Post by megan on Apr 1, 2015 23:22:12 GMT 8
Hi All!
My name is Megan. I joined the site because I'm working on a research project about non-binary gender identity and was hoping to find some participants for qualitative interviews. I will post about my project in another thread.
In the mean time here is a little about me.
I am a University of Washington Master's of Social Work student. I'm a year away from graduation. Woot! I received two undergraduate bachelors from the University of Idaho, one in Psychology and another in Sociology. I'm the first person in my family to graduate from high school in two generations and now I'm a graduate student. I'm just as amazed as everyone else.
I also work for an HIV and AIDS program in Washington state. I love to read and play video games. I also love animals and have a dog and a cat that have been with me since I was a kid.
I identify my gender as genderfluid but my sex as female. I make the distinction because I am comfortable in my female body and with my femaleness but not with the gender role assigned to that sex. In terms of my gender, it fluctuates between masculine to feminine to genderless (usually more on the masculine side or just genderless). If you were to see me, you might take me for a cis-woman but if you look harder you would notice I never wear make up and hardly ever jewlery and dress as gender neutral as my very feminine looking body allows. However if one makes the mistake of thinking I am a cis-woman they will be quite surprised at the way I act, react and the things that I say/how I say them. I use she pronouns out of convenience but I don't really care what pronouns are used by people in general. I prefer my love interests to use gender neutral terms like love or mate, ect. I guess it matters more to me the closer you are to me.
Anyways, hence my interest in the topic of gender identity.
As far as my research project goes, it is for my graduate research course and will not be published but will be shared with my cohort. Most of my classmates have very little experience with non-binary gender identity. I have spent a lot of time just explaining what non-binary means and how it is different from MtF and FtM, which is what most people think of when one mentions genders other than the traditional male and female. I think this research is very important because currently there isn't any research that I could find specifically about non-binary gender identities or the experiences of non-binary folks. If they are mentioned at all they are lumped in one giant group along with individuals transitioning from one binary gender to another.
I wanted to do this project to examine non-binary experiences and see how they are similar and different from the experiences of individuals transitioning within the binary. So if you are interested in sharing some of your story and participating look for my other thread. Because I am only one person, I will only be able to conduct 5 interviews due to time and energy constraints. I wasn't sure how much interest my project would generate so I have posted on a few different online spaces. I will be going with first come first serve and will probably designate a few back up participants in case some people change their mind about participating or other wise can not.
One other note, while my research is going on I will probably not post much as I need to maintain a proper distance from individuals I am interviewing in order to try and stay objective in my observations. So please don't feel shunned. I am just trying to reduce the subjectivity of my results.
Thanks everyone!
My name is Megan. I joined the site because I'm working on a research project about non-binary gender identity and was hoping to find some participants for qualitative interviews. I will post about my project in another thread.
In the mean time here is a little about me.
I am a University of Washington Master's of Social Work student. I'm a year away from graduation. Woot! I received two undergraduate bachelors from the University of Idaho, one in Psychology and another in Sociology. I'm the first person in my family to graduate from high school in two generations and now I'm a graduate student. I'm just as amazed as everyone else.
I also work for an HIV and AIDS program in Washington state. I love to read and play video games. I also love animals and have a dog and a cat that have been with me since I was a kid.
I identify my gender as genderfluid but my sex as female. I make the distinction because I am comfortable in my female body and with my femaleness but not with the gender role assigned to that sex. In terms of my gender, it fluctuates between masculine to feminine to genderless (usually more on the masculine side or just genderless). If you were to see me, you might take me for a cis-woman but if you look harder you would notice I never wear make up and hardly ever jewlery and dress as gender neutral as my very feminine looking body allows. However if one makes the mistake of thinking I am a cis-woman they will be quite surprised at the way I act, react and the things that I say/how I say them. I use she pronouns out of convenience but I don't really care what pronouns are used by people in general. I prefer my love interests to use gender neutral terms like love or mate, ect. I guess it matters more to me the closer you are to me.
Anyways, hence my interest in the topic of gender identity.
As far as my research project goes, it is for my graduate research course and will not be published but will be shared with my cohort. Most of my classmates have very little experience with non-binary gender identity. I have spent a lot of time just explaining what non-binary means and how it is different from MtF and FtM, which is what most people think of when one mentions genders other than the traditional male and female. I think this research is very important because currently there isn't any research that I could find specifically about non-binary gender identities or the experiences of non-binary folks. If they are mentioned at all they are lumped in one giant group along with individuals transitioning from one binary gender to another.
I wanted to do this project to examine non-binary experiences and see how they are similar and different from the experiences of individuals transitioning within the binary. So if you are interested in sharing some of your story and participating look for my other thread. Because I am only one person, I will only be able to conduct 5 interviews due to time and energy constraints. I wasn't sure how much interest my project would generate so I have posted on a few different online spaces. I will be going with first come first serve and will probably designate a few back up participants in case some people change their mind about participating or other wise can not.
One other note, while my research is going on I will probably not post much as I need to maintain a proper distance from individuals I am interviewing in order to try and stay objective in my observations. So please don't feel shunned. I am just trying to reduce the subjectivity of my results.
Thanks everyone!