What or who has had the greatest impact on your gender?

[Trinity]

Lots of different reasons why we are in the boats we are in and the paths that we are on.

Sometimes its people that have the biggest impact on our gender, how we feel about it, what we did with it, whether we hid it or not.

Sometimes its social stuff.

Sometimes its religious.

Love, that'll do a lot.

Sexual experiences, especially in the beginning.

Medai....

What has had an impact on you and your gender?

[Ativan Prescribed]

Off hand I would say just talking it through and throwing out stuff in this forum and in the old one and listening to the responses, like always considering those because my own views can be limited to just my experience.
News articles are the least, there is always some news thing about NB that equates it to being in the middle of binary, it never quite gets the fact that it isn't some in between and is the lack of binary.
The fashion industry just promotes the same old same old in between look as well, it is presentation centered and not NB centered, if they can make a few bucks off some group by declaring a look, they will go ahead and do the this years colors for Nb have to have BS.
It's really in the views of people on the forum that things are revealed, it isn't about presentation, its about living the truth and finding yours, about the path we take, which I suppose there is a boat crossing over some water somewhere along that path...
It's about the never ending trying to keep people from veering off towards the edge in some soon to be a crash or going over it, its about the importance of moving forward as much as possible, its about know there are others who while might not be exactly the same, but you can depend on them to understand and give an opinion as just an opinion and not quote some rules or you have to do this in this order BS, everyone is different, and yet it is easy to just feel their presence through the words they write.

[Ativan Prescribed]

Way back when the only place I knew of that even dealt with NB was the old forum and in the beginning it was called the androgyne section, the owner of that forum wouldn't budge for the longest time on that name, even when NB was the more common label used.
But it was in general a solidly binary forum and our section was a very small part of the overall, but interesting that people paid it a lot of attention, especially when it came to declaring that there is only the binary and nothing more.
To me the idea became this visual of two cities and nothing else existed in the universe, just two cites connected by this highway between them, but I started to refer to the rest stop along the way, a nice quiet place with lots of trees and nice people stopped there often.
But this led to the designation of it being more than just a rest stop and it became a forest, and it had lots of paths, people very quickly started to talk about taking a path to some place in this forest they liked, and since a hero of that forum, Nero, once said we were like unicorns, it became the unicorn forest, and it grew in size because here was a place that people could talk about things in a reference sort of way, symbolically it was suddenly home for us.
But sure enough, it didn't take much imagination to make make the size of the forest grow, it butted right up to the edges of both cities and suddenly the distance between those two cities became further and further apart because the forest was growing.
So it didn't take long before the forest started to have more depth to it and expanded out, the rest stop area wasn't even a thing anymore, the forest became everything and the way people talked about things in it made perfect sense, except to the binaries, they refused to even talk of the two cities.
Things went from a few people who went to the section of the forum to a lot of people, and so a lot of opinions and talk about what it is like and all that, it became significant and the binary trans were having no part of it, they invaded that space with caustic bullshit on a daily basis.
A lot of them were very militant about their views and disrespected ours totally, they degraded us on a constant basis and we fought back, but they had their militant ways right down to a plan that you had to follow if you were going to be transsexual, it had friggen steps to follow...
So there was a lot of push back and from us and them, some moderators who would ban people who disagreed with their opinions, nothing against the rules, just disagreeing with opinions, I think I had the most sanctions and bans like a record of sorts from there, I pretty much flipped them off all the time.
But sure they wanted to play hardball and did, to the point that some people even died because of their actions, not NB but close, and they wanted it seemed to kill off one of the NB members, it was a very heated time and everyone jumped all over the mods and like magic, the NB people stood with locked arms.
But then it just got worse and I could read the writing on the wall, because I was accusing the staff of burning the only bridges from the forest to the cities, I made my feeling known and then some, till one fatal day of just quitting because I was going to get a permanent ban any moment anyways...
But after a while, others left and before I knew it, this forum was started, and I did quit here once over the influx of binary trans who seemed to think they could join and keep up the same steady stream of crap from them, but I cam back and most all of those people either quit, went through a ban hammer time all in one swoop to get rid of them, and once it was established that you come here to cause trouble you will get me and several others right in your face until you either stop or preferably just go away, I'd rather see people asking the tough questions than to hear bullshit answers from people who are not even NB.
So yah, while there isn't moderators as such, well that just means my form of watching out for others on here isn't moderated either, so toe to toe, face off and no there isn't a line to cross, by even wondering if you have you would have crossed it there was one already.
But other than a few people who just were getting under peoples skin and talking trash shit that they had no clue as to what they were even saying other than repeating some dumb shit that people who haven't a clue about NB would say...
So in this forum, the forest is all encompassing, there are those two cities but they are like dots on the map, and the forest remains and it is very quiet in the two cities, we let them be just like we wanted them to let us be in the old forum, its peaceful now.
But the thing that really made it all happen is the what kind of creature are you in the forest thread, it was originally started in the old forum and resurrected in this one right from day one, but we all understood each other and conversed back and forth on that thread, if you weren't Nb you didn't have a clue, while the binary tried to get in on it, they were told to butt out because they didn't have a clue as to how that thread worked, they were more than annoyed that they just couldn't figure it out and that we all understood each other totally.
And to me that is the proof that we know and they don't, that they cling to things that we don't have to, that we in a broader sense know things they don't, and because it is like instinctual for us I suppose, that is what makes this forum important, we understand each other...

[Trinity]

There have been many contributors for me, both negative and positive. It actually can't even be counted, the entire journey and everyone that I have met on it has had an impact, and I am talking all the way back to the crib, my first memory, and in that memory, I was already NB. Later there was layering of the persona stuff, and there was a lot of messed up things going on in the early years.

DES of course had the biggest impact, and I don't know how I found out about that, but I did and I found it really early.

Understanding my gender has been largely the forums, Ativan especially had an impact, everyone has, but especially that core group in the old forest that burned. Once I arrived here a lot of the key concepts were already in place, the gender dance, the core, the diamond heart, gendersplit was a thing that got fixed in here, those were hard days very close to the edge.

The concept of gender as a symphony came here.

But the Core was the big step forward for me, and it got Ativan's attention and everyone elses as well in the old forest.

The other big influencers were bullying, falling in love, losing my virginity straight, losing it "gay", the nightclubs, the booze, and then came acceptance and doing that Hall and Oats vid as a female, that was a kind of big deal for me, and then, the repercussions of falling in love with a straight woman and renouncing being trans. Which of course failed utterly, but we didn't know crap in the mid 80s about this.

The Warhol crowd is an influence since I know them and they know me, the theater, but living it out in NY, losing so much, the kid spitting in my face for being trans although I did give them the finger first when they called me out in front of a busload of people in a dangerous neighborhood, and the other heavies, no sense getting into all that, we know what happened to me.

But living it out was another big deal, and being accepted as sh'e in NY was huge, and had I not been married, it would have gone that way instead. But it didn't, and I stayed nonbinary and always was anyway but it can lean much harder to the trans side of it if I let it. There were a couple paths, I chose the one to Florida and living mostly as what I am now and how it works, which is very well.

Religion was a big influence, and that damned Trump was a big influence in a very bad way. He took me right to the edge for a full four years. But, did he influence my gender? No. He influenced my mental health and rage and desire for justice for trans and nb.

So it all is still there. And you have read of the direct contacts I have had spiritually with the Christ, another huge one, it was right after one of those when I asked why He was still with me (because I could feel Him and I was full out in the bathroom and had just blown yet another purge - and clear as a bell in my mind it was spoken "because I love you. I called the Endo the next day.)

And there's the medical folk too.

Everywhere there are those who either help or hinder the journey.

But my understanding of gender is largely from the forum, and many, many convos with Ativan, who was keeping from going over the edge in the beginning for several years or more. Ativan and Patty and Isla, every day, keeping me from losing it. And the binaries were pushing me over the edge, unfortunately, it was just because they thought I was binary trans and kept taking me in that direction and I was ready to go there. Would have cost me everything.

So, lots of influencers. Lots of heavy hitters, bunch of famous people too, but they didn't influence me, I wound up influencing them

And helping others here, that's probably the biggest influencer now for me. Keeps me sharp.

[Trinity]

What Ativan is saying, big time.

It became imperative that we have a safe place, remember that (shudder) word "invalidation"?

Doesn't happen here. Used to happen a lot. Now it happens IRL but it doesn't happen here.

But that's a good sumation of what happened, and a lot more happened than that, and the history of it all is right here. Just read the what, 100,000 posts we have up?


We came here for freedom.

[nyx]

Thank you Ativan and Trinity, for sharing a bit about where this forum comes from! It seems there has happened a lot, and I am glad to be here with you. For me, this forum was one of the first big steps towards finding out who I am, although I am still confused. But to know that I can come here, talk about my feelings and thoughts, knowing there are people who will understand, whom I can reach out to, is huge.
I am not sure which things in my life had an impact on my gender, but the forum is my constant reminder that I am not losing my mind. So thank you all for existing, you make me feel more real.
I think finding out that my assigned gender is not me has brought an amount of truth in my perception of self which I was lacking before. I have been feeling like some part of me is not real, and this feeling has been declining since I started to explore my identity. Now, I don't feel that something isn't real, it's rather that there is something I don't fully understand. But I know I am growing to understand it. And the forum helps me on my path of growing, I think.

[Leena]

Mostly my family. I came out as trans when I was a kid, and they made me feel like it was something to be ashamed of. They haven't really changed, and transitioning without telling them seemed the only way to do it without them trying to talk me out of it.

Those decades being ashamed and was repressing it were harder on me than I realized at the time. I just couldn't do it any longer when I finally joined the old forum.

Yeah, a lot of people there had the same old ideas about one true way to transition that scared me deep into the closet when I briefly stopped repressing in the late 90s. It just wasn't, and still isn't the best way for me, even if I wanted many of the same things. I'm glad that not everyone there at the time had those old ideas.

I'm a lot closer to binary trans than some middle point. I just really needed to transition the way I did though, and seeing what nonbinary people were doing helped me decide I didn't need those old ideas to move forward.

[koiandras]

Star Trek. Been a fan for over thirty years and as a teenager, I was both attracted to and related to Jadzia Dax. I realised I was bi a couple of years ago and I've only just got to grips with my gender identity, but I think that a lot of the characters and concepts explored in Star Trek meant that I had a positive representation of people who didn't fit societal norms and that it was perfectly OK if I didn't either.

[Leena]

Nov 2, 2021 3:19:21 GMT 8 koiandras said:

Star Trek. Been a fan for over thirty years and as a teenager, I was both attracted to and related to Jadzia Dax.

Kind of felt the same about Dax. Perhaps even more now.