Xdressing vs gender fluid/queer vs non-binary vs dual-gender

[francxs]

So I have a knot of inter-related questions. But let me start with one which mostly relate to people born with male physiology. I hope this is not too muddy. And I'm not even sure there is any right answer to this! I'm certainly not looking to open a can of worms.

It seems quite common now to see younger people presenting in feminine clothing without seeking any artificial adjustments (hip pads, breast forms, shaving, etc.). This makes me wonder if this signals a generational shift away from more binary forms of presentation? It strikes me that my generation (people 50-70) often tended to be more dual-gender and less comfortable with more mixed and non-binary forms of presentation (Bowie and Prince aside).

On groups related more strictly to crossdressing (where the average age tended to be pretty high), I've felt a bit like an outsider. Most flipped back and forth in their lives between *dramatically* opposed identities or were fully female identified. I should emphasize that I get that, even though I'm feeling driven to be more nebulous these days. But it makes me wonder if many from my generation prefer the extreme binaries more because they are more comfortable or safe. They accord a little more with the world we grew up in. They look conventional, and that's something to cling to when everything else is up in the air.

On the other hand, I realize there are probably lots of exceptions to this--I'm certainly one! There have also been periods when more nebulous identities have been celebrated (i.e., the early 80s -- which were fun for me!). So are there just more of us in the middle of things who now feel comfortable exteriorizing our more nebulous nature and so it just appears that there has been a change in identity construction? In other words, is this less a kind of shift in the way identities are constructed and more a question of people feeling freer to come up the middle or to some other kind of place with the result that more of us are appearing out of the woodwork?

[Ativan Prescribed]

I think thats true to a certain extent, younger generations seem to be able to deal with a more feminine appearance based on clothing.
What I do notice, with a limited view up here in the great white north, is that there is a separation of sorts in body language.
Younger generations are adapting a more feminine body posture and language it seems and this is a very positive note from my point of view.
Fashion dictates a lot and fashions are always changing so the idea that there are lines of crossdressing don't really carry much weight anymore.
But I definitely notice the younger generations are much more open and I see these kinds of changes, crossdressing is one thing, if you are a far right fanatic and see someone dressing feminine in the slightest you might tend to freak out a degree or two.
But as far as body language goes, those same people tend to not notice that people in general have relaxed in how they present otherwise.
I'm very aware of people's body movements and can see friends from a long distance that I can't otherwise really tell them apart from others but the way they hold themselves and walk and such allows me to identify them from a distance.
In general it gives off a much more relaxed posture and movement and seems to be mostly tolerable to the fanatical religious right sense of what is and isn't, but then they tend to over exaggerate these kinds of things and are remarkably wrong most of the time.
Nothing is written in stone and with the available social media and the use of it dictating a more even and smoother kind of 'this is acceptable' I think the tendency is to follow social media and accept that people are just people regardless,.
It wasn't that long ago that the fashion sense of androgynous was a thing, while the fashion industry ran it into the ground like it does with anything that catches on, a lot of the fashion sense changed and became accepted, especially the younger generations.There was the time not that long ago that the colors for baby boys was pink and blue was for baby girls in the pastel shades, it was the fashion industry that changed that to what is considered the norm today and even the gender reveal industry is losing its appeal for most, with the exception of the far right, even the religious aspects of that have backed off quite a bit.
Its really getting to where if anyone is going to complain about such trivial matters that people tend to roll their eyes and comments are leaning more towards there are more important things going on in the world.

[Yuki]

Aug 2, 2023 1:33:26 GMT 8 francxs said:

So I have a knot of inter-related questions. But let me start with one which mostly relate to people born with male physiology. I hope this is not too muddy. And I'm not even sure there is any right answer to this! I'm certainly not looking to open a can of worms.

It seems quite common now to see younger people presenting in feminine clothing without seeking any artificial adjustments (hip pads, breast forms, shaving, etc.). This makes me wonder if this signals a generational shift away from more binary forms of presentation? It strikes me that my generation (people 50-70) often tended to be more dual-gender and less comfortable with more mixed and non-binary forms of presentation (Bowie and Prince aside).

On groups related more strictly to crossdressing (where the average age tended to be pretty high), I've felt a bit like an outsider. Most flipped back and forth in their lives between *dramatically* opposed identities or were fully female identified. I should emphasize that I get that, even though I'm feeling driven to be more nebulous these days. But it makes me wonder if many from my generation prefer the extreme binaries more because they are more comfortable or safe. They accord a little more with the world we grew up in. They look conventional, and that's something to cling to when everything else is up in the air.

On the other hand, I realize there are probably lots of exceptions to this--I'm certainly one! There have also been periods when more nebulous identities have been celebrated (i.e., the early 80s -- which were fun for me!). So are there just more of us in the middle of things who now feel comfortable exteriorizing our more nebulous nature and so it just appears that there has been a change in identity construction? In other words, is this less a kind of shift in the way identities are constructed and more a question of people feeling freer to come up the middle or to some other kind of place with the result that more of us are appearing out of the woodwork?

I feel like people are just slowly starting to realize that sticking to strict gender norms is kind of pointless and doesn’t even really work for most people. And yeah, it’s definitely talked about a lot more openly now. I noticed recently that even on the Cleveland Clinic’s website, which is a relatively major medical clinic, they use inclusive language in their articles about things relating to certain body parts. I was reading up about some issues I have related to having a uterus, and instead of saying it affects women, they said it affects people assigned female at birth.

Also, at a doctor’s office recently when I was filling out paperwork, they had non-binary as a gender option. This is in a far right leaning state, where you wouldn’t expect to come across options like that.

It’s starting to pop up and be accepted in more places. Things like that make it easier for people that feel like exploring to feel safe to do so. Which is how it should have always been. I’ll never understand why some people feel like they should be able to tell other people what clothes they’re allowed to wear.

[Leena]

There has been a lot of pushback because of the increased acceptance.

I think it is far less safe to be perceived outside the binary now than it was just 5-10 years ago, or even 30 years ago. I don't know that I wouldn't have ended up binary aligned anyway, but I feel a lot more safe if people just perceive me as a woman than as nonbinary or a feminine man.

It is even safer to be perceived as a masculine man. I can't really pull that off anymore, I needed the facial hair and to not have breasts. If I dress more masculine now, I get stared at in a way that is very uncomfortable. It is freeing though to not have to act or talk like a masculine guy, because it doesn't come natural to me.

This cycle of acceptance and pushback has been going on for far longer than any of us have been alive and I expect it will continue as long as there are humans.

[francxs]

Aug 2, 2023 23:58:53 GMT 8 Leena said:

There has been a lot of pushback because of the increased acceptance.

I think it is far less safe to be perceived outside the binary now than it was just 5-10 years ago, or even 30 years ago. I don't know that I wouldn't have ended up binary aligned anyway, but I feel a lot more safe if people just perceive me as a woman than as nonbinary or a feminine man.

It is even safer to be perceived as a masculine man. I can't really pull that off anymore, I needed the facial hair and to not have breasts. If I dress more masculine now, I get stared at in a way that is very uncomfortable. It is freeing though to not have to act or talk like a masculine guy, because it doesn't come natural to me.

This cycle of acceptance and pushback has been going on for far longer than any of us have been alive and I expect it will continue as long as there are humans.

It's interesting what you say about it being easier to just be "stealth trans" as you say, because it fits the binaries. I've resisted shaving my beard because...well I like it and it seems like me. But I'm not sure I want to be walking around in reactionary Western Canada with both a beard and a dress! It would certainly be easier and safer to go out entirely en femme. 

As for intolerance, I often wonder whether the increased pushback has as much to do with the fact that so many more people are now identifying as queer who would otherwise have disappeared into the woodwork. In other words, I wonder if it is about raw numbers and the whackos being convinced that their kids (who are now coming out in much larger numbers) are getting groomed into queerness rather than just expressing who they are.

[francxs]

Aug 2, 2023 11:21:40 GMT 8 Yuki said:

Aug 2, 2023 1:33:26 GMT 8 francxs said:

I feel like people are just slowly starting to realize that sticking to strict gender norms is kind of pointless and doesn’t even really work for most people. And yeah, it’s definitely talked about a lot more openly now. I noticed recently that even on the Cleveland Clinic’s website, which is a relatively major medical clinic, they use inclusive language in their articles about things relating to certain body parts. I was reading up about some issues I have related to having a uterus, and instead of saying it affects women, they said it affects people assigned female at birth.

Also, at a doctor’s office recently when I was filling out paperwork, they had non-binary as a gender option. This is in a far right leaning state, where you wouldn’t expect to come across options like that.

It’s starting to pop up and be accepted in more places. Things like that make it easier for people that feel like exploring to feel safe to do so. Which is how it should have always been. I’ll never understand why some people feel like they should be able to tell other people what clothes they’re allowed to wear.

It does strike me as a general cultural shift in thinking, although I'm not sure how far it goes outside of the bubble in which I live which is pretty educated. I like to think it does. I am also not sure it is possible to roll it back even though I am frightened of what might fall out over the next decade or two for queer folks.

And yes, it's a funny ball of WTF. Why does it matter what I have in my pants? That being said, the bits of cloth cut in certain ways and hung on the body in certain ways do matter to me. So I guess I can understand on a certain level why they might matter to someone else. (Not that reactionary A-holes deserve my understanding.)

[Yuki]

Aug 3, 2023 0:52:19 GMT 8 francxs said:

Aug 2, 2023 11:21:40 GMT 8 Yuki said:

I feel like people are just slowly starting to realize that sticking to strict gender norms is kind of pointless and doesn’t even really work for most people. And yeah, it’s definitely talked about a lot more openly now. I noticed recently that even on the Cleveland Clinic’s website, which is a relatively major medical clinic, they use inclusive language in their articles about things relating to certain body parts. I was reading up about some issues I have related to having a uterus, and instead of saying it affects women, they said it affects people assigned female at birth.

Also, at a doctor’s office recently when I was filling out paperwork, they had non-binary as a gender option. This is in a far right leaning state, where you wouldn’t expect to come across options like that.

It’s starting to pop up and be accepted in more places. Things like that make it easier for people that feel like exploring to feel safe to do so. Which is how it should have always been. I’ll never understand why some people feel like they should be able to tell other people what clothes they’re allowed to wear.

It does strike me as a general cultural shift in thinking, although I'm not sure how far it goes outside of the bubble in which I live which is pretty educated. I like to think it does. I am also not sure it is possible to roll it back even though I am frightened of what might fall out over the next decade or two for queer folks.

And yes, it's a funny ball of WTF. Why does it matter what I have in my pants? That being said, the bits of cloth cut in certain ways and hung on the body in certain ways do matter to me. So I guess I can understand on a certain level why they might matter to someone else. (Not that reactionary A-holes deserve my understanding.)

It’s fine for it to matter to whoever is wearing it though. We all have a way we want to present ourselves to the world. It should not matter to anyone who’s not wearing it, though. Why should anyone get a say over a body that isn’t theirs? Why should anyone get a say over a body that belongs to a stranger that they’ll probably never see again? As long as we aren’t running around showing our genitals to people that don’t want to see that, it shouldn’t matter to anyone but ourselves what we’re wearing. So.. nah, caring about what you put on your own body isn’t the same as someone else caring about what you put on your body.

Or what you do with your hair. Or nails. Or makeup. Or anything else like that.

The difference is, they feel like they need to control everyone else. That’s why they’re getting so mad and trying so hard to fight against it now. Everyone should do as they say at all times.. or something.

[Ativan Prescribed]

I kinda think the far right somehow thought they were making a difference in their nazi ways, only to find out they are not.
It's like the last dying gasps of bigots as they realize they are nothing more than bigots and even they hate the fact that they don't like bigots.
Their problem is that they are bigots and even when they deny it, it turns out they are and nobody likes bigotry, just like their blatant racism, they deny deny deny and yet the realization that they are and they have no logical explanation as to why they are.
Stupid is as stupid does goes a long ways and when confronted with their stupidity, they are in denial.
And yes as more of the younger generations are coming out and just being themselves, the bigots realize that they are going the way of the dinosauric thinking they desperately hang onto as if they are going to shut down what they don't like.
Its like a cartoon I saw yesterday of two hunched over cavemen complaining about a third one walking upright and saying what's next, the invention of fire?
Yah the older generations have suffered through the bullshit of the right, but I grew up in the fifties and sixties and the sexual revolution started, feminism started, the end of the war in Vietnam was happening, so many things have changed over the decades.
Keep in mind that before the 1800's that gender was not a strictly enforced thing, it was common that people were gay and it was common that people crossdressed as who they felt like, that it wasn't a big deal made it far more acceptable and people minded their own business, just surviving was the biggest concern, things like plagues and famines were much more on the minds of people, there were things that had much graver consequences than what people wore or who they wanted to be with.
It was the rise of the industrial ages that really kicked off the idea that there was things that some of the more elitist classes demanded of the poorer classes, and that turned into political parties of a sort.
Its always been the rich who hold the power and its the rich and powerful who demand that the working classes toe a line that they decided was going to be there, the common people have always had to bow to the demands of the now political right who because of things like the internet are becoming the real bastards of societies worldwide, they do not have the wisdom or intelligence they claim to have and it shows, kinda take a look at Elon 'X' Musk for a good example of what having money is, it doesn't mean a thing except you have money, it doesn't automatically give you power and it certainly doesn't make you a genius, Musk bought and paid for what he claims is intelligence, he simply lacks the ability to be considered a genius.
The right and the powerful are losing whatever they have to the common people because they simply can't just buy their way through life and they are rapidly losing the ability to convince anyone that they deserve to be held to a higher standard.
Information is the great equalizer and I have been watching that for decades myself, I remember using the internet before the world wide web was even a thing.
The more you know the less it seems the rich and powerful do.

[francxs]

Aug 3, 2023 10:41:13 GMT 8 Ativan Prescribed said:

Keep in mind that before the 1800's that gender was not a strictly enforced thing, it was common that people were gay and it was common that people crossdressed as who they felt like, that it wasn't a big deal made it far more acceptable and people minded their own business, just surviving was the biggest concern, things like plagues and famines were much more on the minds of people, there were things that had much graver consequences than what people wore or who they wanted to be with.

Totally agree on most of what you said. And thanks for the response! But I'm afraid this is a myth and something I know quite a bit about.

Certainly, there was no notion of sexuality as an identity prior to the 18th century, but gendered presentation and sexual behaviour was certainly regulated and punished. Men who had sex with men, particularly in the passive role, were the most vulnerable and were certainly punished and sometimes executed. There are even records of women executed for cross-gender dressing and same-sex sex. But I think you are right in the sense that there was more conceptual space. Imagining or desiring to be another sex, having same-sex relations, wanting to present differently, all these were just another kind of sin and not an indication of the kind of person you are. 

The invention of heterosexuality in the eighteenth century meant that suddenly people would be worried that they were gay or lesbian as opposed to just liking to have sex with the same sex. The illustration that is commonly used is that we don't think of a John as a sexual identity, its just someone who likes to have sex with sex workers. It was just sex. And that is freeing in some ways.

The conceptual space that this creates is pretty cool. You find in the middle ages, for example, Jesus described as a mother, feeding the faithful with the milk of her breasts. Or Jesus described in a mystical relationship with an individual soul (male or female) as the "bridegroom" and the soul as the "bride." This is just the tip of the iceberg on some pretty wild gender bending and gender inversion which would be TOTALLY intolerable in most current Christian churches but was carried out by some of the most conservative figures of the medieval period. So, yes, in the past there were forms of freedom we don't have now.

(Sorry to be a pencil-nosed know-it-all.)

[Leena]

Aug 3, 2023 0:38:03 GMT 8 francxs said:

It's interesting what you say about it being easier to just be "stealth trans" as you say, because it fits the binaries. I've resisted shaving my beard because...well I like it and it seems like me. But I'm not sure I want to be walking around in reactionary Western Canada with both a beard and a dress! It would certainly be easier and safer to go out entirely en femme. 

As for intolerance, I often wonder whether the increased pushback has as much to do with the fact that so many more people are now identifying as queer who would otherwise have disappeared into the woodwork. In other words, I wonder if it is about raw numbers and the whackos being convinced that their kids (who are now coming out in much larger numbers) are getting groomed into queerness rather than just expressing who they are.

It's really only easier for me to be stealth trans because I am lucky to have passing privilege.

I wasn't comfortable at all presenting feminine when I even had just beard shadow. I needed years of electrolysis to get rid of it, which actually required me to grow it out.

They want to push everyone back into the closet like I was when I was younger, and they are somewhat succeeding.

[Ativan Prescribed]

Yah depending on where you were and in what society things like prosecution and even executed, but that was in the beginnings of the power struggles of the rich vs poor, the so called educated and uneducated.
If you lived outside of the power struggle areas, like outside the cities, it wasn't a big deal and if you kept to yourself and didn't flaunt diversity, you could be who you wanted to be.
As much as history has recorded the cruelties of the times, it failed to record a lot of what was actually going on, it kinda recorded the headlines of the day and those were generated by the power classes to keep others in line.
Even in the early nineteen hundreds in this country there were certainly people who were diverse in sexuality and gender, it just took keeping a somewhat low profile, which in today's world there are far to many people sticking their noses into everyones business.
But the seventeen hundreds were pretty lax here and prosecuted people often just hit the trails and headed west and this was especially true in the eighteen hundreds.
Just like in todays world, if you aren't making waves its not as likely that the society power struggles and assholes of the world are going to even notice you.
I live in a very small town and I know of several trans people and certainly gay/lesbian, but on one hand you don't want to be THE asshole in a small town and on the other people know everyone and so long as it isn't a general issue, nobody cares.
I mean you still have to go grocery shopping with the same people you live around, are you going to the bigot or are you going to just accept that people are people and get over it?
One of the biggest reasons people get all bent out of shape is religion and religion uses excuses to keep people in line to fill the church's coffers, making somebody the bad person is how they do it regardless of what religion it is.
The same goes for political parties and is the starting basis for wars all the time, find someone and declare them a bad person and keep it up until somebody gets killed one way or another.
But the true core of all religion is to accept others and accept their religious beliefs, its always the assholes of the world who stir up the pot and then blame the defenseless for it being stirred.
Its the bigots of the world who think their rights are more important than others rights when the reality is, they are just trying to use a power play because as individuals, they are powerless in their minds and if you make someone else look bad then aren't you making yourself look better? Thats the reason bigots hate being called bigots, its the reality that they are the weaker person.
Small town living affords me the ability to just be me and not have to worry about others, its like the most alt right person who lives in this apt building as we met in passing in the hallway, it was the usual hi, how yah doing and nice day from both of us, its far easier to just get along in a small town than it is to try and insist that everyone has to be the way you want them to be, I could care less about what others think and they know enough to care less about about me.
Its the crowded rat cage thing, it gets too crowded and people turn on each other for space of a sort, and in centuries past, it was far less crowded in most of the world, even in the cities where people lived like rats at times.
Again, there were far more things to worry about other than a persons gender choices and sexuality, it was mainly the power struggles of the rich and religion that turned ordinary people into the scapegoats of society, and only some of them were different sexualy and or genderwise, they picked on the homeless like they do today as well, if you didn't have some sort of position either good or bad, you were picked out and picked on and made an example out of by the power players of the times.
But you are right that people were executed or imprisoned for things so stupid as to who they wanted to be and who they chose to love.