Genderbending
Mar. 14th, 2015 12:44![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
torquillI went out and did a google search for "exploring non-binary genders".
The first thing that struck me about an SFGate article on the topic was the picture at the top. I thought "huh. There's someone who physically looks like me." Ou is shorter-waisted than I am, and is dressed femme, but usually when you get into genderqueer society all you see are the androgynous slender young things with fauxhawks. It's not often I see someone built like a brick.
EverydayFeminism has a wonderfully informative primer, covering a bunch of the major parts of what is fundamentally an amorphous lexicon. While genderqueer is considered part of the "trans" axis, the article rejects the binary view that older trans people tend to adhere to. Saying that gender is a spectrum is sort of an "oh, okay" moment, until you realize that it means there are people who are living in the middle all the time; it's not just groups on either side, or those who flip from one side to the other depending on how they feel that day.
In this part of the world -- the SF Bay Area is pretty socially progressive -- binary transgender folk have become a reasonably common thing; I know several who are living fully as their assumed gender, and who are very happy. I know far fewer genderqueers, mostly those who are sort of androgynous to start with, and one who switches gender from day to day but does it quite fully. The non-binary thing seems to be about where binary transgender was ten years ago.
The EF article helped break out a few more types in the glob of non-binary gender. It was when I got to the section on "agender" that I said to myself, "....that's what I do every morning." I try to decide how to do my hair, mostly, and whether to leave my camisole (and therefore my cleavage) showing, or wear a vest. Dyed hair? Yep, got that now. Makeup? Just waiting on my budget. And I've been giving a lot of thought to clothing as a form of gender expression.
I went out and did the research because I had a sneaking suspicion that gender was getting more complicated for me, and I wanted to see whether "non-binary" might be where I was heading. It seems, after doing a little reading, that it's where I've been all along. I don't identify as trans in the classic sense -- I've never felt the urge to transition because I don't feel any more male than I do female. But now I'm realizing that I don't feel especially female, either. I never have. I may physically be a woman, but I'm not sure I know what it would be like to feel "womanly". Or "manly", for that matter. It's getting even harder to define these days, as modern feminists challenge many aspects of classic gender roles. I have what I consider to be feminine traits, and I have some masculine traits, and I don't consider them to be in any sort of conflict.
I've been becoming more comfortable with my body during my last round of personality shift, though I'm not totally accepting of every aspect of it yet. Still, it's familiar and I'm willing to work with it. My body also has masculine and feminine traits: I'm very broad-shouldered, strong, and my voice is deep, yet I have a distinct bustline and a female undercarriage. I'm learning to integrate all of those, rather than suppressing some in favor of others. My sex characteristics don't make me uncomfortable, even though they are fully female rather than ambiguous (which is where my head is at most days); they're just there, and part of me, and operate like they do. Sexually I'm a standard heterosexual woman... but out of bed, that doesn't have any more effect on my gender than my nose does. I'm starting to grasp the separation between gender and sexuality in a way that was impossible for me as a cisheteronormative person.
I suppose I could describe my gender as "none", though it feels more like I'm in the middle, just with the saturation turned way down. EF mentions the term "personal gender", which would probably fit. I toy with the thought that my gender is "Sam".
Pronouns are a tricky thing, though at least it's less confusing than it is for genderfluid people. I haven't given it much thought until this week. It's when I got called "Miss" at Whole Foods on Thursday that I got my first jolt -- I felt like I'd gotten misgendered. I've learned to deal with "Ma'am" over the years, and at several stores the receipt provides checkers with a name to use instead ("Ms. Stewart" is something I don't think twice about) but I haven't been called "Miss" since I first started getting grey hair. "Miss" is, to me, much more femme than "Ms.", which was presented to my teenage self with a somewhat censorious attitude back in the 90s -- the message was that only businesswomen and other mannish spinsters would prefer "Ms." It's lost some of that stigma in these days of women who don't give off clear signals about their marital status, turning into a sort of generic female title. But when addressing women directly, it's still a choice between "Miss" and "Ma'am", and while on the face of it I had sort of assumed the distinction was one of age, I guess I also ascribe a certain difference in femininity.
I'm used to being referred to as "she/her". Part of that goes along with my name, which is definitely female. I think that if I were to change my name to something more ambiguous, I might consider setting a preferred pronoun... I'm personally uncomfortable with using "they/them" in the specific sense rather than as a generic singular, as it was pounded into my head too hard that it refers to more than one person (the generic singular suggests it could be one of an undetermined group, thus lending a sense of plurality to the term). I'm just a grammar geek, I guess, and while I wouldn't object to using "they" if a particular person requested it, I don't want to apply it to myself.
My mind cast back to my days on LambdaMOO in the early 90s, when telnet was still pretty new in residential settings and the Web was just being born. I'd telnet (rather than calling directly, like we used to with BBS machines) to Xerox PARC and log in, wandering the text-based halls of Lambda House and using the first C code I'd ever written to create objects to suit my fancy.
I was aware that women got a different reception on Lambda than men did, sometimes getting hit on or harassed, and since I wasn't comfortable with the idea I made a non-female character. Lambda had an array of pronoun sets to play with; I think there were seven or so, including splat, neuter, plural, and Spivak. (Oddly, I don't remember zie/zir being listed, and only ran across it years later.) My main character was a shapeshifter named Kergma pulled out of an obscure corner of Zelazny's second Amber series, and I used Spivak for eir pronoun set. I would occasionally shift personas (I had a male named Perpetual Thumb Twiddler, and a plural that I can't recall the name of) but most of the time I was Kergma. I do remember that when I showed up at a social event, several people were startled to discover that I was a woman. I was about as surprised to find out that Legba was a woman too, so I wasn't the only one going undercover.
I got very good at the Lambda flavor of Spivak, and most of the reason that nobody knew I was female was that I never, ever slipped. I don't recall slipping up on the other characters I had, either. When I was male, I was male everywhere; when I was plural, I was plural. Those of us on Lambda got to refer to ourselves in the third person on a fairly regular basis, thanks to "emote" messages, which allowed us to describe things we were doing ("Kergma pulls a banana out of eir pocket and launches it at the cockatoo"). I still use Spivak much more easily than "zie", mostly because I find it easier to pronounce: is the Z on "zie" hard or soft? Soft makes it sound like the German "sie", which is confusing because "sie" is female (as well as "they" and "you"). If it's hard, it sounds like you're referring to someone by the initial Z. I admit that "e" also sounds like an initial, but it seems to me more like an extension of he/she than "zie" is.
I did say I'm a grammar geek, right? And that pronouns get tricky?
I don't want to make other people uncomfortable by requesting a non-gendered pronoun, but my recent experience makes me realize how startling it is to feel like someone has referred to you with a pronoun that doesn't fit your identity. Everything I've been doing in the last few months has been aimed at making me more comfortable with myself, and taking gender out of the picture -- with all its expectations and assumptions and pigeonholes -- might make me feel that I have more freedom to be the person I am. At least until the patriarchy gets overthrown and we stop assuming so much about what men and women are like.
I'm self-employed, which makes some of this easier, as I don't have to cater to co-workers or bosses, and consultants are often a little more edgy. But with a special election around the corner (Tuesday, woo) I find I need to remember that I might have to moderate myself a little bit in certain venues. The people who come in to vote cover a wide range of ages and backgrounds, but some of the older and/or more conservative folk (we have a decent number of Latinos) might be uncomfortable if the person running the polling place doesn't have a clear gender. Dressing in drag is one thing; I'll stick to my slacks and vest, and most people deal with that pretty well. But if I start messing with makeup and breast bindings and stuff like that, I may want to leave them out for events like this (and some of the public-facing Master Gardener things, like guest lectures).
I knew that I was opening up some different avenues while I was creating Sam when I deliberately threw restrictions on gender out the window. What I hadn't anticipated was finding that gender has never had much meaning for me. This isn't me embracing a new thing -- like many binary trans people, it's accepting something I've felt my whole life. I just hadn't had the tools to recognize it until now. And I don't think that my previous personality would have felt that it mattered. It does now.
The first thing that struck me about an SFGate article on the topic was the picture at the top. I thought "huh. There's someone who physically looks like me." Ou is shorter-waisted than I am, and is dressed femme, but usually when you get into genderqueer society all you see are the androgynous slender young things with fauxhawks. It's not often I see someone built like a brick.
EverydayFeminism has a wonderfully informative primer, covering a bunch of the major parts of what is fundamentally an amorphous lexicon. While genderqueer is considered part of the "trans" axis, the article rejects the binary view that older trans people tend to adhere to. Saying that gender is a spectrum is sort of an "oh, okay" moment, until you realize that it means there are people who are living in the middle all the time; it's not just groups on either side, or those who flip from one side to the other depending on how they feel that day.
In this part of the world -- the SF Bay Area is pretty socially progressive -- binary transgender folk have become a reasonably common thing; I know several who are living fully as their assumed gender, and who are very happy. I know far fewer genderqueers, mostly those who are sort of androgynous to start with, and one who switches gender from day to day but does it quite fully. The non-binary thing seems to be about where binary transgender was ten years ago.
The EF article helped break out a few more types in the glob of non-binary gender. It was when I got to the section on "agender" that I said to myself, "....that's what I do every morning." I try to decide how to do my hair, mostly, and whether to leave my camisole (and therefore my cleavage) showing, or wear a vest. Dyed hair? Yep, got that now. Makeup? Just waiting on my budget. And I've been giving a lot of thought to clothing as a form of gender expression.
I went out and did the research because I had a sneaking suspicion that gender was getting more complicated for me, and I wanted to see whether "non-binary" might be where I was heading. It seems, after doing a little reading, that it's where I've been all along. I don't identify as trans in the classic sense -- I've never felt the urge to transition because I don't feel any more male than I do female. But now I'm realizing that I don't feel especially female, either. I never have. I may physically be a woman, but I'm not sure I know what it would be like to feel "womanly". Or "manly", for that matter. It's getting even harder to define these days, as modern feminists challenge many aspects of classic gender roles. I have what I consider to be feminine traits, and I have some masculine traits, and I don't consider them to be in any sort of conflict.
I've been becoming more comfortable with my body during my last round of personality shift, though I'm not totally accepting of every aspect of it yet. Still, it's familiar and I'm willing to work with it. My body also has masculine and feminine traits: I'm very broad-shouldered, strong, and my voice is deep, yet I have a distinct bustline and a female undercarriage. I'm learning to integrate all of those, rather than suppressing some in favor of others. My sex characteristics don't make me uncomfortable, even though they are fully female rather than ambiguous (which is where my head is at most days); they're just there, and part of me, and operate like they do. Sexually I'm a standard heterosexual woman... but out of bed, that doesn't have any more effect on my gender than my nose does. I'm starting to grasp the separation between gender and sexuality in a way that was impossible for me as a cisheteronormative person.
I suppose I could describe my gender as "none", though it feels more like I'm in the middle, just with the saturation turned way down. EF mentions the term "personal gender", which would probably fit. I toy with the thought that my gender is "Sam".
Pronouns are a tricky thing, though at least it's less confusing than it is for genderfluid people. I haven't given it much thought until this week. It's when I got called "Miss" at Whole Foods on Thursday that I got my first jolt -- I felt like I'd gotten misgendered. I've learned to deal with "Ma'am" over the years, and at several stores the receipt provides checkers with a name to use instead ("Ms. Stewart" is something I don't think twice about) but I haven't been called "Miss" since I first started getting grey hair. "Miss" is, to me, much more femme than "Ms.", which was presented to my teenage self with a somewhat censorious attitude back in the 90s -- the message was that only businesswomen and other mannish spinsters would prefer "Ms." It's lost some of that stigma in these days of women who don't give off clear signals about their marital status, turning into a sort of generic female title. But when addressing women directly, it's still a choice between "Miss" and "Ma'am", and while on the face of it I had sort of assumed the distinction was one of age, I guess I also ascribe a certain difference in femininity.
I'm used to being referred to as "she/her". Part of that goes along with my name, which is definitely female. I think that if I were to change my name to something more ambiguous, I might consider setting a preferred pronoun... I'm personally uncomfortable with using "they/them" in the specific sense rather than as a generic singular, as it was pounded into my head too hard that it refers to more than one person (the generic singular suggests it could be one of an undetermined group, thus lending a sense of plurality to the term). I'm just a grammar geek, I guess, and while I wouldn't object to using "they" if a particular person requested it, I don't want to apply it to myself.
My mind cast back to my days on LambdaMOO in the early 90s, when telnet was still pretty new in residential settings and the Web was just being born. I'd telnet (rather than calling directly, like we used to with BBS machines) to Xerox PARC and log in, wandering the text-based halls of Lambda House and using the first C code I'd ever written to create objects to suit my fancy.
I was aware that women got a different reception on Lambda than men did, sometimes getting hit on or harassed, and since I wasn't comfortable with the idea I made a non-female character. Lambda had an array of pronoun sets to play with; I think there were seven or so, including splat, neuter, plural, and Spivak. (Oddly, I don't remember zie/zir being listed, and only ran across it years later.) My main character was a shapeshifter named Kergma pulled out of an obscure corner of Zelazny's second Amber series, and I used Spivak for eir pronoun set. I would occasionally shift personas (I had a male named Perpetual Thumb Twiddler, and a plural that I can't recall the name of) but most of the time I was Kergma. I do remember that when I showed up at a social event, several people were startled to discover that I was a woman. I was about as surprised to find out that Legba was a woman too, so I wasn't the only one going undercover.
I got very good at the Lambda flavor of Spivak, and most of the reason that nobody knew I was female was that I never, ever slipped. I don't recall slipping up on the other characters I had, either. When I was male, I was male everywhere; when I was plural, I was plural. Those of us on Lambda got to refer to ourselves in the third person on a fairly regular basis, thanks to "emote" messages, which allowed us to describe things we were doing ("Kergma pulls a banana out of eir pocket and launches it at the cockatoo"). I still use Spivak much more easily than "zie", mostly because I find it easier to pronounce: is the Z on "zie" hard or soft? Soft makes it sound like the German "sie", which is confusing because "sie" is female (as well as "they" and "you"). If it's hard, it sounds like you're referring to someone by the initial Z. I admit that "e" also sounds like an initial, but it seems to me more like an extension of he/she than "zie" is.
I did say I'm a grammar geek, right? And that pronouns get tricky?
I don't want to make other people uncomfortable by requesting a non-gendered pronoun, but my recent experience makes me realize how startling it is to feel like someone has referred to you with a pronoun that doesn't fit your identity. Everything I've been doing in the last few months has been aimed at making me more comfortable with myself, and taking gender out of the picture -- with all its expectations and assumptions and pigeonholes -- might make me feel that I have more freedom to be the person I am. At least until the patriarchy gets overthrown and we stop assuming so much about what men and women are like.
I'm self-employed, which makes some of this easier, as I don't have to cater to co-workers or bosses, and consultants are often a little more edgy. But with a special election around the corner (Tuesday, woo) I find I need to remember that I might have to moderate myself a little bit in certain venues. The people who come in to vote cover a wide range of ages and backgrounds, but some of the older and/or more conservative folk (we have a decent number of Latinos) might be uncomfortable if the person running the polling place doesn't have a clear gender. Dressing in drag is one thing; I'll stick to my slacks and vest, and most people deal with that pretty well. But if I start messing with makeup and breast bindings and stuff like that, I may want to leave them out for events like this (and some of the public-facing Master Gardener things, like guest lectures).
I knew that I was opening up some different avenues while I was creating Sam when I deliberately threw restrictions on gender out the window. What I hadn't anticipated was finding that gender has never had much meaning for me. This isn't me embracing a new thing -- like many binary trans people, it's accepting something I've felt my whole life. I just hadn't had the tools to recognize it until now. And I don't think that my previous personality would have felt that it mattered. It does now.
