What is genderqueer?..what is bigender?

Hello again =)

Genderqueer tends to be someone who is androgynous and doesn't really identify as male or female, but more in the middle.

Bigender, from my understand, is someone who's gender identity can fluctuate. One day they can be feeling masculine and the next day they could be feminine. Honestly, I have begun to think I might fit under this category, but I don't know how you can fit a lifestyle around it.

Like one day you are Jane and the next you are John? I just seems weird, because if you truly felt this transition on a regular basis, I would think you would have to be androgynous enough to pass as both sexes, but bigender isn't about being androgynous, its about feeling male sometimes and female others.

I could use some enlightenment myself I suppose...

 

Well, if I were to attempt to answer your question about if they can get sex reassignment (I guess there is an even more PC term then this these days, but I can't recall it off the top of my head. Gender Correction Surgery? oh well...), I'd kind of be taking an uneducated guess. My speculation is no... unless they identify as transsexual, probably no one would approve them for such surgery. I have however met someone who underwent transition (I didn't ask to what extent she had it done) and she identified as a full female at the time, but after the procedure she realized she was somewhat genderqueer. Perhaps 25% male, 75% female. She said if she had said that at the time she probably could not have transitioned though.

I started questioning my gender identity (a term I had never heard of at the time) way before my sexual orientation. In fact, it was before I had even really gone through puberty, so I didn't even really have much for sexual desire at the time I suppose. I was about 12 or 13 and I started going into chat rooms pretending to be female. Sometimes I would engage in "cyber sex," but honestly I was just happier just passing in real conversation with another female. I just liked the feeling of being though of as female, even if it only was online.

When I became a little more educated in the next couple years (still totally ignorant) I started to think I might be a transsexual. I would do guy things during the day (play football, hockey, wrestle, though I would have rather been at home just playing video games anyway. I was never that competitive... or good at these sports for that matter either =/ ) but I never really brought my gender into question during my day to day activities. I didn't think of myself as super masculine, but I didn't think of myself as any less of a guy then the other's either.

But then there were a lot times (usually at home at night) when I would just envy the hell out of women. Times where for a whole month I might just dream about being a female. I would go online and search for crazy stuff like magic potions or science fiction technology that could just change me in an instant. I would lie in bed and pray to God, Jesus, and Mary all individually. I knew that my church preached that God made me the way I was supposed to be and I should be happy like that. So I knew it seemed contradictory for me to pray for change, but in my mind, if God changed me, that was the only way I could know the change was according to his will, and not a sin.

I spent most of my prayer time associated with this praying to Mary though. I tried bargaining, saying stuff like, if she changed me that I would be able to make good come from it. I would be able to end sexism, and show the power of God, and do whatever God bid of me. I would then refrain from trying to touch my body, just envisioning in my mind that it had worked. When I woke I would check excitedly, even though I knew it wouldn't have. I also entertained the idea that perhaps I would just "switch bodies" for with a girl I knew for a day. Even a day would be amazing.

In fact, just an hour or two ago, I was watching a "feminization" video on youtube, in which this woman like puts makeup utensils up to the camera, creating the illusion she's putting them on you. I know it was probably intended as a sexual fetish, but the feeling it gave me wasn't sexual at all. Like I felt like she was really putting it on me, and like I just get this wave of euphoria in femization situations like that (stressing in a nonsexual way). Its like this thought of being female or perceived as female makes my brain just shoot out tons of dopamine and make me feel all tingly and just.... good.

So yeah, it is quite confusing... As with all the gender identity threads, I love to discuss, but I feel frustrated because no matter how much I discuss it, I don't feel any closer to know what will really make me happy. I don't feel the urge to be female all the time, but when I do its so incredibly intense. Still, its not like I ever have a feeling of "Oh I'm so happy I'm a guy." That's never happened. As always, I wish I had real advice to give, but I'm as lost as anybody on this one.

I feel kind of confused and sad now. Its easy to explain that I'm sexually attracted to men. Its a lot harder trying to explain this feeling to people...


edit: Wow, I had no idea how much I had written until I hit submit and saw it all laid out... Sorry for the wall of text that probably no one will read...

 

Genderqueer is an umbrella term; it encompasses anyone who doesn't identify as simply male or simply female (meaning it doesn't include cis-gendered individuals, which are people whose gender identity and birth sex match, or transsexual individuals, which are people whose gender identity is the exact opposite of their birth sex). Bigendered people fall under the umbrella of genderqueer, and they are people whose gender identity has both male and female elements.

I know two individuals, one who self-identifies as bigender (physically female) and one who acts a lot like someone who is (physically FtM transsexual), whose behavior could possibly shed some light on this. The way she describes it to me, sometimes she feels more like a boy, and sometimes she feels more like a girl. It mostly comes out in the roles she plays in the bedroom, and thankfully, her boyfriend is willing to go along with it. I don't know the gory details, but that's what she tells me.

The other person was born female and transitioned to male, but now he has two identities that he switches between (it largely comes out in how he dresses). He even has two different names for them.

Then there's me. I consider my identity to be an amalgamation of male and female elements, largely because I recognize gender as the societal construct that it is, so I don't attribute certain elements of my identity to being "male" or "female"; I consider such distinctions useless. I am me; why give a gender identity to what goes on in my head?

As for reassignment surgery, it's an extremely drastic and invasive procedure, so even if such an option were available to genderqueer individuals, I'd imagine most of them wouldn't opt to go through with it. If they identity as a combination of male and female, doing so probably wouldn't make them feel like their body now more accurately reflected who they are inside.

 

Having no gender identity is called being agender. Genderqueer can mean that someone has no gender, or elements of both genders, or feels like they are some third gender, or any variation on those. Like I said, genderqueer is an umbrella term, so it doesn't have one hard-and-fast definition; it encompasses many definitions.

To answer your second question, I could see it happening. Perhaps someone was born male and has a habitual attachment to the trappings of the male identity but is truly agendered. It's hard to say, though, because gender isn't just a stand-alone entity; it interacts with other parts of our psychology, as well as the society we live in, and its in those interactions that its characteristics truly come out. It's kind of like the Higgs boson; we can't observe it directly, we can only infer things about it from how it interacts with other things.

 

And also, what is it to be agender? I guess that it is under the umbrella of genderqueer, and is where you do not feel male or female, as opposed to bigender where you have elements of both.

 

I would just like to point out that being genderqueer doesn't necessarily mean having an androgynous appearance. I've met people who happily show obvious characteristics of both binary genders.... whatever works works.