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The ability to perceive your gender, how does it work?


Snarkyaxolotl

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Snarkyaxolotl

What is it that one needs to perceive to know their own gender? Are they character or emotional traits? Do cis people perceive it based on their physical body and hormones? 
 

Or is it just something you’re convinced you are regardless of physical or non-physical characteristics?

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AstrophelDragon
28 minutes ago, FaithSapling said:

Or is it just something you’re convinced you are regardless of physical or non-physical characteristics?

Basically this. Except "convinced" might not be quite the right word bc for instance, I was genderfluid before I realized it, but it's something you can just kind of know about yourself internally

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Snarkyaxolotl

Ok I figured it was something you just know, but it leaves me wondering how this knowledge is obtained. I guess that’s just one of the many mysteries of life.

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1 hour ago, FaithSapling said:

What is it that one needs to perceive to know their own gender? Are they character or emotional traits? Do cis people perceive it based on their physical body and hormones? 
 

Or is it just something you’re convinced you are regardless of physical or non-physical characteristics?

 

I think 'perceive' isn't the right word, because you can perceive yourself in different ways but actually inside be or feel another way, or even cover it up. It took me a long time to consider myself trans. It's not something everyone easily knows, you just get to know more and more about yourself through life and some things make more sense than others. It depends on a lot of things, like how someone is affected by societal beliefs and expectations, how they've come to see things, how flexible someone is in being a certain way, how long they can take on things or ways they're not a match with before wanting to be true to who you really are and want to be. and more. Your relation to gender becomes clearer. Or it doesn't. Does it matter to you? If it doesn't then no point overthinking about it xD. Just be yourself, follow what makes sense and feels good to you.

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Snarkyaxolotl

True, gender isn’t even something I even think about. I only use the pronouns my parents used on me out of habit and convenience, but it doesn’t really mean anything personal to me. 

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I was told I was a girl from the time I was born, basically. I was told I would be a woman when I grew up. My best friend was told the same thing, but she thought she found a loophole--that she could choose to be a boy for a while before she had to be a woman. I wanted that to work for her because I wanted my best friend to be a boy so we could share our experiences from different perspectives (or something like that in a child's thought vocabulary).

 

Eventually we learned we were being told we were girls because of some features of our bodies. We wondered about the logical leap people were making from those features to the word girl. Eventually we got the really bottom-line understanding that we were girls because we were told we were girls--that adults needed this for some sake of order of their own. My best friend was annoyed and I was on her side, but I accepted it for myself. I was the youngest of three sisters and I was the little girl doll in the family, while my best friend was the oldest of five and was often in charge (or often put herself in charge really). Our secret names for each other were Tom and Becky (as in Sawyer and Thatcher).

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39 minutes ago, FaithSapling said:

I figured it was something you just know

I tend to think that it is.

 

Which made me wonder how in the hell I "need something" before I can.

 

That's me, though. I have no idea what it's like to be missing this knowledge or what anyone would need in order to come to know if they didn't already just know.

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It's almost just a fact of life. I know that for cis guys like me, feminine features (hips, breasts, etc.) make people feel embarrased, but they don't question their gender identity because of it, because for some reason being male just makes sense for some reason. 

Dress, body, and hormones definitely help affirm, but don't define gender identities. I'm really glad to be able to grow a beard, even though I'm going to shave it off in a week. 

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Snarkyaxolotl

Come to think of it, I’m actually just as apathetic towards my pronouns as towards my own name. Why? Because my Spanish name seems so tricky for English speakers that I feel like telling people they can call me whatever they want, just don’t call me stupid lol

 

I actually find it amusing when English speakers unfamiliar with Spanish will try to apply their complicated English rules of pronunciation to Spanish words and names. Phonetics is probably the easiest thing in Spanish to learn… but I digress.. lol

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Its interesting.  I'm biologically male and identify as male, but its really just a sort of statement of fact.  It doesn't matter to me.    I'm not a man who is XYZ. I'm someone who is XYZ and happens to be male.

 

I find the discussion interesting becuase clearly for some people gender is critically important and central to their sense of self, while for others it not really important.  The altter isn't the same at all asn non-binary,  I have no doubt about my gender, I don't view myself as anything other than male, but it has little more meanign to me than my eyes being brown, rather than blue.  Its a fact, its not in doubt, but it not really important.

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4 hours ago, FaithSapling said:

What is it that one needs to perceive to know their own gender? Are they character or emotional traits? Do cis people perceive it based on their physical body and hormones? 
 

Or is it just something you’re convinced you are regardless of physical or non-physical characteristics?

I just asked people how they'd define gender, then compared their responses to my own behaviors.

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I don't feel very strongly about being a woman, but the fact that I was assigned female at birth has always been fine with me.

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1 hour ago, uhtred said:

Its interesting.  I'm biologically male and identify as male, but its really just a sort of statement of fact.  It doesn't matter to me.    I'm not a man who is XYZ. I'm someone who is XYZ and happens to be male.

 

I find the discussion interesting becuase clearly for some people gender is critically important and central to their sense of self, while for others it not really important.  The altter isn't the same at all asn non-binary,  I have no doubt about my gender, I don't view myself as anything other than male, but it has little more meanign to me than my eyes being brown, rather than blue.  Its a fact, its not in doubt, but it not really important.

That's exactly how I feel.

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1 hour ago, uhtred said:

I find the discussion interesting becuase clearly for some people gender is critically important and central to their sense of self, while for others it not really important. 

This does seem to be the case xD.

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12 hours ago, FaithSapling said:

Do cis people perceive it based on their physical body and hormones? 

This is how I perceive it, and I don't even consider myself to have a gender. I just have a physical sex. I don't feel I'm anything in particular. Which means some people could say I'm agender, but I just don't find the concept personally useful. Unless I felt for sure that I was a man in some way and calling myself a woman felt really wrong (which honestly it did when I was younger, although I didn't feel like a guy either; I just had a lot of discomfort with physical female aspects of my body), which would make me trans, I'm just going to keep it uncomplicated by calling myself a woman. I have no other good framework for identifying as anything else.

 

Edit: That's just me though, and I get the impression that some cis people do actually feel in some way -- that's not simply related to their physical sex -- that they're men or women. I have no idea what other women really mean when they say they feel 'womanly'.

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I think sometimes people use gender to describe a set of personality traits.  "being a 'real' man".  Maybe its people who feel the do, or would like to match certain gender stereotypes?

 

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11 hours ago, uhtred said:

Its interesting.  I'm biologically male and identify as male, but its really just a sort of statement of fact.  It doesn't matter to me.    I'm not a man who is XYZ. I'm someone who is XYZ and happens to be male.

 

I find the discussion interesting becuase clearly for some people gender is critically important and central to their sense of self, while for others it not really important.  The altter isn't the same at all asn non-binary,  I have no doubt about my gender, I don't view myself as anything other than male, but it has little more meanign to me than my eyes being brown, rather than blue.  It’s a fact, it’s not in doubt, but it not really important.

This is pretty much how I feel about being a woman. My apathy towards it made me question my gender for a while, but eventually I realized that my gender could just not matter to me and that it was okay to feel like that. 

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14 hours ago, uhtred said:

clearly for some people gender is critically important and central to their sense of self, while for others it not really important

I think there are people who would not think it was important until other people make it critically important.

 

Who am I talking about?

 

Let's start with doctors who assign genders at birth. Then move on to all the people who that assigned gender matters to, in how they interact with, judge, provide opportunities to, try to influence the person with that assigned gender.

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1 hour ago, Ollie415 said:

I think there are people who would not think it was important until other people make it critically important.

 

Who am I talking about?

 

Let's start with doctors who assign genders at birth. Then move on to all the people who that assigned gender matters to, in how they interact with, judge, provide opportunities to, try to influence the person with that assigned gender.

Isn't medicine one case where biological gender can be critical?

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I think it varies depending on the person. I have a very strong internal sense of my gender. I also don't separate it from my sexuality or gender-presentation; those are both just part of it for me. It's related to my biological sex, but not dictated by it. I personally don't understand why gender is always separated out as its own thing.

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Snarkyaxolotl

The phrase “sex assigned at birth” is interesting because nobody says that about their pets. And it’s not like owners assign whatever sex to their pets, as if it weren’t based on any criteria. Yet there can also be a gray area, even interesex pets exist too. 
 

Humans are more complicated, we’re self-aware enough to have a sense of gender identity, it’s not based on any physical criteria, and that’s okay. I’m sure most cisman who lose something down there to cancer will still continue identifying as male. 

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Snarkyaxolotl
On 1/16/2023 at 4:51 PM, uhtred said:

Isn't medicine one case where biological gender can be critical?

I’ve heard that people can respond differently to certain medical treatment depending on their biological sex. Although one could just identify the specific factors that cause the body to react differently to treatment without having to mention biological sex (like maybe it’s got to do with a certain hormone or something.. I dunno, I’m not in the medical field so I have no clue, lol). But of course, it’s just alot more simple to just go with biological sex and then figure out the rest from there.  

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On 1/16/2023 at 4:51 PM, uhtred said:

Isn't medicine one case where biological gender can be critical?

Biological sex is definitely relevant when it comes to medicine, but at the same time, biological sex alone can be misleading. When I fill out forms at the doctor that ask biological sex or gender, I always have to write stuff off to the side, because they won't be able to give me proper treatment if they think my body works like a biological female or male. For many people, this doesn't apply, but it applies to enough people that it seems more useful to have additional questions about specific sex characteristics.

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