Gender- Body, or mind?

[Deleted]

Is your perception of what your gender is determined by how your body looks and feels and is wired to respond to touch and to stimulus and romance, or is your gender a perception that is based on how you feel, how you react to stuff, how you relate to other people, how you enjoy certain girly or guy things?

Or is the very definition of being nonbinary all kinds of blendings and combinations and paintings using the brushstrokes and oils of both, creating free spirits that are works of art and passion?

An interesting thought, as I am physically quite mtf, yet, quite triune, quite the mix of person, rather complex.  "MTF's look at me and say... of course she is a she, just look at her, shame that she has to have a beard."  Nonbinaries look at the bearded full presentation and say "Way too cool, dont shave, exotic and attractive as heck".

And I hope the ftm's and the andros that have that "I wanna screw a girl or a mtf girl" say..."Gimme that, pin her down, I want her."

Oh yeah Id like that....

Of course, the mirror image holds true, ftm nonbinary, mtf nonbinary, andros, etc etc etc, all the colors of a pallete and all the paintings that are in progress.

It is a shame that some try to tell us how to paint, isnt it?  It spoils the artwork, some of the best art is that of a child, given colors, fingers smearing them everywhere, in a portrait we cherish for life.  Better to give them more colors, isnt it?  And let their imaginations soar, unhampered by people saying this is real, or this is possible, or grow up.   Bull.

Anyway, whatcha think about body gender?  By mtf binarism I am a girl.  By truth, no I am not.  Unless I want to be, and kill off my past self, and the one that protects the whole of me, my strong male self, not a persona, a person.  But thats a lie for me to live... so not.
  
But throw me on a bed and I will give Jamie a run for her money, just, not say it here.  But we know....

There is, personally, a nagging desire to present girl and get dated and wined and dined and laid.  Thats the physical part though. 

Are we not much more than just our bodies, or the bodies we are crafting to reflect the needs of who we are?

Are we our bodies?  Or are we our souls?  Or like marriage, are we one and the same?

Love to all here.

Trinity

[Deleted]

It's mainly a problem with feeling like my physical gender represents the complete antithesis of my personality. I feel like I can't really express me until my body appears sufficiently female. My mind is definitely 100% female in my view, and I wish my body was, too.

[Deleted]

Feb 13, 2015 9:08:30 GMT 8 Trinity said:

But throw me on a bed and I will give Jamie a run for her money, just, not say it here.  But we know....

Ok so I know I got a bad reputation. But " I don't give a damn 'bout my bad reputation". Joan Jett of course.  But me too.  I don't know if you could keep up though.

For me it's really a whole crazy mixed up thing. Feet are more along the size of a woman. Maybe on the bigger size but still not out of the range of an average woman. OMG my hands and the finger ratio thing, even though that really don't count for much but finger size though. With my name and getting my class ring in highschool in my junior year, I got sent a girl's ring. Just the size and my name and the company thought the "M" on the paperwork was a mistake. The ring maker was so embarrassed that they let me keep the "F" ring and sent me a guy's ring too. I wore the girl's ring more than the guys ring because the guy's ring actually looked funny on my finger. I didn't wear either one to school though. And OMFG watches. Guy's watches look really funny and I usually have to take a lot of links out of the metal bands and use the next to the last hole on the leather bands. Women's watches fit right out of the case. When it comes to the leather bands then it is straight up center hole. Tiny boobs? So you could say my body kind of matches my mind. Mind over matter? I won't even mention my tiny appendage. I just call it my outygina. Damn thing don't work right as a guy anyway.  But do I really want it too? Not really. I'm not even on HRT.

But gender I believe is more mind or psychological. Really messed up but I can pass as a male albeit a not real normal man's man but can pass. In makeup and the right clothing I can pass as female. Even my voice is somewhere in between the range of male and female. On radios and telephones I have been sir'd and maam'ed. Lucky me huh? Not always though because I caught a bunch of hell growing up. One late night I had two drivers following me for 300 miles because of my voice on the CB. Flirting and all with me. They called me "Baby doll" even. 

I really don't know what it is but what I thought was mostly a curse turned into a blessing. Hell it's been a blessing way more than a curse looking back.

[Quin]

I'm definitely of the opinion that gender as we tend to view it is mostly a social construct. It covers very broad strokes of general attributes associated with male tending and female tending physical traits. At the end of the day though, social constructs are just what we as individuals, and what society as a whole decides to define them as. For that reason, I kind of think that the term "transgender" itself is a little bit misleading. When I look at myself in the mirror, there are things that I very much want to change. There are physical aspects that don't match what I feel they should be. That those aspects are associated with something like a masculine gender, feminine gender, or some other kind of definition is just an example of fitting existing attributes into arbitrary categories. It's useful in terms of making generalizations, and easy to use as general descriptor much of the time. But it's a concept used to describe what exists, rather that something until itself.

TLDR, I believe that our physical bodies are real, and that the relationships that we have with our own bodies are real, but that the concept of gender as a whole is a conceptual construction of society which is sometimes useful to describe those real things.

[Edge]

Feb 13, 2015 9:08:30 GMT 8 Trinity said:

Is your perception of what your gender is determined by how your body looks and feels and is wired to respond to touch and to stimulus and romance, or is your gender a perception that is based on how you feel, how you react to stuff, how you relate to other people, how you enjoy certain girly or guy things?

Or is the very definition of being nonbinary all kinds of blendings and combinations and paintings using the brushstrokes and oils of both, creating free spirits that are works of art and passion?

I don't know. I really don't know and that's confusing.
On the one hand, my brain is structured to run best on testosterone. No doubt about it. The fact that I don't have a body like other guys makes me very upset and feels wrong. I want to be a guy in my relationships. I want people to perceive me as and treat me as a guy. I relate to people as a guy. My internal sense of gender is male.
But on the other, there are times when I have less body dysphoria, an androgyne body seems like a good compromise, I don't mind if I'm seen as an androgyne or both, and I relate to people as an androgyne or both. My internal sense of gender some of sort of shifting combination of both.
And then there are the (albeit rare) times when I still prefer a male or androgyne body, I still want to be a guy in my relationships, and I still want people to perceive me as and treat me as a guy, but the little voice in my head that tells me which I am says I'm female. Why the heck is my internal sense of gender female in these moments when everything else points to male? I'll still even get upset if someone refers to me as female. What is it then?

Personally, I think the very definition of being a person no matter gender a person is is all kinds of blendings and combinations and paintings. It's how we have so many different kinds of people.

[Deleted]

I'm like the girl who tells a boy, "You only love me for my body. You don't respect me as a person."

I'm a soul, not a body. This body is just the house that my soul was given to live in. It's a slum dwelling, and I needed to be re-housed a long time ago.

[Deleted]

Feb 19, 2015 2:14:49 GMT 8 @foxglove said:

I'm like the girl who tells a boy, "You only love me for my body. You don't respect me as a person."

I'm a soul, not a body. This body is just the house that my soul was given to live in. It's a slum dwelling, and I needed to be re-housed a long time ago.

Well spoken!

[Quin]

Like I've said in other threads, I honestly, don't think that gender is either body or mind. From where I stand, gender is just a general grouping of traits that has been constructed by society. This is why different people have different standards, and you see completely contradictory criteria for gender through various cultures. Physical sex has a biological basis, but gender is about placement in society more than anything else, and that is external, rather than internal.

[Quin]

Feb 19, 2015 4:19:44 GMT 8 @julieblair said:

But does gender presentation not act as a heuristic - a proxy for sexual availability?  I think that the biological reaction uses perception as a measure of desirability and interest.  If if it did not why would anyone care what gender presentation signifies?  I am reminded of China during the cultural revolution.  Gender was squashed into uniformity of dress and presentation.  Once released, gender expression exploded.  Why? because gender expression is the mechanism for enumerating desirability.   Yes it is external, but it represents a deeper biology.

j

Well, the original question asks whether gender is mental or physical, both of which are internal aspects of a person. Things like sexual availability have to do with how other people react to you, which is an external thing. My point isn't that gender isn't "real," just that it's part of an external system, which is society, rather than an internal one. Western society in particular really tries to attach gender and biology very closely to one another, but I think that the trend of doing so is just that. It's a trend, but not a hard and fast rule that's necessarily bound to anything other than cultural perception.

[Metamorph]

I think it's interesting how we always want to separate the mind and body. Is Alzheimer's a mind or body issue? What about some kinds of mental illness? Or Autism? Or Addictions or... there are so many things. From a scientific stand point everything I named seems to have a potential biological component. And for some things, what starts in the "mind" can change the biology of the body - addictions, eating disorders, exercise, meditation. So, I think it's both. I think the two are so intricately bound you can't separate them. They feed and shape each other.

What I think is a social construct is how we try to fit gender into discrete boxes. Some cultures may have 2 boxes and others 4, but we are still trying to take a complex thing and stuff it into a box. Sometimes it will fit well and other times it won't. And in trying to fit into the box, we create identities and expectations. These identities and expectations exist outside the body/mind but they can influence it too. The same way different cultures have evolved different diets and tolerance for food.

[Edge]

The mind is part of the body. It seems so many people want to ignore that though. Even people who are aware that the brains are biological organs made of neurons that is located in our skulls seem to want to ignore it's importance biologically when it comes to talking about psychological things. Or there are the people use biology as justification for bigotry despite ignoring the actual research that has been done so far.
I took this question as "Is gender body dysphoria?" I may have misinterpreted it though.

[DriftingCrow]

I believe gender itself is sociological. Society defines what gender is.

Biology comes in because some things are inherent in people's natures due to genes, hormones, and other bodily influences. Certain things in our body can make us more aggressive or more caution, more emotional or more detached, etc. It's society that then says "a combination of X,Y,Z, = this gender, a combination of A, B, and C = this gender" and then further attaches physical sexual traits to those genders and prescribes that all those in a designated gender class take on those stereotypes. Society then further comes in because people born with a certain sex are taught by society to behave in certain ways.

Like Quin said above, different societies have different gender expectations. Some societies have 3 or more genders. Some societies allow men more emotions and some allow women to have more aggression. Since gender expectations change by culture, this shows that having just "male" and "female" gender as set by Western societies is not a natural, biological phenomenon.

If we had no society, I suspect there'd be no gender. There'd just be people being people.

[DriftingCrow]

Is your perception of what your gender is determined by how your body looks and feels and is wired to respond to touch and to stimulus and romance, or is your gender a perception that is based on how you feel, how you react to stuff, how you relate to other people, how you enjoy certain girly or guy things?

My perception of my own gender is not physical -- physically I look completely female, but I don't identify with society's definition of a woman. 

I feel like I am both, and yet neither.

Sometimes I feel more feminine and others much more masculine. It really depends on what's going on in my mind. I am glad I can feel both and also feel like none. 

[Ayla]

Gender identity is to me innate and is determined by your mind, not your body or your presentation. They may be aligned, but may not be. You are the only person who understands and feels who you are.

I am most convinced by Affect theories of development - the view that gender is bio, psycho, social in nature resonates with me. Each factor plays a role and each factor is interdependent. What it means for an individual is their unique take, their understanding of their innate self, core and gender identity. Only they can define or describe their gender and it may be fixed or fluid, binary or non binary.

Safe travels

Aisla

[Deleted]

Simply put, my body responds as a girl. I need it to look girl. Sex is a female experience. I am mtf female in body and nerve endings.
My mind is both male and female, and spirit. My instincts are more male than female.

I am everything that is gender, but not everything social gender.

There is no box.

What is my gender?

A trinity.

Gender amuses me.

I am anything.

But an mtf body is paramount. And so is fully blending, nurturing every component, taking care of all, embracing all. Like I would a daughter, or a father.

Unblocked feeling.

Physically, emotionally, instinctively, sexually, spiritually.

Free to feel everything.

Theater of the real. Raw gender.

Right now, I love every second of it.

Because I can feel without fear, without stuffing.

That takes hard work that becomes habit that becomes truth...