Gender

[Beardless]

Now, I think we are confusing the issue that Marvin originally meant. Marvin says that gender doesn't matter like race doesn't matter. You can't say that there aren't different races, and that people don't identify as different races, but that shouldn't affect anyone's dealing with them. Same with gender. But why bother identifying as something if it doesn't matter?

Because it does matter. Anyone who feels each incorrect pronoun as a sharp pain or sank into despair that no one would ever see them as what they are knows this. You don't choose to, it just happens.

OK, so being called male when you're actually female is like being called Indian when you're actually Pakistani. We should respect people for what they are, but that shouldn't actually affect how we treat anyone. marvin sees gender as something that doesn't matter to Marvin, and so Marvin doesn't see how it matters to anyone else - and to be honest, I know it matters to other people like having sex or drinking alchol matters to other people. I still don't understand why.

[Raef]

Hey - have there ever been sociological studies re: gender or race conducted with blind participants?

Does it make a difference if you can't 'see the labels' in front of you - or do your preconceived concepts of social roles still interfere with the de-labelling process?

I know I read about a study the other week - which was conducted to see whether racism is innate, as an instinct leftover from when we lived in tribes, to enable us to identify and distinguish between different communities. People of different races were divided into teams using coloured T-shirts; the people then began distinguishing between team colours, regardless of the person's race.

I can't remember how they measured it, but it sounded convincing at the time.

Anyway, that's a bit off-topic, sorry.

[Raef]

"Because it does matter. Anyone who feels each incorrect pronoun as a sharp pain or sank into despair that no one would ever see them as what they are knows this. You don't choose to, it just happens."

But if there WERE no labels, then this wouldn't happen...right? Or am I over-simplifying?

[AVENCakes]

"Because it does matter. Anyone who feels each incorrect pronoun as a sharp pain or sank into despair that no one would ever see them as what they are knows this. You don't choose to, it just happens."

But if there WERE no labels, then this wouldn't happen...right? Or am I over-simplifying?

A little. It'd be like if there were no labels for sexuality, really. A person who's attracted to the same sex wouldn't want to be treated the same, in relation to sexuality, as a person who's attracted to the opposite sex, etc. But it only matters when sexuality comes up- not just in general- so it's weird. It's not like someone who's straight wants to be constantly treated as "the straight person" rather than just "the person", but when it comes to sexual and romantic situations his sexual identity matters. I think, even if we had no labels, people would still have gender identities the same as they do now, and it might be even more complicated because people would be even less equipped to express their identity than we are now. It'd basically be going back to when everyone assumed everyone was straight, it'd just be confusing and a bit hurtful for those few who aren't.

[please delete this account]

Been reading this thread, but not sure what to say yet.

Ditto. It is relevant to my interests.

snap,ish.

[Elliott Ford]

First, can someone explain "nuetroisis" (or however it's spelt) to me? Because i've never heard of it.

I'm not clear on what my gender is and have stopped labelling myself as any particular variety of trans, just as "transgendered" or just "trans". And that's mainly for the practical purpose of saying "Elliott has a good reason to be asking you to use male/female/neutral/no pronouns to refer to Elliott today".

i think that i somehow have a gender. but i can't justify this because i'm not sure what one is.

i once assumed that i was female (back when i also thought i was destined to be a heterosexual) but it wasn't until i was 14 that this bothered me. Why? Because it wasn't until i was 14 that i actually noticed that "girls" and "boys" behaved differently and, well, were different in any way. i think until that (really rather late) age i thought they were arbitarily defined categories with no reference to the characteristics of the person.

Then, once i'd noticed that there were differences, i noticed that i didn't behave like a girl. I regularly got mistaken for a boy. And this worried me. it couldn't be right.

everyone else with a body like mine was a girl. therefore i was a girl. therefore i should act like one.

and now, five years later, i've given up trying to be female. Because i'm not. I'm not male either (i knew that i wasn't male) but it turns out that there aren't just two options and it's okay to just be me. :)

[Raef]

Here's to androgyny 8)

[Raef]

But if there WERE no labels, then this wouldn't happen...right? Or am I over-simplifying?

A little. It'd be like if there were no labels for sexuality, really. A person who's attracted to the same sex wouldn't want to be treated the same, in relation to sexuality, as a person who's attracted to the opposite sex, etc. But it only matters when sexuality comes up- not just in general- so it's weird. It's not like someone who's straight wants to be constantly treated as "the straight person" rather than just "the person", but when it comes to sexual and romantic situations his sexual identity matters. I think, even if we had no labels, people would still have gender identities the same as they do now, and it might be even more complicated because people would be even less equipped to express their identity than we are now. It'd basically be going back to when everyone assumed everyone was straight, it'd just be confusing and a bit hurtful for those few who aren't.

So really, rather than labels themselves being the problem, it's the way people use them/abuse them.

A gay guy needs to be labelled a gay guy so that when sexual situations come up, his orientation is known, which makes things better for him. But the 'gay' label shouldn't have cliched connotations; it should stop at the point where his need for the label stops.

If we get back to gender, though [which, being different from sex, there are no anatomical or sexual reasons for the label to be known]...why can't people just be people, instead of having 'male' or 'female' labels? What purpose does it serve?

[AVENCakes]

First, can someone explain "nuetroisis" (or however it's spelt) to me? Because i've never heard of it.

Neutrois is neither male nor female. It's the opposite of bigender, or 100% male and 100% female. Androgynous is 50% male, 50% female. I don't really understand the difference between bigender and androgynous.

and now, five years later, i've given up trying to be female. Because i'm not. I'm not male either (i knew that i wasn't male) but it turns out that there aren't just two options and it's okay to just be me. :)

Yup, exactly. :)

So really, rather than labels themselves being the problem, it's the way people use them/abuse them.

A gay guy needs to be labelled a gay guy so that when sexual situations come up, his orientation is known, which makes things better for him. But the 'gay' label shouldn't have cliched connotations; it should stop at the point where his need for the label stops.

Pretty much. I think a lot of the stereotypes are false, anyways. I've seen a lot of gay guys complain that women think they'll be their new best friend just because he's gay.

If we get back to gender, though [which, being different from sex, there are no anatomical or sexual reasons for the label to be known]...why can't people just be people, instead of having 'male' or 'female' labels? What purpose does it serve?

As Elliot Ford pointed out, men and women behave differently. Tomboys and boys/feminine guys and girls might behave more similarly to each other, but they still behave differently. And I don't think its all socially constructed, either. I think it matters more than sexual orientation, really, and effects more aspects of life- but it's easier for people to see why you wouldn't want to assume everyone has the same sexuality than the same gender.

[Raef]

"It's the opposite of bigender, or 100% male and 100% female. Androgynous is 50% male, 50% female. I don't really understand the difference between bigender and androgynous."

I think - not sure, but I think - bigendered is an accepted medical/psychological condition, whereas androgyny is more a lifestyle choice. Kinda like the difference between celibacy and asexuality.

This gender stuff makes me want to stab myself in the eye; the world's impossible to live in and be happy :(

[Raef]

In reply to RDraconis...

"As Elliot Ford pointed out, men and women behave differently. Tomboys and boys/feminine guys and girls might behave more similarly to each other, but they still behave differently. And I don't think its all socially constructed, either. I think it matters more than sexual orientation, really, and effects more aspects of life- but it's easier for people to see why you wouldn't want to assume everyone has the same sexuality than the same gender."

Because it wasn't until i was 14 that i actually noticed that "girls" and "boys" behaved differently

But it could well be DUE to labels that this occurs. It could also be innate...but I think maybe not. Definitely not the extent to which they behave differently. I think that's socially constructed - especially when you consider evidence of switched gender-roles in certain tribes where e.g. the men are the main care-givers and women are the hunter-gatherers.

[AVENCakes]

I think - not sure, but I think - bigendered is an accepted medical/psychological condition, whereas androgyny is more a lifestyle choice. Kinda like the difference between celibacy and asexuality.

*shakes head* I think it's more like the difference between grey asexual and asexual, because they're both referring to identities, not physical conditions.

But it could well be DUE to labels that this occurs. It could also be innate...but I think maybe not. Definitely not the extent to which they behave differently. I think that's socially constructed - especially when you consider evidence of switched gender-roles in certain tribes where e.g. the men are the main care-givers and women are the hunter-gatherers.

I don't think so. I acted one way pre-kindergarten, then I saw how people my age acted and dressed and changed to try and fit into what people thought I should be and what I thought I should be, and ended up a bit of an outcast for the attempt. I always felt wrong saying I was a girl, even at a really young age. Yeah, it could be ingrained, but then again that's a kidn of young age. And it's not like I acted like the stereotypical guy, I just felt like one while dressing like tinkerbell.

[Cazz333]

I totally agree with you.

As a sexual, I find the physical traits of one gender more attractive than the other, but I've spent a lot of time thinking about it, and trying to look at things from different angles (even posing as a male on another forum and looking at the different interactions) and most of the differences that I see are just people trying super-hard to fit these silly labels.

(FYI I wear guy's clothes all the time, they fit better, can be found cheaper, and are often more durable! Plus I love cargo pants, and they just don't make decent pockets on girls pants...)

I do that too, for the Role Playing ones. Guess that's why I can write books where I'm a 1st person male narator and not feel awkward for it.

First, can someone explain "nuetroisis" (or however it's spelt) to me? Because i've never heard of it.

I'm not clear on what my gender is and have stopped labelling myself as any particular variety of trans, just as "transgendered" or just "trans". And that's mainly for the practical purpose of saying "Elliott has a good reason to be asking you to use male/female/neutral/no pronouns to refer to Elliott today".

i think that i somehow have a gender. but i can't justify this because i'm not sure what one is.

i once assumed that i was female (back when i also thought i was destined to be a heterosexual) but it wasn't until i was 14 that this bothered me. Why? Because it wasn't until i was 14 that i actually noticed that "girls" and "boys" behaved differently and, well, were different in any way. i think until that (really rather late) age i thought they were arbitarily defined categories with no reference to the characteristics of the person.

Then, once i'd noticed that there were differences, i noticed that i didn't behave like a girl. I regularly got mistaken for a boy. And this worried me. it couldn't be right.

everyone else with a body like mine was a girl. therefore i was a girl. therefore i should act like one.

and now, five years later, i've given up trying to be female. Because i'm not. I'm not male either (i knew that i wasn't male) but it turns out that there aren't just two options and it's okay to just be me. :)

Same. I tend to see myself as bigender/neutrois/ androgynous because some days I'm 50/50 female/ male, other days I feel no gender at all and some days I feel like a man and a woman in one body or I feel like hyper feminine and hyper masculine (I usually wear skirts and male tops on those days and I often ahve my hair down). On my androgynous days, I tende to wear tight-fitting male tops and fairly loos- fitting female trousers and my hair's usually up. On my neutrois days, I wear the same but usually forget I'm a she/he and refer to myself with no pronoun.

So really, rather than labels themselves being the problem, it's the way people use them/abuse them.

A gay guy needs to be labelled a gay guy so that when sexual situations come up, his orientation is known, which makes things better for him. But the 'gay' label shouldn't have cliched connotations; it should stop at the point where his need for the label stops.

If we get back to gender, though [which, being different from sex, there are no anatomical or sexual reasons for the label to be known]...why can't people just be people, instead of having 'male' or 'female' labels? What purpose does it serve?

Labels become harmful when that discriminate rather than differentiate positively/ neutrally.

and now, five years later, i've given up trying to be female. Because i'm not. I'm not male either (i knew that i wasn't male) but it turns out that there aren't just two options and it's okay to just be me. :)

Female- to- neutrois/androgynous/bugender any one?

[Elliott Ford]

I tend to see myself as bigender/neutrois/ androgynous because some days I'm 50/50 female/ male, other days I feel no gender at all and some days I feel like a man and a woman in one body or I feel like hyper feminine and hyper masculine (I usually wear skirts and male tops on those days and I often ahve my hair down). On my androgynous days, I tende to wear tight-fitting male tops and fairly loos- fitting female trousers and my hair's usually up. On my neutrois days, I wear the same but usually forget I'm a she/he and refer to myself with no pronoun.

and now, five years later, i've given up trying to be female. Because i'm not. I'm not male either (i knew that i wasn't male) but it turns out that there aren't just two options and it's okay to just be me. :)

Female- to- neutrois/androgynous/bigender any one?

Neutrois = ?

My gender presentation is (as far as i can tell) rather odd since i now dress as a man almost all the time. I got my hair cut off all but one very long plait (which can feminise me a lot more than i want it to) and i still wear a fair number of necklaces (same problem). There's only so much you can do to masculinise a female body without damaging it (sorry if that's a little TMI) especially if you're not sure that it should be male either.

i get everyone to refer to me with the pronoun they use for themselves, unless i specifically request otherwise. i tend to prefer he but don't mind if female people refer to me as either. for some strange reason though i will absolutely insist that male people refer to me as male. this makes absiolutely no sense but it makes things a lot more comfortable for me *shrug*

[Lekzýs]

I don't really understand what gender is, even though it must exist in some form or another.

I spent most of my life identifying as the same gender as my sex because, well, I had just learned that's what gender must be - someone is male simply because they have a penis; someone is female because they have breasts and a vagina. Or they're transsexual. So, despite never really being what people would think of as particularly masculine or feminine; male or female, my gender was never even considered to be anything but me sex because, to me, that's what gender was.

Then, after discovering AVEN and learning about gender identities outside the binary, and more about gender in general, I realised I didn't actually have a clue what gender really was because I'd never actually experienced it. And since then, identifying as [my sex] just feels completely wrong; my genitalia, which I've always hated, have absolutely nothing to do with me, and the identification brings with it all sorts of other expectations regarding personality &c. that just aren't accurate at all. Which is one of the reasons I want a sexless body, even though I know it'll almost certainly never happen.

...Of course, I'd probably have figured it out sooner, given how obvious it is now when I look back on things, had gender mattered to me - like my sexual orientation, I thought about it only exceptionally rarely before AVEN.

So that was probably nurture overriding nature - or at least that's how I view it - but evidently for others nature takes a dominant role right from the start of life and they know they're not cisgender, despite how they're brought up. But whether or not gender roles and things like that are social constructs or not is really unclear - given that different genders exist, and not everyone is cisgender, then there must be differences of some sort between them, but whether these differences are really the ones seen by people...is completely unknown to me.

[AVENCakes]

Neutrois = ?

Neutrois is neither male nor female.

Neutrois= 0% male, 0% female. Androgyne=50% male, 50% female. Bigender= 100% male, 100% female. Genderqueer= all mixtures. Genderfluid= people who feel their gender changes, so they might feel more male at one point in time, more female at another, more androgyne at a third, etc.

So that was probably nurture overriding nature - or at least that's how I view it - but evidently for others nature takes a dominant role right from the start of life and they know they're not cisgender, despite how they're brought up. But whether or not gender roles and things like that are social constructs or not is really unclear - given that different genders exist, and not everyone is cisgender, then there must be differences of some sort between them, but whether these differences are really the ones seen by people...is completely unknown to me.

That's how I think of it, too, and I think that's the problem. Most people don't really question gender or sexuality, so don't realize that they have a different one until they're old enough for people to argue that the only reason they think they have one is because society's constructed it.

[goldboy44]

I feel that a lot of gender is focused just to keep a stupid way of doing things . I feel it helps feed sexism. I feel if I like or dislike something it has nothing to do with my gender. I see why we have gender identification, I don't see why we have such set rules towards what a gender roles is. Do girls really like flowers are is it programed. I don't like sports am I a girl?

[Cazz333]

Neutrois = ?

My gender presentation is (as far as i can tell) rather odd since i now dress as a man almost all the time. I got my hair cut off all but one very long plait (which can feminise me a lot more than i want it to) and i still wear a fair number of necklaces (same problem). There's only so much you can do to masculinise a female body without damaging it (sorry if that's a little TMI) especially if you're not sure that it should be male either.

i get everyone to refer to me with the pronoun they use for themselves, unless i specifically request otherwise. i tend to prefer he but don't mind if female people refer to me as either. for some strange reason though i will absolutely insist that male people refer to me as male. this makes absiolutely no sense but it makes things a lot more comfortable for me *shrug*

Neutrois means you feel neither female or male. I tend to get called "he" or "she" interchangably even if i wear a dress probably because I have a heavily masculine soul. I wonder whether I was a male born in a woman's body but the strange thing is I feel comfortable with my body the way it is. I did consider the ftm surgery but the idea of male parts makes me ill and I want my breasts. I like them and I like the discretion of female parts.

I don't mind being called female or male but not feminine. That makes me angry. I prefer being called a masculine female since that's what I dress up as. I don't like the "zhe" or "hir" pronouns. It's gets mangled when I say it. Often I wonder whether I should be refered to as "Heshe" or "Shehe" as pronouns but it doesn't bother me. What bothers me most is the assumption that I should be more feminine to attract men. I don't see how that would work since most woman's clothes make me want to tear them off. I tend to prefer feminine men on the whole and don't find them soft or wimpy as other women do. That's probably why I can identify with ftm transexuals even though I'm not one.

About men refering to you as male thing; I don't blame you. I wonder whether a woman, often seen as a potential sex object by many, can be truely equal in a man's eyes. For some reason men don't see me as a potential date unless they're gay. Then the homosexuals back away because physically I'm a woman and I don't act hyper- male either. Women at best see me as a counsel for relationship troubles even though I have been in very few. Then they back away because I act like too masculine for them. Only my good male and female friends, are comfortable with me. But I wonder how far that comfort extends...

Gah, it's complicated. I often whether I'm the daughter of the Ancient Roman warrior goddess Minerva. Sheesh. The braid thing's cool by the way. I keep my hair long because I like to play with it.

[Elliott Ford]

I'm sitting here wearing all male-intended clothing, including my first-ever pair of boxer shorts. The only female-intended item i'm wearing is a bra designed to flatten my chest. (sorry if that's TMI).

I'm happy enough with having a female body, i guess. but i'm not female and i am finding it easier to live as though i am a man. This makes me happier so it must be okay, right?

i love the fact that it's okay to be who i am here. i feel happy explaining that i have a nonbinary gender, much happier than on other sites for transpeople which are dominated by transexuals who do not *necessarily* understand what it feels like to be non-binary.

i have lovely friends here in York who are brilliant at understanding who and what i am but i was a little worried about still being myself in the "real world". Then my mother told me something important that i'd like to share with anyone else whose gender / gender presentation doesn't match up with their assigned birth gender. She told me that I DON'T HAVE TO EXPLAIN MYSELF. i can have a man's name, wear men's clothes and insist on male pronouns as much as i want, this doesn't give anyone the right to demand an explanation from me. My gender is no one's business but my own.

[metalgirl2045]

I'm sitting here wearing all male-intended clothing, including my first-ever pair of boxer shorts. The only female-intended item i'm wearing is a bra designed to flatten my chest. (sorry if that's TMI).

I'm happy enough with having a female body, i guess. but i'm not female and i am finding it easier to live as though i am a man. This makes me happier so it must be okay, right?

I'm glad I was born female because I can dress like that and nobody cares. If I feel like dressing very feminine, that's OK too. If I was biologically male, cross dressing because I think it looks nice would not be socially acceptable.

[fancy.boy.valiant]

there's some quote.....

aha found it. and another... that may be food for thought.

"When i am alone i am not aware of my race or my sex, both in need of social context for definition" -Maxine Hong Kingston

"We make ourselves up as we go" -Kate Green

i don't really know what i think about this.... i feel like gender is whatever you make it. i think that it is a very loose and hard to define thing. well.. i'm gonna go the rout that there are an INFINITE number of genders. no one person is exclusivly one thing or the other... each person is shaped by different life experiences and is differing derees of genders. noone is entirely "female" or "male" or even a completly separate gender from those two. i am vastly different fomr all the other people in my gender... "umbrella" so much so that how can i possibly be the same gender as them? yet i am not in the other "gender umbrella" either. i'm my own gender and so is each of you.

at least... thats what i think.....>>

[maddox]

Then my mother told me something important that i'd like to share with anyone else whose gender / gender presentation doesn't match up with their assigned birth gender. She told me that I DON'T HAVE TO EXPLAIN MYSELF. i can have a man's name, wear men's clothes and insist on male pronouns as much as i want, this doesn't give anyone the right to demand an explanation from me. My gender is no one's business but my own.

That helps... but I guess when it's your mum *asking* for an explanation it would be hard to avoid it... or no?

Makes me wonder how I would do it if I decided to publicly display as my gender, especially dealing with family or old acquaintances.

[Elliott Ford]

Then my mother told me something important that i'd like to share with anyone else whose gender / gender presentation doesn't match up with their assigned birth gender. She told me that I DON'T HAVE TO EXPLAIN MYSELF. i can have a man's name, wear men's clothes and insist on male pronouns as much as i want, this doesn't give anyone the right to demand an explanation from me. My gender is no one's business but my own.

That helps... but I guess when it's your mum *asking* for an explanation it would be hard to avoid it... or no?

Makes me wonder how I would do it if I decided to publicly display as my gender, especially dealing with family or old acquaintances.

My mum, being brilliant, has never really demanded an explanation from me. i volunteered one of my own accord. but she wanted me to know that it isn't anyone else's right to know if i'm genderfluid or androgynous or genderless or a transman or whatever. all anyone needs to know is "i'm Elliott and i'd prefer it if you referred to me with male pronouns please". they don't need to know why, they don't need to know precisely what organs i do or do not have... just like no one has the right to know my birth name. Basically no one has the right to demand to know PERSONAL information about me. Like my gender and my sexuality. i don't need to explain myself, I am Elliott and that's all anyone needs to know.

[Elliott Ford]

Makes me wonder how I would do it if I decided to publicly display as my gender, especially dealing with family or old acquaintances.

I'm glad I was born female because I can dress like that and nobody cares. If I feel like dressing very feminine, that's OK too. If I was biologically male, cross dressing because I think it looks nice would not be socially acceptable.

Maddox, i won't lie and say it's easy because it isn't. as metalgirl2045 points out, i have it easier than i might otherwise because i'm female-bodied (although the disadvantage of this is that it makes it really difficult to be accepted as male when i want to be, because lots of women look like me).

Some of my friends from back home were shocked when i came back after a term of university having seemingly changed out of all recognition. they couldn't see past the clothes and the hair and see that i was still me but i'd just dropped the act i'd been keeping up the whole time they knew me. they knew me as a girl and it was hard to get them to do even the simplest things, like call me Elliott. they usually manage alright when i change my name (i have a history of changing it) but this time was different because i'd changed my gender presentation too. they couldn't see that i hadn't changed as a person.

it's not easy. but i'm happier now that i'm not pretending.

[Sinitivity]

Mhmm, the french philosophy Judith Miller articulates the fact that gender is merely a social construct we are conditioned to follow, changing to suit social context. In today's context there is much more fluidity and ambiguity surrounding sexuality, so much fluidity that the rigid male/female categories have been strewn with alternatives.

It might seem a little backwards, but in the end I feel like gender should be a referral to someones biological attributes, which then you can pair with traits such as "masculine" and "feminine". With the exception to Trans-gender, because that's primarily when someone feels their biological bits "a false of incompletely description of themselves".

[maddox]

Going back to the original question...

The way I see gender is as two continuums, or giant sliders, one for female and one for male. Your gender changes as you slide the sliders wherever you see fit on that particular month, or day, or hour. It was very liberating when I first realized that it was totally valid to change the sliders every day if you wanted to!

And yes, some people here disagree that we should even use the terms male/female, but that's just the way we've been conditioned to *see* the world, and language does shape your brain and perceptions. THAT is why I think labels are important, and although the meaning of the label does not change, the person is free to change labels. Therefore, we avoid permanently labeling a person, while retaining some sort of meaning or way of identifying certain attributes.

Now an analogy: think of gender as colours: if you wanted to imagine a slightly dark green, it would be on the green continuum, and you call it dark green, as if it is a variation of green, even though ideally it is not really "green," we just label it that way. And a dark green can come in all shades, which are technically different from each other, but we still call all of them dark green.

As with gender, turquoise seems to be a very awkward color because for some it looks more green than blue, or more blue than green for others, and it can even change for the same person to the point that it becomes a color on it's own because it doesn't fit the prescribed colors we already have. Some don't like turquoise because of this ambiguity, some do. But if you imagine the sliders, turquoise could still fit within a blue + green continuum....

Now take white; is white the absence of color (as it is with paint) or the aggregate of all the colors (as it is with light)? The same with black...

This is really just a thought experiment to get at other's points of view, so feel free to argue.

[Raef]

My mum attempted to beat it out of me/beat femininity into me when I was a kid, which may be why I'm unable to just dismiss labels, 'chill', be myself etc because for a few years [12 - 14ish] I tried my best to fit in with the females at school - so now I have to figure out what my natural voice sounds like [tried to make it more feminine, but pretty much just makes me soft-spoken and have to repeat myself lol] and stuff like that.

Anyone else experience the ol' "it's just a tomboy phase" line?

I know it's lazy but I wish there was something that could accurately say 'you're this' and then I'd know for sure, instead of having to work out all this gender and sexuality stuff.

[Elliott Ford]

in response to Maddox,

My SO and i are both non-binary and in order to explain our respective gender identities we drew a graph. Masculine axis (y axis) perpendicular to feminine axis (x axis). Se's at origin, (0,0) being neither masculine or feminine whilst i'm floating around the middle (if we assume the axis both go 0 - 100, then my coordinates are around (55,75)) i'm actually considering drawing this graph and sticking it on my wall so that i can plot my ever-changing gender on it to look for patterns that might indicate... well, something about what gender it is that i am.

to Raef, i know you'll have heard it before and i know it's damned frustrating but only you can work out what you are. Not too long ago i defined both my gender and sexuality as "I don't know, why are you asking me?". Now i'm saying that my gender is "Elliott" and leaving people to make their own minds up about what the heck that's supposed to mean. it don't help much but have some .

[Cazz333]

Some of my friends from back home were shocked when i came back after a term of university having seemingly changed out of all recognition. they couldn't see past the clothes and the hair and see that i was still me but i'd just dropped the act i'd been keeping up the whole time they knew me. they knew me as a girl and it was hard to get them to do even the simplest things, like call me Elliott. they usually manage alright when i change my name (i have a history of changing it) but this time was different because i'd changed my gender presentation too. they couldn't see that i hadn't changed as a person.

i

it's not easy. but 'm happier now that i'm not pretending.

Yeah, I tend to not make a big deal out of the fact that I'm not very feminine. Most of time I wear what I want and try to be content with my life and improve it if need be. I think in the end that makes other people around happier and more comfortable with me despite my gender fluidity. Unfortunately, my parents object to my style of dressing most of the time since they want me to look sexy and attractive. Really so more men would be attracted to me and so I can choose who I want then. Yet, I think the price is too high to pay. I rather be myself and attract men by being the best me and not dressing for them or for anyone else.

This might be TMI, but when is the point where one person wants to be an ftm transsexual and the other just wants to have just a male identity? In my experience, I don't even want a male name, just to wear male clothes and I don't object to more neutral female clothes or spartan feminine ones. The only thing I do wish that it was easier to date men and not have them think I'm an effeminate male, an ftm transexual or simply a freak.

My mum attempted to beat it out of me/beat femininity into me when I was a kid, which may be why I'm unable to just dismiss labels, 'chill', be myself etc because for a few years [12 - 14ish] I tried my best to fit in with the females at school - so now I have to figure out what my natural voice sounds like [tried to make it more feminine, but pretty much just makes me soft-spoken and have to repeat myself lol] and stuff like that.

Anyone else experience the ol' "it's just a tomboy phase" line?

I know it's lazy but I wish there was something that could accurately say 'you're this' and then I'd know for sure, instead of having to work out all this gender and sexuality stuff.

I used to wish that. Now I'm less bothered because well, there's only of me. Why be someone else when there's only one of me to be? Besides conforming doesn't make one happier if different, it just confuses you. You don't know who you are or what you want because you're so used to tailoring yourself to other people's wants and lives.

in response to Maddox,

My SO and i are both non-binary and in order to explain our respective gender identities we drew a graph. Masculine axis (y axis) perpendicular to feminine axis (x axis). Se's at origin, (0,0) being neither masculine or feminine whilst i'm floating around the middle (if we assume the axis both go 0 - 100, then my coordinates are around (55,75)) i'm actually considering drawing this graph and sticking it on my wall so that i can plot my ever-changing gender on it to look for patterns that might indicate... well, something about what gender it is that i am.

to Raef, i know you'll have heard it before and i know it's damned frustrating but only you can work out what you are. Not too long ago i defined both my gender and sexuality as "I don't know, why are you asking me?". Now i'm saying that my gender is "Elliot" and leaving people to make their own minds up about what the heck that's supposed to mean. it don't help much but have some .

I fit somewhere in the middle of the graph although I can on some days end up on the origin.

[Raef]

Thanks for the