(By the time I noticed the "fill out poll" link in the original post, I had already written most of this.)
1. "list"? Everyone thinks/assumes I am male, and since currently the only indicators which say otherwise are psychological (and not glaringly obvious -- I mean, it took me over 30 years to figure it out, and I have much better access to the inside of my head than other people do), I don't fight it... but very long ago, long before I knew anything about transgenderism or gender dysphoria, I decided I was at least "not a man". It doesn't yet feel right, though, to say I am anything... but nonetheless, I let people assume I'm male. I will refuse to register on web sites where an answer to this question is required, however, if it involves both business and social interaction. (If it's a social site, I might go in as female, but I don't think this has actually happened yet... Oh, yeah, Plurk. Which I never use. On sites where I'm just an account number, I'll put down "male" because that's what's on my driver's license.)
2. Female, but only within a certain range of attributes. (Do you really want to know all this stuff? Yes, I suppose you do... ok, then...) I tend to be attracted to girls with a certain maleness in their appearance and demeanor... physically: not "butch", but angular; mentally: hmm, hard to describe... "practical"? ...but also empathetic. I'm anti-attracted to make-up, perfumes, most jewelry, and conventional female fashion. Am I babbling yet? Jenny (http://wiki.hypertwins.org/Category:Jenny) was almost exactly the epitome of what I'm attracted to (in a sense, she was my "one true love" -- but sex was never really a goal, even with her; intimacy, yes, but not sex). It's probably relevant to mention that the friends I tended to feel most comfortable around in kindergarten were girls (mostly of a somewhat tomboyish bent).
3. Well, the usual suffix there is "-sexual" which of course implies "sex" which I finally realized I don't like (given physical misconfiguration), though of course there's also "-amorous", which only implies "love", and most of the time I don't know if I actually even do "love". "Mono" can apply because historically, I have never actually had more than one intimate relationship at a time, but I gradually came around to realizing that poly makes a lot more sense for me, once I got over... a lot of mistaken ideas about it.
Side note: I don't understand the point of "dating" as distinguished from "going places with someone you'd like to know better and become more comfortable with, possibly eventually leading to intimacy but not necessarily, depending on how the chemistry works out".
4. "Complicated"; a two-person relationship trying to become a more-people relationship, where the obstacles to doing so are primarily logistical (rather than emotional).
5. I don't have any that feel comfortable. Perhaps "you", with the optional prepended honorific "hey". I often use "it", as that feels the most accurate. "He" is understandable, and "she" is okay too though I have this odd idea that I... haven't earned it, or that it's not fair to adopt it until it's correct in objectively observable ways (either by physical modification or else some sort of psychological test which makes the truth unambiguously clear... and I doubt there is any such test).
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ninetydegrees
anserz
on 2009-01-30 04:57 pm (UTC)1. "list"? Everyone thinks/assumes I am male, and since currently the only indicators which say otherwise are psychological (and not glaringly obvious -- I mean, it took me over 30 years to figure it out, and I have much better access to the inside of my head than other people do), I don't fight it... but very long ago, long before I knew anything about transgenderism or gender dysphoria, I decided I was at least "not a man". It doesn't yet feel right, though, to say I am anything... but nonetheless, I let people assume I'm male. I will refuse to register on web sites where an answer to this question is required, however, if it involves both business and social interaction. (If it's a social site, I might go in as female, but I don't think this has actually happened yet... Oh, yeah, Plurk. Which I never use. On sites where I'm just an account number, I'll put down "male" because that's what's on my driver's license.)
2. Female, but only within a certain range of attributes. (Do you really want to know all this stuff? Yes, I suppose you do... ok, then...) I tend to be attracted to girls with a certain maleness in their appearance and demeanor... physically: not "butch", but angular; mentally: hmm, hard to describe... "practical"? ...but also empathetic. I'm anti-attracted to make-up, perfumes, most jewelry, and conventional female fashion. Am I babbling yet? Jenny (http://wiki.hypertwins.org/Category:Jenny) was almost exactly the epitome of what I'm attracted to (in a sense, she was my "one true love" -- but sex was never really a goal, even with her; intimacy, yes, but not sex). It's probably relevant to mention that the friends I tended to feel most comfortable around in kindergarten were girls (mostly of a somewhat tomboyish bent).
3. Well, the usual suffix there is "-sexual" which of course implies "sex" which I finally realized I don't like (given physical misconfiguration), though of course there's also "-amorous", which only implies "love", and most of the time I don't know if I actually even do "love". "Mono" can apply because historically, I have never actually had more than one intimate relationship at a time, but I gradually came around to realizing that poly makes a lot more sense for me, once I got over... a lot of mistaken ideas about it.
Side note: I don't understand the point of "dating" as distinguished from "going places with someone you'd like to know better and become more comfortable with, possibly eventually leading to intimacy but not necessarily, depending on how the chemistry works out".
4. "Complicated"; a two-person relationship trying to become a more-people relationship, where the obstacles to doing so are primarily logistical (rather than emotional).
5. I don't have any that feel comfortable. Perhaps "you", with the optional prepended honorific "hey". I often use "it", as that feels the most accurate. "He" is understandable, and "she" is okay too though I have this odd idea that I... haven't earned it, or that it's not fair to adopt it until it's correct in objectively observable ways (either by physical modification or else some sort of psychological test which makes the truth unambiguously clear... and I doubt there is any such test).