State of the Gender, March 2015
Mar. 31st, 2015 06:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sorcyressToday is the International Transgender Day of Visibility and I feel like I should probably write a thing. Mostly because I think it's been a while since I last sat down and talked about my gender with y'all, and this is as good an excuse as any.
So!
I am not trans.
But I am sure as hell not cis1. The short version is that I'm genderqueer. The long version is that I'm primarily agender with binary genderfluid tendencies. The longer version is that I'm a FAAB, enby/agender, societally-identified boy who was raised with a lot of (sometimes toxic) traditional female socialization, and who sometimes experiences strong periods of being male or female...and I'm not very serious about it.
Let's try breaking that down a little more.
FAAB means Female Assigned At Birth. It's as good a place as any to start talking about my gender. When people assume a gender of me, it's usually some variation on "girl". If we are talking about secondary sex characteristics, I have ovaries (presumably, I menstruate sometimes) and a vagina and vulva, and breasts.
Enby stands for NB or Non-Binary, outside the "male/female" gender binary. Agender means "no gender". Both of them apply to me, I am not a male or a female, I am in fact, none of the above. Most of the time, I do not have a gender. The word I used to use was genderneutral, I think agender has more traction with the rest of the world, so I've been switching to it.
Societally-identified boy means that when I think about my place in society, I think of it from a traditionally male perspective. I am continually surprised that other people don't see me as a man. A good example is my interactions with babies --I am always nervous when I smile at strange babies, because society says that men can't be interested in children without being creepy, so therefore I am going to seem creepy.
Raised with traditional female socialization is just to say Good Girls Aren't Here. I do not display my emotions (I have been taught that being "emotional" is akin to being "illogical" and therefore "bad"). I strive to make people happy, often at my own expense and especially if it seems like they are angry or upset. I am very bad at interrupting. (I am working on all of this. Dancing makes it easier to take up space, and that's an interesting thing to consider further sometime.)
I sometimes experience strong periods of being male or female. Ah. This is the interesting one, and the one that makes my gender _difficult_. If it weren't for this, I could just go with "FAAB agender person, they/them/their, yep!" But the problem is that I'm not always agender. Sometimes I am definitely a boy. Sometimes I am definitely a girl. So far, I have never been both at once (although I dress to present that way on occasion) and I have never been a different gender, but I'm not ruling it out as an eventual possibility.
If I am wearing (somewhere on my person, usually head or tucked into a pocket/belt loop) a bandana2 that is some shade of purple, then I am currently male and would like to be referred to with he/him pronouns. If it's orange, then female, and she/her.
As for the last bit? A friend of mine (who I'm not going to name/out without permission) once said that they would love it if there were OKCupid style signifiers for gender. Right along with how much you actually care about your diet and religion and astrological sign, you could go ahead and say that "I'm male, and it's very important to me" or "I'm female, but it's just for fun!". So all my gender tends to come with a pretty big pinch of "but it's not that important".
...which segues nicely into a post about pronouns and some of that aforementioned socially raised female bullshit. But I'll write that later, it's time for me to go dance.
~Sorcyress (sometimes PopTartsKing)
MOOP!
1: Cisgendered: having a gender identity that aligns with the gender assignment you were given at birth.
2: I am into neither "anything goes" nor "piercing", so I suppose an argument could be made that this is me fucking up the Handkerchief Code by flagging with my own weird bullshit. I don't much care.
So!
I am not trans.
But I am sure as hell not cis1. The short version is that I'm genderqueer. The long version is that I'm primarily agender with binary genderfluid tendencies. The longer version is that I'm a FAAB, enby/agender, societally-identified boy who was raised with a lot of (sometimes toxic) traditional female socialization, and who sometimes experiences strong periods of being male or female...and I'm not very serious about it.
Let's try breaking that down a little more.
FAAB means Female Assigned At Birth. It's as good a place as any to start talking about my gender. When people assume a gender of me, it's usually some variation on "girl". If we are talking about secondary sex characteristics, I have ovaries (presumably, I menstruate sometimes) and a vagina and vulva, and breasts.
Enby stands for NB or Non-Binary, outside the "male/female" gender binary. Agender means "no gender". Both of them apply to me, I am not a male or a female, I am in fact, none of the above. Most of the time, I do not have a gender. The word I used to use was genderneutral, I think agender has more traction with the rest of the world, so I've been switching to it.
Societally-identified boy means that when I think about my place in society, I think of it from a traditionally male perspective. I am continually surprised that other people don't see me as a man. A good example is my interactions with babies --I am always nervous when I smile at strange babies, because society says that men can't be interested in children without being creepy, so therefore I am going to seem creepy.
Raised with traditional female socialization is just to say Good Girls Aren't Here. I do not display my emotions (I have been taught that being "emotional" is akin to being "illogical" and therefore "bad"). I strive to make people happy, often at my own expense and especially if it seems like they are angry or upset. I am very bad at interrupting. (I am working on all of this. Dancing makes it easier to take up space, and that's an interesting thing to consider further sometime.)
I sometimes experience strong periods of being male or female. Ah. This is the interesting one, and the one that makes my gender _difficult_. If it weren't for this, I could just go with "FAAB agender person, they/them/their, yep!" But the problem is that I'm not always agender. Sometimes I am definitely a boy. Sometimes I am definitely a girl. So far, I have never been both at once (although I dress to present that way on occasion) and I have never been a different gender, but I'm not ruling it out as an eventual possibility.
If I am wearing (somewhere on my person, usually head or tucked into a pocket/belt loop) a bandana2 that is some shade of purple, then I am currently male and would like to be referred to with he/him pronouns. If it's orange, then female, and she/her.
As for the last bit? A friend of mine (who I'm not going to name/out without permission) once said that they would love it if there were OKCupid style signifiers for gender. Right along with how much you actually care about your diet and religion and astrological sign, you could go ahead and say that "I'm male, and it's very important to me" or "I'm female, but it's just for fun!". So all my gender tends to come with a pretty big pinch of "but it's not that important".
...which segues nicely into a post about pronouns and some of that aforementioned socially raised female bullshit. But I'll write that later, it's time for me to go dance.
~Sorcyress (sometimes PopTartsKing)
MOOP!
1: Cisgendered: having a gender identity that aligns with the gender assignment you were given at birth.
2: I am into neither "anything goes" nor "piercing", so I suppose an argument could be made that this is me fucking up the Handkerchief Code by flagging with my own weird bullshit. I don't much care.
no subject
on 2015-04-01 03:22 am (UTC)I like the bit about not-cis not necessarily being trans. Good distinction.
no subject
on 2015-04-01 10:51 am (UTC)no subject
on 2015-04-01 02:59 pm (UTC)Also it's good to know your pronouns & genderfluid stuff!! I know we don't see each other irl very often but i'll keep your personal hanky code in mind :^)