I'm not sure I quite understand it - the whole idea of gender as something salient. For most people it seems like a background guide for normativity - more explicitly so for guys trying to be 'masculine' and thus choosing whether to do something because it is or isn't 'masculine'; I haven't heard many girls say something equivalent to 'that's not something real guys do'.
Genderqueer folk are somewhat confusing to me in more or less the same way; they do have a salient gender they want to be more like (which perhaps doesn't happen to be the one they're born into), or maybe vacillate, or construct a new one from components of each, or aim for something specifically off spectrum. I don't know how much of this is for self and how much is impression management; probably always both to some extent because gender is so strongly influenced by how one is treated, so if one is treated as an X then it's nice if X is what one identifies as also. And if anything, it seems that trans folk are more likely to be more strongly gendered than nontrans; viz. drag queens often aiming for an over-the-top view of femininity, or butch girls aiming for something fairly macho.
I don't particularly find it confusing that they would have an identity that's not what they're born to, or that they would find things dissonant if identity and treatment or behavior don't match. That's totally understandable really. I just don't understand why the strong mental genderedness in the first place.
As for myself... I'm pretty definitely physically male, and have never wanted to be different. (It's a lot simpler, for one... poor uterus-bearers, getting kicked in the stomach a couple days a month just for having the option to then go through childbirth.) To the extent that I'm not completely dysmorphic*, I like my body. But nothing on the masculinity / femininity / genderfuck plane has an attraction for me. I don't think of myself as 'neuter' either, just... whatever-I-am, I suppose. It's not something that particularly affects me except when I extrospect like this.
I'm not sure how I compare to any of the usual genders; Audrey and V both described me a couple times as being some gender of my own, and they had more time to observe what I'm like naturally than most people. I find it rather hard to do that comparison myself for some reason. I've been told that the sort of stillness I have is a more masculine one, for being center-outward; that if I am arrogant, that it's an odd sort that doesn't seem to play the usual dominance / posturing games. For that matter, I don't seem to have an automatic monitoring sense of that meta-communication (which has been occasionally problematic); I mostly just try towards truth and understanding, not to have some effect on an audience. (This is probably something I should change, as it's rather maladaptive socially.)
* And I am sometimes very body-dysmorphic; it can feel like a very very strange shell with which to interact with the world, by which to be perceived, etc. I have never really felt comfortable with my reflection; it doesn't look like 'me', but then I have no good concept of what 'me' would look like either, so I can't say why it doesn't...
Generally I seem to be drifting more towards neutrality over time, with one exception: that simple-complex thing I refer to as "calm brilliance". That is something I very strongly identify with, feel dissonance when / inasmuch as I don't match it, and very intentionally try hard to shape myself towards. I suppose that's a lot like gender, ne? And it's a sweeping enough identity to be of the same scope as gender. This is far more central to my self-concept than anything else I can think of and so it's hard to overstate how important it is; perhaps that's why I often feel like I can't get others to understand "me". It's an unusual thing to identify by, and a hard one to explain or understand except through gnosis. Hmm.
It seems to me that this view of gender (or lack thereof?) is what "makes me" bisexual. Like most people, I generally am attracted to people who are similar-complementary to me (or who fit my self-concept at least). Gender is one aspect of that; I've always gone mostly for androgynes of one sort or another, people who aren't strongly gendered in any particular direction. Where they are gendered, I find it curious in about the same way as I would any other aspect of them I didn't identify with myself (like an interest in some hobby I don't share): something to learn from and about, and neutral to attractiveness.
I'm not sure how this meshes with my definitely increased recent preference for guys. Perhaps it's just sexual curiosity, but it doesn't seem so (though that's definitely an aspect; libido is running high lately); there is some aspect of gendered attraction specifically that clearly means I'm making some sort of male/female sex distinction, which means that my self-understanding of gender per above is missing something.... which makes me more curious.
Starting a relationship again feels... strange but very much what I want (difficult as it is to admit strongly wanting anything). Reminds me a lot of the beginning, with Audrey. Trying to keep some semblance of grounded nonattachment, but that's proving rather hard. I guess I'll find out how it goes, ne. It's been a long time since I heard someone call me きみ; still has the same effect. And all this is totally human/normal, but both very melty/enjoyable/restful, and dissonant with my stillness-identity. Confusing. Which explains why I (unusually) feel a need to talk it out.
WWBD? Meditate, recenter into calm brilliance, make all possibilities fully okay, and wait. *wry smile*
I wonder how often others have this sort of complex inner life. It's hard to tell; most people don't talk about it, and that doesn't tell me whether it's there or not. For that matter, I don't normally talk about it; most of it gets expressed here, as I find writing much easier than talking for most things, and very few people actually ask me questions that would get at it (and want to hear the answer).
I've been told occasionally by others that it's unusual, but they rarely are talking about themselves too, so it's hard to know if they're right or not. Maybe it's one of those things everyone thinks they're unique in, and most people are just not used to talking about.
- Location:desk
- Mood:
contemplative - Music:Hedwig and the Angry Inch - The Origin of Love
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Comments
Gender has a lot to do with my interactions with others. I want to interact with male lovers and potentials as a gay man. I can tell when someone is thinking of me as a "butch girl aiming for something fairly macho" and it feels wrong and gross in a way that it would not if I were actually a butch. For one thing I don't think of myself as butch. Transitioning has allowed me to relax and be more fem, whereas when I was living as a woman I felt like I had to be butch in order to not be seen as a woman (it didn't work well).
Ideally I could live without gender. I tried that, in fact, from the time my mother found my crying with a cut chin in the bathtub and patiently explained to me that girls don't do that, shave their faces, it's only for grownup men, and yes I was a girl and not a grownup man. I seem to have internalized this for a long time in the form that if I = girl, then for me gender didn't exist. It only confused me when people tried to apply that construction to me.
It took going through a rough period of the kind of magnitude it usually takes to strip a layer off your outward persona before I started realizing that I wasn't happy alternately playing to and trying to fight this whole "woman" thing. I tried being genderqueer or androgyne or something for awhile, but the world I live in doesn't really allow for that without a whole lot of work, and I was getting emotionally exhausted. I transitioned, really, out of ease. And it is easier now.
I don't know if I was "born to" this identity or not. I remember things from early childhood, now, that make sense if I think of myself as a boy, or wanting to be a boy, but so do many people who aren't trans men. I have given up trying to explain to myself how I got this way, but I reserve the right to draw boundaries around my identity and protect it from what I may perceive as a threat—i.e. other people seeming to question its "realness." I also reserve the right to be fluid if I wish to be without people questioning my "realness," either.
You say that people don't usually ask you questions about this, so I hope you don't mind if I ask you a few: Do you notice people treating you differently when they perceive your gender differently? Does your preferred mode match the way people usually treat you by default? Whether yes or no, how does that feel?
I'm glad to hear about your exciting new relationship. Hoorah for you!
It seems that when people identify you in a way not congruent to how you selfidentify, you overcompensate. The part that's strange is that you would overcompensate in the direction of being *more butch*, rather than being more 'emphatically' whatever-it-is-you-are, if that makes sense.
Would you be comfortable being (as it were) a "girly boy"?
You say that people don't usually ask you questions about this
Well, about anything nonsuperficial really.
so I hope you don't mind if I ask you a few
Of course I don't mind. :-)
Do you notice people treating you differently when they perceive your gender differently?
I have no idea. I think I'm usually perceived as some sort of male, but I don't honestly know; the few people I've talked to about it have said that I'm weird but hey I'm weird just in general, so that doesn't answer gender perception specifically. So I don't have experience with my gender being perceived in ways that differ widely enough to notice a difference in treatment.
Does your preferred mode match the way people usually treat you by default? Whether yes or no, how does that feel?
I'm not sure on that either. The way people treat me by default vs what I prefer doesn't seem particularly gendered; the incongruencies that I notice are usually based on a misunderstanding of how my emotions work (e.g. that I lack them, that I am likely to be angry or strongly emotional in most standard situations, that I would want status-type apologies, etc), which mostly gets down to the calmness thing. I think most people do not normally treat me as I would prefer, and those that do I get along with very well, but it doesn't feel like an issue of gender and I'm not sure if it's one of identity.
I guess I could try finding out the answers to your questions by intentionally dressing up really butch or really femme or really genderfuck, but that would feel weird to *me*. Might be worth it as an experiment?
p.s. Hoorah. :)
I think behind my "butching up" as a woman was a recognition that other people for the most part view things binarily, and if I didn't want to be perceived as a standard, garden-variety woman but as something else entirely, I would have to go down the binary scale pretty far in the other direction to offset my appearance. Acting like a stereotype of a gay man didn't cause people to see me as one without making physical changes, and anyway I didn't want to be a stereotype either.
It might be worth experimenting with your gender expression if you're curious about how affects people's interactions, but there are certain gendered interactions that may be out of your reach, depending. And if you're not sufficiently curious to deal with the discomfort, then please don't put yourself through it just because I said so. ;)
FWIW I don't notice that people treat me much differently when I'm in public wearing a sarong vs wearing jeans. A bit more attention, but the quality of it isn't much different to my perception (which might well be oblivious). And I live in the CA Bay Area, so it'd probably be a different experience somewhere less liberal and blasé. :-P
Bookish is good. :-) Yay geeks. I think I understand what you mean about the binary categorization; what if e.g. you were treated as female, but one who was more gendered as a bookish male? I know several who fit that pattern. Would that be more or less dissonant than being treated as a butch gay male? (Which stereotype were you referring to btw? Fairy, leatherdaddy, cub, ...?)
And now I'm really curious again how I'd perceive you in person. From text you are ... neutral really. If guessing without knowing (and without the obvious content tipoffs) I'd guess slightly towards male, but that is likely just to be because I'm one and default to seeing others as being me when there isn't additional data available.
It happens in the Bay Area that interacting with a guy in a sarong is not a lot different from interacting with a guy in jeans, in many cases. Both are quite different from interacting with a woman in a sarong, or a woman in jeans with a flat-top. Somewhere else, interacting with a guy in a sarong is much different from interacting with a guy in jeans, but not in the same way that interacting with a woman is different—people may gender you as "FREAK!" instead of feminine.
It's still different. Gender expression might be a sliding scale but gender role is pretty much a binary. If I'm feeling like a bookish male and projecting that but I'm getting read as a female projecting bookish male it still doesn't quite work, and makes me a target. And it takes more effort. Just like it's different to be treated as a man in a sarong vs. as a woman in any kind of clothes.
Maybe your body got swapped with someone else's in the hospital when you were born, one of those tired-nurse-type accidents. Somewhere out there is the person with the body you would have had, wondering why they look funny.
FWIW, my movements and reactions are much more "like me" than my appearance as such. E.g. the skritch-reaction and other cat behaviors. To a certain extent they still feel awkward because of trying to get the body to flow right, but that's hard to separate from the awkwardness of not having enough practice.
Fortunately for me I'm not species-dysphoric, just extremely catlike. :-)