#also this is fine to rb without any added opinions bc i like people reading my words <3 yayyyyy

[buriedunderdaffodils]

thinking a lot today about like... listen i don't wanna say gender is entirely fake because it IS a concept that matters to many people, regardless of their queerness or lack thereof. but definitions of gender are humanmade, and the european colonialist patriarchal gender binary i live under serves the purpose of power and subjugation, far more than it provides any insight to what it means to FEEL like a woman or a man or what else have you. it demands that we define our genders based on specific anatomical features - which not all people even fit cleanly into - and that we obediently take up the roles associated with those features. it demands that our sexes and genders and gendered expression and sexualities all cleanly "match". that's not even to mention the way things like race and culture and class impact the expectations and demands placed on us. gender and sexual assignment, in the society and time i live in, are primarily methods of maintaining power and enforcing control.

so... why can i confidently say i'm both a man and a woman? what inside me is leading to that conclusion? what does it mean to feel like, to be, either one? if i think gender is all subjective and largely restrictive, why do i still insist on clutching the gendered descriptors i use for myself? yes, i am a woman, and yes, i am a man, but fucking why?

i think in some ways it comes down to living my life under the imposed male/female binary. these are the easiest for me to conceptualize, despite being vague and unclear, because they're the most familiar. i have SOME kind of blueprint for what the majority consider "masculine" or "feminine", even if that blueprint is inconsistent horseshit, and it's easiest to conceptualize my gender in a way the majority will understand.

but, simultaneously, i think that by cisbinary standards, i am neither man nor woman, because those are "supposed" to be exclusive from each other. i am not a proper man, because i'm too much of a woman. i am not a proper woman, because i'm too much of a man.

if we try out defining "man" as "someone who benefits from patriarchy" and "woman" as "someone who is oppressed by patriarchy" (which i think is a bit too simple but i will get to that) - i am either a man or a woman depending on the way i am perceived by others. and that varies WILDLY, thanks to a combination of my body, what clothes i wear on any given day, how i move, how i speak, which of my government documents another person has access to, how i interact with my peers, what assumptions people make about my relationships. on perceiving me, people generally are not in agreement about where exactly i stand within the patriarchy.

this hypothetical definition, though, is flawed. trans women AND trans men, regardless of how binary they may consider their genders, are BOTH considered viable targets for misogyny. even the binary cis straight white men who should benefit most from the patriarchy are at times harmed by it, even if they generally are helped by it. therefore, i cannot define my gender on the basis of my experiences with misogyny, because it does very little to ACTUALLY differentiate me from the people around me who are ALSO affected by misogyny. if anything, my experiences with misogyny are BECAUSE of my gender, and because my gender and presentation and day to day activities vary, my experiences with misogyny also vary.

okay, so that's one potential definition introduced and shot down. maybe it has more to do with what i want my anatomy to look like? after all, my transition goal is to combine sex characteristics that are seen as either male or female on their own. i want a penis and testes, and it makes me sad that i'll probably never be able to impregnate someone. i want a vagina as well, which i have, but i do not want a uterus. i want smaller breasts that can pass as flat under a loose shirt but still fill up cute little bras. i'd love to have a prostate if i had the choice. surely these represent the different "halves" of my gender, surely my aspirations for my body reflect my mix of womanhood and manhood.

and... in some ways, they do, but not as cleanly as some might assume. i do not conceptualize my ideal body as being made up of "male parts" and "female parts". i want to be a woman with small tits just as much as i want to be a man with small tits. post-phalloplasty i will be both a man with a dick and a woman with a dick. it's less that the specifics about my anatomy are meant to combine maleness and femaleness, and more that, sexually speaking, this is the anatomy i would have the most fun with. i enjoy the feeling of being penetrated vaginally, and i want to feel what it feels like to penetrate someone with my own flesh. small breasts are just the most appealing option for me. i've heard prostate orgasms get spectacular reviews on yelp. it's convenient that these goals can also serve to make my anatomy more androgynous by cisbinary standards, but that's not WHY they're my goals. they're my goals mostly because i'm a horny switch vers.

and when you factor in how many trans people are happy with their anatomy without needing to medically transition "fully" (another humanmade concept) or at all, the argument becomes threadbare. sure, SOME trans people may connect their transness to their desires for different anatomy, and my own transition goals may happen to combine what is generally assumed to be separately male and female - but that doesn't mean that's how i define my transness or conceptualize my body.

there is also, as with all aspects of "my" self, the wee little wrench in the gears of plurality. i've been speaking mostly from my own perspective, combining it where useful with the collective experiences of my system, but there are a FUCKLOAD of us and we all seem to conceptualize our own genders differently. i'm a bigender femme woman+man. 🪫 is, most days, a butch woman+man, sometimes leaning more femme. 🌊 presents very masculinely but chooses not to label himself very much beyond that. 🧭 generally hates being gendered and does not have a particular gender label. i don't even know what 🪻 is doing, nor does he seem very pressed about it anyway, but it's certainly a whole lotta something. a small handful of us are binary men, but even those folks don't tend to fully relate to that label because of our collective experiences with being nonbinary - they do not consider themselves women, but share a body with many women, which affects how they conceptualize their own manhood. it's all interconnected for our system.

so, perhaps my question should be reframed as, how does ANYONE in my system have the ability to confidently declare any gender at all? and why does it vary so much between headmates? why don't we all have the same gender if we're in the same body, the same brain, the same nervous system, with (generally) the same transition desires? is it related to our specific roles within the system, in ways we don't even understand? is it our brain's way of expressing different sides of some collective gender? or is it completely fucking random and arbitrary? what can this tell us about singlets' genders?

i don't have a solid conclusion. i cannot fucking explain HOW or WHY i am both a woman and a man, it's simply the most correct answer i can think to give. again, maybe that's just the result of living in such a binary society. maybe i'm just using the best language i was given for my existence. maybe i'm simultaneously a man and a woman and nothing and something else. idk. lol.