(sorry that not all of these are links I can only multi-quote so many things at once and it's hard to go and grab links!)
Trans* means anyone who is not cis. The point of the * is to be all-inclusive of trans-ness, including non-binaries and everyone.
Genderqueer is a specific identity. It's often used to mean non-binary but it's a misuse; it means someone who is genderqueer and identifies as such. (although you can be gq and non-binary at the same time.) It's like trans male, trans female, agender, etc.; it means not those. Its specific use can be different with each gq person and also each gq person generally has, like, a different use of gender as well, but it generally means - their gender is queer.
o
Trans* was started in the 90s, so it's not that recent. And it was started specifically as a way to include non-binaries. 9_9
Thank you!
So if someone's saying they're genderqueer, would people generally assume the
exact meaning of it is personal and not already have a set identity in mind when they see it?
Leafpool said:
Sorry if my responses seem short or not very elaborative or whatnot - I've been suffering from sleep deprivation a lot lately and I'm not in a great mood for responding to things but I figured I might as well to show at least I wasn't ignoring you.
That's okay I wouldn't have figured you were ignoring me anyway lots of people just read and don't have a particular thing to say or get busy! You should sleep more sleep deprivation isn't good :c
Cirrus said:
I'm very sure, though, that mostly when someone uses trans* they mean anyone not-cis, rather than people who are within the binary! I personally feel a liiiiittle uncomfortable using 'trans*' or saying 'trans' and feel super-jumpy about it, because for almost as long as I've known, trans has been something that I'm not, and there's this weird feeling that I shouldn't be using it since I don't even know exactly how I feel (ugh, I hate using that phrase, often people assume I mean "I don't know if I'm not-cis or cis" which is wrong, wrong, wrong) and should just let ~actual~ trans people (people within the binary, I guess??) use it. I've seen 'transguy' and 'transwoman' and all these things that have always been very very much not me, and now it feels weird to suddenly feel like I can use them?? I think it's definitely a new thing for trans* to mean not-cis, presumably because now the queer community is sure that we exist!
Cirrus that's how I felt about it, too, that I'm
not a "transguy" or "transgirl" just a something else and worried that people assumed that from "trans*", I guess! I guess they don't if it was specifically created to be inclusive, so I'll try to be less jumpy about that! It's still hard not to be jumpy, though - I guess it just seems like everyone even lots of transgender people refuse to recognize non-binary people!
Also there was a scary article the other day where someone was questioning a transgender person and asked "How can you tell if someone is transgender?" and she was like "oh people will always act like the opposite stereo-types super-super-early on they'll always know right away and everyone around them will always know right away it's super-obvious the most obvious thing never any doubt!" that was a really bad answer :c
Cirrus said:
But there are some people who just identify that way and it's an established thing within the trans* community! :c I don't know anyone personally who does so we should look up some resources, right! It's strange and uncomfortable when a person tries to push 'third gender' on you as if that's the only thing outside the binary you could be, but for some people 'third' is the only thing they can pin down outside that binary and maybe it's the only thing that's ever worked for them!
It doesn't make sense to randomly count genders, but people usually say 'third gender', 'fourth gender, fifth etc. etc. etc.' and I don't think I've ever come across anyone who genuinely thinks there are just three strict concrete genders. (There's also the fact that in some cultures 'third gender' is actually a legal and cultural thing, but.)
Cirrus oh I didn't know about that! :c It seemed really sketchy maybe mean I guess I'll try and not find it that way if that's the only thing that works for some people!!
opaltiger said:
I see how there are much better alternatives (i.e. "non-binary") but why is saying "a third gender" inherently problematic? It's not suggesting that there are only three genders (as "the third gender" would), simply that the person is talking about a gender that isn't in the binary (i.e. a third gender apart from male or female). Which particular gender that is isn't specified.
I thought it seemed problematic because, like! It seems like saying "I get that there are only two genders and that's normal and good but I'm this mysterious alien third gender it's really weird and alien and rare I know but here I am" except not sarcastic-sounding. It sort of sounds like it's making it out to be that a "third gender" is really strange and like since it's counted, there's no room for any other genders, let alone lots and lots and lots! Also I mentioned this before but it sounds like that sci-fi thing where some ~creepy alien race~ is a "third gender" (a third
sex) and everyone finds it creepy and weird and then they go home where things are "normal" and silently decide to never think of it again because oh no, how could you ever possibly deal with something or someone being different from you personally, you poor, poor sci-fi characters.
Um does that make sense! I guess if people legitimately use it and it's just what they're comfortable with then I should discard my knee-jerk reaction and try and learn more about that, though!
Also sorry for all the weird sarcasticness it turns out it was tougher to explain than I wanted it to be :c
opaltiger said:
Actually, I have a question. Hiikaru, you said there might be infinitely many genders. I'm wondering, how would two non-binary people realise if they belonged to the same gender, or two different non-binary genders? With male or female, you presumably have an entire cultural institution built up, within which you have been raised, so there is some kind of standard of comparison, whether it's comparative or contrastive. But if you identify as a non-binary gender, how do you go about comparing your experience with other non-binary people? It seems like there would be no reference points.
ETA: Never mind, disregard the second paragraph.
Would it be bad if I still answered even though the disregard!
I don't know that you
would be able to decide that you're the same gender! No matter how much depth and detail someone goes into trying to explain their gender, you can't ever
really go in their head and see every intricacy of their feelings and compare them with complete accuracy! I'd also tentatively say that I'm not convinced two people who identify as girls or guys or agender could say they're the
exact same, either, even though it's considered to be a specific feeling - how can you possibly know for sure?
It's really easy for me to think of hypothetical genders in terms of things like "feels very strongly that they're a girl, but a little genderless, too" or "sort of half a guy and half a girl" or "mostly an 'it' but also sort of like a boy" and then toss in fluidity variation (and fluid could mean "smetimes a girl, sometimes a boy", or "mostly agender sometimes more or less agender sometimes with girlness but only rarely with boyness", or 100% fluid could feel anything any time; there could be tons of different fences or boundaries!) and that seems like it could go into infinite or really close to infinite! And I know people who
do define their gender as things like that and as fluid with boundaries (and I do) so it seems silly to just assume there's mysteriously only a few variations of doing that.
Also really I'd be really uncomfortable if someone tried to decide they had the "same" gender as me because it feels really personal to me and I don't know that it's even possible that someone could have the exact same one! Similar, sure! But my
exact gender is kind of dependent on being me and having my experiences (probably not everyone feels that theirs is dependent but I kind of do!) so I don't think anyone else could have it!
What does this... mean?? I mean, then, how do you 'present' as not-male or not-female? I thought at first that she was using 'present' to be what they identified as, but this seems a lot more like making guesses based on secondary sex characteristics or binary gender expression. That shouldn't be a 'general rule' at all.
I mostly wear quite femme, flowy, frilly clothes, including the occasional skirt, I tend to walk in a 'feminine' way... those... shouldn't be reasons to decide to use 'she' for me until corrected! (Especially since 95% of the time, I don't correct because scary) Why is this advice?? It's nice that it's about not what you think is a 'real woman' but clearly you're still making a decision by yourself? What is presenting as male or presenting as female if you don't speak to the person?
What's wrong with using 'they' anyway, if you're so concerned with being inclusive? ?_?
Cirrus hm maybe by present she means if they say so or what pronouns others are using?? It's tricky because sometimes people aren't comfortable saying their gender or sometimes others are gendering them wrong or they wear stereo-typical clothes that don't "fit" with the gender they are for one reason or another or :c It's just hard to know for sure for
anyone unless you ask because who knows if someone is cisgender or not you can't know!
Leafpool said:
But the question I ask of trans* people here is - in this instance is 'girl' the right word to use? Does it refer to the trans* person's physical appearance as a woman, or ver gender identity? If I met someone who was physically female but used male pronouns, I'd probably preface telling someone about him by using "So I met this guy today. He's a trans man." because if I were to say "So I met this girl today. He's a trans man." whoever I was speaking to would understand the gist of my statement after I finished (you met someone who's physically female but mentally male) but just looking at it/listening to it original it seems absurd to use the pronoun "he" to refer to a "girl". But what kind of noun would you use to refer to someone using ve/ver/vem? I suppose you could substitute it with "person" ("So I met this person today. Ve's transgender, physically female but uses the pronouns ve/ver/vem.") but is that always applicable? Is there another noun that can replace that but get across the impression that this person you met is, in fact, outside of the gender binary? Or is "girl" the correct word because ve's physically female?
"Girl" and "boy" are identity words, so someone can't be them unless they specifically identify that way! Also it'd feel really gross to a lot of people if you said it like that, even if people would "get the gist of what you were saying", you're still calling them something that they've been fighting and fighting against! Also some people are really uncomfortable with the implication that their body is male or female based on their parts, because if they identify as, say, a girl, surely their body is also a girl body, since it belongs to a girl? Then if "male" and "female" are also considered identity words (it'd be easier if they weren't, but it makes sense to also use them as identity words since a really big amount of people are
going to think of them as identity words and force you to use them as identity words no matter what you say), then it gets tricky! It's infrequent that anyone desperately needs to know the details of which set of parts a person has, though, so it doesn't really matter that it's tricky! (you might think it would be important sometimes, but it's actually not most of the time)
You can say "assigned sex" or "assigned gender", though! And then you get to avoid the trickness of "person identifies as" which apparently makes lots of people assume you're actually saying "so person cliams eir identity is this but I'm totally on your side in believing there's no such thing as trans* people and that we more intelligent beings magically know everyone's feelings better than they do" and that's really scary and I didn't even realize for a while that that's what people were doing. :(
Butterfree said:
Well, I can't speak for them, but I don't think it has anything to do with intent to do whatever, just with dissonance and discomfort with being referred to by gendered pronouns or viewed as a particular gender.
So being called "she" or whatever would just feel deeply wrong, not like it really means you. I understand a facet of this in that I really dislike people on the Internet thinking of me as a guy, for several reasons (like that it irritates me so many people assume people on the Internet are men by default) but mostly just because I'm not a guy. And that feeling doesn't involve my body specifically - I'm not mad they think I have a penis, just that, in general, it feels like they're making all sorts of assumptions about me and they're wrong. (Of course people make wrong assumptions about women too, but perhaps just because I've thought of myself as a woman all my life, I'm accustomed to assuming those are the assumptions people make about me, whereas finding people are making this whole other set of assumptions feels weird and wrong. It doesn't mean the assumptions about women are correct, or that I don't wish to fight tooth and claw until there are no assumptions, just that those are the assumptions that I'm... prepared for, I guess? I like subverting expectations about what women are supposed to be like, but if people aren't thinking of me as a woman, what I'm doing means something completely different to them than it's supposed to mean.)
In my case it only happens with people who've never met me and it's easy to correct them, so that feeling is more slight annoyance than anything else. But for people who experience that kind of thing all the time in real life, especially if neither of the commonly assumed genders in our culture feels "right", I imagine it would grow to be pretty maddening. And thus, wanting different pronouns that do feel "right", regardless of how they feel about their bodies in particular.
Butterfree that's a lot like how I feel about it! People aren't thinking of
me as a person when they misgender me, they're thinking of someone else that they made up and just assuming that I'll be like x and y! At best if I do the opposite of x and y or don't do x and y they'll go "oh, well, I guess not
everyone is like that..." and go on assuming it for other people and struggle with not assuming it for me because apparently it's horribly horribly difficult not to assume that every single person who looks like this will act like that. And then there will always be tons of people who think that me not doing x and y properly is just a lie and that I still secretly do that and think that. And it colours everything that they see and think about me and it's the worst thing!
I
like having my special different pronouns (that people will insist on calling me "special snowflake" for because they're mean) because if someone calls me those, there simply don't exist any colours to go along with it, so no one
can randomly colour me with their years and years of collected stereo-types and meannesses! I guess some whenever they see it will think "super-weird person who's just doing it to get attention and be a ~special snowflake~" but that's just sort of being a jerk, not being completely disgusting and dysphoric and
wrong. Having my own pronouns is so freeing in comparison! It just means
me.
Vladimir Putin's LJ said:
By the way, silly question incoming: for people who want some other pronoun to be used, how do you feel about your birth sex? What I mean is: I'm a transsexual man who has no interest in advertising his transsexualism. I view my condition as a birth defect to be corrected post-haste. As such, I don't really understand people who identify as trans instead of as men or women? Does it mean you'd rather we all had the same genitalia? Or does it simply mean you don't want there to be gendered stereotypes?
Because since I view my condition as physical I agree 100% that there shouldn't be gendered stereotypes and that anyone should wear whatever they want without any sort of connotation, but I also have trouble relating to people who are comfortable in their bodies but want some special pronoun? Like. I just hate my body and there isn't a day where I don't wish I was XY, but I see a lot of XX or XY people who want to be called they or ve or something but are a-okay with their body. If your intent is to just abolish gender stereotypes, surely the answer isn't to just identify with some other gender and instead to be proud of the one you have and do whatever you want to show stereotypes are silly?
I use an alternate pronoun set and feel okay about my birth sex! My body isn't disgusting - I feel a lot more comfortable in it than I used to getting to be in safe spaces and around people who will treat me like a regular person and not be weird and constantly backpedaling from their weird stereo-typed assumptions! I feel dysphoric when people make up my gender because it's
wrong, not because I'm in the wrong body! Although when people treat me differently based on what my body looks like then I feel dysphoric about that, too, but it's not a permanent inherent dysphoria, it's more like...
wishing it would be different so that people would leave me alone? And associating the grossness of people being mean and misgendering me with my body and wanting to just be
away from it for a while. But I can't! If no one ever misgendered me or randomly decided who I was based on what I look like, I'd be fine with being like this!
Like Cirrus, I don't really understand the rest of the questions, though - why on earth would I want to force everyone to have the same body parts just because I'm okay with my body? If you could magically get the parts you wanted and then you'd be comfortable in your body, would you suddenly start wanting everyone to have the same parts? ?_? I can't find how you're making an association there. I have brown hair and I'm okay with having brown hair, but it doesn't mean I think everyone needs brown hair? It's the same thing - it's not a huge deal to
me which sex I am (well, it matters to me some, but it's not like vitally important to my identity or anything) and I'd like it to be as arbitrary to everyone else as my hair colour is! That doesn't mean wishing for sameness - why would it mean that?
Stereo-types could just vanish one day and my gender wouldn't morph into something else just because they were gone - it's not
about stereo-types! I just have a random feeling of being this gender! It's gross when people misgender me - isn't it gross when people misgender you? Wouldn't it still be gross even if stereo-types went away? I can be called other pronouns too and be okay with those if people aren't being horrible and assuming weird things, but I'll always feel strange being called them and they'll never be correct.
And I'm baffled by the idea that I'm choosing to have gendered feelings just because of stereo-types, too. What? I didn't get up one day and go "wow, stereo-types are really mean. I bet if I just start hurting whenever I'm called a guy or a girl and decide to feel like a different gender, the stereo-types will go away!" That's nonsensical. Also, sometimes I wish I
was a guy or a girl just so I could say "look, I'm $gender, and I don't do that. How can you say that everyone who belongs to $gender does that?", but I'm not, so I have to fight it other ways. I didn't decide! Why would I? You didn't decide to feel like your chromosomes are wrong! What's different about it? It's just a feeling of wrongness for a thing that you can't control having.
I'm not
ashamed of my gender or sex, they're just the way they are - why do I have to suddenly try and force myself to have different feelings...? I can't do it, I tried. It would be easier that way! But it's just not that way so too bad.
Vladimir Putin's LJ said:
That's the impression I often hear, but here's where I guess my understanding diverges: what's wrong with gendering it, exactly? The only thing I can imagine is that you wouldn't want the baggage associated with a particular pronoun, but why should that matter?
How would it
not matter to have all that "baggage"? It feels
disgusting that it's there. It's not
fair that people look at someone's body and instantly decide "oh, well they have $parts, so they must like this, and that, and do this when they get hurt, and they'd act like this if I did this particular thing, and they probably go to this and this activity unless they don't have the money because $gender people just plain enjoy those activities, and they probably are incapable of doing this or would find it really hard, and this is probably their favourite colour, and they
definitely think this and that and if they say they don't they're lying because how could you possibly have $parts and not think that even though it doesn't make the tiniest bit of sense that parts would absolutely have to infect all of your thoughts and feelings and that no one in the whole world could ever have a different feeling ever because every single person is precisely the same we're robots" and if you ever do anything a hair out of place they'll be the absolute worst to you and hurt you and assume you're lying and being secretive for stupid reasons - you don't think that that
matters? Of course people don't want that! Even cisgender people don't want that thrust upon them, so why would someone outside of the binary mysteriously want that when they don't even identify as the gender that people are grabbing the horrible things from so they can't even say "well I'm $gender and I don't" without making
themselves dysphoric because no, they're not whatever gender? Do
you want people doing that to you? Why?
Vladimir Putin's LJ said:
I'll freely say I'm leery of people who say they're 'FtM' while making no effort to look male, then take T, then detransition a little while later, but just because it makes people who know they want T for the rest of their lives have to jump through more hoops.
It
is really really sad and terrible that people who are 100% sure have to jump through all those hoops just because "oh well what if they're not sure after all and regret it!" But you can't blame people for being unsure, either! They can't help that! It's great for you that you're 100% sure, but feelings are mysterious and fluid and not everyone can instantly read every feeling accurately for everything - especially when it's something that people try so hard to pretend doesn't exist. It seems really strange to me that people even
can be 100% sure really quickly, but I guess it just happens! I thought a few years ago that maybe I was the "opposite" and that I'd want to do transitioning things, but it took me a while to realize that I didn't
have to fit into everyone else's boxes and that dysphoria didn't mean "opposite" just meant not this, and that I felt dysphoric for being thought of as either a boy or as a girl, not just as one of them! And, well, of course I didn't get that immediately - how could I have known with everyone being taught every second of their lives that there are two genders and that if you don't conform you're a horrible disgusting demon and you should die? How?
Also, I'm not convinced that unsure people get surgery and hormones because that would be way too terrifying if you weren't completely sure that that was what you wanted. Maybe hormones because they figure they can just stop taking the hormones and/or take different hormones if they don't like it? But that's a super-complicated scary process to go through if you're not even sure! :c
Vladimir Putin's LJ said:
while I don't get genderqueer people at all because I don't understand being fine with your body but not liking people to address you by the pronoun your body shows you to be? I might have to draw a diagram because I'm finding it hard to put it in understandable terms, sorry.
Being fine with my body doesn't mean I
have to identify as whatever people want me to identify as! Why does my body
have to be a huge part of my identity? Back to hair, I have brown hair but I don't identify as a brown-haired person. No one even cares what colour of hair I have, no one would expect me to have to identify as a brown-haired person because what even
is a hair identity. I don't have an identity based on my hair, or on how many fingers I have, or on what size shoes I have to wear, or on having glasses, so why do I have to have an identity based on what type of body parts I happen to have? And you're allowed to have other feelings that aren't related to your body, like you could identify as a feminist, or as a gamer, or as an artist, and you'd never say "Um, why are you identifying as an artist if you're comfortable with your body? ?_?" or "Why do you experience happiness if you're comfortable with your body?????" because that makes no sense at all. So there are feelings you can have that people don't consider body-dependent. So why does a feeling of not liking the pronouns people call them have to be body-dependent! It's a feeling of not liking a thing that happens. You don't
have to like everything that happens. You don't have to like if you fall on a rock just because it happened. So why is this a thing that you've decided people have to like? It's really really hard to understand why you think that makes sense, sorry! :c
Vladimir Putin's LJ said:
I don't have any problem recognizing that I have privilege because I'm an upper-middle class white person typing this message on a computer in a high-rate university, but honestly I don't think being transsexual grants me privilege compared to a genderqueer person who is comfortable with their body. I'm honestly not trying to attack you because wow this doesn't change either of our lives in the slightest but I'm going to have to shell out thousands of euro to have extremely invasive surgery to remove my uterus to get a piece of paper changed so I can avoid being ridiculed in public, physically attacked or denied all sorts of basic rights and pleasures (like travel). Exteriorising a non-binary identity (such as Neutrois people) makes you run the risk of these problems as well, but if you're XX and look XX you won't have these issues for gender-identity-related reasons (obviously women have these things happen to them for mysoginy-related reasons, but that's another issue)
That's not what Cirrus is saying! It's definitely sad and hard to be transgender and transitioning is really really scary and hard that you have to do it! So if a non-binary person doesn't want to transition that's maybe a privilege over you! But people who don't identify as a boy or a girl have some different bad things for them that you won't have to deal with, ever, too! It's not a contest ot trying to erase your struggles, it's just a thing!
Vladimir Putin's LJ said:
I think the thing is that for me 'she' is to be used for people who have an XX body and like it or people who have an XY body and don't like it, while 'he' is to be used for people who have an XY body and like it or people who have an XX body and don't like it.
It seems instead like "she" is for people who identify as a girl and are comfortable with being called a girl and thought of as a girl, and "he" is for people who identify as a guy and are comfortable with being called a guy and thought of as a guy! (also, maybe there are people like that who still don't want "he" and "she"? Who knows.) Otherwise you have people who are okay in their body but extremely uncomfortable with the assigned pronouns, and people who are not comfortable at all in their body and
also uncomfortable with "he" and "she"! Whether anyone likes it or not "he" and "she" have very specific meanings and it's okay if people feel that those very specific meanings don't apply to them! I'm
not a girl or a guy, so why should I be at ease with pronouns that specifically say to me "you are a girl" or "you are a guy"? I'm not!
If pronouns were strictly grammatical and meant
just "this person was born with these chromosomes" then maybe I'd feel differently? But they don't mean that and I can't force them to mean that. So I'm really a lot more comfortable with other sets of pronouns that don't carry the meaning that I identify as something I don't identify as!
