coping with doubters and their opinions

[FaerieKim]

What do you say to people who accuse non-binary identified people of being "special snowflakes"?  What do you say to TERFs and other radfems who say that gender is all socially constructed stereotypes and that you should identify in line with your biological sex and just be a non-typical man or woman?

I'm tired of having to second guess myself every time I hear these opinions, and letting people confuse and upset me like that.  I need better ways of asserting the validity  of my identity and my reality.

Is gender socially constructed?  Is biological sex the only sense in which gender is at all real or true?  Are the scientific studies that indicate a kind of gender in the brain - are they reliable studies or is there a flawed assumption behind them (eg. brains do actually change due to environment and experience anyway - so those differences could actually be created by social factors anyway)?  What is the real definition of "man" or "woman"?  Is  there a kind of inner, immutable sense of gender or is that a fiction we have created to justify trans experiences?  Is identity just what you happen to call yourself or is it deeper than that?  What the f is gender anyway?

Some of those questions genuinely perplex me, others are just me playing devil's advocate - but I'm sick of feeling confused and distressed by all  this gender stuff.  I've been feeling that way all my life - and identifying the way I do is an attempt to move beyond that and learning to feel more comfortable with who I am - but then people always seem to want to confuse me and mess with my head about it.  And I don't know how to respond without getting more confused and upset about it all.  Sucks when people always want to doubt the validity of my experiences. 

[Shan]

I'll let the others here comment in detail, but let me say this much, you will have to realize that we are surrounded by a cloud of A-holes that feel self important and feel compelled to validate their own selves by denigrating the lifestyles and understanding of who you and I are. I envision that process in my own mind as if they are using my face as a stepping stone when they do that. Just ignore them, they aren't you and they don't live in your skin or walk in your shoes.

[Ativan Prescribed]

Gender is what you are in your head, your thoughts.
Binary gender is based on a social construct, but a person can have a binary gender in their thoughts as well.
Ignore TERF's and radfem bigotry, their arguments don't hold up, except in ignorance.

[Kira]

It's like the whole, being gay is a choice thing... And? So let me chose to be gay if that's how you see it. Take your drama somewhere else. Gender is a social construct? Great, let me construct my gender then. But if gender is a construct then I am as much entitles to construct myself as whatever I want as you are.

[Shan]

Mar 19, 2016 0:21:11 GMT 8 Kira said:

It's like the whole, being gay is a choice thing... And? So let me chose to be gay if that's how you see it. Take your drama somewhere else. Gender is a social construct? Great, let me construct my gender then. But if gender is a construct then I am as much entitles to construct myself as whatever I want as you are.

Always been my favorite little woman here, you know it, I know it and everyone else now knows it, chill honey...it's gonna be ok!

[Trinity]

They may doubt the validity but that doesnt change it either.

Just means they are enforcing their stuff onto you.

Pay no attention to it.

As to constructs theres a bunch of thteads on that.

Nobody in here gets invalidated whether binary or nonbinary. Period.

We are who we are. Not who someone else decides we are for us.

Kira i believe yor comment is directed at the folks that invalidate us...not at F.K....

Misunderstandings suck.

Fairy.

[EchelonHunt]

Being non-binary is being an even more marginalised community than the transgender community.

Being transgender, transitioning itself supports the binary system. Going from A to B or B to A. Male to female or Female to male. I know it's not that black and white but for simplicity's sake, this is what society and the general population sees it as. Some people can accept this, some more easily than others.

The ones that don't? There will always be people who claim transwomen are "not real women" or transmen are "not real men".

Their reason why? Transwomen cannot carry children, which in turn, eliminates the many sterile cis-women out there in the world. Transmen don't have a "real penis", which in turn, eliminates the cis-men who lost their genitalia from motorbike accidents or explosions in war.

These people fail to realise how stupid and outrageous their claims are, there is no help for them.

You will always get that crowd of people who insist that gender is innate, something you are born as, (e.g. if you are born a girl, you are a girl. Born a boy, you are a boy.) they will say things like "Nature doesn't make mistakes" or if they are inclined towards religion, for example, religious zealots, they will say, "God doesn't make mistakes."

These people are for the most part, unreasonable, they cannot be reasoned with. Don't waste your energy on dealing with them, it's like talking to a brick wall.

Now, being non-binary is like throwing a spanner into the works.

It's one thing to say you are transgender, it's quite another to say you are non-binary... even more so if you are both transgender and non-binary!

It's throwing out the notion of male & female out the window entirely, unless you identify as bigender, genderfluid or anything that has some inkling of male and/or female gender identity lurking within.

Some people just cannot accept that having no gender is a possibility, a reality for many people. They will refuse to acknowledge it because adknowledging it means they have to question or abandon everything they previously believed in.

And if they question or abandon everything they believe in, the preconceived notions between male and female, the gender stereotypes, the media drawing from stereotypes to sell you things you think you need but actually don't, the amount of bullshit covered in media, they will come to see the difference between men and women is sociological. It holds no weight and doesn't at all in the face of one's self-expression, whatever that may be. It will fall flat on its face.

For some, this thinking being crushed means they will feel lost, helpless and they won't know what to do anymore. This belief system offers stability to them, it's the foundation they have built themselves up on.

Girls must be this way, boys must be that way. Even transgender folks themselves fall into this trap.

It boggles my mind that transgender men will say things like "I've always hated Barbies, hated dresses, play-wrestled with boys, climbed trees, got dirty in the mud." as if this somehow affirms their identity as male...? Same for transgender women, they will say, "I've always played with dolls, wore princess outfits, wore my hair in pigtails, wore my sister's lipstick when she wasn't looking." Since when does the things you do, things you like, things you wear, the length of hair define your gender identity? It's not what you do, what you wear or don't wear, it's how you feel and how you identify interally, isn't it? At least, I think so anyway.

Skye, a non-binary individual, made a video about Challenging The Construct of Gender, & My Trans Narrative - in which they say, "It infuriates me that trans people talk as if hair, and clothes, and toys defined gender!"

It just feels like transgender folks place so much emphasis on appearance that they fit the stereotype of man or woman. I've yet to see a transgender man who was feminine in childhood but still identified as male and vice versa for a transwoman. I wonder if these minorities within the minority are forced or shunned into silence because their childhood does not fit the "standard transgender narrative" that is shouted from the rooftops everywhere.

The things you like, dislike, how well you play with others, how does this define gender? I believe it doesn't. Gender is how you feel internally and how you see yourself. 

(Got into a bit of a rant there, sorry.)

There are lots of threads in Gender category under Community Discussion. There is Is Gender a Social Construct? A Gender-Free Society? & What is Gender? What does it mean to you? which is a good starting place with lots of discussion between members. 

It will also help that as you go through your journey, your confidence in your identity will grow over time as you become more and more comfortable in your skin.

Eventually, you will laugh off those people's comments as they won't mean anything to you. You don't have to prove yourself to them, you are under no obligation to. You may wish to educate them but that may be a slippery slope unless the person is willing to listen and change their view of things.

I've had people cause doubt in me before. A voice specialist I saw once actually, she kept asking me if I was regretting my transition due to me wanting to work on having a feminine voice. It was jarring to have the validity of my transition constantly brought into question. It's like, hang on, you haven't seen me struggle the past 8 years to get to this point, fuck off. I found I don't regret transitioning, not at all, however, I knew that a male presentation simply isn't going to work for me so I simply altered my transition to suit my needs.

[Shan]

Wow, excellent commentary Jacey! 

[FaerieKim]

Mar 19, 2016 0:21:11 GMT 8 Kira said:

It's like the whole, being gay is a choice thing... And? So let me chose to be gay if that's how you see it. Take your drama somewhere else. Gender is a social construct? Great, let me construct my gender then. But if gender is a construct then I am as much entitles to construct myself as whatever I want as you are.

    Let me be clear, in case you did misunderstand, that I'm not trying to invalidate anyone else's identity.  I'm just trying to clear my own head of internalised bullshit from other people.


And also - I love what you said about if gender is a construct then let me construct my own gender

[FaerieKim]

Mar 19, 2016 1:19:34 GMT 8 EchelonHunt said:

These people are for the most part, unreasonable, they cannot be reasoned with. Don't waste your energy on dealing with them, it's like talking to a brick wall.

  I know that.  And with most transphobic bigots I can ignore them.  I might go on a self-righteous rampage (online anyway) but it's usually pointless and ends with me having to disengage and ignore them in the end anyway.

But it's the feminists and their bullshit that manages to get under my skin for some reason.

And if they question or abandon everything they believe in, the preconceived notions between male and female, the gender stereotypes, the media drawing from stereotypes to sell you things you think you need but actually don't, the amount of bullshit covered in media, they will come to see the difference between men and women is sociological. It holds no weight and doesn't at all in the face of one's self-expression, whatever that may be. It will fall flat on its face.



For some, this thinking being crushed means they will feel lost, helpless and they won't know what to do anymore. This belief system offers stability to them, it's the foundation they have built themselves up on.



Girls must be this way, boys must be that way. Even transgender folks themselves fall into this trap.



It boggles my mind that transgender men will say things like "I've always hated Barbies, hated dresses, play-wrestled with boys, climbed trees, got dirty in the mud." as if this somehow affirms their identity as male...? Same for transgender women, they will say, "I've always played with dolls, wore princess outfits, wore my hair in pigtails, wore my sister's lipstick when she wasn't looking." Since when does the things you do, things you like, things you wear, the length of hair define your gender identity? It's not what you do, what you wear or don't wear, it's how you feel and how you identify interally, isn't it? At least, I think so anyway.



Skye, a non-binary individual, made a video about Challenging The Construct of Gender, & My Trans Narrative - in which they say, "It infuriates me that trans people talk as if hair, and clothes, and toys defined gender!"



It just feels like transgender folks place so much emphasis on appearance that they fit the stereotype of man or woman. I've yet to see a transgender man who was feminine in childhood but still identified as male and vice versa for a transwoman. I wonder if these minorities within the minority are forced or shunned into silence because their childhood does not fit the "standard transgender narrative" that is shouted from the rooftops everywhere.



The things you like, dislike, how well you play with others, how does this define gender? I believe it doesn't. Gender is how you feel internally and how you see yourself.

I agree with everything you said there    

I suppose that's why I half-agree with the feminists - because  everything you said that I agree with does sound a bit like the social construction theory of gender.

But instead of the hypocrisy and contradictions of the TERFs (who insist people identify according to the biological sex) - we are really saying identify however you want because gender is 90% invented by  society anyway.

Anyway, I refuse to let my body, or what society thinks I should be like define how I actually live my life.  For me that means identifying outside the binary, for others it might mean embracing a desire to be male or female.  As long as we respect one another and don't force roles and stereotypes on other people then who cares?  Let the bigots talk whatever nonsense they like, it doesn't change any of that stuff anyway.

Oh, I guess you helped me respond to the doubters without getting confused and upset   thanks!

[Kira]

I always thought that, if I were ever confronted by a 'feminist' who objected to my gender expression, I would probably go with 'Honey, I'm not going to take advice on gender conformity from a woman wearing trousers'. It kind of cuts to the heart of the issue in a mildly amusing way.

[FaerieKim]

That reminds me of when someone said something to me about "appropriating" femininity. I thought "can I complain about butch lesbians appropriating masculinity?"

[FaerieKim]

I waste far too much time worrying about stupid youtube comments

[Shan]

Mar 19, 2016 8:35:25 GMT 8 FaerieKim said:

That reminds me of when someone said something to me about "appropriating" femininity. I thought "can I complain about butch lesbians appropriating masculinity?"

What would be the point?

[Shan]

Mar 19, 2016 8:37:03 GMT 8 FaerieKim said:

I waste far too much time worrying about stupid youtube comments

There, you probably have your answer Kim!