#if we delete male/female concepts then so much of the english language actually breaks down

[guardiandae]

(gender anon 1) dae i have an important question that's been bugging me since forever : how do people figure out their gender and pronouns ? it used to seem simple to me but tumblr confused the hell out of me. i get that gender doesn't depend on genitals and stereotypes, that girls can like cars and videogames and boys can be sensitive and wear skirts and that everything in between is just as free to be what they like, etc. so i guess my question is : what DOES gender depend on ??

(gender anon 2) why do people chose one over the over ? at this point it seems to me that the only real difference is the spelling. tbh gender only made sense to me as a way to let people know what genitals we are most confortable with. exemple : i'm a girl because i have / wish i had a vagina, this is what i identify with, or, i'm non binary because i don't feel like specifying to people what's between my legs / i feel like i'd be okay with either / i'm intersex and i'm cool with it.

(gender anon 3) but that doesn't seem to justify the dozens of different genders that exist. so. i'm really confused. i hope i'm not missing something obvious and this doesn't come of as dumb.

(gender anon 4) sorry me again. i feel like i didn't properly explain my question and i wanted to try to approach it from another angle. let's take an example : person A's gender is "girl". what does it say about A ? it doesn't necessarily mean A is feminine or born female, those are both stereotypes right ? but then, what DOES it mean ? what meaning is left in "girl" ? if girls can be anything and anyone can be a girl, then why would person A chose that label over another in the first place ?

I feel like there are “a dozen genders” now because for decades, especially in Western society (and I can only speak from experience of Western society), there’s been such a strict binary divide, “This is what a man is, and you should fit this mold or be ashamed” and ditto for women. People who didn’t fit neatly into the category that society pegged them as would face social, even legal consequences or worse, assault or death. (”You were born with a vagina, so you’re a woman, but you’re too masculine and trying to be a man so you’re going to jail until you learn to behave like your sex!”) Now that’s less heard of... unfortunately not entirely eradicated, but for the most part people are waking up to the fact that this gender binary concept is kind of bullshit, and what even is gender and is it real and what does that mean for us???

What gets my goat is that, a lot of people who are against these “new genders” or the concept of say, boys wearing dresses.... ultimately when you argue with them, it boils down to them being angry because they can no longer tell who is “actually” male or female, who has a penis or a vagina. They are probably coming to the same conclusion that you have, that if penis = masculine, sports, cars, assertiveness, square jaws, beards, ‘men’s’ style clothing, and vagina = feminine, caretaking, babies, sensitivity, soft faces, breasts, ‘women’s’ style clothing .... isn’t true and is in fact just a giant lie created by society that we’re realizing we don’t need to believe in anymore... I lost my train of thought. But they are realizing the same lie, but instead of just being in confused awe of it and accepting it, they react with fear and anger. People with vaginas should act and look a certain way, people with penises should act and look a different way otherwise how will we know who has penises and who has vaginas?! Rabble rabble rabble! It’s the same obsession with sex with homophobia, regurgitated as transphobia and... I’m not sure what word would be the phobia for non-binary-conforming people in general.

But honestly? The fear is bullshit, and the entire concept of non-binary people isn’t new in the slightest. I work in retail. Staying away from gendered terms like “sir” or “ma’am” is a wise choice because there are many many many many many many older people who I honestly cannot judge their gender by their face, body, hair, or even voice. That’s why anti-trans bathroom bills are a really bad fucking idea for everybody, btw. How many older women with whiskers on their chin are going to get kicked out of the ladies’ room? It’s just asinine. But I’m off-topic by now.

My answer to your actual question is pretty straightforward and probably unhelpful:

Gender depends on how you feel. Whether you identify as male or female, and what pronouns you prefer, really depends on what feels right.

I saw a twitter thread where someone mentioned the topic of how many genders there are, and isn’t that excessive and unnecessary and other people are just trying too hard to be special, right? Not for them. They never felt like they quite fit in anywhere until they saw “demi-girl” defined, and they burst into tears because finally something described how they felt. It’s like how I felt when I finally realized that I did fit into the asexual ‘umbrella’. Holy fuck, I’m not broken, I’m not alone, this is me, this finally feels right.

I asked someone that I know who is trans if they had a different take on this, but she answered simply with, “I just kind of knew.” She said that puberty felt wrong when she started growing a beard instead of breasts, but that she was also a tomboy, so the masculine/feminine constructs have always felt like a weird contradiction. 

The thing is, the ideas of what is “masculine” and “feminine” might be a socially constructed lie... but in many ways they are still true because as a society we know what is generally considered to be masculine or feminine. For some people, they want to have a ‘feminine’ fashion style, for others, they want a ‘masculine’ body. I don’t think that it’s necessarily bad to have these stereotypical concepts of masculinity and femininity, as long as we understand that people are not stereotypes and we can’t force gender roles onto other people. It’s when others come in and try to tell someone, “you’re a man because you have a penis / you are a woman therefore you must love shopping and babies / you’re a man so you can’t wear makeup and heels” that we run into a gross problem.

Personally, I felt betrayed when puberty hit and I gained weight, and suddenly I had breasts. Before that, I could be boy/girl, either, neither, and that made me happy and felt right. After I got curves I was like, “...I guess I have to learn how to be a female now” but it never felt right and honestly gave me a lot of stress and dysphoria at times. The closest I feel to any gender would probably be agender... but pronouns? I don’t know about that either, because personally, nothing feels right. If I could opt out of pronouns altogether, that’d be great, but the English language makes it difficult to be gender neutral, much less avoid pronouns altogether.

So yeah. Sorry this is a non-answer, but really there isn’t a good answer. I’m not sure you really can define “boy” or “girl”. I’ve not been able to see anyone define “man” or “woman” in a way that didn’t exclude cisgendered men/women in the process. You just... know. It feels correct. And when you’re misgendered, it feels wrong or even unbearably awful.