#gendersex

[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.

[nukashiire]

[ID: a seven striped flag where the second stripe has drips and the fourth stripe is thick and lumpy like a cloud. There is a symbol of a bed and one person on top of another person who is laying down and a blanket draped over their bodies where their heads peak out from the top. The flag is colored, from top to bottom, black, dark reddish brown, reddish brown, brown, light grey, reddish orange, pinkish red, dark pinkish red, and very dark red. end ID]

Fighoulsex

A gendersex (link) subterm related to Fire Nameless Ghoul sex, sex in a Fire Ghoul way, being a Fire Ghoul and having sex, sex relating to Fire Ghouls, etc.

Coined on 2/14/2025 | Colors based on my ghoul species flag

(Taglist) @archiveafterdark & @mogaigonewild

[genderadmor]

gurosexn ♡

not to be confused with gurosex.

a gendersex gender connected to guro sex, sex in a guro way, having sex & being guro/liking guro, sex relating to guro, etc!

tagging @mogaigonewild!

minors do not interact/follow!

[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.

[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 why I feel like kink is so important as a framework, because it gives you a way to play with this radioactive stuff without any desire to make it real.

Like, my pal is SUPER into kidnap: Properly deep, multi-day, multi-participant scenes with loads of financial and time investment. Because he has the space to talk about it as a kink, there has never been any confusion- of course he doesn't REALLY want to be someone's prisoner, dependent on their whims, of course he doesn't really want to be dressed by them and forced to wait on them hand and foot, doesn't want to be unable to escape the whippings and etc, this is a game that he plays with his partner because it's fun to temporarily inhabit those characters - and it would be horrifying to really BE them!

It would be so sweet and healthy if Gender-ing like the ones above was a kink scene, and fully committing to 24-hour Gendering was seen as as much of an extreme, inadvisable, niche commitment as being a 24-hour rubberdog was.

"Yeah me and my partner do Gendering - So he's my Boyfriend and I'm his Girlfriend (don't worry, we won't expect you to use those titles for us!) - as part of our kink, he takes initiative: He chooses where we go on our dates, and when we have sex ,and if I want to do either of those things I can't ask directly, I have to do what's called 'hinting', so like I can't say 'god I'm horny, come home so I can fuck you', I have to wear special clothes that in our kink scene, let the Boyfriend know that I want him to initiate sex. Part of the kink is that Girlfriends are don't work or earn money, and Boyfriends don't do any upkeep of the house... Obviously that is really dangerous and difficult to really do, but we pretend that I don’t have a job, and when we're doing a Gendering Session, I will cook for us both and get really into the minutiae of my own appearance, and he will pretend that he can't look after himself.

One important part of Gender-ing Play is how you interact with other players who aren't your partner- It's a lot like Old Guard leather in that, it's really strict, so Girlfriends aren't ever supposed to talk to people who play the "Man" role, and likewise Boyfriends are supposed to never speak to anyone playing the "Woman" role - Not just sexually, but they aren't supposed to seek them out as friends, or to have any conversations with them beyond totally utilitarian ones- yeah, it is really difficult! But the difficulty adds spice to the scene! - So we have weekends where a load of Gender-ing players get together and try to live it full-time for a couple of days..."

But, lo, we don't have that, so people who want to do this try to do it as 24/7 lifestylers.

this little glamorized misogyny "joke" has run its course right. can we leave this corny demonic shit in 2023. it is done now. we've had enough.

[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

[h1sstoria]

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

[nukashiire]

[ID: a seven striped flag where the second stripe has drips and the fourth stripe is thick and lumpy like a cloud. There is a symbol of a bed and one person on top of another person who is laying down and a blanket draped over their bodies where their heads peak out from the top. The flag is colored, from top to bottom, black, dark reddish brown, reddish brown, brown, light grey, green, dark green, dark forest green, and black. end ID]

Eaghoulsex

A gendersex (link) subterm related to Earth Nameless Ghoul sex, sex in a Earth Ghoul way, being a Earth Ghoul and having sex, sex relating to Earth Ghouls, etc.

Coined on 2/14/2025 | Colors based on my ghoul species flag

(Taglist) @archiveafterdark & @mogaigonewild

[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

[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]

It's probably a sign that I am not in a good place mentally, that it is bothering me more than usual how the contradictions in gendersexing are inescapable.

So:

"Women can look like anything, no aesthetic choice will disqualify a woman from womanhood!"

"Women can wear anything, no arrangement of clothes makes a woman less of a woman!"

"Women can have any arrangement of body parts, can desire having any arrangement of body parts, can have had or not-had any number of surgeries, and none of that makes any woman more or less of a woman than any other woman."

But then:

"We need women's spaces, with no men in them."

And I want to ask like... What do you want to keep OUT? Who are you making feel like a worse or more-marginal kind of woman, because of insinuating that they have proximity to Man, or that women like them en-masse would be unacceptable and make a venue too Manlike.

And then in the other direction is even more exhausting and downright harmful in more serious ways to bigger numbers of people, with:

"Woman is a female human, just someone with the Right Kind Of Body Parts,"

"There is no such thing as How Women Think or How Women Act..."

"Womanhood is defined entirely by the body, not by social norms or by anything that different cultures construct at different times!"

But then:

"Women would never say that! Women never like that! Women never think like that! Women don't dress like that and don't want to look like that!"

And it's just like, everyone is frustratingly unable to follow their thought through to the end of the line.

Abolish all this shit.

[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.

[nukashiire]

[ID: a seven striped flag where the second stripe has drips and the fourth stripe is thick and lumpy like a cloud. There is a symbol of a bed and one person on top of another person who is laying down and a blanket draped over their bodies where their heads peak out from the top. The flag is colored, from top to bottom, black, dark reddish brown, reddish brown, brown, light grey, brown, reddish brown, dark reddish brown, and black. end ID]

Ghoulsex

A gendersex (link) subterm related to Nameless Ghoul sex, sex in a Nameless Ghoul way, being a Nameless Ghoul and having sex, sex relating to Nameless Ghouls, etc.

Coined on 2/14/2025 | Colors based on my ghoul species flag

(Taglist) @archiveafterdark & @mogaigonewild

[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"