Just some thoughts about myself recently; I thought I'd put them down to see if they make any sense. A few days ago I was wsahing dishes, and I felt that I was a girl. Naturally, various physical characteristics say otherwise, but since I couldn't see myself (my eyes being their sockets and all) it didn't matter how I looked. I just felt that the person washing those dishes (myself) was a girl, no doubt about it. Now, that's not the first time I've had that feeling, which of course leads to confusion. But I don't always feel like a girl. As much as I hate the idea of being a "man," I'm not particularly attracted to the idea of being a "woman" either. The reason for this, I think, is that those terms hold a certain level of masculinity and femininity that I just don't exhibit. I'm somewhere in between; sometimes I feel like a girl, but sometomes I'll feel like a boy. And sometimes I won't really feel like either. Now, the features that show me as a male- namely my body hair, facial hair, and depth of voice- I hate. I've never been particularly fond of those traits, even when I considered myself to be a heterosexual male. There's nothing really effeminate about my body- And in all honesty, that's fine. Facial hair aside, my face is fairly gender-neutral. Other than what I just mentioned, I don't really feel the need to change my body (though I could stand to lose a little weight). Physically, I'm male, and though I wouldn't mind if that were a little less obvious, I'm fine with that. My problem isn't that I'm male, it's that my body's more masculine than my personality. Annoying, yes; I hate my genes (for quite a number of reasons not relevant to mention here) for giving me traits I just associate myself with. In order to match my body to my personality, I'd have to shave quite a bit of my body and raise my voice to a higher, less masculine tone. Which I suppose is doable. So what's my personality? Boyish, really. With bouts of girliness. Like I said, sometimes I feel like a boy, sometimes I feel like a girl. And sometomes I don't really file like anything in particular. Leading me to this description of myself: "Physically male, psychologically whatever." Honestly, I think "whatever" is a more apt term for me than "both." It's late, so I can't really tell, but does any of that make sense?
It does. I mean, gender is a social construct, right? Your gender was assigned to you at birth based on your sex. You didn't really get a say in it, and it's perfectly fine for you to not feel like a boy sometimes. And anyway, no one exists as completely "masculine" and "feminine"--I think gender is a spectrum that we all exist on and some of us have more "masculine" traits and some have more "feminine" and some have both. I mean, I have more "feminine" traits to be sure; my assigned gender is female and I'm fine with it, I ID as a woman, I really don't feel like a man at all. But I could ID as a man if I felt like I was a man, regardless of my sex. It's all about how you feel. Just because you have the "traditional" body of a man, it doesn't mean you have to be a man. You could be genderfluid, from what you say you feel like--sometimes a man, sometimes a woman.
Solarcat - you do sound a lot like me. I can't tell you how upset I got when my body hair started appearing; I felt as though (even if I didn't quite grasp why then) my body was betraying me again. These days, it bothers me a lot that my body isn't near as fem as it was in my youth. >.> -sends hugs-
I think the most appropriate term for me would be either genderqueer, genderfluid, or pangender; I'm not clear on the distinction. I can safely exclude agender (I do feel like a specific gender, usually) and bigender (sometimes I feel like a mix). I don't know. I'm enoug of a boy, I guess, to call myself a male on certain forms, and don't really have a problem being referred to as a boy (though I'd rather not be referred to as a "man" or a "guy"). Which makes me wonder if I should even care what my gender is. Once you reject the traditional concepts of gender, and what is or isn't appropriate (according to certain members of various anonymous hordes), does is matter? If you base your identity and behavior on how you feel at that moment, is there any reason to try to define yourself? Besides, it's not like there's anything about me that's easy to define. Of course, if you're having trouble identifying your gender, isn't that the whole point of the term "genderqueer" as an umbrella term of sorts? That's probably a good way to describe how I feel.
