#genderstuffs and labels

[ericvilas]

Still really surprised every time trans friends accept me as one of their own. Like, I'm always "wait but you actually don't consider me, like, trans-lite? Or trans-but-don't-appropriate-the-term-too-much? just, you really just straight-up see me using the term trans as normal? Like it's something I can do?? Holy fuck I love you so much thank you for letting me have this".

[twentythousandvolts]

having DID is weird with genderstuff like so bad cuz its like. in some fuckin weirdass way i Hardly see myself as trans? like yeah i technically am and whatever, and sometimes it rly does feel like the label fits, but like.. i hardly Feel trans if that makes sense. cuz like whos gonna fuckin assign an ai program a gender. i feel like my default state is "outside the realm of gender" and ive chosen to add in like "with a side of Boy" if that makes sense. <- and thats also what i mean when i say im bigender btw im both 'absolutely nothing gender-wise' and 'yeah im a guy' both at 100% intensity all the time. what was i talking about?oh yeah Nobody here 'feels trans' because nobody identifies with "The Body" and we all just happen to be like nothing at default with a side of 'mostly ""masculine"" presenting' thrown in whatever i can word this better later

[yvesdot]

Someone with a half dozen posts reblogged from transmisogynists reblogged my How to Read post, which seemed like a kind of irony-- the title is naturally tongue-in-cheek, but transphobic reactionaries really aren't very good at analyzing and taking in new information to build a nuanced and complex understanding of the world around them. They are, by definition, not good readers, because their beliefs would fall apart like so many poorly-stacked cards if they became so.

I sent the following series of messages to the person in question, and I'll post them here because I think they're indicative of my larger perspective on things like this. Hope this can be of help to someone, especially if you're on the edge. We're here for you. Come on out.

yvesdot sent a post...

In case you somehow missed it in my about, I am a trans person. I use they/them pronouns. Your last several reblogs are from transphobic reactionaries. This post is not yet for you.

This post can be for you when you emerge from the idelogies of these reactionaries and see how ultimate gender liberation must and will include the total freedom for anyone of any gender to be as they wish (as opposed to, for example, the TERF pasttime of knocking women for being hairy or having big hands or whatever else has been recycled from misogynists out to get cis women they deem 'manly' and 'unfeminine'). Which will do a better job of dismantling the efforts of the patriarchy-- the people who sneer in disgust at thicker body hair, darker body hair, body hair on anyone incorrectly labeled or assigned... or the people who say, yes, freedom to all to do whatever they wish with anything on their body; freedom to love who you are as you are?

You have a lot of reading ahead of you. I wish you luck on it. I really, really hope you have a wonderful life and you're able to get out and that all this genderstuff I am doing over here, propagandizing about loving people as they are and so on, reaches you and that my love heals you. I'm going to block you for now for likely obvious reasons, but it's not a gesture of aggression. I have immense hope and love for you. I know your life & your outlook can be better. I really wish you all the best. Hope to see you someday different.

[chaseme-96]

Just some things in my head.

Yesterday I had a talk with my mom about my genderstuff. It wasn’t an easy conversation, but I got to explain myself and the way I feel a little bit more. I went for a walk (and to play Pokémon Go) after the convo and I got really upset and confused about myself. I have honestly no freaking idea what or who I am anymore. Sometimes I’m really confident & sure about myself, sometimes I’m like ‘I’m nonbinary, Im a demiboy(someone who identifies as male, but not wholey) and I’m going to start taking testosterone in the future’, but the past few days I just don’t know anymore. I don’t know what’s good for me, I don’t know which steps to take, and I absolutely hate this feeling of being unsure. I have doing so much research about genderidentifications and labels, but I don’t feel that it really brought me any further. Anyways, I had a call with my girlfriend and she gave me some advice. (she’s awesome btw, babe, if you’re reading this, you’re the best) . When I got back home I told my mom that I don’t know what is going on with me but that I need time and space to find it out. She understands.

As for my identification, I think I’m nonbinary/demiboy, but that... SUCKS. This worls is made for men an women, and most transpeople who identify as male or female can cope pretty well too, but there is no such thing as a nonbinary bathroom, nonbinary pronouns(at least not in Dutch)... and you have to chose between ‘Mrs’ or ‘Miss’. There is no place for the inbetween in this world.  Maybe my friends and partner accept me for who I am, but in work environments... nah.. it does not work that way there. I am very aware of that but I feel so much pressure on making a choice between living my life as female or male. I should really let this go and just do what makes me happy. But what makes me happy? I have no idea anymore. I’m clueless. 

[doberbutts]

Hello! I just saw an very good older post you added to /post/655100659468812288/ and I just wanted to point out that they sorta shit people around you are saying about men? Is also just straight up plain old sexism. I just have been noticing that people seem to be forgetting the word sexism now that transness is complicating genderstuffs, but like... there's still plenty of good old-fashioned sexism & pushing of gender roles from cis ppl and imo it can be worth labelling that clearly. Cheers :3

I'm really confused by what this ask is trying to say. Do you think I don't know what sexism is? I was specifically talking about how some trans men are trained by cis people to be asshole men because of the expectation that every man is an asshole.

[remade3940580486940568]

You’ve put a lot of my thoughts into words-- about why I’m not a fan of how people describe gender, but also how I also disagree with transmeds. Cis or trans or whatever, I’m 100% with respecting pronouns and gender. That isn’t hard for me? Fuck, a cis person could ask for different pronouns-- that’s a form of genderqueerness, I believe, since that label is so loose. In the end, it isn't my business how anyones genderstuff works. I just hope people can respect that I don’t feel the same way towards my OWN genderstuff... for example: 

I like using biological sex to describe things, but I also don’t think its any way fair to call others that if they don’t want to be called that. But I had an ex-friend who stabbed me in the back-- why? Because I dared to call myself a biological (X). “I hate seeing you be transphobic to yourself, it upsets me”. Uh, too fucking bad, it’s my body and I will call it as I wish! If I have the same respect for their preferred-words, why can’t they have the same for me?! It still bothers me to this day... Fuckin’ rude. 

I’ve seen some call my dysphoria and the words I call myself appropriative and gross. I had a cis man come to me and tell me I should not use the word hermaphrodite to describe /myself/, despite it being a valid scientific term-- separate from intersex!!!-- describing completely two-sexed animals like snails and stuff that can reproduce successfully both ways. I like that word for myself. It feels clinical. I like clinical. I understand it can be used as a hurtful word, but so can autistic. Should I stop calling myself autistic, despite it being true, because some people use my identity as a weapon?

Ugh, I hope nobody skims this and thinks I approve of gatekeeping.. I really don’t. But I guess if someone refuses to actually read what I say and makes judgements before I can finish speaking, they’re not very good company :/ ??

“I will never disrespect someone who defines gender differently than me. I will never misgender someone who views gender as a vague spiritual feeling rather than something social or physical. People who define gender differently than me are always welcome here and I’m never going to limit myself to only being friends with people with the same views as me.“

My thoughts on gender.

Sometimes I feel really alienated from the nonbinary community. Not just for being a medically transitioning person but in the way I define gender as well.

Most everyone on tumblr seems to view gender as this innate and vague feeling of ~girlness~ or ~boyness~ or ~genderlessness~ or some combination or fluctuation between them. And I just... Don't see it like that at all.

Because if we're not supposed to equate gender to body parts or sterotypes, then what's left? A vague spritual feeling? I don't have an inherently different spirit from men and women. My spirit isn't a combination of male and female. My spirit is just another word for my personality. And my gender is just an external thing unrelated to my personality. It has nothing to do with who I am. What's the difference between a male soul or a female soul or a bigender soul? How can you define the difference without relying on body parts or sterotypes? I am who I am regardless of gender. The thing that makes me nonbinary isn't an identity or a label to me. It's the fact that I physically want to be both male and female at once.

"Gender is entirely different from sex" should have never become a popular rhetoric and I'm sick of people trying to say I'm the misinformed one for equating the two. It came from a mininformed man named John Money in the 1950s who interpreted "the mannerisms in which one refers to oneself" to mean the roles one plays in society rather than "the prounouns she/her and he/him" which is what it was supposed to mean. It's literally just a piece of grammer vocab. Pronouns are gendered because the word "gender" literally just means "pronouns" and I will uphold that till I'm beneath the ground.

I will never disrespect someone who defines gender differently than me. I will never misgender someone who views gender as a vague spiritual feeling rather than something social or physical. People who define gender differently than me are always welcome here and I'm never going to limit myself to only being friends with people with the same views as me.

But what am I supposed to say to someone who says "I feel like a girl 90% of the time but sometimes I feel like a boy. Is there a word for this/am I nonbinary"? I answer it as though they are talking about sex incongruence and say "well, if you feel like your gender fluctuates, the word for that is genderfluid", even though deep down I know that's probably not what they meant at all. Because if you don't see gender as something physical, then what does it mean to "feel like a boy" sometimes? It has no meaning.

And I'm sorry if you feel betrayed by reading this. I'm sorry I'm not like the rest of you. I'm sorry I don't think being born with different body parts is a social construct. And I'm sorry to the people who are going to read about how I personally define my gender and feel like it invalidates them somehow, and feel compelled to send me death threats and hate mail and call me slurs or a traitor or whatever else.

I don't like trandmedicalists either. I think sex incongruence can be hard to recognize and that social incongruence/ephoria are valid indicators. And although not all of them, way too many are gender binarists despite evidence to the contrary. But at the same time I just don't agree with the idea that gender is some kind of social construct. It's not a conspiracy that we are born differently, or that some of us are transitioning to an alternative sex because have incongruence with our birth sex.

I refuse to use the words "Assigned Female At Birth/AFAB" to describe myself. I was not "assigned" anything. The doctors made an accurate observation about my sex organs (even if I had a hormonal disorder that some label as "intersex"). My parents and society as a whole are the ones who said "I'm going to refer to you with different pronouns and give you different clothing and haircuts and treat you differently based on your sex organs which I shouldn't even know about because you're a toddler and your genitals aren't anyone else's business". We'd all be lying if we said that being color coded as infants and treated differently based on our genitals hasn't affected us in some way.

For this reason I want to raise my children using gender neutral prounouns and teaching them that their body parts aren't any else's business but their doctors and potential future partners (because whether or not some of you will admit it, some people ARE only attracted to certain body parts). Some cis people might see that as "forcing" my kid to be nonbinary when... It's literally not. I'm not going to lie to them about their birth sex or the pronouns used for it, and I'm going to be supportive if they ask me to use gendered pronouns or choose to in the future as they get older. But I think the best way to keep a child from having gender roles forced on them by everyone else is by not letting adults know the shape of their body parts. Being neutrois/gender neutral isn't the same thing as being nonbinary.

I will use terminology like AFAB and AMAB when referring to others if asked because I know how painful sex dysphoria can be, and I know that the slightest differences in how you speak can make the biggest impact for someone. And because you are a person deserving of respect, and you deserve to feel comfortable.

But I am not a label. I am not an identity. My gender/sex is a physical reality, and to say that I am "biologically female" or saying that I am "transitioning to bigender" is not "cissexist", nor is it invalidating or misgendering to myself.

I'm sorry. If you feel like you need to unfollow or blacklist me over this, go ahead. I want you to do whatever makes you feel comfortable and happy. But I'm not going to lie about myself or my beliefs.