Tag Archives: gender

0

Pride Challenge: Day 21

|

Political LGBT issue that is closest to you or affects you most. 

This used to be domestic partnerships/marriage, but with that being the law of the land now, things have changed.

One big LGBT issue is the growing prevalence of so-called “bathroom bills”.  Bills that make it law that you basically must show your birth certificate at the door of the bathroom to be able to use it.  Which is all sorts of problematic.

In no particular order:

1. Gender is not a binary.

2. Carrying around your birth certificate all the time is ridiculous and it massively increases your risk of identity theft if your wallet/purse/bag is stolen, as birth certificates have social security numbers on them.

3. It’s prurient.  Why the fuck does anyone want to know what my bits look like?  It’s perverted to tie bathroom access to what your bits look like or what is on your birth certificate.

4.  What about intersex people or other folks whose genitals somehow don’t match the sex listed on their birth certificate, even if they are cisgender?

5.  Why does it matter what bathroom anyone uses?  As long as you keep your hands and eyes to yourself, it should not matter where you go to pee.  For pete’s sake people.

0

Gender Conversation

|

I had a lovely conversation with Moss while we were out on a date last night regarding gender, which as a fluid thing for me, can be a bit complicated to talk about, partially because it changes on each given day (roughly), our language lacks words to describe it some days, and some days I just don’t know.

He wanted to know more about my relationship with my gender and seemed to be in the place I often am – where do I start with the questions?

But the question that struck me was “why?”.  Probably because “why?” is always my favorite question and is, I’ve found in most cases, the hardest question to answer – possibly because it involves digging into motivations that aren’t always clear.  I love it because it digs in to what makes people tick, which has always been fascinating to me, both from a physiological and psychological perspective.

I digress.

I identify as non-binary trans because it fits right, like “queer” fits right.  I am bisexual and I am genderfluid – these identify facts about me.  Non-binary and queer, in a way, demonstrate my attitude about my identity: I don’t care what people think about them, I am who I am, and anyone who doesn’t like it, can just go hush themselves.  The trans part is difficult for me – I have just recently embraced that part of the non-binary thing – I don’t identify as the gender I was assigned at birth, that’s a basic definition of trans.  Sometime my gender does round or slide to one or the other – more often to female than male, by quite a long shot – but much more often it just hangs nebulously in the middle.  I also do occasionally experience bouts of gender dysphoria – more often when I am depressed and/or restricted in my presentation options.

But why?  I’ve never felt comfortable in boxes.  It took me a long time to learn to color within the lines.  I was a major tomboy growing up.  I was never the good hostess that my mother wanted me to be.  Grace has been a learned skill for me – it’s not an inherent thing, either physically or socially.  I spent most of my time growing up in the outdoors, wandering around, or in my room with a book.  Exploring comes naturally and easily to me, even if the unpredictability can occasionally set off my anxiety.  I am ok with being the weird kid who never quite fit in, but was close enough to normal that I was never shunned.

As an adult I learned to become comfortable with the more feminine aspects of my personality and style that I had rejected early on, for a number of reasons: 

  • Feminine clothing is not often designed for comfort or practicality (dresses with pockets are a major win for me – I wish I could afford more of them),
  • Foundation makes the patchy bits of my skin which are normally pretty unnoticeable super obvious (just don’t wear foundation, you can wear whatever makeup you like), 
  • Femininity is often read as weakness (I still struggle with this one), 
  • Long hair gets in my face and that drives me mad (so cut it)
  • Breasts get in the way – I did not like having them at all until midway through high school (having properly fitting bras and clothing that either accentuates or hides them based on my gender presentation feels is super helpful)
  • Femininity is often read as submissiveness (meeting strong, no-nonsense femmes has really helped with this)

So, here I am.  A genderfluid (non-binary) tomboy femme.  It fits comfortably enough to not be restrictive, but gives me a few labels that help me figure out my place in this world and in the queer community.

0

Pride Month Challenge: Day 1

|

So, some of my friends on Facebook are doing this LGBT Writing Prompt thingy for this month, and I like it, so I’m going to do it here.  I misssed the first day, but I will just do two posts today.

Define your sexual orientation or gender identity. Be creative in your definition.

I’m like ice cream – I come in many different forms and variations and can fit in different containers, but at the beginning and end of the day, I am fluid.  Sometimes I am more tart, sometimes more sweet, sometimes decadently sinful, but I am always delicious.

To be real – I find it hard to be one or the other – the binary does not suit me very well.  In fact I’m not sure it ever has.  I mean, really – queer (bisexual/pansexual), switch, poly, non-binary gendered.  I live the middle.  The middle lives me.

0

Gender

|

I recently started identifying as genderqueer.  I’ve had hesitations about identifying as strictly female for quite some time.  I was a tomboy as a kid and never quite grew out of it, but sort of adjusted to what was expected of me.

A few years ago I figured out that queer was a far more accurate label for my fluctuating sexual sexuality than bisexual or the one that I more often use – pansexual.  I like the term because it evokes something different, something outside of the heteronormative, an oddity that is accurate for who I am.  But recently I realized that this is also accurate for my gender too – a little odd, a bit different.

Genderfluid is probably more accurate – it shifts from day to day (as does my sexual orientation), but I love the word “queer”.

If you’re curious – I choose she/her or zie/zir for pronouns.  I’m not a fan of they/them for myself – doesn’t feel quite right personally  (grammatically is a different tin of worms that I’m not getting into).

3

Queer

|

This post is long overdue.  It has been in the works for quite a long time, I just keep procrastinating and procrastinating on it.

The term queer is near and dear to my heart.  It means odd.  It has also meant homosexual.  The term has been retaken by the LGBTQI movement to mean something more full and inclusive than simply “homosexual”.  A queer person may be of any sexual orientation, but they realize that they are not simply defined by that orientation; they know that their sexuality can be fluid and they are accepting of this.  They are comfortable in their otherness, their oddness.

I have a friend who identifies as queer.  He is pretty much exclusively heterosexual, but there is something else about him, a comfortableness with being, a bond with the idea of being gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender, without necessarily being fully one of the above.  Like me, he knows the sex and gender binaries and what can be damaging about them.  He is one of the few other people I know who objects to the use of the term “gender” on forms; gender is not male or female, but one’s gender identity as feminine, masculine, androgynous, or any combination of the above.  To put it simply, there is no correct answer to the question of “male or female”.  But most people do not understand that and I believe, do not care.  I always put “female”, simply because I believe that my biological sex mostly matches up with my perception of myself in a sexual way, and that most forms do no not leave space for an explanation of how I believe I differ from that.  And my assumption is that they are really asking about that.  This is where my friend may be more queer than me.  Often if there is an option he will indicate “other” on the form, perhaps at an attempt to address the difference between how he feels about himself as a being and the stereotype of “man” in our culture. I greatly admire him for this and may do this in the future, simply because it is a way that appears to work pretty well without preaching or getting upset at every little form or incident.

There are privilege issues at stake here too.  As I have said before, as a bisexual woman, I do not have some of the privileges that heterosexual women take for granted.  As a queer (mostly) heterosexual man, my friend can come from a position where he acknowledges that there are privileges he does not wish to partake in that he could claim simply by not also identifying as queer.  I think queerness addresses privilege in a way that heterosexuality (or homosexuality) cannot, by coming at the issue from a different perspective

There is so much more I could say, but it is getting late, so I will potentially save that for another day.

P.S. I apologize to my friend if this seems to imply that I am saying something about how you feel that is not true.  Feel free to leave me a comment and I will change it if need be.