A(gender)vengers Assemble!

[Jordan...]

Sushi-cake binary ^_^

[Heart]

(we need a sushi-emoticon)

I'mma petition the webmasters for a sushi-con now! ^_^

*puts on to-do list

[Jordan...]

SHUN THE NON-BELIEVER!

[Flying Ace]

*agender androgyne joins the club*

Half of the time I feel like a man and a woman, the other half I feel like neither.
I really like the Agendervengers Assemble thing. We should have awesome costumes.

What's with the sushi?

[BusTotem]

It's yummy, it looks like the agender flag, and it's a bit out of place to be offered ace cake as an allosexual talking to allosexuals.

[Heart]

We just decided that agenders needed an awesome food too, so we decided to make Kappamaki our mascot ;) (In other words, we are sometimes pretty much always at least a bit goofy in this thread).

Welcome flying ace!

[Aworld]

I really like the Agendervengers Assemble thing. We should have awesome costumes.

We should so do that! Maybe the superhero costumes can be in the colours of the agender flag! And instead of like "Iron Man" it's "Iron Person" because agender! *goes off to start drawing stuff*

[scottsummers]

hi all, have recently accepted being non-binary agnder-neutrois type thing; and wanted a name change because mine is very feminine. what do you think of Scott? I'm assigned female at birth and look very feminine but am NB-neutrois so wanted a name to express that i am not female. also my dad's middle name is Scott, and my surname is summers,,,, scott summers = cyclops' name in xmen

but then was worried that its like calling for attention changing my name to a male name D::

[DigitalBookDust]

Ach, why worry? If you like Scott, then go with Scott! People are going to think whatever they're going to think. Most will probably be accepting.

I don't go by the name on my BC but use the gender neutral name of Kellee or, more usually, Kel. It's your name, after all.

[wakeywakey]

If you like Scott go for it!

That being said, Cyclops is a complete asshat. Seriously, out of all the Summers (Christopher, Scott, Alex, Gabriel, Nathan, Rachel, and Hope if my nerdiness hasn't failed me) Scott's the worst except for maybe Gabriel. Maybe...

You should do whatever feels comfortable! Just don't associate it with Cyclops...

[Dodecahedron314]

I really like the Agendervengers Assemble thing. We should have awesome costumes.

We should so do that! Maybe the superhero costumes can be in the colours of the agender flag! And instead of like "Iron Man" it's "Iron Person" because agender! *goes off to start drawing stuff*

Funnily enough, one of my first posts here in the gender subforum was about how seeing Tony Stark's aesthetic in The Avengers was what first kind of opened my mind to being able to present as something other than female (basically my thought process was something along the lines of "I don't care if I'm supposedly female, I want to look like that!...wait...maybe I actually could?"), so that's kind of apropos for me personally. That, and it's basically one of my life goals to be the agender Tony Stark anyway. (I recently said this (minus the agender part) when I was at a party and someone was talking about marathoning every single movie in the Avengers story arc, and she said, "So basically you want to be Elon Musk?" I suppose that's not too far off, now that I think about it. I certainly wouldn't pass up having my own space program.) So yes, an agender colored Iron Person suit would be awesome. I think I've already seen an agender flag Captain America shield somewhere on Tumblr, but not the whole costume. And isn't Hulk actually already the colors of the genderqueer flag, green and purple?

[Kappamaki]

What do you think of Scott? I'm assigned female at birth and look very feminine but am NB-neutrois so wanted a name to express that i am not female. also my dad's middle name is Scott, and my surname is summers,,,, scott summers = cyclops' name in xmen

but then was worried that its like calling for attention changing my name to a male name D::

Scott's a cool name! And so is Scott Summers. And it wouldn't worry much about it calling unwanted attention - it's a primarily male name, yes, but it sounds pretty gender-neutral to me. If someone told me her name was Scott and she's a girl, I'd believe them. Probably because of the similar name Scout, as in Scout Finch. By the way, when I think of 'Scott,' my mind goes to Scott Pilgrim.

You could also pass Scott off as a nickname for now if you don't think you're in a place where you can/should change your name yet.

[scottsummers]

thanks for all your help peoples :)

[Amoeba-Proteus]

*Lurks back into the thread*

Just wanted to share:

I wasn't sure whether to put it in the celebration thread or here in the Gender Discussion forum. I decided to stick it here. I'm staying with my parents for a couple months, and today I had a talk with mum regarding my agender identity. She was previously aware of my being asexual and agender. I decided to mention that I identified more as masculine-agender and without giving a detailed explanation, mentioned my gender dysphoria and that I've been trying things the last while in order to appear more masculine. I partially mentioned all this in case I have a wicked dysphoria day while I'm here and decide to dig out one of my more masculine looks. I hoped it would be less shocking if I'd at least mentioned it prior to the event...

While living away from my parents, I didn't have to worry about it so much. I have a friend back home who knows about all this and has been pretty awesome about it, so he almost doesn't seem to notice when I switch between being, er... "normal"? and being more masculine.

Anyways, mum was pretty good about it. ^_^
Dad's going to be a whoooole other story. But to be honest, I don't think I'll ever be letting him know about being masculine-agender. He's always been kind of negative when it comes to someone being "not the norm", so I feel better just keeping quiet around him.

Getting more comfortable overall though, with being less secretive about my masculine-agender identity. :)

[Aworld]

That's awesome! :D Best of luck for telling your dad, if you do.

[Selasphorus]

Bonjour tout le monde! It sounds like you're having a party on this thread, so I thought I'd stop by and sneak a couple pieces of sushi off the table in the corner while I try to figure out what gender actually is. (But I'll probably give up pretty quick and continue stuffing my face.)

[Jordan...]

Bonjour!

[Heart]

Bonjour tout le monde! It sounds like you're having a party on this thread, so I thought I'd stop by and sneak a couple pieces of sushi off the table in the corner while I try to figure out what gender actually is. (But I'll probably give up pretty quick and continue stuffing my face.)

Sometimes food > gender ;)

Bonjour Selas! (May I call you that?) Comment ca va ce belle journee qu'on a?

[Selasphorus]

Bonjour tout le monde! It sounds like you're having a party on this thread, so I thought I'd stop by and sneak a couple pieces of sushi off the table in the corner while I try to figure out what gender actually is. (But I'll probably give up pretty quick and continue stuffing my face.)

Sometimes food > gender ;)

Bonjour Selas! (May I call you that?) Comment ca va ce belle journee qu'on a?

Yes you may. ;) Ce matin j'ai une tasse de thé dans la main, donc je suis heureuse maintenant, mais plus tard aujourd'hui j'ai un examen final à faire. :o Haha, it's been so long since I've actually written anything in french, I can't believe how many things I just had to double-check the gender for. Why is this language so gendered anyway?! I just want to be neutral/ambiguous... :P

[Heart]

Bonjour tout le monde! It sounds like you're having a party on this thread, so I thought I'd stop by and sneak a couple pieces of sushi off the table in the corner while I try to figure out what gender actually is. (But I'll probably give up pretty quick and continue stuffing my face.)

Sometimes food > gender ;)

Bonjour Selas! (May I call you that?) Comment ca va ce belle journee qu'on a?

Yes you may. ;) Ce matin j'ai une tasse de thé dans la main, donc je suis heureuse maintenant, mais plus tard aujourd'hui j'ai un examen final à faire. :o Haha, it's been so long since I've actually written anything in french, I can't believe how many things I just had to double-check the gender for. Why is this language so gendered anyway?! I just want to be neutral/ambiguous... :P

BONNE CHANCE!!!! A cake to help you *ace* it! (That will NEVER get old :P )

And yeah, gender in French and romance languages sometimes makes just about as much sense as gender in society... ;)

[Kappamaki]

And yeah, gender in French and romance languages sometimes makes just about as much sense as gender in society... ;)

So glad English ditched that! And... totally confused how it happened, since historical linguists don't seem to have figured it out. But in the Middle Ages the English cut out applying random genders to nouns, and now, English is the most successful language in the world! Coincidence!?

... Yes. A native language that doesn't randomly apply gender to nouns did not make the British Empire good at colonial imperialism or the United States even better at cultural imperialism. So, coincidence.

What's really frustrating is Japanese. In romance languages and German and the like you gender stuff like apples and bridges. In Japanese, you gender yourself with how you speak. And not just through word choice, but through syntax and grammatical constructions! Horror of horrors. I'm sure there's some other language out there that stuffs gender into places I can't even imagine.

[wakeywakey]

It feels appropriate to leave this here

[Spectre/Ex/Machina]

I miss eatting sushi.

[Selasphorus]

And yeah, gender in French and romance languages sometimes makes just about as much sense as gender in society... ;)

So glad English ditched that! And... totally confused how it happened, since historical linguists don't seem to have figured it out. But in the Middle Ages the English cut out applying random genders to nouns, and now, English is the most successful language in the world! Coincidence!?

... Yes. A native language that doesn't randomly apply gender to nouns did not make the British Empire good at colonial imperialism or the United States even better at cultural imperialism. So, coincidence.

What's really frustrating is Japanese. In romance languages and German and the like you gender stuff like apples and bridges. In Japanese, you gender yourself with how you speak. And not just through word choice, but through syntax and grammatical constructions! Horror of horrors. I'm sure there's some other language out there that stuffs gender into places I can't even imagine.

I've just started learning Japanese, so I'm still a super beginner. I was quite pleased with the lack of gendered nouns and verb conjugations, but then I did some reading on the internet about gendered speech patterns. Do you know how obvious it is, or if it's possible to toe the line and be more ambiguous without being too odd? Have you figured out a way to deal with it? Ahh, to many things I don't know and too much curiosity!

[Kappamaki]

What's really frustrating is Japanese. In romance languages and German and the like you gender stuff like apples and bridges. In Japanese, you gender yourself with how you speak. And not just through word choice, but through syntax and grammatical constructions! Horror of horrors. I'm sure there's some other language out there that stuffs gender into places I can't even imagine.

I've just started learning Japanese, so I'm still a super beginner. I was quite pleased with the lack of gendered nouns and verb conjugations, but then I did some reading on the internet about gendered speech patterns. Do you know how obvious it is, or if it's possible to toe the line and be more ambiguous without being too odd? Have you figured out a way to deal with it? Ahh, to many things I don't know and too much curiosity!

There are a lot of speech patterns and first-person pronouns and the like that are technically gender-neutral but still swing male or female - for instance, kashira is a feminine version of the gender-neutral kana, so kana is a bit masculine of center; da is technically gender-neutral but omitting it is characteristically feminine, so using it is more masculine, etc; watashi is gender-neutral but only really appropriate for women when in informal situations so that a man (or person read as a man) who uses it when speaking casually comes off as effeminate or aloof, etc. Also, just generally speaking in a more refined and withdrawn manner is typically feminine and a more rough-and-tumble way is typically masculine. So it's almost impossible to totally avoid gender or the implication of gender in your speech, but it is possible to not gender yourself too heavily, and it is socially acceptable to not toe the line in gendered speech but to play around a bit. Also, written Japanese is basically not gendered; this is all spoken stuff.

I generally speak in a way that's a bit masculine here and a bit feminine there - and a bit broken everywhere from under-use. Some sentence-ending particles I'm fond of using are typically masculine while others are typically feminine, and I generally gravitate towards whatever way of speaking is the most fun-sounding (na no, da yo). This is generally a reflection of what comes to me naturally when I talk, so my gender in spoken Japanese kind of reflects my actual gender in that it comes naturally. My pronouns are usually watashi and atashi (or rather 'atash' because I'm lazy), and sometimes jibun (because of Haruhi in Ouran), so I'm admittedly a bit female-leaning there. There was someone in my class in college who deliberately alternated daily between speaking in a super-girly and super-boyish way (and the girl spoke exclusively keigo and the boy was ridiculously over-emphatic), and boku was popular among the girls. Most teachers I've had encouraged 'appropriate' gendered speech and would correct what they saw as deviations "because we don't want you to sound weird," with one glorious exception who encouraged screwing with gender at every turn and would often do so himself.

[Selasphorus]

What's really frustrating is Japanese. In romance languages and German and the like you gender stuff like apples and bridges. In Japanese, you gender yourself with how you speak. And not just through word choice, but through syntax and grammatical constructions! Horror of horrors. I'm sure there's some other language out there that stuffs gender into places I can't even imagine.

I've just started learning Japanese, so I'm still a super beginner. I was quite pleased with the lack of gendered nouns and verb conjugations, but then I did some reading on the internet about gendered speech patterns. Do you know how obvious it is, or if it's possible to toe the line and be more ambiguous without being too odd? Have you figured out a way to deal with it? Ahh, to many things I don't know and too much curiosity!

There are a lot of speech patterns and first-person pronouns and the like that are technically gender-neutral but still swing male or female - for instance, kashira is a feminine version of the gender-neutral kana, so kana is a bit masculine of center; da is technically gender-neutral but omitting it is characteristically feminine, so using it is more masculine, etc; watashi is gender-neutral but only really appropriate for women when in informal situations so that a man (or person read as a man) who uses it when speaking casually comes off as effeminate or aloof, etc. Also, just generally speaking in a more refined and withdrawn manner is typically feminine and a more rough-and-tumble way is typically masculine. So it's almost impossible to totally avoid gender or the implication of gender in your speech, but it is possible to not gender yourself too heavily, and it is socially acceptable to not toe the line in gendered speech but to play around a bit. Also, written Japanese is basically not gendered; this is all spoken stuff.

I generally speak in a way that's a bit masculine here and a bit feminine there - and a bit broken everywhere from under-use. Some sentence-ending particles I'm fond of using are typically masculine while others are typically feminine, and I generally gravitate towards whatever way of speaking is the most fun-sounding (na no, da yo). This is generally a reflection of what comes to me naturally when I talk, so my gender in spoken Japanese kind of reflects my actual gender in that it comes naturally. My pronouns are usually watashi and atashi (or rather 'atash' because I'm lazy), and sometimes jibun (because of Haruhi in Ouran), so I'm admittedly a bit female-leaning there. There was someone in my class in college who deliberately alternated daily between speaking in a super-girly and super-boyish way (and the girl spoke exclusively keigo and the boy was ridiculously over-emphatic), and boku was popular among the girls. Most teachers I've had encouraged 'appropriate' gendered speech and would correct what they saw as deviations "because we don't want you to sound weird," with one glorious exception who encouraged screwing with gender at every turn and would often do so himself.

Ok, cool! That's probably what I'll end up trying to do as well. Once I learn all this I'll have to go re-watch Ouran!

[Aworld]

What's really frustrating is Japanese. In romance languages and German and the like you gender stuff like apples and bridges. In Japanese, you gender yourself with how you speak. And not just through word choice, but through syntax and grammatical constructions! Horror of horrors. I'm sure there's some other language out there that stuffs gender into places I can't even imagine.

I've just started learning Japanese, so I'm still a super beginner. I was quite pleased with the lack of gendered nouns and verb conjugations, but then I did some reading on the internet about gendered speech patterns. Do you know how obvious it is, or if it's possible to toe the line and be more ambiguous without being too odd? Have you figured out a way to deal with it? Ahh, to many things I don't know and too much curiosity!

There are a lot of speech patterns and first-person pronouns and the like that are technically gender-neutral but still swing male or female - for instance, kashira is a feminine version of the gender-neutral kana, so kana is a bit masculine of center; da is technically gender-neutral but omitting it is characteristically feminine, so using it is more masculine, etc; watashi is gender-neutral but only really appropriate for women when in informal situations so that a man (or person read as a man) who uses it when speaking casually comes off as effeminate or aloof, etc. Also, just generally speaking in a more refined and withdrawn manner is typically feminine and a more rough-and-tumble way is typically masculine. So it's almost impossible to totally avoid gender or the implication of gender in your speech, but it is possible to not gender yourself too heavily, and it is socially acceptable to not toe the line in gendered speech but to play around a bit. Also, written Japanese is basically not gendered; this is all spoken stuff.

I generally speak in a way that's a bit masculine here and a bit feminine there - and a bit broken everywhere from under-use. Some sentence-ending particles I'm fond of using are typically masculine while others are typically feminine, and I generally gravitate towards whatever way of speaking is the most fun-sounding (na no, da yo). This is generally a reflection of what comes to me naturally when I talk, so my gender in spoken Japanese kind of reflects my actual gender in that it comes naturally. My pronouns are usually watashi and atashi (or rather 'atash' because I'm lazy), and sometimes jibun (because of Haruhi in Ouran), so I'm admittedly a bit female-leaning there. There was someone in my class in college who deliberately alternated daily between speaking in a super-girly and super-boyish way (and the girl spoke exclusively keigo and the boy was ridiculously over-emphatic), and boku was popular among the girls. Most teachers I've had encouraged 'appropriate' gendered speech and would correct what they saw as deviations "because we don't want you to sound weird," with one glorious exception who encouraged screwing with gender at every turn and would often do so himself.

This is really interesting! In fact, I've heard boku used in songs sung by girls even though I'd been told it was generally for boys, so I figured it must be okay to mix it up a bit.

[Kappamaki]

This is really interesting! In fact, I've heard boku used in songs sung by girls even though I'd been told it was generally for boys, so I figured it must be okay to mix it up a bit.

The sad truth is that when a female vocalist uses boku in a song, it's usually just to fit the meter.

A lot of female anime characters use boku to emphasize their tomboyish natures, but it's less common in real life. Many young girls use boku but most succumb to pressure to switch to feminine pronouns once they enter school, because gender policing gets stricter then. Older girls and women might use boku if they're tomboys, making a feminist statement, or trying to be cutesy in an anime way.

And, because why not, here's a study about Japanese young children and pronoun usage!

http://www.inst.at/trans/16Nr/01_4/ito16.htm

[Selasphorus]

This is really interesting! In fact, I've heard boku used in songs sung by girls even though I'd been told it was generally for boys, so I figured it must be okay to mix it up a bit.

The sad truth is that when a female vocalist uses boku in a song, it's usually just to fit the meter.

A lot of female anime characters use boku to emphasize their tomboyish natures, but it's less common in real life. Many young girls use boku but most succumb to pressure to switch to feminine pronouns once they enter school, because gender policing gets stricter then. Older girls and women might use boku if they're tomboys, making a feminist statement, or trying to be cutesy in an anime way.

And, because why not, here's a study about Japanese young children and pronoun usage!

http://www.inst.at/trans/16Nr/01_4/ito16.htm

Aww, Haru's mom sounds cool. Freaking gendered social norms though! It starts from day 1! Actually probably before then. I have this impression of social norms as these giant monstrosities with so much inertia that it takes continual effort of massive proportions to even shift them a teeny tiny bit. But hey, an object in motion stays in motion unless acted upon by an outside force, so maybe if you can just start it moving, it will eventually sort itself out. Or maybe that's just wishful thinking.

[Dodecahedron314]

This is really interesting! In fact, I've heard boku used in songs sung by girls even though I'd been told it was generally for boys, so I figured it must be okay to mix it up a bit.

The sad truth is that when a female vocalist uses boku in a song, it's usually just to fit the meter.

A lot of female anime characters use boku to emphasize their tomboyish natures, but it's less common in real life. Many young girls use boku but most succumb to pressure to switch to feminine pronouns once they enter school, because gender policing gets stricter then. Older girls and women might use boku if they're tomboys, making a feminist statement, or trying to be cutesy in an anime way.

And, because why not, here's a study about Japanese young children and pronoun usage!

http://www.inst.at/trans/16Nr/01_4/ito16.htm

Aww, Haru's mom sounds cool. Freaking gendered social norms though! It starts from day 1! Actually probably before then. I have this impression of social norms as these giant monstrosities with so much inertia that it takes continual effort of massive proportions to even shift them a teeny tiny bit. But hey, an object in motion stays in motion unless acted upon by an outside force, so maybe if you can just start it moving, it will eventually sort itself out. Or maybe that's just wishful thinking.

I think we'd have to figure out the coefficients of static and kinetic friction for gender norms if we wanted to get a better idea of how much force it would take to keep them moving under their own momentum. Or, we could just do the stereotypical physics thing and assume that gender norms are spherical objects on a frictionless surface in a vacuum, but sadly that doesn't seem to be the case, though I feel like that could get really metaphorical.

Now I'm thinking of the whole electromagnetic levitation thing...if we find a way to turn gender norms into superconductors, dunk them in liquid nitrogen, and put them on a metal surface, we should be able to push them around wherever we want with hardly any effort! At least until they heat up to the point where they quit superconducting. Hmmm...we're going to need a lot of liquid nitrogen.

#DodecIsBeingOverlyLiteralAgain