#it's that the concept of someone else being able to control whether I'm conscious and whether I remember anything

[thethingything]

I need to get ready for bed but I remembered the dentist appointment that's coming up in less than 2 weeks and ended up dissociating for over 2 hours (I'm honestly not sure how long it's been) and I do not feel good in the slightest after that

[segadores-y-soldados]

Dear segadores-y-soldados, I'm a young adult that is trying to be more socially conscious and respectful of LGBTIQA, and I get most info primarily from the web and similarly conscientious PDHPE teachers. However, I've been stumped on the idea of gender as a concept; if gender isn't determined by gentalia, or performance actions ( e.g. wearing dresses isn't = female), what is it? As a transman, how do you personally define gender? Feel free not to answer if you feel its intrusive in any way.

I forgot that I put that question thing on the queue, haha.

This is a very interesting question.  

The simple answer is that I perceive gender as a gradient spectrum, or even a “grid” - at the ends we have non-visible “segments” that are different for every single person that define the boundaries of a person’s internal beliefs on “masculinity” and “femininity.”  Because it is a spectrum, these boundaries are often ill-defined, even internally, and where a person “places” themselves on a spectrum is up to them, and up to their internal sense of self and identity.

I put it like this because I have often moved my own “internal boundaries,” considering myself nonbinary for several years before I recognized that I fell within my own internal category of “masculine” instead.But even then I worry that is too restrictive.  Maybe gender is less like a linear spectrum and more like a circular one that wraps back to itself.  Maybe it’s even more like a sphere - somehow both large and “all-encompassing” and yet because we are positioned somewhere inside it, we can’t actually see everything about it.

And there’s something to be said about the concept of gender being “fluid” instead of being a line or a solid shape.  That gender “fills to fit a mold,” so to speak - and intersectionality is hugely important.  The crucibles of our experiences that come to shape us are all different - cross-sections between gender, ethnicity, cultural heritages, economic class, physical and mental health, job history, your “relevant skills,” your personal interests, even whatever we might consider some sort of “personality core.”

(OH HEY, I WAS ABLE TO PUT A CUT IN HERE SWEET)

(Read a lot more under the cut!)

Full-disclosure: I come from a background of a combined Materialism (historical materialism) and Performance Theory.  Materialism describes that you are affected by the world around you - no person is born in a social, political, or economic vacuum.  You are born into a position that already has history attached to it - your family, your parents, your living situation, your actual physical location in the world - and from the moment you are…well, I guess, conceived, this history will be engrained in you before you ever have the ability to decide things for yourself.

You are a product of a history you inherited without you ever getting a say in the matter.

It sucks.

I’m not saying it doesn’t.  Life is not fair.  There is literally nothing but sheer luck separating me from someone who may have almost exactly the same circumstances as me, except maybe we differ in eye color.  Or hair color.  Or my parents buy one book and their parents buy a different book.  Your physical world will shape you, and this is why extending better social supports to everyone of all backgrounds and circumstances is so important.  We will never be exactly the same and that is not the point.  The point is that we should all have the same opportunities presented to us regardless of our spectrum of minute (or large) differences that we inherit (physical, mental, emotional, social, political, economic, personal, etc).

In my personal experience - mine and mine alone, I do not speak for any other trans or non-binary individuals - I’ve found that being transgender (or non-binary, back when I considered myself like that) is that you often find yourself at internal odds with the external history and life “product” you are given as you grow up.  When you start getting a mental, emotional, and social grasp on your internal  consciousness and your external appearance, you begin to feel…funny.  You don’t know how, but you’re suddenly 12 or 13 and you don’t fully remember how you got to this point, but wearing dresses makes you feel…uncomfortable.  You don’t really know why.  You look back and try to find a point where this feeling started.  You cannot fully pin it down.  When did your internal, personal story begin to be at odds with the external physicality you’re engaging with?

And it’s not like your realization about being uncomfortable with certain clothes suddenly makes you “less of a girl.”  There are other girls around you who don’t wear dresses.  Dresses make them uncomfortable too!  But when you start asking about other questions, their answers don’t perfectly align with yours.  You’re like 15 or 16.  You’re confused.  If no one particular “femininity” is the same, then what defines it at all?  And “masculinity?”  You are internally drawn to intangible things about masculinity.  It’s not the stuff that people who stereotype transgender individuals think: you don’t sit there and make a laundry list of “the manly things I like” and the “womanly things I dislike.”  You are drawn to…how the boys around you act.  Their “style.”  Their ability to talk a certain way.

Their performances of themselves, or rather, apsects of themselves.

But even then, that’s just one set of cross-sections in the “liquid matrix” of your internal, personal story.  A ciswoman can engage in performance styles that are “traditionally masculine” (by Western standards) and still be…well, a woman.  A ciswoman can present herself in any way she wants to, and she completely has that right.  Remember, the point isn’t to make us all fit into neat boxes, but to engage in ourselves and each other reflexively.  We are liquid, fluid, freeform existences that are given slightly different molded shapes from the histories we inherit, and these shapes can be changed or restructured with our different, lived experiences.

So you start asking yourself why certain points for you are different from the friends you have.  I have literally asked cisgender female friends if they are comfortable with being considered “a woman,” and when their answers - regardless of all their other cross-sections of personal identity - were “yes” without hesistation, I knew, personally, that I needed to ask myself why my answer was different.  Why did it make me uncomfortable?  If I wasn’t “okay” with being “a woman,” then what was I okay with?

…Again, full disclosure, one of the most difficult, excruciating questions I had to ask myself was if I was a misogynist.  It physically pained me to think that I might hate women, girls, and femininity on an irrational level, but it was a discussion I had to have with myself.  But I am glad I did it, because it forced me to understand that I DO like certain aspects of “feminine performances” (aka things Western culture considers “feminine”).  I loved, and still love, many things that are considered “feminine” - high heels, jewelry, flowers, pop music, etc.  I loved - and still love - many of the women who have been strong, inspiring presences in my life.  My mother, grandmothers, sister, and several friends in particular will be lifelong role models to me.  And whether I like it or not, my actual physical existence will inevitably be tied to how women and girls are treated in my country.  Even though I will eventually need a separate, specialized care, my rights to healthcare are permanently tied to how women, girls, and feminine individuals (including transwomen and non-binary feminine individuals) are treated in this country.  And that goes for all of us - men, boys, and masculine individuals too.

What I came to realize is that I was deeply and personally uncomfortable with apsects of myself that (I thought) I had no control over - cross-sections of my existence that were integrated into me long before I even had the ability to “cogito ergo sum.”  I was so deeply uncomfortable with these aspects that I frequently mentally detached my internal, personal self from the external physical self.  I often felt like I was a brain stuck in a body I did not choose to have.  I was on reddit some random day several years ago when I came across a comment expressing the above situation - “I feel frequently detached from my body.  I don’t like it.  I feel isolated inside myself.”

And the response someone else gave back was, “You may want to check if you have gender or body dysphoria.”

I literally cannot describe the intensity of relief I felt to finally have a term to describe this feeling.

Gender dysphoria.

What a relief to learn it has a name.

Gender dysphoria sucks.

…And that’s putting it mildly.

Life is not fair. There is literally nothing but incredibly minute, incredibly small differences that separate me from my cisgender sister - theories range from hormones in the womb, to exposure in the first few years of life, to “brain chemistry,” or whatever.  I don’t know the answer.  I don’t have a theory I favor over others, because many of them do not include the experiences of my non-binary “siblings.”  I gave up trying to find a “scientific answer” for my situation because so many of them wanted my fluid, liquid, freeform “self” to fit in a box that I didn’t actually care about.  I don’t really need or crave a “scientific answer.”  As far as I can tell, the most “common solutions” for transmen and transmasculine individuals have already been found and, frankly, been in place for hundreds of years (even if they weren’t all recorded).  They are simple things - engaging in “masculine performances,” getting specialized healthcare (in the form of surgeries and hormones), changing your name and pronouns to the ones that suit your liquid, fluid self best.

Incredibly minute, incredibly small differences

That can finally - finally - help me bridge my internal, personal story with the external physicality and the product of a history I inherited.

My shape will never be “perfect.”

But no one’s is.

We are all products of histories we inherited without ever getting a say in the matter.

But that does not mean we are solely defined by them.

Nor that we cannot reshape them ourselves.

Gender is a social construct you inherited without you ever getting a say in the matter.  It intersects and makes cross-sections with other aspects of identity and history that you, unfortunately, did not get a say in choosing.  But because it is merely a construct, you can, with time and effort, push back against it.  The liquid and fluid aspects of who you are - your personal identity - do not have to be defined by it.  The mold of your shape can be hammered out however you want it to be, however you feel it should be.  The crux of the issue is that we also live in a material, physical, real world that will push back, and this material, physical, real world has certain expectations about who it thinks you are and who it believes you should be.  It will try to construct you.  You and I and everyone are shapes being put under constant pressure by inherited histories, cross-sections of social, political, and economic spheres, and constantly changing situations.  We make progress not to make everyone the same, but to understand, learn about, celebrate, and reshape our differences.I choose to define myself as a transman because I believe that the experiences and situations of other transmen mirror mine.  There are differences between us, certainly, and I will never fully understand another transman’s situation or his life or his experiences, but many of our internal, personal stories and our cross-sections of identity align.  I have chosen, like many transmen, to engage in “masculine performances” that make me feel more comfortable with the story I am telling about myself, to myself.

In the end, the only story that matters is the one you tell yourself.

Apologies for the long post.  I hope this helped answer some of your questions.  And thank you for asking all this stuff!  I can really only speak to my own personal experiences and what educational frameworks I can utilize.