OT: Gender Identity

[Valerie]

And I'm a succubus

I'll suck your bus, baby. ;D

Bubbles: I'm totes jelly. I wish I were a Pegasus. D:

[Captain LeBubbles]

And I'm a succubus

I'll suck your bus, baby. ;D

Bubbles: I'm totes jelly. I wish I were a Pegasus. D:

Color scheme, mane/tail style, and cutie mark?

[Valerie]

Color scheme, mane/tail style, and cutie mark?

Hmm. Well... Color scheme would be purple/raspberry, I think. Mane and tail, if we base it on my real hair, would be shortish and slightly wavy. Cutie mark's a hard one. I'm afraid I haven't found my special talent in life yet. So maybe I'm a blank flank. XD

[Artemisia]

Here's my pony And Val

[Captain LeBubbles]

Color scheme, mane/tail style, and cutie mark?

Hmm. Well... Color scheme would be purple/raspberry, I think. Mane and tail, if we base it on my real hair, would be shortish and slightly wavy. Cutie mark's a hard one. I'm afraid I haven't found my special talent in life yet. So maybe I'm a blank flank. XD

Ta-da~!

[Valerie]

Ta-da~!

YEAAAAAHHHH!
Man, look at that blank flank. So much potential.

[strangled]

The closest I can get to understanding the anguish that comes with it is typical "body image" stuff-- "My nose is too big," or "I have too many freckles." And I know it's got to be much more difficult than that, but it comes down to being a little similar. The bottom line is that something physical isn't matching up to your mental self, and it bothers you. It might bother you a little or it might bother you a lot. But that's the best I can do to put myself in that position.

But the thing about that is that you wont face wrong assumptions about yourself due to those physical characteristics. Being misgendered is more traumatic because you are faced with how you look everywhere you go (i.e.: people calling you "sir" instead of "ma'am" if you identify as male, or giving you dirty looks for being in a women's lingerie store), whereas the world isn't going to be pointing out your freckles to you every second of every day. Also there's all the gender stereotypes that are already pretty harmful to cisgendered people, but made even worse because you're being forced to fit a mold you simply do not fit into.

& then there's also the erasure of intersexed or androgynous people, or genderfucking or drag queens or any of the other myriad things you can do with gender that usually get ignored by just "s/he is going from one gender to the other" type of thinking. Gender is more of a big, vast tube map instead of two points with no stops in between.

[Lia S]

Being a feminist certainly makes explaining being trans more difficult, because I don't get to say "I'm a woman because I want THIS gender role". And in fact I don't want quite a few things from the traditional female gender role.

When someone refers to me as male or by my male name, I get a feeling like they said "1 + 1 = 3" or "I love your blond hair" (my hair is slightly on the red side of brown) or "happy new year, it's now 1721". Seeing my body does the same thing to me. But I couldn't explain why it feels that way. It just does.

There are a many reasons one might not want surgery, I can name a few even though I do want it:

- Cost/benefit: it will hurt a lot and it's dangerous, while simply not running around naked might be a "good enough" solution. Things that cannot be fixed by surgery (but some may be fixed in other ways) may be much more important than getting rid of the snake: body hair amount and pattern, figure, voice...

- The feeling that surgery is more important for OTHERS to accept me as female than it is for me. Others telling me what to do with my body makes me want to do the opposite, but of course I should just ignore them.

- Considering what makes my (nonexistent) partner happier.

---

I think gender identity and physical sex are related to each other in a very weird way. One woman might want/be happy to have a completely female body but have a traditionally male role in life, whereas another might prefer a male body but wants a traditionally female role including pretty dresses and whatnot. And that's just two surprising extremes. Maybe male/female/both/other should just be what one wants to be called, and the rest needs more and different words to be described accurately.

[Trefle]

As for gender roles... Trans people don't necessarily stick to their gender roles. Women can be "masculine" while still being women, and the other way holds true for men. So I don't see why a trans person would be any different. But this is a point that's much harder to explain to more "traditional" people, especially when so many of them can't even keep "trans" and "gay" separate.

BUT ANYWAY. Here is Val's basic line of thinking on it.

Girls can do anything boys can do.
Girls can wear pants.
Boys can wear dresses, because girls can wear pants.

For me (bigender/agender/genderfluid, considerably 'homosexual'), the ideal was akin to yours, only more..'be';

Girls should / can be angry and strong and dependable and independent just has Boys should / can be caring, compassionate, emotional, crying..

The same in profession. We have seen women becoming soldier and mechanics and scientist and 'other male-oriented jobs' without getting -too- much stigmas, and that's good. But the opposite aren't too true...I think? Men still got more stigmas in becoming a hairdresser or a designer or a househusband or anything womanly = 'oh. Gay?' at least in my perspective. Why Gay? Because Gay is girly and therefore more [insert adjective here]? I mean, female scientist aren't getting too much 'Lez Looks' from other people...

It's hard defining gender, for me personally. Because a LOT was something socially constructed (paraphrasing a good question from someone that sparked this thought; 'Why did a lot of trans people often becomes the most visible type , as far as gender spectrum and types are concerned?' as in a lot of MtF often go very...feminine, and a lot FtM often go ver masculine.)

Personally I used to have a lot of dysphoria. "EW why is being male like THAT? I don't like being a male." As you can see, the problem is pretty much social-based / affected by social ideas. I also feel more..like a female, moreso than being a male. Recently (like, 5-4 years ago), the dysphoria subsided. But it's still..there. I'm technically better working from the angle of 'I'm a female in a male's body', but I also don't hate my body more than I did. I'm alright with being a male, but I'm not exactly one. I'm more identifying with a female.

Then more recently I throw gender altogether. Pfft. Call me male, call me female, I'm alright.

[LadyObvious23]

:/ Well my outlook on gender isn't much different than alot of people I know.

I figure if it makes you happy and it isn't hurting yourself then be who you believe you are.

Though I've just considered myself a feminine girl(At home at least). But with other family members I'm actually very masculine.

Like this one time I've gone shopping with my cousin and her mother one time, I was the only one who didn't buy make up or a new dress or anything distinctly girly girl like.

In fact the entire time I was bored to tears. DX

And the entire time I was wondering,"Why isn't this fun? Is there a trick to this I ain't getting? How come I'm the only one who's bored out of their mind?'

And two hours into the shopping trip I was thinking,"Geez...is this why guys hate shopping? It's boring! ): Wait...is me being bored a bad thing?"

At the time I kinda freaked out at how unfeminine I was compared to my aunt and cousin. I told a few people I knew about this and it made me feel a bit better but still. DX It kinda made me feel less like a girl that I didn't buy anything remotely feminine during the trip.

Yeah I know it sounds silly but at the time I was seriously freaked cuz I considered myself a typical girly girl. X3 Though I was kinda glad to be more masculine during my junior year.

I had biology and we were doing dissection on worms, crawfish and frogs.

And I with a whole lot of other girls were doing it just fine.

Only ONE boy out of the class was willing to touch the things we were working on. All the other boys were too busy gagging and fake throwing up.

I don't know if that counts as gender identity but I figured I'd just add it in for laughs.

[Valerie]

While I'm sure that's related, Lady, I think it can be summed into what Freemage quoted earlier in the thread about identity vs. expression.

[Kamino Neko]

The idea of gender identity tied to gender roles honestly confuses the hell out of me.

My perception of my self has never been tied to gender roles. I am bigender - that is, I see myself as male or female on a shifting basis, but the rest of my identity stays pretty much static. (Aside from my sexuality, which has a bit of wiggle room. Actually, a lot of wiggle room. But that's a whole different thread!) It's just a matter of how I perceive myself, and want to be perceived by others.

Everybody has a mental conception of themselves - a platonic ideal of who they are, so to speak. Most people don't have to think about it, because it matches the other self, the one everybody else sees.

But for some of us, it doesn't - not always, at least - and us...we notice it.

Here's an analogy that may help - you also don't notice your clothes, most of the time*... But imagine, instead of being properly fitting clothes, you're wearing something that fits just slightly off - not enough that anyone else can see it, but so that every time you move, you feel it. It keeps calling attention to itself, by being wrong.

* Ignore the fact that, thanks to my saying that, you now are noticing them. You are also now consciously breathing, and very aware of where your tongue is.

[Captain LeBubbles]

Ignore the fact that, thanks to my saying that, you now are noticing them. You are also now consciously breathing, and very aware of where your tongue is.

Does that still count if we're not wearing clothes?

[Valerie]

Does that still count if we're not wearing clothes?

[Insert demisexual hitting on naked asexual here]

[svenman]

*nosebleed*

Oh Bubbles, do you even realize what you did there?