What is gender anyway?

[Trinity]

We talk about our sex, and gender dysphoria circling around our body parts.


And we talk about our genders, and its stated that gender is not necessarily our sex.  And gender dysphoria then becomes a social thing as well, not just physical gender dysphoria, but the whole 9 yards of it.


And orientation is a totally different thing.


Gender I think is our perception of who we are, male, female, or nonbinary, in our cores.


But physical gender dysphoria may not line up with our gender core perception, it does not in mine, my physical gender dysphoria is pretty darned binary.  There's some ambivalence about surgeries, true, but in a perfect world for me its all the way trans female as a happy place physically.


So, what is gender really?  I honestly don't think, even after all this time, that I really have a handle on that.  It confuses me, all I know is that in my core I am not a man or a woman, I am something different and unique, you could say trans woman, or androgyne, or just nonbinary, labels don't work well for me at all, I have my self perception and its just who I am and its me, and in a sense, I am my own gender, and I might view my gender as the whole thing, the core, the body I need, even how it works sexually or more how I wish it would work because I have the wrong parts.


I don't think its simple at all.  That's why I sometimes refer to it as a symphony, other times as the diamond core/heart of trans, sometimes a dance, in the beginning I was so trapped in the binary that I could only see he she in a dance, and it took a long time for it all to integrate into sh'e me, the whole person.


What is gender?

[charley83]

I don't feel like I understand gender either. To me it's a definition, a box that people can put someone in that describes what they see and perceive based on how a person looks and what's between their legs or on their chest. I don't see my gender as something that need defining. I see it as just a fluid part of me that shifts and conforms to what my inner being feels that day. This person inside me is both male and female yet neither at the same time. They refuse to be labeled and prefer to confuse. They slide from one end of the binary to the other depending on their mood and the situation but even then they don't want to be labeled.

[Leena]

I feel like I should be able to answer this after all these years, but how are you supposed to know if you are nonbinary or binary trans? That was a question that I was stuck for a long time, even after I was sure I wasn't cis.

Now that I am well into transition, I think I might have my answer. I starting to think I'm binary and was just really dysphoric about not passing. I just wasn't going to ever feel comfortable going out presenting feminine how I looked pre-transition. I just needed to transition and start living as a woman in order to know. I don't really want to live as an out nonbinary person much more than I want to live as a man. I was prepared to do that if I wasn't happy with my results, but I can see myself more likely just living the rest of my life as a woman now.

I love everyone here and am going to continue to be supportive of nonbinary people here and elsewhere. I wish this world didn't make as big of a deal about gender, whatever it is.

[Trinity]

Sept 15, 2020 3:12:41 GMT 8 Leena said:

I feel like I should be able to answer this after all these years, but how are you supposed to know if you are nonbinary or binary trans? That was a question that I was stuck for a long time, even after I was sure I wasn't cis.

Now that I am well into transition, I think I might have my answer. I starting to think I'm binary and was just really dysphoric about not passing. I just wasn't going to ever feel comfortable going out presenting feminine how I looked pre-transition. I just needed to transition and start living as a woman in order to know. I don't really want to live as an out nonbinary person much more than I want to live as a man. I was prepared to do that if I wasn't happy with my results, but I can see myself more likely just living the rest of my life as a woman now.

I love everyone here and am going to continue to be supportive of nonbinary people here and elsewhere. I wish this world didn't make as big of a deal about gender, whatever it is.

Its funny how the journey goes, we have folk that come and are NB and then go to the binary, but don't demean the NBs, and folks that start NB, go binary, and then go back to NB, and others that just stay NB all the way through.  There's a million ways to do this journey.

The only people that get in trouble are the ones that push folk into their own idea of what their gender is supposed to be.  That interference becomes the problem, and its a deeply personal journey.

In the end for me, the binary vs nonbinary thing (which destroyed Susans and almost destroyed us here too) just should not be a thing at all, be who we are, and don't sweat it, just find our truths and enjoy it.

I look, talk and act like binary trans at night, and during the day, I look, talk and act like either a trans person who is presenting male, or as a nonbinary person who is presenting as themself.  I don't get hung up on it, and its funny, binary trans females percieve me as a transexual female, nb's perceive me as NB.  I think they are both right, and that all folk are trying to do is to categorize it or describe what they see.  And that depends on if they can see the whole symphony, or if I am showing  them just a part of my symphony, or if they can't see my symphony, or if they are in denial about my symphony and have filters tuning out some of the frequencies.

We love you too honey.  You are one of the very few here from the beginning, when you were VL.

[Ativan Prescribed]

Gender definitions are very over rated, when even cis binary gender definitions are not exactly smooth and definitive, when you get into trans binary and NB, it just gets muddled completely.
Bottom line is your gender is whatever it is you want it to be and no amount of trying to define it is going to be the same as the next person.
I think about it like this sometimes, when I dream I can be any sort of gender and it depends entirely on the dream situation.
Sometimes I am cis female and other times male, most of the time its NB but then other times its trans female, somehow trans male hasn't been a consideration, and that stands to reason I suppose but then it wouldn't surprise me in a dream at all.
Why should awake be any different? I have yet to hear a definition of gender that works for even half the people, here and everywhere.
Gender is what you think it is and that can be different depending on the situation and on even the time of day I suppose, its how you feel, not how others feel about you.
What my gender is at any given moment in time is for me to decide and not some Websters dictionary definition, and once people realize that their sex is one thing and their gender is another, there is personal clarity.
Or not, I wonder at times about mine still, but mostly its the matrix or society version of it and the expectations society puts on it that causes momentary questioning, but then I realize again that its mine and not society or the matrix that determines it.
It's the insistence of cis society in general and just in general that gender is the same thing as sex, and if they happen to line up, then I can see how difficult it might be to talk to someones who's doesn't.
But the bottom line is that it is what it is to you personally, nobody gets to decide and even when you tell someone this is how you think of your own gender, they don't get to use that information, it isn't a requirement that you live up to others expectations of gender, because chances are, their perception is not even close to yours anyways, so really, gender is an abstract thing and is always always going to be different and for most all people, it isn't the same all the time, cis or not, if they tell you it is for them, they are bullshitting themselves, not you.

[Leena]

Sept 15, 2020 7:44:01 GMT 8 Trinity said:

I look, talk and act like binary trans at night, and during the day, I look, talk and act like either a trans person who is presenting male, or as a nonbinary person who is presenting as themself. I don't get hung up on it, and its funny, binary trans females percieve me as a transexual female, nb's perceive me as NB. I think they are both right, and that all folk are trying to do is to categorize it or describe what they see. And that depends on if they can see the whole symphony, or if I am showing them just a part of my symphony, or if they can't see my symphony, or if they are in denial about my symphony and have filters tuning out some of the frequencies.

I didn't find that it actually was possible for me to do anything like that. I thought it would be more like that, but it didn't work like that for me. The things I had to do in order to even occasionally be perceived as woman made it difficult to be perceived as a masculine guy. I really needed the facial hair for that.

As convenient as it would be, I am not a shapeshifter. This is a one way transition for me, there's already no going back to looking like that guy with a goatee.

Your symphony sounds beautiful. I feel like I was forced to play a cover song I didn't even like for decades, and then sort of stopped trying but was still playing it for years later because I couldn't play the one I wanted to. I'm going to play it now, even if I don't have it perfect yet.

[Trinity]

Sept 16, 2020 0:15:56 GMT 8 Leena said:

Sept 15, 2020 7:44:01 GMT 8 Trinity said:

I look, talk and act like binary trans at night, and during the day, I look, talk and act like either a trans person who is presenting male, or as a nonbinary person who is presenting as themself. I don't get hung up on it, and its funny, binary trans females percieve me as a transexual female, nb's perceive me as NB. I think they are both right, and that all folk are trying to do is to categorize it or describe what they see. And that depends on if they can see the whole symphony, or if I am showing them just a part of my symphony, or if they can't see my symphony, or if they are in denial about my symphony and have filters tuning out some of the frequencies.

I didn't find that it actually was possible for me to do anything like that. I thought it would be more like that, but it didn't work like that for me. The things I had to do in order to even occasionally be perceived as woman made it difficult to be perceived as a masculine guy. I really needed the facial hair for that.

As convenient as it would be, I am not a shapeshifter. This is a one way transition for me, there's already no going back to looking like that guy with a goatee.

Your symphony sounds beautiful. I feel like I was forced to play a cover song I didn't even like for decades, and then sort of stopped trying but was still playing it for years later because I couldn't play the one I wanted to. I'm going to play it now, even if I don't have it perfect yet.

Hugs honey.  That was sweet.