QUILTBAG. Queer, Questioning, Undecided, Intersex, Lesbian, Transgender, Bisexual, Asexual, Ally, Gay, Genderqueer.

In my experience, everyone has at least a general idea of what most of those words mean. For example, 'lesbian'. There's variability in the definition—does a woman who's never had sex with a woman count as a lesbian? What about a woman who's attracted to men as well as women but who has sex with women exclusively? But if I say 'lesbian', you hear some variant of 'woman who has sex with women', for just about any value of 'you'. Similarly, bisexual and transgender people get the short end of the stick from most sides, but thanks to the popularity of the acronym 'LGBT', people tend to at least have heard rumors of the existence of bisexual and transgender people.

Intersex and genderqueer, though? What nonsense is this?

I am not intersex, nor am I aware of knowing anyone who is, so I'll leave the explanation of that concept to the experts. I am, however, genderqueer myself, and I know several other genderqueer folk. This subject I can take on.

Everyone who isn't intersex fits into one of two distinct boxes with regards to biological sex. XX or XY, vulva or penis. 'Sex', the characteristic so identified, is entirely distinct from 'gender', the characteristic discussed in the remainder of this piece, though confusingly the words 'female' and 'male', 'man' and 'woman', are used to refer to either sex or gender, or where possible both at once. Mostly it's possible, because most people are cisgender: self-identified female as well as birth-attending-doctor-identified female, for example. Sometimes it is not possible, because some people are transgender or genderqueer: 'transgender' means, for example, identifying male while having been identified at birth as female. Gender is both an identity and a social construct.

Wikipedia is an excellent starting place for a relatively straightforward definition of the word 'genderqueer'. To paraphrase: there are at least as many ways to be genderqueer as there are people who call themselves genderqueer, and there are several categories within the concept: bigender people (who are both male and female), third-gender people (who have a gender that is neither male nor female), agender or genderless people (who have no gender), genderfluid people (who are sometimes one gender, sometimes another, sometimes in between), and people who queer gender (who express gender in non-normative ways).

An example of queering gender would be someone I know who goes by Woggy. He identifies as cisgender, describes himself as a 'femme male', and I have seen a picture of him wearing an ankle-length green skirt. In US culture, from whence Woggy and I both hail, skirts are reserved for the female of the species, and the cissexist mind would lock up at the sight of the obviously male Woggy wearing one.

Someone who declines to be identified has childhood recollections of thinking "I should have been born a girl". He oscillates between thinking of himself as happily genderqueer and as a trans woman in denial; he prefers himself with long curly hair and without facial hair on the grounds that that way he looks "girly". If he is a trans woman (and I continue to use male pronouns despite that possibility because he says he prefers them, at least for the moment), he's not among those who would seek sex reassignment surgery; he is content to remain physically male. Gender is often described as performative, as a result of our behavior and the roles we play, and so it is for him.

Azz identifies alternately as 'genderfluid' and 'gender-irrelevant', and before all else as 'geek'. They can be found on the gender binary, sometimes a feminine 'she' and sometimes a masculine 'it', but they are not always on the gender binary, and see also 'gender-irrelevant'. They will answer to feminine pronouns, though, being female-bodied and accustomed to wearing skirts and tops that flatter that body.

An anonymous individual prefers the pronoun 'ő', or 's/he' and 'her' for those of us who speak English and can't work out how "roughly like the 'ir' in bird, particularly with the British received pronunciation which drops the r, and gets the vowel sound close enough" is supposed to sound. S/he isn't sure if s/he's agender, genderfluid, third-gender, or as Azz says, gender-irrelevant; the beauty of the term 'genderqueer' is that it's broad enough to cover all those possibilities. The certainty is that s/he is not male and not female. Especially so on days when s/he's on her period or similar; the disjunction between the body's thus-emphasized sex and the mind's gender or lack thereof exacerbates mental health issues.

Sixwing uses female pronouns offline for family reasons, neutral pronouns online; ze is constantly amazed at how people respond to zir setting zir gender, in Internet places that require disclosure, to 'not telling' or 'other'. Identifying as genderqueer is, for zir, more about rejecting gender than embracing it, because neither female nor male stereotypes, roles, or accoutrements fit. Ze is working to present as androgynous to masculine rather than as feminine, and appreciates that zir workplace doesn't require gendered clothing; again, gender as performance, tertiary sexual characteristics such as clothing deliberately chosen.

Rainne is female-assigned-at-birth (as distinct from female-bodied; as another FAAB interviewee said, it's their body and they're not female). She tends to recognize this fact only when it is being inconvenient, such as when she is on her period. Female pronouns aside, Rainne is agender, and behaves as such. Not femme, not butch. Gender is a performance in which Rainne chooses not to play a role.

I myself identify most days as an agendered femme woman, three words: one for gender identity, one for gender performance, one for body shape. The rest of the time, I think I'm being appropriative of the genderqueer experience by identifying myself as genderqueer rather than as a cis woman. Certainly the world outside the Internet thinks I'm a cis woman, and my skirts and earrings and my reluctance to get motor oil on my hands do nothing to dissuade them of that belief.

Huh. It's only as I write this paragraph that I realize, for an essay meant to reflect the diversity of genderqueerness, it's not very diverse at all. My interviewees whose birth sex is male identify with the female gender, and my interviewees whose birth sex is female are gender-neutral.

I did not ask any of my interviewees their sexual orientation, though some of them volunteered that information. This was deliberate on my part. Gender identity and sexual orientation are two distinct things. They're related—a male-assigned-at-birth person beginning to feel sexual attraction to men might be beginning to identify as a cis gay man or as a straight trans woman—but there are significant differences between cis gay men and straight trans women, not least of which being the level of societal acceptance. Gay and lesbian people are not inherently rejecting the gender binary, just the bit that says men must have sex only with women and vice versa. Trans people are not inherently rejecting the gender binary, just the bit that says gender is determined by whether one's procreative organs are external or internal.

Genderqueer people inherently reject the gender binary altogether. 'Male' and 'female' are not the only categories, our existence says; belonging to one category does not preclude belonging to another, and it is not compulsory to belong to either.

Perhaps that's part of why genderqueerness is so little known. We threaten the gender binary, and on that binary rest so many assumptions (established as early as the pink or blue icing on the baby shower cake) about people and how they behave that if it crumbles, everything might crumble with it. Better to pretend we don't exist.

Guess what? I exist. Woggy, Rainne, Azz, Sixwing, they exist. Bigender and third-gender people, they exist. And for many, many reasons, it is long past time that the gender binary came tumbling down.

--MercuryBlue

---

The Slacktiverse is a community blog. Content reflects the individual opinions of the contributors. We welcome disagreement in the comment threads, and invite anyone who wishes to present an alternative interpretation of a situation to write and submit a post.

Comments

[Sixwing]

Hm. Perhaps it's more about a diversity of implementation? 'Agender' could also encompass a large range of presentations and styles as well as intentions regarding gender as classically perceived, so while it's a worthwhile umbrella, I don't think it necessarily indicates sameness. For instance, I despise skirts and refuse to wear them unless there are really good reasons (but kudos to those who like and wear them, because fashion is not something I care to be prescriptive about). I have a distinct appreciation for a particular 'femme dandy' gender expression (and oh my the issues wrt class there) and have begun to think of it as a specifically genderqueer part of fashion, but that's a tiny sliver of the many ways of ... er, not fitting into the binary, while still working within a world that, by and large, operates with that binary as one of its baseline assumptions.

By which I mean if you have a function that will accept 0 or 1 as values, a null will make it break just as much as a 3, but that doesn't mean that 3 is equal to null.

Typepad, what're you doing? So sorry if this posts twice; I promise I added content the second time.

[Rakka]

Thank you for this post. I hope the conversation will continue in the comments.

Gender? Irrelevant as long as I'm not expected to be a woman. I don't usually make special effort to pass for man, but I dislike how it's assumed I'm a woman just because of my body, and treat me differently because of it. I only realized, after starting working at my parent's shop that draws 50% old men for customers how much I hate it. They don't mean it badly, but in a situation that I can't correct it and don't see much point to, it rankles.

I didn't use to mind having a female body - I mean, it has its not-a-bug-a-features but mine is pretty good from functional point of view - when people didn't shove me into a box for it. I'd be a happy Gethenian in somer (and not currently living with my beloved, so somer is an ok state to be in) but this is pushing me to think of transitioning somewhere halfway or so. Probably not going to go there but the thought of it is more serious now than a year ago. We shall see where it'll lead to.

I'd like to hear more about how people who identify as third gender define the, well, third gender, if abyone is willing to share.

[Deird, who is incredibly female]

I find genderqueer-ness harder to relate to than being trans*. Being VERY STRONGLY gender identified, I can imagine what it would be like to be strongly identified for a gender opposite to what my body indicates - but I find it very hard to put myself in the shoes of someone who doesn't stay on one extreme or the other...

Thanks, MB, for reminding me that it's more complicated than I tend to think it is.

[hapax]

I found this post to be absolutely fascinating, because I could put myself in the headspace of practically every other letter of the acronym -- but not this one.

And I do have a very bad tendency to assume "if I can't understand this, it must not really exist."

Or worse, I try to force it into a category I *do* understand, and 'splain, "Aha! What you *really* mean is This Other Thing entirely!"

(Analogy may be my friend, but it's often a friend who doesn't have a clue where it's going...)

[Lonespark]

This post is a good start on a big confusing subject. So, a good thing in More Complicated land.

As I have grown up these three decades and some I become more confused about separating the strands of gender role, sexual orientation, and gender identity. Because they're all braided/tangled/blended together, I suppose. I think an important part of feminism, of activism for queer rights, and for sexual freedom* in general is that it shouldn't matter, except to define identity and smooth communication. It shouldn't matter to what degree our identities are innate, or easily categorized, or related to thoughts vs. behaviors. Boxes don't get at the complexity. Axes sort of do, maybe...

*I wanted a term that encompasses freedom for attractions and behaviors that respect consent. That would include QUILTBAG people, kinky people, poly people, etc... "Sex-positive" as an identifier sounds like it might be denigrating asexuality, chastity, etc. I don't know many other terms.

[MercuryBlue]

Boxes don't get at the complexity. Axes sort of do, maybe...

Maps? Topographical or time-lapse if necessary?

"Sex-positive" as an identifier sounds like it might be denigrating asexuality, chastity, etc.

'Might be' nothing. I remember reading somebody say ze was asexual and therefore anything that put sex and zir in the same sentence was a Bad Thing, and therefore 'sex-positive' bad. Not something that occurred to whoever coined and nearly everybody who uses the term, I'm sure.

Also (I think this next bit comes out of a synecdochic essay which I will attempt to find after work) the possibility of using 'sex is a good thing, baby!' to pressure someone into sex. I don't like 'sexual freedom' for that latter reason, unless it is made Very Clear that freedom to have sex requires freedom not to have sex. (Given how few people seem to realize that freedom of one's own religion requires freedom from others' religion, or freedom to have children requires freedom not to have children...)

[Lonespark]

Maps? Topographical or time-lapse if necessary?

Damn that's sexy-awesome. More visual modeling, says the geologist!

I don't like 'sexual freedom' for that latter reason, unless it is made Very Clear that freedom to have sex requires freedom not to have sex.

Right. It's not a good term, but I couldn't think of a good term.

[Rowen]

I can't really imagine any definition of the term "sexual freedom" that doesn't include the right to say no. That just seems to smack of "ur doin it rong."

Same thing with "Sex is a good thing." So's cake, but I'm not gonna be forced to eat it when I don't want to.

[Majromax]

Same thing with "Sex is a good thing." So's cake, but I'm not gonna be forced to eat it when I don't want to.

If the narrative is "Cake is a good thing," then it's implicit that someone who says "I don't like cake. Not just 'not right now', but I don't ever like cake" is doing it wrong. Maybe they just haven't had the right kind of cake, or they've not had it when they've been hungry, or they had a bad experience with cake as a child, or they have a medical condition/allergy that renders them tragically unable to enjoy cake, or...

It's bad enough with food preference. I imagine that dealing with it when it's sex is really spoon-intensive.

[Timothy (TRiG)]

There was a case, a while ago, of a same-sex couple in Malawi arrested for homosexuality. It later came out that they actually weren't a same-sex couple: one of the "men" was actually a trans woman. Or not. And this is where it gets dicey, because different cultures seem to draw these lines in different places. To me, it seems clear that gay and trans identities are very different, but this may not be the case for everyone.

The Observer recently had an article about asexuality.

TRiG.

[Rowen]

I dunno. I really don't like pie, yet have no problem asserting it here, amongst all the pie lovers.

I'm also fully aware that I'm not most people. I also find it really hard to find an appropriate analogy since I don't want to compare sex, or a person's right to not have/desire sex to a bad thing.

[Majromax]

I dunno. I really don't like pie, yet have no problem asserting it here, amongst all the pie lovers.

Nobody here is pressuring you to actually have pie, either at this very moment or in the near-ish future as a matter of general principle. Try the same thing at, say, a family dinner. "What do you mean you don't like pie? You should try some of Aunt Matilda's Cherry Bon Bon Chocolate Creme Dexlue Pie, it's the best! She'll be very offended if you don't have any! It's not like you're full, I see you have a plate full of cookies right there!"

Even a sex-positive culture can put pressure on an asexual/celibate person to defend hir preferences. That's a good deal milder than pressure to actually have sex at this very moment, but it's still an emotional strain. Hell, for a strictly heteronormative example look at the guilt/stress/embarrassment stereotypically attributed to the late-teenage virgin.

It seems like the most supportive culture would be one that is based on the principle of "there is no normal," but I have a hard time imagining what that would be like.

[hapax]

Boxes don't get at the complexity. Axes sort of do, maybe...

Oh dear. I know what this *means*, but now I can't get the image out of my head of a band of Pratchett's dwarves industriously thwacking away at the Gordian knot of Venus's girdle...

[muteKi]

Definitely a tough question, especially since I think gender labels really only can apply on larger scales (see here); as a result it's always seemed to me that "queer" is a nearly meaningless label in terms of understanding what a person might be like -- because few if any people strike me as fitting into such categories neatly, and thus the term seems unable to really speak to the sort of variance in behavior not implied in more strict classifiers.

Of course given the points 1 and 3 a bit in the middle of the article here, I can see why people would have issues with why many seemingly reduce genders to relatively simple criteria. The examples given later in that link are interesting as well.

[Timothy (TRiG)]

... so you decided to put it into our minds instead.

TRiG. ;)

[Timothy (TRiG)]

Incidentally, on the under-development free-software social-network site Diaspora, sex/gender is an open text field. I found this from a question about designing a website: Should the default sex be male or female? (Many of the answers to the question included, Why do you want to know?

TRiG.

[Sixwing]

muteKi, I'm not sure I agree that gender labels apply only on large scales. In this very thread we have an individual who identifies very strongly with a gender label, and the entire thing is about people who don't identify with any of the classical European, binary gender labels.

Are you really trying to imply that the whole thing is meaningless at an individual level? That's what I'm getting out of your post, and I'd disagree rather vehemently with that statement. To riff off the article here, by the same author as your first link and feeding right into the idea that generic plurals can be very misleading, what's the point of making statements about a population if those statements can't reliably describe the individuals who make up the population? It seems like a useless pursuit unless you're interested strictly in the percents of a given population who do a thing, which is not what this article was about.

[Nenya]

I love this article. :) One of my little sisters is genderqueer--she goes by female pronouns most of the time, but she says that she wears her gender more like a costume than an inherent part of her. "I'm a little bit boy," she says, and wears long skirts sometimes but more often chucks and a tie, and feels most herself in an androgynous suit (what Sixwing calls 'femme dandy' or something similar).

She is epically badass. <3

I'm more or less happy as a woman--I often say I'm about 97% girl. I love having boobs; if I could never again have to deal with a period I would be absolutely delighted. (The two years I was on the pill and could skip periods were fantastic, except that it shut down my sex drive.) I can't stand long skirts (short sexy ones are sometimes OK), but I can't tell if that's just because I associate that garment with my fucked-up Christianist upbringing. But sometimes I would really like to try out a guy's body for a while, just to see what it was like. I remember telling my mother when I was about seven years old, "Wouldn't it be cool if we could switch back and forth and be a girl sometimes and a boy sometimes?" I didn't even realize that trans* or genderqueer was a thing, at the time, but it just seemed cool and I was sad that I couldn't try it. It felt limiting, like an option I ought to have wasn't there. I am fascinated by shapeshifters in fiction for this reason among others. (Why in Valen's name doesn't Odo ever look like a girl unless he's impersonating someone? Why??)

tl;dr from someone who identifies as a cis-woman, but this whole topic fascinates me. Humans are so damn amazing in our variety.

[DanA]

Thanks for sharing this. It helps me slowly wrap my brain around concepts like genderqueerness and transexuality that are concepts that I find completely foreign and confusing. I was born and raised a cis-gendered male and despite despising everything associated with masculinity (as practiced in my local social context) and wishing I had been a girl since it seemed like I would have been happier my gender identity has always been firmly male and identifying as anything else seemed as bizarre as identifying as a cat would have been, regardless of how nice it would have been if that were the case.

[Kirala]

One thing I am curious about is how genderqueerness interacts with sexuality. If a person does not identify as either male or female, it would be difficult to be considered either homo- or hetero-sexual (unless the person considers "homosexual" to be preferring people of a similar genderqueer state and "heterosexual" to be preferring people not so? Or uses biology as a default mode?)

Is there terminology to be used for expressing sexual preference independent of self-identified gender, or do most people just say "I prefer females/males/other/none/no preference"?

[Certainly Sylvia]

Egads ... so much to the dialogue :)

I guess I'd start with my own, hopefully polite view, on the whole issue of labels.

Please, No boxes; No Axes; No Maps; No Topographical constructs, euclidean or otherwise; no positive affirmations, on sex or any other identifier, and absolutely no categorisation from outside of any given individuals' narrative.

I am not a label. I don't fit into any box anyone wants to settle me into and I don't want to fit into such.

Technically I was born Intersex. I didn't know at the time. Neither did my parents. I didn't find out until years after I'd come out as transgender. The practice here, back at the dawn of time, was that the doctors would 'guess' (always guessed male though - no bias there I'm, sure) :P and 'adjust' the infant without either the parents consent or knowledge.

I identify as Transgender, Lesbian and Queer. I'm good with female or neutral pronouns. I'm not ashamed of being Intersexed. I have no issue with anyone who identifies as such. That is their decision, within their own narrative, and I don't get to argue that point.

There are reasons I reject, for myself, the I in QUILTBAG, but they are my reasons and could be considered quite political. I never go into them in detail because I do not wish for anyone to think I am imposing my narrative on them. This is only the second time I've ever mentioned being Intersex on the net. I've only told 3 people off net. So the distinction doesn't often come up. Many people see me as transgender and I'm okay with that. Some people still see me as male and I simply correct them.

It's complex and, as a result, only the person involved should decide on any label or category - if they want one - because as soon as we go there we come upon the danger of categorical imperatives and issues such as gender essentialism.

I'm not arguing against a lexicon, a language of possible definitions, only that it must be seen as a flexible construct.

Take, for example, the binary aspect of female. When we identify as female we are identifying as something, at a meta level, quite vague. You could take a group of strongly self-identified women and ask them 'What is female?' and get a host of different answers. I've seen such research and the only common point of definition tends to come in at a biological level, which is about sex, not gender per se.

Even then, you find all kinds of conflicts. In one study group a member was born with something missing. She was female. She had self-identified as and been externally identified as female all her life. Was she Intersex? The doctors didn't think so. She certainly didn't. The other women in her discussion group all agreed that she was female. So yeah ... can being female be reduced to biology?

Gender is even more fluid. Look at how the social view of female has shifted over time in many parts of the world. The same for males.

In Australia, 70 years ago, if you were female there were specific perfomative requirements to avoid being seen as odd. As a general rule, Men did not cook. Nor should they cry or show any feminine display. Women did not work or, if they did, once they were married that was expected to change. As late at the early 1970's, if a woman got married she had to resign from any public service job she held. It was law.

There was a case in the 1940'2/50's of one of our greatest Physicists of the time, hiding her marriage - with her husbands assistance - in order to keep her job. When their deception was discovered she was treated terribly and serious consideration was given toward charging both her and the husband with fraud! She ended up resigning just before the birth of her first child.[¹]

Now, more men cook and help in other domestic duties. Women can work and express freedoms that, in other eras, would have been considered unthinkable. Still there is a ways to go. I'm not saying we're 'there yet' .... just ... closer.

Seriously, in the early 19th century, there was serious resitance to letting females get access to education in the USA[²]. Some of the arguments made were tragic. Reasons such as how it would be unfair to impose education on women, because they'll fail in comparison to men and that would instill a deep sense of inferiority in them. Yep .. don't let them go to school because the poor dears will come out of the experience scarred and repressed.

So their access to education should be repressed because, if it isn't, then they will feel repressed! Good grief.

Now, females outperform men, in Australia at least, across the board in education.

So, if a binary definition can shift so radically ... well, it's easy to see how variable non-binary definitions could be.

Such definitional absolutism is not confined to patriarchal expression. Just look at some of the positions of first wave feminism. Germaine Greer, among many others, displays virulent rhetoric and opposition to any expression of transgenderism.[³]

They were, and many still are, engaged in a fight to control a narrative (What is female) that, in reality, has shifted and continues to do so.

Such views are expressed also at the infamous (to me at least) Michigan Womyns Festival. [⁴] While many attendees are engaged in political dissent, the consensus is still an abhorent one. To them, women must have been 'born as such' and must have lived as such. They need to have experienced the evils of the patriarchy to qualify.

But seriously, even among those that fit within that definition, the range of experience is enormous. No? To them, someone 'born female' is more qualified to wear that label that someone who 'chose to be female.' Someone born into a position of disadvantage, re patriarchy, is somehow more qualified than someone who actively rejected it?

It isn't as simple as that of course. Nor is as simple as saying that those who 'become female' were not raised differently in privilege.

The point is, it's incredibly complex. As a result, I contend that any labelling must grant the bearer of that label the right of self-defintion, first, above all others.

I reject any action that strives to define my narrative, or that of anyone else. Such endeavours are almost always ideologically driven.

That doesn't preclude discussions of such, or aggreements between groups of people. Just ... any consensus should only apply to those within that consensus.

Egads ... that was longer than I expected. Hopefully there aren't too many tl dr response :)

[¹] Sometimes laws are just wrong.↩

[²] I have a really good article here somewhere but can't find it. Will keep looking, because it has some quotes by politicians opposing access to primary education for women. Scary looking glass.

[³] Grr grr Germaine ... I love you otherwise ... but no no no on this.↩

[⁴] Transphobia sadness.↩

[MercuryBlue]

Is there terminology to be used for expressing sexual preference independent of self-identified gender, or do most people just say "I prefer females/males/other/none/no preference"?

The words 'androphile' and 'gynephile' exist, but I've hardly ever seen anyone use them. I've seen bi/pan/omnisexual with rather higher frequency.

[Nenya]

It may be because most of the nonbinary-gendered people I know are also attracted to more than one gender, but I do see bisexual and pansexual used a lot. (It fits for my sister and--if I remember correctly--the friend in town here who uses "they" as a singular pronoun.)

Of course there's a whole post in there somewhere about how through self-selection the phrase "In the future, everyone is bisexual" when applied to my life would indicate that, in fact, I live in the future--so I'm sure there are mono-sexual (androphile, gynephile) genderqueer folk somewhere. In my sister's case it seems like fluidity in gender applies both to herself and to whom she dates, but again, anecdata.

[Lonespark]

Speaking of femme dandies and the like, I was recently made aware of this website:

http://www.queerbois.com/

I might have looked at every page because lovely pictures.

[Rowen]

Majromax,

Please do NOT assume that just because other people are functioning with a dearth of spoons that I have a full drawer. I said what I said for a reason and am aware of, through first hand experience, that SOME people can come up and inform me that I haven't enjoyed the right kind of "pie." Yes, that's not cool and extremely rude. I will not, however, deny the right of people to enjoy and to talk about enjoying pie (not a euphamism) around me, which is what I feel that automatically dismissing any sex positive talk as being othering is doing.

[Lonespark]

Also this post goes along with a BIIIIG discussion being had in pagan circles about gender and religious practice in the wake this year's Pantheacon, and last year's.

[Nick Kiddle]

//One thing I am curious about is how genderqueerness interacts with sexuality. If a person does not identify as either male or female, it would be difficult to be considered either homo- or hetero-sexual (unless the person considers "homosexual" to be preferring people of a similar genderqueer state and "heterosexual" to be preferring people not so? Or uses biology as a default mode?)//

I lurk on a board with lots of non-binary people, and the idea that keeps coming up is that the usual terms for sexual orientations very much reinforce the binary. People with binary identities define their attraction to other binary identities and non-binary identities are othered and left out. Then there's the running argument about whether bisexual inherently implies there are only two binary genders. I think the consensus is that the usual terms are less than useful when applied to non-binary people.

[Anonymous]

I identify myself as a genderqueer lesbian. I don't like the term gynaephile because to me...gynae reminds me of gynaecology and lady-bits and perhaps gynae is greek for "woman" or something, I don't know, I don't speak greek, but to me, it primarily calls up the physical aspects of being a woman, and not all women have those physical aspects and some people who have them aren't women. But I'm not bisexual or pansexual or anything like that. I'm attracted to the female-bodied and/or female minded, and to only one person at a time, monogamy and no extra-marital sex and all of that.

It's true that there isn't a word that means "someone of my gender who is attracted to women" but I'm okay with using the term lesbian, which seems to be the nearest term.

[Anonymous]

Also most terms ending with -philia aren't about a friendly sort of love or a romantic love, but are about an over the top sort of love, a love that's become a problem.

[Sixwing, who is sleepy like whoa]

Certainly Sylvia, thank you for the long and thought-provoking post! I very much agree that someone's identity needs to be a realm of self-definition first. What I have trouble with is squaring that with a society that very much wants to identify me (and others) based on a set of mostly-arbitrary traits, at which point grrrrrrrrrr.

I contend that any labelling must grant the bearer of that label the right of self-defintion, first, above all others.

QFT!

Ahaha, and then we get into sexuality, and I have to point at the motto and laugh at some of those mostly-arbitrary traits used to categorize people. I don't think I can write about sexuality without getting very muddled, considering I am not entirely sure I understand it myself.

[Rakka]

IIRC the reason why intersexed babies are usually "fixed" to male is that it's pretty much impossible to make a functional penis, whereas it's only difficult and costly to make a vagina, so in doing a completely needless permanent operation they at least err on the side of caution... Sigh.

[Certainly Sylvia]

Sixwing,

I agree with the issue of socially-imposed identities being difficult. To me that's resolved by people coming together, imperfectly, under broad labels and pushing back. The LGBT movement is largely a politcal action. That's a good thing, solidarity, but it also contains a danger. Many will see that group narrative as a refection of any given member.

It isn't. It's a blend of all the members.

Another problem is where you come to 'Group Identity' as something imposed and expected. That is, a group of disparate individuals comes together to fight for their collective rights. Certain 'truths' emerge from that and are assumed to be universal to anyone sharing the group narrative.

The problem here is, if someone within the group says something counter to the unconventional collective wisdom, they are often shouted down and/or vilified.

I'm not saying eveyone has to agree with them, but they don't get to say anything like "No ... if you are one of us then you cannot think that or hold that narrative."

It's complicated however, because there are basic factors which are seriously foundational to the group narrative ... but then there are others that are treated as though they are, when they are not. Telling the difference is not always easy.

[just this girl, y'know?]

I'm feeling rather the need to be anonymous at the moment, so I hope y'all will forgive me. This is a fascinating discussion which really makes me wonder a few things. Maybe y'all might be able to pitch in a few thoughts.

So -- born girl, pretty much identify with it, because, well, that's kinda the way it's always been. But I've always been a tomboy type. I was the one out in the street playing baseball with the boys. I always wanted the boy toy at McDonalds -- hot wheels were *so* much cooler than Barbie dolls. In sixth grade, I was the pride of the class because I actually won baseball tickets from the local radio station by knowing the answer to the morning sports trivia question. (Also, I could name every World Series winner for forty years running, which also fascinated the boys.)

Thanks to a quirk of biology, I can go years without having a period (although some of the drugs they give me seem to trigger it more often -- although I hated the birth control and having it every month. It felt *wrong* in some horrible way) and I grow a beard. I've also got a voice that's slightly deep for a girl, and when I am in baggy jeans, a jacket and a ballcap -- particularly if I haven't shaved in a while -- I have been known to be called 'sir'. It's gotten to the point where I don't even correct them anymore. I prefer masculine avatars when I have to create them online -- the girl ones don't fit right, as I noticed when I was playing around with my xbox avatar trying to find another t-shirt and getting annoyed that the boobs were that noticeable.

Even now, I don't really like girly things. I could care less about sewing and knitting, I love football and baseball, I work with computers (which I know is more gender neutral these days, but still...), I am a geek and a nerd. I hate skirts and dressing up -- you'll generally see me in jeans and t-shirts, and I try to keep my hair cut short because I don't like having to take a ton of time for maintenance of my appearance.

Physically, I'm tallish (six foot even), broad shouldered, and -- well, I'll just admit it, I'm fat. I used to joke I'd be a decent linebacker candidate if I'd been a guy.

I don't really know. I mean, I'm pretty okay with being a girl. But there are times I wish gender just didn't matter so much, and that the fact I had boobs meant that I was a lesser person and that, well, can't we all stop focusing on the who's going to bonk whom and get some work done here? (Although, that, I suspect, is another issue coming into play.)

So yeah, it's not so much that I want a penis -- it's just that, in some ways, I'd not mind any gender markings at all. I don't know. Kinda confused. Any thoughts?

[Anonymous]

My opinion, if you want my opinion (I'm interpreting "Any thoughts?" as a request for opinions, but if my opinion doesn't fit you, feel free to discard it), is that you could be any number of things, the one that feels most right (or least wrong) when you consider it for yourself is probably your best bet. You could be a woman -- there's nothing wrong with women liking sports, being butch, preferring cars to barbies, etc. You don't have to be femme to be a woman, so that's a possibility. You could also be intersex[1], which doesn't preclude you identifying as a woman, a man, genderqueer, transgendered, agendered, or anything else. You could be a trans man. You may or may not want to transition, and you may or may not want to transition all the way. You could be a male in a female body who doesn't identify as trans. You could also be genderqueer, which is what you sound like to me, but what matters is what you sound like to you.

There are a lot of options with genderqueer, since it's a catch-all term. When you write "I'd not mind any gender markings at all," you sound like you might be agendered -- a person who doesn't have a gender. If you feel your gender shifts and changes -- sometimes being more masculine, sometimes being less masculine (or more feminine), sometimes being other, sometimes being agendered, then you might be genderfluid (And you don't have to sometimes be feminine to be genderfluid either). You could be gender-irrelevant as well. That's the "all right, I've got boobs, can we talk about something interesting now?" section of genderqueer.

My advice is to try things on for size, and keep what fits. I'm somewhere between genderfluid and agendered myself. I think. I'm sure I'm genderqueer, but I haven't nailed it down more specifically than that. Do you like being called sir? Or do you feel that you're not really sure what to correct them with, that sir is as wrong as ma'am would be? Or do you not care whether you're called sir or ma'am? How you answer these and other questions you might ask yourself can give you clues that can help you pin your gender down, if it wants to be pinned down. Some genders are slippery fish.

Also, I wanted to say that these aren't the only options. The options listed are fairly eurocentric modern concepts and there are other options available. Some cultures view sex and gender and orientation in different ways, such as Bakla or Two-Spirit, but if you are not a member of one of those cultures, it may be difficult to navigate those other approaches to sex, gender, and orientation in a way that is not appropriation. I'm not sure whether as a white person I could claim to be Two-Spirit without having grown up in a native american culture, without having any ties to a tribe -- I would at the very least feel as though I was a white person coming in and picking and choosing and Doing It Wrong (and I'm not sure Two-Spirit fits me anyway, it's just an example). But if you do have a cultural background or ties to a culture that does gender differently, you may have more options available to choose from -- and at the very least they're interesting to learn about and realise that the ways we think are the only ways to be gendered or sexually oriented are not the only ways after all.

[1] as was mentioned upthread, these things sometimes don't come out until adulthood -- not all intersex people are genitally ambiguous at birth and even with those that are, the doctors sometimes "fix" things quietly without telling anyone. There was a thing at the olympics a few years back when a lot of young women athletes turned out to be genetically more male than female and they'd never known or suspected or identified as anything other than female. I'm not a doctor and I don't know the specifics of your situation, so I'm just throwing it out there as a possibility. You might not be intersex; there are other conditions (like PCOS) that might explain things as well, and I'm not asking for more details -- I'm not qualified to analyse them and they aren't my business to ask. You shouldn't share anything more than you feel comfortable sharing.

[just this girl, y'know?]

Heh, I almost mentioned the quirk of biology in question was PCOS, and I should have. So yeah, I didn't think intersex applied -- I'm pretty sure I was born girl and that my genetics would show a double X chromosome.

Thanks for the thoughts. They've given me some things to chew on.

[Froborr]

Really thought-provoking post and discussion. I cannot comment much on it, except to say that I really like that your friend identifies as "geek" first and foremost. I never thought much about that as being an identity before, rather than a descriptor, but it fits; I really don't feel like I have a strong sex/gender/orientation identity--I would still be me in all senses that matter to me if I woke up a different sex, gender, or orientation--but I most definitely would not be me if I were not a geek.

[muteKi]

@CertainlySylvia

"I agree with the issue of socially-imposed identities being difficult. To me that's resolved by people coming together, imperfectly, under broad labels and pushing back. The LGBT movement is largely a politcal action. That's a good thing, solidarity, but it also contains a danger. Many will see that group narrative as a refection of any given member.

It isn't. It's a blend of all the members."

I think this a bit better expresses the sort of idea I'm getting at -- there have to be a lot of shared traits among people who all identify in a certain manner, but there's no way for me to get even close to a good picture of any one person from that group by that label.

Add in the fact that most of these identifiers don't have fixed definitions -- what one person means by "queer" may be very different from what someone else does given how (intentionally) vague it is.

I suppose rather than "meaningless" (which I suppose has slightly different connotations around here than I usually use it as), "not informative" on a person-to-person level would make a bit more sense.

[Certainly Sylvia]

@just this girl, y'know?

I think Anonymous gave you very good advice. The essential point is that only you can make any decision as you your identity. Gender performance overlaps a wide range of experiences so it isn't always obvious, even to the individual themselves. If you are unsure, then try identities on, safely and at a pace you are comfortable with. Don't press or rush or try to force any answers to come. In time you'll find yourself a space :)

Just one note. Do be careful about using Chromosomes to demarcate sexes in a biological sense. There is a lot of diversity. Studies hold that there is a significant population who do not have chromosomes that 'match' their biology - and they do not know. They can be strongly identified as a particular gender despite this. The role of hormones and other factors is more complex than once thought. :)

@Rakka

Yeah the 'erring on the side of caution' argument is very problematic at many levels. Most of all, for me, is the notion that anything had to 'be' fixed. Fortunately, modern practices, at the capable edge, understand this and, extant issues of medical impacts, most Intersex children are not 'fixed' anymore. Instead, the understanding is to wait for the child to express their gender and/or decide what (if anything) they want to do. I think this is a good turn of policy.

@muteKi

Exactly. In addition, people can apply varying 'labels' to the different modes of gender. Someone can be Genderqueer regarding identity; in a performative sense or both. It's complex. There's a lot of overlap too. Take for instance the bit I kind of left out (but for implication) ... re my own situation. I said I identify as Transgender, Lesbian and Queer. Regarding the latter, I include Genderqueer in that too. For me though, while this aspect intersects with my identification, it is also largely performative. Being Genderqueer, for me, is partially a political statement - a refusal to live within the boundaries society 'allows' to me.

This is where it gets complex. I am limited in the manner in which I can express this performative aspect ... and I will be until I have completed my transition.

Why? ... simple - my transgender expression conflicts with my genderqueer expression because people are stuck in this binary thing. There is an implicit assumption that, since I am changing my physical expression to a female one, that I must be strongly gender identified.

I had a 3 hour long, deeply philosophical, discussion with a gatekeeper psychologist on this point. I went to the appt and wasn't all femmed up. He asked why not and whoah ... 3 hrs later he was laughing and granting me the permission to proceed.

The issue you see was that ... my presentation was NOT my identity. I was lucky, he got this and we had a really cool conversation about gender in all it's manifestations. I could have gotten a more prescriptive gatekeeper and been in trouble but I decided, whatever the case, to be me.

His biggest laugh was when I pointed out that I was more femme, even as I was, than either of the lesbians I was sharehousing with at the time.

I don't hate skirts and such .... but I can vary in my expression depending on mood, fancy and even a stubborn sense of refusing to be consistent - as a political action.

For me, transition is a physical alignment. It isn't the same with all transgender people. Some are naturally very femme, all the time. Some are initially so, because they are trying to assert themselves, to 'fit' in. I refuse to do that and it's my choice to do so.

I think a lot of feminist critiques of transgender people - especially for those shifting toward a female physicality - is that they push to fit into the binary and, in so doing, express themselves in terms of negative stereotypes. I think some do but, most of them, in my anecdotal experience, move away from that as they become more comfortable in themselves.

This overcompensation can express in other ways too. I have a friend who once shocked me quite deeply. I was sharehousing with her and she came home from a night out with her friends. They were all in fits, laughing themselves senseless - over 'how ugly' the crossdressers were. I was deeply offended, even though I understood it was her way of pushing back and saying "That is not me." She, and her friends, were wrong to behave like that. It was a sad expression of how privilege exists in complex arrays of intersectionality.

I quietly asked if she laughs about me the same way, because I don't pass (don't expecially care in many degrees) and she said no - you are different. I left it at that ... but yeah, identity and how we express it, to others AND to ourselves, can be messy. People can behave in the most terrible manner - born of their own insecurities and social pressures to conform. I find that somewhat sad.

It's complex.

If I push my gender subversion too far, then I get misgendered even more. This pushes against the physical dysphoria and that's my only issue. I could care less what anyone 'thinks' of me ... but I have to face the truth that some very negative affects can result.

So, I am careful in how I express as Genderqueer atm. On the otherside of transition it will be much easier.

Hah! When unexposed cisgendger people find out the complex realities of my identity, they often get very confused - the poor dears. They just manage to wrap their head around my transition and then the rug is pulled out from under their new found 'understandings.'

[Nick Kiddle]

I sometimes wonder about myself. "Male" doesn't quite seem to fit me properly, although it fits way better than "female" and I wouldn't mind being called "sir" for the rest of my life. I can't work out how much is my interesting brain taking exception to labels and how much is actual non-binary identity, but the fact is I can fit the binary well enough for all practical purposes, so it's really nothing more than wondering.

Presentation, though ... I wish I could present more femme. I have a real longing to wear corsets and lacy blouses and things, but only if I could be read as a femmey or cross-dressing man. As things stand, I would look like a woman, and the idea makes me too uncomfortable.

[Certainly Sylvia]

@Nick

Yeah. This.

For me, however, it is complex in several dimensions. A therapist asked if/when I was going to wear dresses more often. My answer is a simple one. I'd love too but, until I have a shape that fits, it'll just cause too much feedback in the form of dysphoria.

It isn't a thing of shame or worry re how I'd look or what anyone would think. It's purely that it adds to weight of dysphoria. If I wear a plunging neckline then what is absent (though that is changing) becomes emphasised and anxiety levels rocket. It's just confusion and I suspect it will remain so until the body is right. Whether I pass or not at that point will not matter - as long as everything fits.

It's hard trying to explain dysphoria to people unfamiliar with it. It's made more difficult, because not everyone has the same experience of dysphoria.

For me ... when I was in denial, I used to run long distance. I stopped because, over time, the dysphoria grew worse and worse. I could feel stuff moving that wasn't there. After I came out I kind of like my phantom boobs :) - though not as much as I like the ones now baking :)

I explain, post coming out, to a cisgender female friend what it feels like when running. How things moved. What tugged where. The rythym of things. She was gobsmacked. She'd been skeptical prior but after that talk she finally got it and just accepted that somewhere, some alignment between the body and the minds' map of the body digressed.

If I am having a bad dysphoric day - sometimes I'll run and it helps. Sometimes I won't, because it would feedback badly. I can't explain how I know which type of dysphoric day is which. I just do.

:)

[Sixwing]

Lonespark wrote:

Also this post goes along with a BIIIIG discussion being had in pagan circles about gender and religious practice in the wake this year's Pantheacon, and last year's.

I've been sorta-following some of that discussion from the fringes (and the "oh my gosh AGAIN" side of the fringes at that). I don't think I have a lot of useful things to say on it, since I'm not part of a tradition that does that sort'a thing, but I have thoughts on it regardless.

I don't think that I, personally, would be comfortable in a ritual or even in a tradition that defined ANYONE specifically by their anatomy, ignoring all other factors. But that's me, and I honestly have a hard time understanding a strong attachment to a particular gender, because I don't live there.

I'd honestly love to see some writing on "what it means to me to be a [cis wev]," that wasn't based on excluding All Those People.

[Izzy]

TW: fertility stuff

I'm a cis woman, and I'm usually fine with that: the plumbing works fine (though periods, ugh), I like dating guys, I like "women's" clothing, I drink girl drinks, and so on.

But man, do I hate the...I dunno, expectation of gender roles? Difference philosophy? I loathe the idea that I'm supposed to be nurturing or sentimental or sexually restrained, to the point where I probably overcompensate for it a fair amount (and definitely did when I was younger). I fear the thought that my uterus might rise up and take over my brain one of these years. And while I have close female friends, I hate the Ya-Ya Sisterhood stuff.

I like to think that whatever differences exist between me and my friend Bob are individual, rather than because He's A Guy and I'm A Girl, and that whatever gender-based stuff is going on is mostly down to the fact that our society provides different experiences to men and women in many ways.

So I am also a little uncomfortable with pagan stuff that's about Woman-ness.

[sarah]

I don't *think* this needs any trigger warnings.

[[Izzy: But man, do I hate the...I dunno, expectation of gender roles? Difference philosophy? I loathe the idea that I'm supposed to be nurturing or sentimental or sexually restrained, to the point where I probably overcompensate for it a fair amount (and definitely did when I was younger). I fear the thought that my uterus might rise up and take over my brain one of these years. And while I have close female friends, I hate the Ya-Ya Sisterhood stuff.]]

I'm with Izzy here, except I don't quite like girl drinks. :) I'm comfortable being female. I did spend a long period of my life refusing to wear dresses or anything remotely "girly" (whatever that means), and I still feel most comfortable in jeans and t-shirts and stuff. And I also have a lot of female friends, I work at an all-women's school*, and I play on an all-women's rec baseball team. Ya-Ya Sisterhood? Never seen it. Or read it.

But, like Izzy, I don't really do the nurturing thing well. When students cry in my office, I hand them tissues, hear them out, and then (usually) point them to the counseling office. It takes a lot for me to express outward emotion that's more than even-keeled or happy or whatever.

Anyway. I think there is an intersection between identity/what's in our heads and socialization/expectations, but I'm not sure how to articulate it well. I also think that people should be able to define themselves and that I should respect their self-identities.

*This is something I wonder about with regards to trans and genderqueer issues. As far as I know, we've never had any students who identified as transgender. That doesn't mean we won't in the future, and while I think our faculty and staff will be welcoming, I don't know about the student body. Something to keep in my head, I suppose.

[sarah]

Also, MercuryBlue, thanks for this essay on a complicated topic. :)

[Lonespark]

I like to think that whatever differences exist between me and my friend Bob are individual, rather than because He's A Guy and I'm A Girl, and that whatever gender-based stuff is going on is mostly down to the fact that our society provides different experiences to men and women in many ways.

Yeah.

I was thinking somewhat along these lines earlier, considering the argument from some fundamentalist-types that marriage is about forging intimacy across the gulf between men and women, so marriage equality wouldn't offer that. I feel like, have them met people? We have different personalities. They clash. They spark. Some things in some cultures line up with gender...but there's still huuuuge variation within gender groups.

There's this idea that "opposites attract," but it seems to me more true as "variety is exciting," or "similar strong personality traits can create friction..." and even so most fully consensual long-term relationships seem to be built on similar values, and usually compatible interests.

[Izzy]

@Lonespark: Right, and also, of course, it depends a lot on the people involved. Some people like a lot of conflict in their relationships; the High Drama form is pretty unhealthy, and irksome to friends, but my folks thrive on political arguments and snide comments about the GPS. Some people want a lot of similar interests, others want more separate lives. And so forth.

Also, I haven't noticed much of a gulf, myself. Men are not an incomprehensible alien species. *Boys* are an incomprehensible alien species, but that's in the sense that everyone you (or at least my friends and I) want to bone becomes somehow less straightforward and more open to microanalysis. I'm pretty sure any girl I was into would take on the same dating-as-a-strategy-game layers of intrigue.

[Will Wildman]

I'd honestly love to see some writing on "what it means to me to be a [cis wev]," that wasn't based on excluding All Those People.

I would be intrigued by this, and I am a cis dude. I'm not really sure what that's supposed to mean to other people; honestly I feel like it just happens to be the jersey I got handed and I find it bizarre to try to piece together how this does/could(/should?) reflect on any other aspect of my persona. On a social level, obviously, we have these concepts of male and female that enormously affect our experience of the world, but I think the diversity of gender expression proves that there's more to it than conditioning.

I'm not aware of any powerful resonance between me, my body, and my gender, in a positive or negative way. I mean, I like it well enough, it's an adequate dude body, but it seems to me that this is born more out of familiarity than anything else: if I'd had an equal length of time in a 'female' body, I'm not sure I wouldn't like it just as much. So the idea of my mental self being placed in a 'female' body is not particularly disturbing to me (except insofar as it would disrupt my life in other ways), and the idea of suddenly mentally being 'female' is like trying to imagine suddenly being brillig when I've been mimsy all my life. What does that even mean?

I wouldn't identify as agender or genderqueer or anything; I'm male and I fit most of the ways that maleness is presented in culture and I'm totally okay with all of that. But in a way it all just feels like random labels to me and the idea of trying to root out some kind of truth of my being as relates to my essential maleness would seem to fit somewhere in the same category as phrenology and that thing where someone studies your handwriting to determine your psychological profile and whether you steal paperclips (internet reminds me this is called graphology). It just gets me all "WTF stop obsessing over the way I loop my W you are making this increasingly weird".

[Froborr]

I would be intrigued by this, and I am a cis dude. I'm not really sure what that's supposed to mean to other people; honestly I feel like it just happens to be the jersey I got handed and I find it bizarre to try to piece together how this does/could(/should?) reflect on any other aspect of my persona.

Likewise, except that in my case the jersey doesn't fit very well and it's the wrong color and every other jersey I've seen is worse and I don't even want a jersey anyway.

[hapax]

there's still huuuuge variation within gender groups.

In pretty much analysis I've ever seen of the various "gendered" personality / character / aptitude traits (verbal skills, math skills, empathy, nurturing instincts, aggressiveness, monogamy, etc. etc. etc.), the variation WITHIN the gender groups dwarfs the variation between the "average" of the gender groups -- and this is without adjusting for societal pressures and expectations!

This is even true for some factors that you might expect to be biologically determined, like stamina and upper body strength.

(The same holds even more true for "racial" personality and aptitude types, by the way. I'm not quite ready to say that "gender" is as much an artificial social construct as "race", but I'm close.)

[Mmy]

@hapax: the variation WITHIN the gender groups dwarfs the variation between the "average" of the gender groups

Oh FSM I am having ANOVA flashbacks.

[Maartje]

I'm with Froborr.

Except I've been wearing this one jersey all my life, and people still insist on telling me I'm not really the kind of person who should be wearing this jersey.

(Some people mean that as a compliment. Others as an insult.)

I've gotten used to this jersey, and getting used to another jersey would be annoying. Especially since I've finally learned to wear it with style and panache, and really don't want to go through another abominable duckling phase. I even very much enjoy romances with people who wear the jersey that's supposedly complementary to mine!

Sometimes I wonder if I'm just oversensitive when it comes to jerseys and the problem would go away if people just relaxed their expectations for jersey-wearers.

But then I meet people who feel so at home in their jersey that they call it their skin and never wanted to be parted from it, and I remember that I'm really not like that.

[Emily]

Gender is totally a social construct. I mean, when you control for body size, men only have slightly higher upper body strength than women. And who invented and controls the measuring system me use to determine body size? The patriarchal Western scientific establishment! The whole idea of people having an objective "height" is a very problematic and contested area. I wish people were more aware of this.

And don't get me started about the pseudoscientific nonsense about "X" and "Y" chromosomes. You know who else liked to label people based on their genes?

[Darth Ember]

The whole idea of people having an objective "height" is a very problematic and contested area. I wish people were more aware of this.

So... if we smash the patriarchy... I stop being five feet tall? My height becomes subjective and therefore infinite? Good job! I shall create a group of subjective giants!

In other words, not sure if you're trolling or just not expressing yourself very clearly. Especially with what I suspect is a thinly-veiled Godwin in that last sentence.

[Certainly Sylvia]

TW: Abstractish reference to having Amputation of a limb

@Izzy and sarah and Froborr and Maartje

Heh. Gender expectectations are truly annoying but then so are most socially constructed norms to me. Not just because they can lead to expressions people don't 'fit' within, but also because so many people don't pause to examine them - ever. I'm really glad to see lots of people here doing the 'Wha-huh-but-gaargh' thing here :)

I saw an interesting documentary a ways back, examining men who are stay-at-home dads (in Australia) and how they were viewed and, quite often derided - even by close male friends. More shocking ... was how many women reacted. There were all these arguments of 'not a real man' floating around. The stay-at-home men were all interviewed and they seemed no more or less male than any I've ever met or seen. Political issues were also raised, like how a lot of companies that offer maternity leave, had nothing to offer men who wanted time to care for their kids.

It struck me quite hard because I have quite a few friends in this exact situation.

Even people, who live more normatively, who accepted it - even they had reservations. Some of the reactions from women were the most shocking to me - a lot of "Oh yeah, right, hahahha, a man 'cleaning' the house is inefficient, let alone trusting one to keep a baby alive for a week." Some of these women were/are self-proclaimed feminists for crying out loud!

Sigh.

Just be 'you' and blah to anyone who says you don't fit. People who do that to you are imposing a narrative on you that is not yours. You can even use rude words and fling monkey-poo :)



@Will Wildman

I agree - so much of the labelling is about demarcating what is and isn't allowed. Or determing what you 'should' feel comfortable as.

I don't agree with biological determinism even though I accept the newer research that says we have a series on internal body maps. The latter just means that if you did find yourself in a female body, suddenly, then you might find it confusing physically - IF you still had the body map of your prior body and it was strongly drawn.

Think of it like this. Do you think that, if you found yourself losing a limb, that you'd not experience phantom limb syndrome?

You might not - not everyone does. The internal body maps can vary widely between people in terms of how enforcing they are. Some could shift bodies much easier than others. Body maps can update. For some people they are slower to do so than others. It's complex.

I can post some links re this research is anyone wants, I just don't want to segway too far from MercuryBlues excellent post. :)

In case it wasn't clear earlier - my status as transgender has little, in my experience, to do with wanting to be another gender. It isn't about being able to express and live in another part of the 'binary' ... it's purely a move to address serious conflicts between 'what the body is' and 'what the mind tells me the body is.'

That is not the case with everyone who is transgender. I'm not claiming, in any way, to be more legitimate in my transition. Whatever the reasons for people to transition, well that is their business and as valid as any reason/s.



@Emily and hapax

Have you read any Judith Butler? Just curious. if you haven't you might find it very interesting, given your stated position.

I agree with a lot of what she says. I don't agree with all of her assertions, let alone conclusions, but she's wonderful reading for anyone who likes to be pushed in their thinking.

Aka, I'd recommend it to anyone here who's interested in gender as construct. She even deconstructs biology to a degree that I don't completley agree with, even though I do agree 'mostly.' :)



@Darth

No no no. You won't suddenly not be 5 feet tall ... but how you are 'seen' and treated as a person of such height will be socially different.

As in, if you change the underlying definitions of expectations and assumptions of what 'being 5 feet tall' means, then you change the experience of being such.

No?

[Darth Ember]

@Certainly Sylvia:
No, I don't think so. I am objectively a certain height. If I walk under a low-hanging branch and it clocks me in the head, I can't complain that my subjective height was shorter than that. I cannot reach some things, because of my height. This is a simple physical fact. The measuring system simply denotes how many centimetres or inches of me can be measured vertically.

If Emily had said 'perceptions' of height, heightism and the like, I might have agreed, but her post came across to me as objecting to the practice of measuring/accepting the physical reality of height at all. Which is why I wondered if she was trolling or being facetious.

I rather like a nice, objective measuring system of sizes and weights. The heights get buildings built without them constantly collapsing because someone thought a 1.5metre steel rod was subjectively the same as a 1.7metre steel rod. And the weights... well, precision in weighing things (among other elements) gives me the right doses of the medicines I need.

[hapax]

@Certainly Sylvia -- I haven't read Judith Butler, but a quick read of her Wikipedia article indicates that she would be an interesting read. Thanks!

I should be clear, however, that much of my perception of gender as a social construct is contradicted by hapaxspouse's research, which is primarily in the field of sexual dimorphism and the comcomitant variety of mating strategies in primates.

I say "contradicted" because most of his findings would be nonsense unless one accepts sex and gender as both objective biological facts for our closest relatives -- unless we wish to argue that lemurs, say, possess a sufficiently sophisticated culture to perform as a particular sex, that always happens to coincide with specific biological traits.

I don't know how to reconcile this contradiction without appealing to some sort of unique status for human beings that I can't objectively justify. (It helps somewhat that humans have very low sexual dimorphism; but depending on how you measure it, other primates (e.g. Colobus monkeys) have even lower dimorphism, and I'm not ready to argue that sex is a social construct there)

It's ... complicated.

[MercuryBlue]

So wrt gender (and incidentally sexuality), biology is not destiny, but it certainly helps?

[sarah]

Oh, Judith Butler. Memories of grad school start flooding back in.

[Lonespark]

I don't know what Emily's trying to get at and it came across as a bit troll-esque, which I hope is just micommunication/hair trigger rxn...

The height thing is interesting. I'm not sure what we're using "height" to mean. "5 feet tall" is a social construct based on an empirical measurement using a certain scale. We've decided that feet and inches and height in general are useful ways of distinguishing people's physical characteristics and to a great degree how we relate to them and expect them to relate to the world, but as always there's mitigating cultural/subcultural/etc. factors.

[Timothy (TRiG)]

Feet are a social construct, but "5 feet tall" is a socially constructed way to measure an objective fact. Of course, the importance attached to that fact is also a social construct.

TRiG.

[hapax]

The color of one's skin is an objective material fact; the question as to whether it means anything (let alone what it means) varies enormously from society to society.

Didn't we just have a post about the degree of social construction in hair color in the blogaround?

[Froborr]

The color of one's skin is an objective material fact

The reflectivity of your skin at various wavelengths is an objective material fact; how exactly one defines colors and where one places the boundaries between them is at least partially a social construct. For example, where exactly is the dividing line between white and light brown?

[hapax]

Thank you, Froborr. That's a *much* better way of putting it.

[Emily]

Let me clarify: particular height measurements might be objective facts - but the reductive linear ordering which compels us to accept the notion that "five feet" is "taller" than "five foot five" which is "taller than" "five foot eleven" is ultimately a phallocentric construct of the linear "root-stem-glans" paradigm.

Someone who is constructed as "5' 8" in the U$ would be constructed as "un metre soixante-dix" or whatever in France. So how can anyone claim that height is anything but culture-dependent?

@hapax: hapaxspouse's perceptions of primate gender roles are ineluctably filtered through "his" socially-constructed decision to identify as a cis-gendered male. In other words, sex in lemurs is a social construct, but it's constructed by humans, not lemurs. A biologist from a culture that wasn't riddled with male privilege and rape apologism would likely perceive lemurs as having dominant females, or reproducing vivoparously, or having three or six genders.

[MercuryBlue]

the reductive linear ordering which compels us to accept the notion that "five feet" is "taller" than "five foot five" which is "taller than" "five foot eleven"

...I assume you mean 'shorter'?

A biologist from a culture that wasn't riddled with male privilege and rape apologism would likely perceive lemurs as having dominant females, or reproducing vivoparously, or having three or six genders.

I'm sorry, but that just strikes me as laughable. Do you even know what 'viviparous' means?

[Froborr]

Odds that behind "Emily" a troll is giggling that they got us to engage this topic: Very high and rising.

Odds that said troll realizes we love talking about this kind of thing and their "trolling" is the rough equivalent of handing out free candy: Vanishingly low.

[Emily]

@MercuryBlue - Taller, shorter - my point is that the ordering is inherent arbitrary. Men are assigned higher "height-numbers" by the male-dominated cultural paradigm, and so a bigger number is constructed as "taller", but that's inherently arbitrary and contingent.

They laughed at Judith Butler but feminist scholarship has proved her right.

A small lemur is mounted by a big lemur. A male, Western scientist - or maybe a Woman or Black scientist afflicted by false consciousness - constructs that as a "male" lemur inseminating (raping) a "female" lemur. In reality, the lemurs might have been playing or having egalitarian lesbian relations. Then the smaller lemur coincidentally gave virgin birth (viviparity), which even Western science acknowledges can happen in some creatures.

What's "laughable" is to maintain that there's one true paradigm of lemur reproduction that can't be questioned. If hapax weren't forced by society into a subordinate gender role, she would be able to question her partner/oppressor's so-called "objective" "research".

[MercuryBlue]

Bzzt! Wrong answer. 'Viviparous' means 'gives live birth' as opposed to 'lays eggs'. Virginity ain't got nothing to do with it. Unless miracles or modern technology are involved.

What did Judith Butler say that's relevant to your post?

Not touching the rest of your post, except to go 'bwahaha you funny'.

[Emily]

@Froborr: yeah, it's easier to write me off as a "troll" (a misogynist term also applied to "women" who don't perform your arbitrary standards of "beauty") than to engage with my arguments, isn't it? At least you say you like talking about this kind of thing, and there is some chance that continued dialogue might make you less of a misogynistic neckbeard.

[Emily]

@MercuryBlue - maybe that's what viviparous means in the paradigm you unthinkingly accept, based around 19th-century White men torturing and mutilating animals and minority ethnic people, but that's not how I construct it.

[MercuryBlue]

Words, Emily. They have meanings. What word means 'gives live birth rather than laying eggs' if 'viviparous' isn't it? And trigger warnings. They have a purpose.

Still curious what relevant things Judith Butler said. (Not to dismiss her work as irrelevant, mind you, just, I know nothing of her, what does she have to do with the right-here-right-now?)

[Will Wildman]

'Viviparous' means 'gives live birth' as opposed to 'lays eggs'.

Drat, I was way off with my guess of 'pair of sixes'.

[Froborr]

From nonsensical claims demonstrative of a failure to understand the OP or the discussion to personal insults in four posts! Quite fast, but I don't think it's quite a record, alas.

[Emily]

Meanings are imposed by the kyriarchy to stifle alternative discourses which question male privilege. By foregrounding the importance of 'giving birth', that definition of viviparous seeks to evade the question of whether copulation (rape) is necessary for birth to take place (when a feminist biology could conclude that it is not).

The key Butler references are 'Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of "Sex"' and 'Gender Trouble'. If you haven't read those yet, you can't hope to understand my position, you poor dear.

[Emily]

@Froborr: Who started the personal insults? Who labelled me a "troll" because I'm not sexually pleasing enough for you?

[Mmy]

maybe that's what viviparous means in the paradigm you unthinkingly accept...but that's not how I construct it.

"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said in a rather scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean--neither more not less." (Throught the Looking Glass, Lewis Carroll)

[Emily]

I see, Mmy - I won't accept your heteronormative paradigm, so you have to attack my body shape? Classy!

[Mmy]

@Emily: I didn't attack your body shape since I have no idea what it is.

Everyone else: Emily has learned a few words. Zie isn't sure what they mean but zie thinks throwing them around will either a) earn zir points, b) intimidate people or c) amuse us.

I'll go with c)

[MercuryBlue]

tw: rape

Wait, did Emily seriously just say that all sex is rape?

Folks, I do believe we have a genuine radical feminist on our hands. I thought those only existed in Rush Limbaugh's imagination.

(I will read the Judith Butler, though. Eventually. I have umpty-dozen other things to read first.)

[Emily]

"Humpty Dumpty" was clearly a misogynist slur because I don't conform to the "hourglass" paradigm. Now you are questioning my ability to understand words as well! Really nice. Really nice.

[Mmy]

In case everyone else hasn't figured it out -- Emily isn't a troll zie is a poe.

[Emily]

I didn't say all sex is rape - and clearly the idea that feminists think that's the case IS a slur by Limbaugh and his like.

But constructing sexual acts within a heteronormative paradigm can make them rape. If you interpret an act of lemur copulation within that paradigm then you are, at best, an accessory to rape.

[Will Wildman]

I'm aware that there is or was a Chinese topolect that was used only by women, but I unfortunately don't know where I could find a resource that would allow me to translate 'What the @#$% are you on about?'

Judith Butler is interesting, although the language is more technically-phrased than I like to get into on psychology. In terms of biology, it's one of those cases where I'm not sure if the author was trying to present as radical an argument as she is characterised, or if she was using radical phrasing in an attempt to disrupt a rigid frame of thought so that she could introduce a different framing of fairly obvious facts.

[MercuryBlue]

tw: rape

the question of whether copulation (rape) is necessary for birth to take place (when a feminist biology could conclude that it is not)

*tilts head and squints* Still not seeing how you're not saying that all het sex, if not all sex full stop, is rape. Also not seeing how one gets to the point of 'het sex is not necessary for birth (without technology one can safely assume lemurs do not use)' from...anywhere, really. I can see where you get 'rape is not necessary for birth', but that's as much of your stated position as makes sense to me.

[Froborr]

I dunno, hir intentional misread of the Humpty Dumpty comment and self-contradiction between 3:58 and 4:15 still says troll, rather than poe, to me. Anyway, since the only difference between the two is intent, which is unknowable and irrelevant, it's a distinction without a difference.

[Certainly Sylvia]

I'm kind of glad I woke up now ...

@Emily

I asked about Butler earlier because I thought you might be here to agitate and was interested to see where you went with her.

Seriously. You've really read "Bodies that matter" - because that'd be quite the irony, given she wrote it to clear up misreadings of her prior work ... misreadings similar to what you are displaying.

Good grief. When Butler raised the issue of 'giving birth' it was with regard to how it was being used as a primary identifier ... aka, women were defined by the trait of 'giving birth' which, given many could not or did not want to made it incomplete - and then on to material about how being woman was a process of social construction. As she said:

"If there is something in Beauvoir's claim that one is not born, but rather becomes a woman, it follows that woman itself is a term in process, a becoming, a constructing that cannot rightfully be said to originate or end."

And yes, she does talk about how focusing on that 'giving birth' action allows us to ignore how we got to that point ... but to take it as far as you have here is something she never did.

As for you completely mistaken use of viviparous in the context you used it ... I have no words.

Otherwise I'm with Will Wildman ... you're not making a coherent argument. I have read Butler and she is is hard to read, the language itself takes effort to get into, so I will give you kudos on this. You managed to out-obfuscate Butler. I mean, her argument could at least be found if one looked long enough.

@MercuryBlue

Do give Butler a go. I'd start with Gender Trouble. Oh and Butler was the one who originated the notion of 'getting rid of gender' ... of seeing the whole edifice as a construction.

:)

I goes back to sleep now - really not proper to wake mid-sleeps for random replyings :D

[hapax]

Well, I was about to take "Emily" seriously and ask for citations, until I read this:

If hapax weren't forced by society into a subordinate gender role, she would be able to question her partner/oppressor's so-called "objective" "research".

BWAH-HA-HA-HAH!

You have no idea how funny that is, on about six different levels. Srsly.

But yeah, for the rest of it, "Emily"'s posts are pretty obviously word-salad parodying of a mistaken stereotype of feminist discourse.

I agree -- Poe.

[Froborr]

Wait, I thought a poe was someone who looks like a troll but is actually seriously defending an extreme position? Whereas pretending to hold a radical position for purposes of trolling is just a troll? Or is a poe the latter, or both? *confused now*

[Certainly Sylvia]

@ Froborr

A Poe Troll ??? - or is that someone who Quoths the Raven out of context ... I'm confused too :)

Okay okay ... I goes to sleep ... I goes ... just ...

@Hapax

On the otherside I have (hopefully) interesting things to say about the epigenetic influences of culture and social constructions. It's might even include a cool link to a TED talk that really made me rethink a lot of evolutionary biology ...

but ... not now ... sleep ... sleep is good for Kate :)

[Mmy]

@Froborr: The understanding of "a poe" in the part of the internet I cut my eye teeth on was "someone posing as an extreme version of a fundamentalist who purposely takes it to such extremes that it will make the fundamentalism look ridiculous." That understanding then morphed to include concepts such as "feminist poe" -- which would be someone posing as a feminist and purposely exaggerating feminist stands so they look ridiculous.

Since there is no dictionary I know of that nails down internet slang -- it is just the way the people in my neck of the woods used the word.

[Froborr]

@Mmy: Ah. Which is exactly what I thought Emily was doing, so... yeah. I thought you meant zie actually meant what zie was saying, which I found... unlikely.

In my neck of the woods we use "poe" for things that seem like trolls at first glance, but later turn out to probably be just legitimately that far down the rabbit hole. Like Westboro Baptist, or that article that claimed My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic is satanic and used as part of its evidence that the first-season showrunner's last name is Faust.

[Nick Kiddle]

//That understanding then morphed to include concepts such as "feminist poe" -- which would be someone posing as a feminist and purposely exaggerating feminist stands so they look ridiculous.//

My first thought was that this is what I would call a "joe job", but I'm not so sure. The classical joe job is impersonating a specific person and being rude and obnoxious in order to sully that person's reputation. Emily would appear to be doing something similar with a group of people rather than one specific person. (I'm fascinated by how many subtly different words we have to describe various kinds of irritating behaviour on the internet.)

[Froborr]

I'm fascinated by how many subtly different words we have to describe various kinds of irritating behaviour on the internet.

I do not find it surprising, but then, I have a parent fluent in Yiddish.

[Mmy]

@Froborr: :) Maybe we should get together and write a "dictionary for our website." The way the internet just sort of "growed up" there are lots of variations "exactly what words mean" from one site to another.

[Nick Kiddle]

//I do not find it surprising, but then, I have a parent fluent in Yiddish.//

I'm not exactly surprised. I just like collecting words and arranging them into groups and polishing them so they sparkle nicely and so on.

[Anonymous]

Urban Dictionary confirms your usage, mmy: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=poe

[Izzy]

What the hell I am way too drunk for this.

[Froborr]

I just learned Urban Dictionary is blocked at my office. Interesting.

Also, linguistic descriptivist powers go!

If the community consensus leans more toward Mmy's definition, dictionary is not relevant/needed, I'll just remember to use and read "poe" appropriately.

[Mmy]

@izzy: What the hell I am way too drunk for this.

My first thought was "so the sun is over the yardarm there, eh.

Also: if typing seems bad for a while or if there is sloppy/slow mod work -- the arthritis in my right hand has asserted its suzerainty over the muscles of said hand.

[Izzy]

@mmy: Where drinking is concerned, I adhere passionately to the theory of relativity re: time.