Hi, I'm new to all of this

[chrispychrust]

Hi friends,
Here are the things I know about myself (I thought it wasn't a lot until I started to write it all out!)

-->My assigned gender is female, but I've never done much to try and seem like a girl (or not like a girl)

-->I am twenty two and as white as old paper (what I mean to say, I'm a white person with a lovely yellow undertone)

-->I hate it when people call me Tina, but Chris doesn't quite feel right either.

-->I love falafels and oatmeal and waffles and stir fry. And seltzer, tangerine-lime is my favorite.
-->I'm a creative writing graduate student, and have always been passionate about writing despite the fact that I started reading books (instead of skimming for the sake of quizzes), short stories, and manga about a year ago. So, definitely a late bloomer there.

-->I'm writing this out while I should be working on a submission, but I woke up thinking about this and it won't go away soooooooo

--> I have a cat named Talulah. She's the sweetest lovebug.
-->When I was a kid, I went to the only princess party I was invited to as the dragon (This was before Shrek, Spyro was my hero)

-->My favorite colour is purple

-->I have no idea how to feel about my body.
-->I have been called both he and she. Neither bother me, but I was actually happy to be called 'he' by a friend's friend.
I came to this site because I want to learn more about gender identification. I've recently started to change my presentation to my androgynous while living on my school campus, so people started asking me what my identity was, and I didn't know how to respond beyond saying that I was pansexual (cringeworthy, I know). So, I knew I needed to fix that, and I wanted to see what I could find out about myself. There's an LGBTQ+ support club on campus, but I'm way too nervous to approach right now, and besides, I'll be leaving campus in May so I want to find the means to support myself. I will take all the advice/pointers(if you want to call them that)/support I can get, because heck no my family does not know and nor will they ever, likely, want to.

[LadyGagaIsMyGod]

Hello Friend!

A little birdy told me all new members are offered cake...🍰

[LadyGagaIsMyGod]

P.s this place is great for tips and advice, we have entire forums dedicated to it. 

Really helped me out.

Try Asexual Rantings and Musings

[Paula @ BH]

Dear Chrispychrust,

 

So, What Is A Woman?

 

Gender is socially-constructed, per culture, per social class, per religious affiiliation, so maybe we just have to refuse to play it like it's written, if we don't like how it's written just now.

 

If you will PM me with an e-mail address, I'll send you a Minority Rights Activists' questionnaire which is designed to break right open a person's understanding of what they mean when they say 'woman' - by surfacing lots of their hidden asumptions so that the person can think about  them.

 

And are these women:  women of the Kurdish Self-Defence Forces?;   Women combat pilots of the Red Air Force in the 'Great Patriotic War'; Women of the Israeli Defence Forces?;   Women soldiers of the Viet Cong & Viet Minh?   The buried Female Viking warrior who was assumed for ages to have been a man, but was actually a woman, revealed when her DNA was tested?   The women of Sparta in Classical Greece -who were the scandal of the men of the other Greek city-states?   The Sarmatian women, upon whom the ridiculous nonsense about the Amazons was based?   An Onna Busheiga (a female Samurai)?   A non-fighting women of the Samurai class, with the weapons she was given on reaching adulthood, and which she would use quite readily to defend herself and her home? 

 

They'd eat us all for breakfast - and no, they weren't lesbians, and yes, they did have and raise girl and boy babies, and yes, they did live with men, and yes, it must have been them who did the breast-feeding.   That illustrates my point that Gender is socially-constructed, per culture, per social class, per religious affiiliation.  Just look across ethnic/religious cultures within Western societies - is there really only one way to be a woman here, today?

 

May I suggest also that you look at the book 'New Female Tribes', where four very different contemporary ways of 'being a woman', based on thousands of surveys across the world, are identifed.  That's where the term 'Alpha Female' on my own AVEN profile comes from.  

 

The differences from typical male managers which make Alpha Females so very effective in organisations is the Alphas' concern for the other person, and their lack of aggression and of teritoriality, and their honesty about the performance of their units (not needing to hide defects in order to prop up their egos).  They use 'Theory Y', not 'Theory X', as their touchstone in leading their teams, too.  They are Assertive (my goodness, aren't they just!) but not Aggressive.   I succeded in male-dominated, engineering based industries, and that was not in support roles, and not by 'sleeping with' male colleagues either. 

 

The high prevalence of asexual people reporting that they are not clearly of one main gender or the other is probably because gender, as it is expressed in our society, relates to sexuality in our society – no sexuality, so no need to adopt and display strongly one or other main gender.  It's as if the 2 main genders (het-M, het-F) were two sets of interlocking dance steps, but for a dance we just don't want or need to dance.  Actually, I don't have a strong sense of gender or of sex either, but, if forced to choose within the artificial gender- and sex-binary, which officially here in the UK, everyone is - then its much more comfortable to me to say 'she/her'.

 

The only two things a man can do that I can't are, standing up to pee neatly without a special cup and tube, and something rather unmentionable to me, given my childhood.  I learned both 'gendered' sets of skills as an adult - no man about in my life to do that stuff for me, and my mother was, as I discovered, pretty useless at her stuff - and I can use both 'sets of tools' - and when I use 'mens' stuff' in public, I deliberately wear a dress or a skirt. 

 

So, I do genderQueer by attitude, by posture, by gait, and by skills and knowledge and behaviour (verbal & non-verbal).

 

Yet, I'm 'feminine', if that's what one likes to call it, 'a woman' ... but there's nothing 'pink and pretty' about me, and I like my body, although it's not sexually-responsive at all - I'm just not a member of one of the other three 'New Female Tribes'.  And I can care, and nurse, and nuture, and I have done for several years for each of my belovèd long-term partners (RIP, each) as they have fallen ill and died.  

 

And it amuses me to be 'genderQueer' through my behaviours, skills, attitudes, posture, gait, etc. - and still make people call me she/her.  

 

I do dress ambiguously when I like, but I think that 'dressing' (including 'binding' and 'packing') is the least-likely way, on its own, to break gender and provoke change.

 

I suupose I'm saying:  if you change your view of what's possible, then you can go and stuff that on them. 

 

They won't like it, but that's what comes of their having sexist expectations. 

 

And you'll find plenty of women who won't like you for it either.  Wusses, all!

 

🙂 Paula

[oldgeeza]

Hi, welcome, I like your description of yourself, you sound a very fascinating person, what I would say is, even though you leave campus in May, any advice is good/bad advice, it's always worth learning from others' experiences, you don't have to take all of it on board, but there will be parts of all advice which may come in useful, don't be afraid, we've all been in the same position as you, even them on campus, you never know, you may meet some interesting folks there, maybe you'll be helping them as they're helping you, that's often how it works, as for family, my family don't bother that much with me, my friends though, I really couldn't wish for better, they accept me for who I am rather than what I am. I hope all goes well for you

[NickyTannock]

@chrispychrust Welcome to AVEN!

 

I, unfortunately, don't know a lot about gender personally, but you might find this section of the forums helpful, https://www.asexuality.org/en/forum/57-gender-discussion/

 

Incidentally, it is a tradition here to welcome new members by offering cake,

[Lichley]

Welcome! Ooh waffles, how about a waffle cake?  

[Custard Cream]

Hello and Welcome! Have some more cake!