired, arrested, assaulted, even killed for being too feminine in the wrong areas. They probably won't get ahead as easily as they would were they masculine, and you can face a lot of social problems for it. A masculine girl faces some discrimination but it's not nearly to that degree, the worst I've heard was getting thrown out of a resturaunt.

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followmearound

This whole concept confuses me so much. So so much.

You are biologically male or female (or not).

I am a biological female. I would have preferred to have been born male, but I wasn't. The end. As for my gender..well, what does gender even mean? I just don't understand how someone can say that they are (mentally) the other gender. It seems like it generalizes too much. Like, everyone in x gender is like this. I just think, if you want to change your parts, well, do whatever you'd like with your body, but mentally I feel like... well, aren't we all the same? Why do we have to apply meaningless labels?

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Guest member25959
Right, of course we have the traditional:

"I am a x trapped in the body of a y"

"i am a ... trapped in a society that assigns gender by body type".

I totally know how this feels, its awful ><

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Even though I'm a woman, I do feel quite like a man and it's frustrating because I'm always treated differently by my male friends. They always end up developing a crush on me or something when really all I want to be is 'one of the guys'.

I can relate to that! :D

At best, I have a confusing mashup of a gender. I almost feel like I have two separate personalities, one a man and one a woman, although I know that I am not really two people. :P I will feel more feminine in some social situations, and more masculine in different company.

But I guess I have to say I feel slightly more masculine than feminine, overall. I seem to think more like a man, I seem to be better than other women at things that men typically excel at over women... and generally I just feel like a dude. And it's not that I am masculine, really, aside from maybe my mannerisms and voice. My hobbies and activities are all very 'female' and I'd never go out and rough it up on the football field with the boys or anything. I just feel that I can relate better to the men I talk to than the women.

That being said, I do dislike straight men for one reason only: they treat me completely as a very feminine, helpless woman. "Got a heavy box that needs lifting, miss?" No, sir, I'd rather lift this box myself and impress the ladies with MY machismo, thanks. :lol: And yeah, I never feel like I can be 'one of the guys' and participate in the kind of guy talk that women so despise. I'm into chicks and so are straight guys, we should have lots in common, right? But, since I'm a chick, I'm an outsider.

Strangely though I feel at home in my female body. I have my hair long and curly, most days I wear very feminine clothing, I even put on a spot of makeup on occasion. I used to reason that femininity just looked better on me, and I still believe that, but I think it's more true that I do not feel out of place in a female body, even if I am more natural in a masculine mindset. For I do acknowledge that I have a feminine side as well; honestly I'd feel more comfortable in a ball gown than a tuxedo.

By no means is it an emotional struggle or anything, though. :)

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One confusing result of my lack of gender is that I seem to be the "gay friend" to females (you know, the stereotypical gay guy who hangs out with the girls, even though I'm biologically female), and "the girl" to males. The presence of females makes me act more masculine, and the presence of males makes me more feminine (I don't know why). Since my friendship group is mixed-gender, this gets... confusing. I've given up trying to find labels on whether I'm "really" genderless or female or genderfluid or whatever; I'm me and if other people want to put me in boxes that's their problem.

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I am energy trapped in a fixed body, trapped in a society that labels said body based on parts that they admit to being private.

Yeah. Something like that.

My ideal form would be much less ... solid. Like the little dream-creatures in Gossamer. ^_^

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i have a female body, xy chromosomes, and i dont feel male or female. my friends just refer to me by my last name "saphri" or another nickname that is gender neutral. i feel like an outsider when im around gendered people, and dating men or women seems impossible for me. sometimes i just want to find a colony of people like myself somewhere. ;p

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Hm, well I've always felt like I didn't really belong with 'girls' ever since I was a small child. I had predominantly male friends, and a few female friends who were more tomboyish. After deciding that society's standard for male and female just didn't work.... I dunno. All I can really say is that I don't think like any male or female I know. I've always felt that I was separate from the whole 'gender' thing, and thus neutrois works best with me. Or more like if someone asked me if I was a boy or a girl the best answer would be 'both and neither.' XD Kinda hard to explain. Pronouns don't bother me so much, but having my gender mistaken is really flattering for whatever reason. As long as I'm not shoved in the 'boy' box or the 'girl' box I'm generally okay. Luckily, my quirkiness kind of forces people to consider me in a section all my own as far as that is concerned.
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I always just thought of myself as being male in gender because my sex is male. However, now that I have been thinking about it, I think I might be agendered. I just never felt particularly male or female.

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I have never felt that I quite fit in either gender. I have a woman's body, which I hate, but I wouldn't be happy in a man's body either. If I could just get rid of the breasts, I think I would be much happier. Most of my good friends see me as neuter, but female acquaintances are forever trying to "fem" me up. I used to give in, but no more. If people can't accept me the way I am, then they can let me be. I feel much freer than I ever have before. My question: why am I so afraid to tell my friends? These people have been with me through my attempts at being heterosexual (didn't work), my attempts at being homosexual (didn't work), as well as supporting me through mental illness and addiction. Why do I fear letting them know that I am asexual and understand myself as nongendered?

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  • 4 weeks later...

um... ok, here goes something (i think).

being in loose jeans and an oversized t-shirt is what makes me most comfortable (though i have tried a couple of times to be more 'girly' for the sake of my family's feelings, which honestly doesn't work very well) i will wear the ridiculus tight pants and tiny tops that are expected of me but in the long run this only serves to make me irritable and mostly i wear them because it keeps my well-meaning sister out of my room which means she won't throw away my comfortable clothes (again). with each passing day my distress regarding my sex is renewed as i find yet another reason to hate my 'bits', as i call them, and looking down at my body from where my head is perched atop my shoulders long ago became something that fills me with disgust.

changing my voice is easy, and if the person i'm talking to can't see me then they may never know what sex i was born as or am. it's my body's shape from the neck down that gives me away (curses!).

also, though i could see a possible need for this for others, i am very nearly terrified by the idea that very soon i will have to talk about to a docter, and have examined, bits i have not used, have no intention of ever using, and very much do not like the idea of still having.

lastly, just in case this was not clear yet, i do not want my 'bits', in fact i do not want 'bits' at all, as i have no use for them and find the function of them disturbing.

i would very much appreciate help in finding the appropriate phrasing to explain this to my family in considerably less words, for though they are supportive of (almost) most of what i do/say, i have found no signs that they will understand my feelings or that they will have the slightest clue what i'm talking about.

i do apologize for any pain caused by the original font size and color.

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I have life long struggle with gender and body issues. I got major case of body dysphoria that got really bad at beginning of puberty, lot of horrors stories I am not going to get into here. I spent sixteen years in transistion to what I thought was my own gender to only realize absolutely bizarre my true gender is compared to everyone elses. I really dislike society hang up with identify gender by sex organs and stereotypes.

I feel comfortable as male but I much more then my beard, I don't mind my glitter painted nail polish or occasional lipstick but its amazing how many people have always butted their noses about my gender it comes down to one thing I think: I need to know what gender you are so I can decide where to classify and objectify you in my sexual fantasies. When I moved beyond their ideas of what gender I was assigned at birth to some unknown category it was amazing seeing these people strangers in fact squirm get really uncomfortable and hostile towards me because they couldn't figure out if I was boy or girl, when it was none of their business.

It really annoys me I want to go on trip I was checking out different hotel accommodations even there they want to know my legal gender. I am thinking okay if I say gender blank the legal one and I show up looking like do the opposite gender they are going think I am trying to pull fast one. whole time I am thinking I wish it was none of your business.

Edited by DagonX
misspelled word
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  • 3 weeks later...
Right, of course we have the traditional:

"I am a x trapped in the body of a y"

or mine:

"i am a man trapped in a society that assigns gender by body type".

I really like the second. I think "a woman trapped in a society that assigns gender by body type" describes me better.

Here are a few ways I describe it:

*It's like having lived my whole life in a country where everyone looks a certain way except me. I use racial analogies a lot, because in this culture, a person is born into a gender the way they are born into a race. For example, I use George Carlin's bit on golf:

The only blacks you see in country clubs are carrying trays. And don't give me any of that Tiger Woods nonsense... He ain't [sic] black. He talks, acts, and lives like a white boy. Skin alone doesn't make you black.

Similarly, I talk, act, and live like a genetic girl (an eccentric one, but whatever), and genitals alone don't make you a man or a woman.

*A lot of it is an extreme version of things some genetic women have. I was born without ovaries or a uterus (and thus can't have babies) but instead have extreme clitoromegaly (look it up); I look very masculine (I knew a genetic woman who looked like Fred Flintstone); feminine clothing in my size is really hard to find; and so on. The rest is composed of little things--I'm not allowed to wear dresses or go into the bathroom with a female friend, that kind of stuff. Sure, I'd like to have a female body, just like I'd like to be thinner and have a smaller nose. But I'm not going to go through transition just for these little things.

*It's like being a Neanderthal woman in the human world; I have a big, hairy body and heavy facial features, but that doesn't change the thing about me inside that are basically female (this is a variation on the racial analogy--some scientists think Neanderthals were just another race of humans).

*If our culture let everyone choose their social gender, I would have chosen to be female at the age of 4 or 5, and I wouldn't have any real problems with my biological sex. I'd just think of it as being a big ugly girl who can't have babies. Actually, that kind of sums up how I see myself.

Good analogy. I feel like a Greek and Latin speaker fasforwarded to a time where people speak English stuck in a totally alien culture to my own, Britain, and still thinks ahead of that time. Urghh. I'm female-male and shift from both to nothing. I don't even know how much of a female category I fit in or what gender people think of me. I suppose I go by body since I want to keep mine the way it is.

I was born small, thin-looking and very girly looking except for some reason most people called me he; his; him or a boy. I had short hair then and did hang around my 3 male siblings lots still even now most people lapse now and then into he although at least 98.99999 of the time it's she.

I suppose I confuse people with my clothes becuase I like male clothes way more than female clothes. They're more discrete and subtly good-looking than female clothes. I still have female mannerisms, twisting my now long hair, sitting with my hands folded so I don't particularly get why some people treat me as male.

Amid my maleness as it were, I still like my body- I really feel like a man with breast. They exist and seem fun in a texture sense but that's about it. I like being a smallish man if I could choose a gender role although I prefer to date men and maybe have children through them.

As for neanfethals, I certainly like the rugged, strong, pithy Neadnderthal man that led his tribe through and skirmish and presides over his wife, uh, husband in my case, brings up the children, teaches them the world, and moves easily amid women and men cementing alliances. I found out the Neanderthals were more socially aware than previously thought. Certainly now adays, through puberty, my body's got thicker and more muscly than as a child. womanly? I think not.

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