#gendersex

[ketchup-cat-sub]

Fairly certain I've posted this on my old account and it's definitely not a novel sentiment, but it's a good one and worth repeating: I don't really identify as a trans woman, the point that at times when I need to type things such as "I am a trans woman" it feels icky and incorrect. Largely because it is not treated as being [adjective] [noun] combination but a singular term: "trans woman". The former is correct, but I reject the phrasing because of the way society perceives it as the latter.

I am binary in my gender, mostly to differentiate myself from those that are decidedly not. I don't share that experience or whatever else comes with it. But to put a singular word on my gender is difficult because gender is complicated. Woman, girl, female, femme, whatever-words-in-my-native-language. Sure these describe one of the binary categories that I am decidedly in. I am a woman, I am female, etc. I won't be kind to anyone who disagrees.

The binary gender categories are a strange thing because they are so broad and implicit, yet seemingly specific and obvious. That's how we societally and culturally regard these, especially when not giving them much thought. Being such defaults for cisgender people and even the rest of us in the binary, there is no great need to use language to be more exact about gender. Many do, but that is often in relation to something else, such as sexuality. The situation I am in is knowing which category I am in but without a care to describe that further. I am a woman, whatever that means or whichever word is used.

Of course, I am also trans, but it does not act as a modifier to my gender. I find both words transgender and transsexual as applicable, most of all because the heavy distinction that gender and sex are different and uncorrelated is in my view just the cissexist/-normative society bargaining to maintain a semblence of control with "biological sex" to be treated as immutable and binary and using "gender" to be pragmatic about reality which includes trans people and anyone else challenging that norm. As a sidenote, I like the term gendersex to communicate this idea.

But when it comes to transness, I think I find transfem(me) as the most pragmatic and homely word for myself. Transfem woman does not as easily get relagated to a term that degenders me or modifies my womanhood. Transfemme serves as a connection to communities that have been and are important to me. Transfeminine describes my experiences, for better or for worse.

To be a bit cheeky for the end, femme also manages to be suitably pretentious word to place me in the correct gender category, while communicating both how serious and how uncaring I am of womanhood. Such a meaningfully useless thing.

[h1sstoria]

Greek homosexual activity, despite popular misconceptions, was not restricted to man-boy pairs. Vase-painting shows numerous scenes where there is little or no apparent difference in age between the young wooer and his object of courtship as well as graphic scenes of sexual experimentation between youths. Early poets such as Theognis (1.41, 1.65) and Pindar (1.86) make it clear that youths were attracted to and slept with other youths of the same age. Plato tells us that the young Charmides’ beauty provoked the admiration and love of everyone present, even the youngest boys (5.4.154). In the Phaedrus, Socrates quotes the proverb “youth delights youth” to imply that young men would prefer companions of their own age to older lovers (5.9.240). Xenophon shows Critobulus in love with Cleinias, a youth of the same age or perhaps even a bit older (5.8.4.23). Timarchus’ lover, Misgolas, appears to be the same age (4.7.49). In the Hellenistic period Meleager attests that boys were attractive to boys (6.40), and Quintilian worries about older boys corrupting younger boys in Roman schools (9.34).

Homosexuality In Greece And Rome: A Sourcebook of Basic Documents, edited by Thomas K. Hubbard

Sources referenced below the cut:

Theogonis 1.41

In youth you can sleep the night through with a friend,*

Unloading the desire for lusty action,

And you can go wooing and sing to a flute-girl’s tune—

No other thing is more thrilling than these

For men and women. What are wealth and honor to me?

Pleasure conquers all—and merrily.

Mindless men and fools weep for the dying

Instead of the blossom of youth that’s falling.

*The Greek makes it clear that the friend is an age-equal.

Theogonis 1.65

Boy, since the goddess Cypris gave you a lusty

Grace, and your beauty’s every boy’s concern,*

Listen to these words and for my sake take them to heart—

Knowing how hard it is for a man to bear desire.

*In other words, Cyrnus’ beauty arouses desire even among boys his own age.

Pindar 1.86

When Ephyrean¹ choristers pour out

My sweet voice around the Peneius,²

I expect by my songs to make the crowned Hippocleas

Still more splendid to look upon to both his age-mates and older men,

And a heartthrob for young maids. For

Different loves tickle the fancies of different folks.

Whatever each man reaches for,

If he wins it, let him hold as his desire an ambition near at hand;

Things a year in the future are impossible to foreknow.³

I have relied on the kind hospitality of Thorax, who, bustling about for my sake,

Yoked this four-horse chariot of the Muses,⁴

Favoring one who favors him, giving willing guidance to one who guides him.

To one who tests it, gold is revealed on the touchstone—

So too an upright mind.⁵

¹Ephyre was an ancient name of the Thessalian city of Krannon.

²The main river of Thessaly.

³The poet appears to be exhorting the boy not to be tempted by the other erotic opportunities that may be presented to him in his newly acquired glory, but to stick with his present good, namely Thorax.

⁴This expression is probably a metaphor for commissioning the present poem.

⁵In other words, Thorax’ virtue and devotion are proven by commissioning this poem (putting his gold to the test).

Plato 5.4.154

[...] You mustn’t judge by me, my friend. I’m a broken yardstick as far as handsome people are concerned, because practically everyone of that age strikes me as beautiful. But even so, at the moment Charmides came in he seemed to me to be amazing in stature and appearance, and everyone there looked to me to be in love with him, they were so astonished and confused by his entrance, and many other lovers followed in his train. That men of my age should have been affected this way was natural enough, but I noticed that even the small boys fixed their eyes upon him and no one of them, not even the littlest, looked at anyone else, but all gazed at him as if he were a statue. And Chaerephon called to me and said, “Well, Socrates, what do you think of the young man? Hasn’t he a splendid face?”

Plato 5.9.240

[...] But besides being harmful to his boyfriend, a lover is simply disgusting to spend the day with. ‘Youth delights youth,’ as the old proverb runs—because, I suppose, friendship grows from similarity, as boys of the same age go after the same pleasures. But you can even have too much of people your own age.

Xenophon 5.8.4.23

Hermogenes said, “Socrates, I do not consider it appropriate for you to overlook the fact that Critobulus has been so driven out of his senses by love.”

“Do you think,” said Socrates, “that he has been in this condition ever since he associated with me?”

“If not, since when?”

“Do you not see that the soft hair has recently crept alongside this one’s ears, while it already climbs from Cleinias’ chin towards the back.* Critobulus here was mightily inflamed before, when he went to the same school as Cleinias, [...]

*This suggests that Critobulus and Cleinias were both adolescents: if anything, Cleinias may have actually been a bit older. However, the interpretation of the Greek is disputed: others take the reference to be to hair on the nape of Cleinias’ neck. And 2.3 tells us that Critobulus is already married! Perhaps Critobulus is exaggerating his youthful appearance to imagine him-self as more like his beloved.

Aeschines 4.7.49

I want to say something else in advance, in case Misgolas obeys the laws and your authority. There are men who by their nature differ from others in their physical appearance as far as age is concerned. There are some men who though young appear mature and older, while others though old when one counts the years seem positively young. Misgolas is one of these. He is in fact a contemporary of mine and was an ephebe¹ with me; we are both in our forty-fifth year. And I myself have all these grey hairs that you see, but he doesn’t. Why do I give this advance warning? So that when you suddenly see him you will not be surprised and mentally respond: “Heracles! He is not much older than Timarchus!”² For it is a fact both that his appearance is naturally like this and that Timarchus was already a youth when Misgolas had relations with him. . . .

¹This refers to mandatory military service between the ages of eighteen and twenty.

²In fact, Timarchus seems also to be at least 45 at the time of this speech, judging from his service on the Council in 361 (mentioned in section 109); one had to be at least 30 to serve. Aeschines is apparently attempting to confuse the jurors and make Timarchus seem younger than Misgolas, whereas they were in fact the same age. Some commentators suspect textual corruption and think Aeschines and Misgolas were 54 rather than 45.

Meleager 6.40

Delicate Diodorus, casting a flame upon his young age-mates,

Has been caught by the flirtatious eyes of Timarion,*

And retains the sweet-bitter weapon of Eros. Truly, in this I see

A new wonder. Fire blazes bright burned by fire.

*A female courtesan.

Quintilian 9.34

I do not approve of younger and older boys sitting together in a classroom. For even if such a man as one would want is set over their studies and character and can keep the young modest, the weak should still be separated from the stronger, and not only the charge of moral turpitude, but even the suspicion of it should be avoided. I have considered that these matters should be briefly noted. That the teacher himself and his school be free from the worst vices I think hardly even needs to be said. And if there is anyone who in selecting a teacher does not avoid obvious moral misconduct, let him know that if this factor has been overlooked, everything else we try to devise for the benefit of the young is utterly futile.

[jewfrogs]

begging everyone who wants to talk about jewish gender(s) to read trans talmud by max strassfeld and no posting until youre done

[dykepuffs]

THIS IS WHAT I MEAN about how if one person has gendersex, everyone has to have gendersex!

I go into an interview room and I have to think: Does the interviewer think of themselves as being more like Man Gendersex or more like Woman Gendersex? Will they see me as being a similar-kind-of-gendersex or a different-kind-of-gendersex? If I get it wrong - Will the man-gendersex interviewer be offended if he sees me sitting adjacent to him as a type-of-woman being flirtatious, rather than a type-of-man trying to be nonconfrontational? What if that is actually a woman-type-of-person interviewer, who sees me as a man-type-of-person being overfamiliar and pushy, rather than as a woman-type-of-person being friendly? What if the man-type-of-interviewer thinks that I see him as a woman-type-of-person so reads my sitting across from him as a man-type-of-person trying to put a woman-type-of-person at-ease, so feels offended because I've impugned his manhood? Etc etc etc.

Does anyone have a sauce for this paragraph because I want to put it in my dissertation.

i fucking hate gender bro what the fuck is any of this shit

[genderkoolaid]

the fact that transmasculinity & assigned-female transness place in patriarchy goes so unanalyzed is wild because i feel like trans people are a fundamental issue in feminist philosophy that need to be understood and addressed. not only the question of "what if a woman isn't born a woman?" but also "what if a woman chooses not to be a woman?" because both of these are like. vitally important when discussing the real life violence of misogyny and the neglected groups in that discussion. widely cis feminists just came to the conclusion "well if a woman chooses to be a man (/adjacent) then she's a traitor who wants privilege, if she chooses to be something else she's a coward" and have just reworded that basic idea to be more or less openly transphobic. and i feel like transfeminism should be fundamentally about pointing out that misogyny does not only target and hurt "women-born women" but people punished for threatening patriarchal control by exposing the gendersex binary as false, people pushed to the outskirts of gender with none of the protection of being seen as natural, illuminating the violence done to those people for being (seen as) both women and not-women, and the way womanhood is more complicated than something you are, it's an experience that stretches beyond an inherent trait (of sex or gender). and yet

[ciaran]

what Imane Khelif is facing is transmisogyny, but I think it's ultimately kind of misleading to term it “misdirected transmisogyny.” i think cis people can experience transphobia but that's not the main point. it's that the gendersex polarity punishes divergence in all its forms, which manifests in a multitude of ways (transphobia, exorsexism, intersexism[?]) and she's catching that. the gendersex polarity has certain common tropes (the confused nb teenager, the genderfreak, the autistic woman cutting off her breasts, the predatory man) which are applied in situations where they may not exactly fit, because the gendersex polarity is absolutely unconcerned with nuance or accuracy and only cares about punishing deviance by applying any easily available trope to pressure people into disappearing whether that disappearance is ultimately executed through overt violence or covert violence in the form of erasure (which is not an isolated act but the systematic enabling of other forms of violence). so it's not to say that what she's experiencing is “misdirected.” the scrutiny and violence are targeted precisely at her for being intersex, & for being gnc woman. but the trope is one that “doesn't fit,” that's all

[ghelgheli]

something that reading histories of the transgender child really solidified for me is how deep the pathological narrative of transness as an acute condition runs. doctrines of the body as developmentally plastic, with this plasticity fading over time, with puberty as the main punctuation of this decrease—and nosology of transness as something that demands treatment and correction, normalization, modification up to an end goal—these work together to 1) render the "late" (post-pubescent) transitioner a primitive relic of times we did not know or could not do better, something to be dreaded and avoided through the "right" "treatments" we have now, and 2) the trans child as a site of repair-through-plasticity, so that they grow up into an unmarked form that the ideologies of binary gendersex can be at ease with, so that their transness is transient as far as the public is concerned and, adding 1 to 2, so that adult transness disappears outside the clinic

[dykepuffs]

Encoding gendersex in your third person pronouns feels silly, when there are so many more useful things you could do there. So I was noodling with different sets of three and four, since that is the "basic" set in British English (She, He, They, with optional rare It)

Since they're most often used when someone isn't present, I propose: Pronouns to tell you if you are meant to know a person.

She/Her - Someone that the speaker knows but the listener doesn't. So "A guy at my work brings her dog in on Fridays" - Don't worry, you don't need to remember who the guy is, the story is about the dog. Or conversely "You went to school with Jim, but she told me about her wife having an affair" - I am emphasising that I am much closer to Jim than you are, that Jim is my close friend and your distant acquaintance.

He/Him - Someone known to the listener but not the speaker. "Did your Dad insure you on his car?" - I don't know your Dad, I am relying on your account to understand the story. "He was on television, he streaked at the football match and we all saw his arsehole" - I am telling you that your friend streaked, not just that I saw a random streaker.

They/Them - A person known about equally by both participants, whether because of equal familiarity or equal ignorance: "Our dad just found their winter coat that they lost when we were kids, it was in their shed" - Both participants know Dad. Just like in regular English, an anonymous person known to neither speaker. "Someone left their bag on the train" - I don't expect you to know who did it - Or a person known to neither participant "I saw Tony Blair on television, they looked like they were drunk and lairy." - I don't expect you to personally know Tony Blair and I don’t either.

It would make correcting someone's pronouns far more useful too!

"I saw Brian today, she looked well"

"Oh good, they deserve a win"

The reply inherently encodes both "I'm glad Brian looks well" and "I also know Brian personally"

Or "I don't have your pen, I lent it to a student and they never gave it back"

(Meaning both "A student has your pen" and "The student with your pen is someone that you know too"... Or potentially "I gave it to a student who I also don't know, sorry")

"Well he'd better buy me a new one"

Encoding not just "Buy me a new pen" but also "I don't know this student, so if the student claimed to know me, that was a lie"

[dykepuffs]

Spot on.

Patrick Califia's "Doing It Together: Gay Men, Lesbians and Sex" is a beautiful account of gay men and lesbians hooking up at fisting parties in 1977, published in 1983. Likewise, the essay in Leatherfolk about The SF Catacombs, where they had a "mixed night" which attracts both gay leathermen and leatherdykes excited to get a chance to fuck each other...

...And also, last weekend, watching a lesbian I'd met earlier in the day bugger a gay man against the urinals until the flush broke and it just sprayed water randomly, whilst trysts of all configurations cottaged in the all-gender stalls. Nobody was clutching their pearls about Illegitimate Orientations, or at being in proximity to the Wrong Kind Of Queer, they were just happy at being able to be so free.

Sometimes the "homo"-ness in homo-sexual isn't about "same gendersex" or even "same kind of body" it's about "same queer", and that doesn't have to change how you gay or how you lesbian, but your gaying and lesbianning isn't more perfect and pure than theirs just because yours is easier for straight people to understand.

I think a lot of people on this website would benefit from hearing that back in 2011 when I was a part of my college's pride group, I was friends with a gay cis male drag queen whose roommate was a lesbian. They had sex with each other often, but it didn't stop my friend from identifying as a gay guy, nor did it stop their roommate from being a lesbian. Neither of them identified as bisexual. This kind of stuff happens between queer people of "conflicting" identities all the time, it's nothing new. There aren't any rules

[h1sstoria]

Netsuke: Nude samurai with articulated penis. Late 19th century, Japan. Hirado ware; porcelain with matte bisque glaze and stain.

[genderkoolaid]

is it weird to feel like i was still treated/classed as a faggot before even knowing i was a boy (i'm transmasc)? i was never called a dyke or derisively called a lesbian or any of that. but i was a tomboy, always was. and i was always heavily derided for crying or "being a crybaby," derided by boy and tomboy friends if i ever liked any Girly Things with comments like "that's so gay (derogatory)", and being masculine but still interested in boys was regarded as this weird and disgusting thing. it's like being a tomboy and, for at least for a part of my life that being accepted, i had this expectation of masculinity placed on me that led to me being castigated by my peers for stepping outside it.

there were still expectations placed on me for "being a girl" and i was punished for not doing that correctly and i experienced heaps of misogyny, but there are so many instances in my life where i was specifically punished for being a tomboy who wasn't masculine in the right way but instead in a gay way. i never felt targeted by anti-lesbian sentiment but always felt very heavily targeted by anti-gay man sentiment. but despite desiring my whole life to be a boy i didn't truly know and accept that i was one until i was 18 and didn't start living as a man until i was 20

idk man my experience with gender growing up was always so weird and confusing and people's assumptions about what i Must Have Experienced based on agab and identity are always incorrect and it's just so incredibly alienating.

I've heard things very similar to this from a lot of trans(+) people. I myself have been out since I was very young and spent the majority of my life openly (gender)queer which definitely shaped how I experienced gender socialization.

This is the problem with using socialization as a Gender Binary 2: Its Inclusive Now! While there are broad trends, people can have such wildly different relationships with gender. Some trans people have always felt targeted based on their assigned sex, some people have always felt targeted based on their gender identity, some people have felt both.

The thing about the patriarchy is that it's a liar and you should never trust anything it says. The patriarchy claims to be a strict gendersex binary for control purposes, but it also must grapple with the existence of queers (gays, trannys, intersex folks) whose existence proves that what it claims to be natural is constructed. Because the ways in which misogyny and transphobia actually function are not tied down by any logic other than "stay in control." Demonizing queer&trans+ people for being "monstrous" for blurring the boundaries between (cishet) men and (cishet) women is like, alongside misogyny, a core part of how gender oppression works. Whenever people expect us to have the exact same experiences as cis people, whether based on gender identity or agab or socialization, they are trying to fit a square peg in a round hole.

[ciaran]

by the way, the manner in which western biomedicine disproportionately targets poor, racialized, marginalized non-western or improperly/insufficiently western bodies with their extensive systems of testing and gendersex boundary maintenance is no accident. obviously, it is racist. but there is an intertwined history of racism and the development of biomedical paradigms. genetics is a young discipline, but it has immediately been drafted into racist and eugenic projects not as a side effect, not as an aberrant co-optation, but because for many centuries medicine has been innovating exciting new ways to prove white superiority. watch closely how claims are made to "the science" - it is easy to write them off as simply stupid, but that isnt all. science has never been neutral. it still isn't. its claims to neutrality in recent decades have been part of a global shift to undressing imperialism and reclothing it in objectivity. that "the actual science" is "progressive" matters not at all to the flagbearers of "the science"

[dykepuffs]

The joy of exploring your queerness is in realising that whatever *you* are, there are women with experiences identical to yours and men with experiences identical to yours and all sorts of people with experiences identical to yours, and that every facet of your personality, life story, body's specifics, hopes, etc, could just as easily belong to someone with any kind of gendersex.

(And then, potentially, because anyone who believes they are a man is a man and anyone who believes they are a woman is a woman, that men and women and all the other gendersexes only exist because we believe in them, so we should stop encouraging people to make "X only" or "No X allowed, X DNI" places.)

My queers, we really need to put the "no men" thing away. Men are not inherently bad. There are queer men. There are questioning men. There's men that are just plain cool. Denying these men a space at our table is not helping - except the TERFs. I just came off the back of reading a transphobe gleeful rant about the need to have pride without men - They of course mean me. This kind of stuff is damaging to me and I really need us all to take a step back and maybe kill this "men dni, men not allowed" stuff. What you mean is "no men who are going to do mean stuff to me." And frankly those men won't give a shit about that kind of boundary.

But I promise you there's a fleet of good honest men who will see that and be sad they're not allowed in your version of queer spaces.

PATRIARCHY is what you hate. Dni Patriarchs.

[sheherlestat]

hate to break it to you but we cannot have gendersex liberation if y’all keep accusing irl cis men for queer baiting when they wear a skirts and paint their nails. their gender is not the problem. if they’re homophobic, that’s a problem. the problem is misogyny. the problem is gender prejudice. not men with fruity aesthetics.

[croutoneater69]

im making queer theory 2 and it will include my christo-gendersex-horseshoe theory

[ecoevoexo]

please recognize that pointing out power dynamics is not a personal attack on your friends, or on anyone. saying someone is white, or abled, or tme, or whatever is not the same as calling them assholes. saying "all abled people are assholes" is not the same as saying "your friend Jim, who has no disabilities, is an asshole and a bad person". people are complex and we can talk about the ways that they embody elements of power dynamics without it being an attack on them personally. (likewise, people who are more marginalized are not necessarily better people). we need to have the space to address problems like privileged people disregarding or even participating in our suffering without it being seen as a case-by-case attack on privileged people or dividing the community or whatever.

years ago when internet feminism was getting off the ground there was the debate between "not all men" and "yes all men". and while a lot of it was intentional obfuscation, there was also a good deal of missing the point. because to say "yes all men" points to the fact that "men" as a category are constituted of and by patriarchal power, without which they would not be what we understand to be men, and to say "not all men" means that the people constituted as men have individual free will with how they engage with that patriarchal power and can choose not to do harmful things with it or even to work towards its destruction. while i still firmly say "yes all men" i find it frequently important to clarify that i don't mean "men" in terms of the people themselves, i mean "men" in terms of the dividual elements of the social role they occupy in the sexgender system.

this is something that our society, with an algorithm's dependence on identity determinism, does not easily prepare us to think about. a bureaucratic society resists these forms of materially embodied nuance and tries to discipline them or make them unthinkable, especially when that bureaucracy is also a technocracy. but spending time thinking on your life and the people in it, it should be clear that we are both a mixture of unique people making our own paths in some degree of confusion, and the products of a long inherited social war along various lines of class, race, gendersex, etc. and seeing that distinction and the way it plays out in your life ideally shouldn't cause you to retreat or to reject others, but to better understand the importance and the nature of the struggle for liberation we are engaged in, and to try better yourself in the ways you are impeding the liberation of others.