Pomogender, The Most Radical Gender Identity?

[Pramana]

I found on Tumblr a new gender identity known as pomogender. It is the gender equivalent of the orientation terms pomoromantic and pomosexual. It stands for "postmodern gender", and indicates that the person rejects categorical gender labels because gender is too personal to be defined by social categories.

 

Now this is interesting because I've been reading gender theorists who argue that the male/female gender binary was socially constructed to oppress women, and who also argue that non-binary is still oppressive because non-binary genders are formulated through reference to the oppressive gender binary. For example, the genderfluid label indicates that one moves back and forth between male and female gender expressions, and thus legitimizes the oppressive male/female binary as the basis for talking about gender. So instead gender theorists ask us to invent unique labels that reflect our individuality without reference to pre-existing or overarching categories. I wonder, though, about the ability of these new labels to communicate? Pomogender suggests something about the speaker's political sentiments, but doesn't convey the information associated with traditional gender categories (whether that be information about one's physical body, mental states, personality traits, or behaviour preferences).

Similarly, I recall reading a gender theorist who argues that the asexual label is oppressive, because it forces people to situate themselves against a hegemonic sexual/asexual binary. To avoid that consequence we could instead identify as pomoromantic pomosexual, but likewise while revealing of our political sentiments, doing so would be silent regarding our romantic sexual feelings and preferences.

I'd be curious to hear other members's thought on the matter?

[Celyn: The Lutening]

I think that these "pomo" labels mean absolutely nothing. If you want to reject labels, go ahead, I actually agree with that sentiment to an extent, the only reason I have labels is because I have an aspie need to classify stuff, including myself. But don't make up a label that means "rejects labels" - that makes no sense.

[Guest]

23 minutes ago, Pramana said:

It stands for "postmodern gender", and indicates that the person rejects categorical gender labels because gender is too personal to be defined by social categories.

I LOVE it when people choose a fancy label to identify the fact that they're rejecting labels, it's literally the most special thing ever

 

24 minutes ago, Pramana said:

I've been reading gender theorists who argue that the male/female gender binary was socially constructed to oppress women

I laughed out loud and spat on my computer by accident  Those words are used to identify people who have tits and a vagina, and those who have a penis and non-functioning tits. Same with any species that uses sex to reproduce. The label identifies which reproductive functions (primary and secondary etc) the creature has. And before anyone says 'not all men have a penis', every trans man i've met would still be happier WITH a penis if he could have one. Just because he was born in the body of a different biological gender doesn't actually mean he's REJECTING the sexual characteristics of the gender he is mentally/emotionally. Gender theorists are some of the most sheltered, naive people on the internet right now.

 

28 minutes ago, Pramana said:

Similarly, I recall reading one gender theorist who argues that the asexual label is oppressive, because it forces people to situate themselves against a hegemonic sexual/asexual binary. To avoid that consequence we could instead identify as pomoromantic pomosexual, but likewise while revealing of our political sentiments, doing so would be silent regarding our romantic sexual feelings and preferences.

Yep, this just goes back to what I said about them being sheltered and naive. I actually feel sorry for them - the world they live in must be so confusing and scary with all these established labels!! 😧 

 

 

[Celyn: The Lutening]

3 minutes ago, FictoVore. said:

And before anyone says 'not all men have a penis', every trans man i've met would still be happier WITH a penis if he could have one.

Agree. And yes, most transmen don't have bottom surgery (at least in this country) but that's only because the options are still really shitty. Painful, long recovery and don't even look like a "real" penis.

 

6 minutes ago, FictoVore. said:

I LOVE it when people choose a fancy label to identify the fact that they're rejecting labels, it's literally the most special thing ever

Right? It's...cute hypocrisy.

[AcornCarvings]

1 hour ago, Celyn said:

1 hour ago, FictoVore. said:

And before anyone says 'not all men have a penis', every trans man i've met would still be happier WITH a penis if he could have one.

Agree. And yes, most transmen don't have bottom surgery (at least in this country) but that's only because the options are still really shitty. Painful, long recovery and don't even look like a "real" penis.

( I just want to toss in that not all transmen I know want to have bottom surgury, even if the options weren't as super shitty as they are right now.)

 

I do agree that the entire argument that nonbinary and asexual are "oppressive" doesn't really make sense. I don't really have guff with people using pomo-whatever as a label, but I find their argument against other labels kinda insulting when they take it to a broader level not just for their own personal identity. idk

[Guest]

Just now, AcornCarvings said:

I just want to toss in that not all transmen I know want to have bottom surgury, even if the options weren't as super shitty as they are right now.

so if someone with a vagina is (honestly) identifying as a man though, but wouldn't want a penis even if they could be offered a perfectly functioning one, what is it that is making them identify as a man? And yes i know that being a man is about more than having a penis, but gender dysphoria is a bitch and being able to adopt the sexual characteristics of the gender one feels inside can help alleviate the suffering of transpeople.

 

I think it would diminish the suffering many transpeople experience if we started saying ''someone can be trans even if they're totally happy and comfortable with their biological sex and secondary sexual characteristics etc''. It's like when people say asexuals can love and desire sex just as much as any sexual person. It paints a false picture and makes people think ''oh okay so asexuals/trans people really ARE just special snowflakes because look, they can love sex/are totally happy with their genitals just like anyone else''.. when actually both trans people and asexuals suffer a lot specifically because they're NOT like the rest of the population when it comes to sex/being comfortable with their body/genitals.

[AcornCarvings]

I think it is that trans people can experience dysphorias other than just physical stuff, and even then not all physical dysphorias are the same. There is more to gender than just sex and there is more to sex than just genitals, and different people experience them in different ways.

One of my trans friends is doing HRT and wants to have top surgery but he said to me that even if he could have a penis, he wouldn't want one. And another doesn't want to do medical transition at all, and most of his dysphoria is social.

 

I know that their experiences are different and probably a minority when it comes to trans men but I just wanted to throw in the point because a lot of times when it comes to trans stuff, while there is a ton of societal pressure trying to erase us and deny medical stuff and everything, there is also pressure (lots of times coming within the community) like you have to want to medically transition to be valid as trans. And I don't think that is true.

[Guest]

2 minutes ago, AcornCarvings said:

One of my trans friends is doing HRT and wants to have top surgery but he said to me that even if he could have a penis, he wouldn't want one. And another doesn't want to do medical transition at all, and most of his dysphoria is social.

Sounds like they're more comfortable with who they are than many of the people they would label 'cis' 😕 sometimes it seems like some people adopt the term 'trans' over confusion about what it actually feels like to be 'cis', or even for a bit of fun. But this is a pretty hot topic to discuss on AVEN, it's hard not to get warnings when trying to take a more logical approach to this subject so i shall bow out now.

[Pramana]

In case anyone thought that I was just making this stuff up, I've provided a representative passage from the following journal article: Oakley, Abigail. “Disturbing Hegemonic Discourse: Nonbinary Gender and Sexual Orientation Labeling on Tumblr.” Social Media + Society 2, no. 3 (2016): 1-12.

"Additionally, individuals who identify their gender outside of the binary continue to use variations of normative male/female terminology. That is, even if an individual identifies as genderqueer or genderfluid, the pervasive practice is to claim a pronoun such as “they” (see Table 3); only two individuals chose to use nontraditional pronouns (ey/em/eir and xir/xem/xyr). Although “they” is gender-neutral in that it does not indicate whether or not the individual being referred to is male or female, those who do this are still choosing to use existing language that was created with the male/female binary in mind. Language is ever-evolving, making the invention of new or usage of current, nontraditional gender-neutral pronouns not an entirely unmanageable task. In fact, the gender-neutral pronouns “zir” and “ze” have even been adopted in University infrastructure language to accommodate genderqueer students (Scelfo, 2015). In effect, the choice of traditional pronouns, rather than subverting the hegemonic, binary discourse, is, in some ways, reified by extensive labeling practices and pronoun usage.

Even the absence of gender (agender) is a label that allows individuals who claim the label to be recognizable by those who think in terms of the dominant discourse. Asexuality has only come to describe human desires in the 21st century (Renninger, 2015), formerly being used to describe the reproduction of plants (“Asexual,” n.d.). This is due in very large part to the online communities such as those on Tumblr and AVEN, a website which “is often said to be the birthplace of an asexual identity as it is understood today” (Renninger, 2015, p. 3). After claiming of the label “asexual,” several subcategories of asexual cropped up, including gray-asexual, demisexual, and aromantic, all of which fall under the “asexual umbrella” (Renninger, 2015, p. 3). But the point here is that the appropriation of the term “asexual,” which is traditionally used to describe reproduction that is abnormal – that is, without a male and female partner – is the appropriation of a term that exists because of a hegemonic male/female understanding of both gender and sexual orientation."

[AcornCarvings]

[brace for grumpy venting]

Gah.

Gross.

uuuuggghhhh

They b trashing on things I really care about.

grrrrrrrr

bblllaaahhhhhhhhhh

yuck

'cuz the term "asexual" was clearly created as a unique, radical critique or the gender binary and not by some scientists who needed a term to describe microorganisms or plants or whatever.

GGAAAAHHHH I'm ok with them using their terms because they don't think the binary is works for them and think all existing labels they have come across are built off of it. Sure. I get that. But I just think bashing existing labels and pronouns on severely questionable basies is kinda - aaarrggh

Their argument against "they" because it is existing language that was built with the gender binary in mind. As they write their paper in english.

[venting over]

[Celyn: The Lutening]

I'm not against @AcornCarvings position at all. I said most transmen want a penis, not all. But part of the reason I identify as mascandrogyne rather than transman is that I don't want a penis. 

Hmm it's all very complex. Like, most transpeople say they would feel less, or no dysphoria if they hadn't had to deal with social gendering. But we will never know if that would actually be the case.

I don't doubt that trans people who don't want to medically transition, really are the gender they say they are, but I do find them hard to understand. Why would you make life so hard for yourself? Like it or not, your transmasculine friend is going to experience social dysphoria the rest of his life because, to most people, he still looks female, so society, which doesn't understand transness very well, will misgender him. I still support him, wish him the best and admire his bravery though

 

If you need me I'll be in my happy little fantasy world where everybody is physically androgynous and gender doesn't exist.

[AcornCarvings]

2 minutes ago, Celyn said:

I don't doubt that trans people who don't want to medically transition, really are the gender they say they are, but I do find them hard to understand. Why would you make life so hard for yourself? Like it or not, your transmasculine friend is going to experience social dysphoria the rest of his life because, to most people, he still looks female, so society, which doesn't understand transness very well, will misgender him.

Yeah I get you. I think for him it's that he would be fine if he didn't deal with gendering and social stuff. And since he is comfortable enough in his body, he'd rather try to force society to change than have society force his body to change, at least that's what I've gotten from what he's said to me. (he's a very stubborn person )

[Celyn: The Lutening]

That's so brave of him. I'm a coward in that I'd bow to society's mores because I just want a quiet life, I'm no revolutionary, unlike your friend.

[AcornCarvings]

revolutionary, stubborn, lol idk same thing?

anyways Ima say something real cheesy but I think that anyone honestly expressing or experiencing their gender is a revolutionary in my books 

[Celyn: The Lutening]

Aww that's cute. But true. Me coming out didn't change society, but it was a revolution for me

[AcornCarvings]

aawwwwwwwww  wow I'm basically squeaking this is so adorable!

and you'd be surprised, coming out can do more than people sometimes expect. Visibility, making people feel less alone, opening the doors for other people. I only came out about my stuff (and was really able to accept myself) because two of my friends were super out and proud and that made me feel like I could 💜

[anisotrophic]

Oh, @FictoVore. has such an interesting point – gender is truly a biological thing, only fools claim it is "socially constructed". We must want one body or the other, for sure. And I hope I've done "cis" right, using those female bits for all those female things! Bearing children with my uterus, using my teats for babes. And before being so maternal, I used my naturally long eyelashes to entice and beguile.

 

Oops, I'm sorry, I made that last one up. Biological femaleness didn't give me longer eyelashes. That's just one of many social constructs so deeply ingrained into our lived experience, many don't realize it isn't biological. Besides, I was terrible at the enticing and beguiling. I've been terrible at most of the social construction of female.

"Live it anyway! If the biology feels fine, just ignore the construct. It's just in people's heads." Of course, so are traffic lights. Totally constructed. But if you want to try driving on the other side of the road, you might find it wise to move to another country first.

 

If someone says transitioning away from female is about being unhappy with my biology – and if not, then I'm just confused, or trying to have fun ... that I am not logical ... yes, please do "bow out". Because the vast majority of our experiences as male and female are not biological, but – my god – are they imposed. As a parent of young children, I watch the constructions assert themselves upon them. It is so powerful, and so unavoidable.

Which is to say: while I've got no dysphoria with my biology, I am so eager to change it, to relieve myself of some of the dysphoria that social construction imposes upon me, which @Pramana references. I'm eager to complete my final reproductive project (which currently gives me irritating nausea), and after that's done I have no reason to be female. I've done a full tour, used my female biology for its biological purposes – can one really call me naive or confused? I'm eager to get my hands on some T, to have a new voice. (Literally.) I look forward to entering my fifth decade as something else.

 

But to return to the idea @Pramana brought us... I think radicals can sometimes fall into patterns of point-scoring arguments that accuse others of insufficient radicalism. This eagerness for one-upsmanship seems like it's wandered into questionable claims. A dictionary defines words by using other words, and it seems pretty reasonable to do more of the same – I suspect the binary may be more effectively challenged when people use binary vocabulary – if only so they can give it the bird.

[Guest]

Hahaha you cracked me up, good one mate

[Guest]

(Tits and a vagina are part of having the biological sexual anatomy of a female, by the way. Shouldn't need to clarify that).

[ElasticPlanet]

On 5/27/2018 at 6:18 AM, Pramana said:

the appropriation of the term “asexual,” which is traditionally used to describe reproduction that is abnormal—that is, without a male and female partner—is the appropriation of a term that exists because of a hegemonic male/female understanding of both gender and sexual orientation

Of course, I'm quoting your quote of Abigail Oakley so those weren't your words. Anyway...

 

I agree that this hegemony is a huge problem, but I don't get why she thinks it makes both of those usages of the word asexual so bad. Did she suggest a better word for us to use instead? Also when we're trying to find words for things that didn't have words before, we're doing it in a world that is a product of the binary cis-hetero hegemony we're trying to push against. Bigger changes in language are much harder to get people to accept.

 

Also, why do people have to be so negative about negative labels? I use tons of them to describe myself - you could say I've been 'collecting' them since I first heard the word atheist as a child.

[Pramana]

On 5/28/2018 at 11:53 PM, anisotropic said:

But to return to the idea @Pramana brought us... I think radicals can sometimes fall into patterns of point-scoring arguments that accuse others of insufficient radicalism. This eagerness for one-upsmanship seems like it's wandered into questionable claims. A dictionary defines words by using other words, and it seems pretty reasonable to do more of the same – I suspect the binary may be more effectively challenged when people use binary vocabulary – if only so they can give it the bird.

 

On 5/29/2018 at 8:20 AM, ElasticPlanet said:

I agree that this hegemony is a huge problem, but I don't get why she thinks it makes both of those usages of the word asexual so bad. Did she suggest a better word for us to use instead?

You get into an interesting philosophy of language question here about whether words can communicate without making reference to other words in some way. If we say that new gender/orientation vocabulary is oppressive by virtue of the fact that it makes reference to the traditional binary vocabulary, then any newer terms defined in reference to that first set of new terms would be oppressive by the same logic, and so on. And then the only way out would be to introduce a sui generis term like 'pomogender', but then you're no longer communicating the same information.

[ElasticPlanet]

If the problem she finds with words like nonbinary and agender is that in their very names they compare themselves with binary gender, well... There's a huge difference between the binary genders merely existing, versus their being part of a system where they are the only genders allowed and are coercively tied up with orientation, presentation and social roles. Our world is moving (albeit far too slowly) from the latter towards the former. I think the word nonbinary itself says nothing about which of those social systems we're living in, so why is the word the problem? It's the society that needs to change, and I hope the existence and more widespread use of these words will help that to happen, even if we end up losing a few of the new words along the way.

[Alex the Queer]

first of all, that whole ‘pomo’ thing sounds beyond ridiculous. coming up with a strictly defined label in order to announce the fact that you.... reject strictly defined labels. really takes ‘defeating the entire purpose’ to a whole new level. and do you really need to call yourself a whole different gender identity just to say that you reject the idea of gender? saying ‘i don’t agree with gender and think it doesn’t really exist/is total bs’ isn’t even an identity to begin with. in almost every other situation i would scoff at the whole ‘special snowflake’ thing and say that anyone who says ‘special snowflake’ is an annoying  pissant..... but good lord i think we might’ve just found the definition of it

[Pramana]

Relevant to this discussion, I found a journal article that examines 'counterpublic antagonism' between AVEN, Tumblr, and Reddit. Illustrative passage:

"In the mainstream media television shows and news features cited earlier in this article, there is almost always some skepticism or resistance to understanding asexuality as a legitimate identity. In this section, I want to explore the chance for online antagonism. The affordances of counterpublic spaces exemplified above on Tumblr may potentially be subverted and antagonism can color counterpublic communication acts. In discussing the affordances and social dynamics of the Tumblr platform and alluding to other platforms along the way, this article has emphasized the ways that users seeking out counterpublic communication chose or use particular SNSs in order to engage in counterpublic communication unhindered by outsiders. While many instances of counterpublic communication are separatist and seek to carve out a semi-autonomous space for users to discuss certain topics or feelings, often communication seeks to reach a larger public. Throughout, self-containment, privacy, and autonomy have been important concepts central to thinking about the attributes that are sought out within counterpublics. On SNSs, counterpublics can be disrupted with antagonism. In ways either afforded or limited by the platform, ill-intentioned trolls can disrupt counterpublics."

Renninger, Bryce J. ““Where I can be Myself ... Where I can Speak my Mind”: Networked Counterpublics in a Polymedia Environment.” New Media & Society 17, no. 9 (2015): 1513-1529.

[Karst]

All of this theory is going to give me a headache.  We need to be more concerned with living in the world, not with philosophical concepts.