Why does everyone understand gender except me?

I feel a bit same. I get asked a lot about my gender identity. Why do I feel like this? Why do I want to change? Why is it important? What would be different if people saw me as male? I ask myself if it was really that important if society didn't have such strict gender roles. What is gender really? Skin colour doesn't mean anything either really but we all know the history and all that.

I talked about this with my therapist. About this confusion. We came to the conclusion that maybe it's really ok to not to know. To admit we don't know. It's actually wisdom. We are just open and it's great. It's just that people normally are not that open and we can get trouble but maybe it's worth it. Societies change because times change and who else can change things and times than people who are open? It's wisdom to admit that we don't know and might never know for sure. Many people tend to know a lot but others always have different answers and they also know. There is no real answers for those who refuse to know for the sake of being comfortable.

Be you and be proud of that. You got a lot of courage. You are also not completely alone although it might feel like it.

 

I'm kinda confused about it too. There are times when i think i get it, like when i was sure i was ftm until i asked myself what does a man or woman feel like? How do i know what i feel is male? Can society influence your gender identity? What is gender really? I don't know if it will ever be figured out why some people are trans but if transitioning helps improve their quality of life then that's great and maybe knowing the root cause isn't so important. If you feel happy as you are then great, try not to stress about the gender thing too much, I've been trying to figure it out for years and still can't figure out exactly why or what it really is.

 

Hi SQ,

So some of what you are saying sounds like a request for understanding, but some of it sounds like a request for a debate. Honestly, I feel a lot of the time when I do debate this stuff like my back is to a wall. There are deep needs I have, that I have tried every way of dealing with that either of us can think of, before finally coming out and starting a medical transition. That worked. Everything else is just people talking as far as I am concerned. Unfortunately for me, just me being who I am, tends to make a lot of other people uncomfortable, and question a lot of ideas they had about gender. And that leads to a lot of other people viewing what I am doing as some sort of a political statement, or something that is up for debate. It's a debate I can't win, because I have no interest in getting other people to see things my way to begin with, and the person I am talking to is usually very interested in getting me to see things in a way that would put me back where I was two years ago, before I made any attempt at all to deal with my problem.

So I do believe that your post deserves a reply. And I will to the best of my ability. But please understand, that if this becomes in any way disrespectful - and by the way that works both ways, the other trans people here will agree that I am always fast to call it when they are being disrespectful as well - I will simply leave this thread.

The best place to start I feel is with sexual attraction. You mentioned finding male-to-female transsexuals that have not had bottom surgery attractive. I think that's an honest response. After all, deep down, beneath words, there are some people you just are attracted to, and some you are not. Right? You did not wake up one day and say "you know what I think I'll be gay". You just can't be attracted to women. You've seen men you like, you have seen women you don't like and are apparently supposed to. You realized some things about yourself, and I'm really glad to see that you let at least us know you are gay. Gay is not a bad thing to be

The problem is, when you start mentioning genitals and chromosomes, it really makes me feel like this is more of an argument you are presenting than a natural attraction. You see those things are normally invisible. There are several conditions that can cause someone to develop completely male, without "normal" XY chromosomes. And of course, you never really know what genitals someone has unless you look, and I really don't think you are that rude normally.

So what you are left with is the idea of someone's chromosomes, and the idea of someone's genitals. Now maybe your sexuality works differently from my own. But I have found many women attractive, that were wearing dresses or skirts or pants or other things hiding their genitals, without doing blood tests on them.

Now penises are a turn off for me. They just are. I can't get and stay aroused if either myself or my partner has one. I say this, also saying that I am actually seriously considering dating another trans woman. Again, just as if I was in a wheelchair, I would be aware that people out there that believe I can really walk exist, and that fact would not bother me, whether anyone else thinks I am "really" a gay man just does not matter to me. I have met a wonderful woman, that has a lot of shared experiences with me, and there are things we can do intimately that don't involve that part both of us are eventually getting surgically corrected anyway. I honestly can't have much of an intimate relationship with anyone at all the way things are right now.

Everyone is different of course. Some transsexuals can't date other transsexuals. Some can. I found out I was one of the ones that can.

But I think when we look at sex, we can't really look at ideas. Chromosomes cause your body to make different gonads, and those gonads make different hormones. They're blueprints. The hormones are what turn every single part of your body except your gonads into a male part or a female part.

So what I'm saying is, saying someone's chromosomes make someone attractive, is like looking at a house that's rotting and being demolished and saying it has beautiful blueprints. Or looking at a beautiful house designed by a master architect based on a drawing their sex year old did and hung on the refrigerator, and judging it the same way. I really think it's a lot more honest to say that you would rather move into the second house than the first one, and the only way you can say that is if you are looking at what is right in front of you.

Of course, if the reality of someone that looks - and smells - completely like a woman, but has a penis, if that attracts you when you have had the opportunity to see it, say in porn, then it does. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. I don't think you are in danger of getting kicked out of the gay club. What you are and are not capable of being attracted to, is part of you that you just can not control. It's like being left handed.

So if you at least see where I come from in terms of sex and sexuality, then I'd like to get into gender.

I really think that gender roles are just exaggerated stereotypes. Some of them of course, like pink for girls, blue for boys, are completely arbitrary. But I think others - men are physically strong, for instance - they basically take biological realities, such as the fact that testosterone builds muscle (which is why some athletes "dope" with it illegally), and run to an extreme with them. And try to apply the same standard to everyone. Which is of course a little crazy. The end result is that absolutely no one fits these roles. Lots of women body build. Lots of men are excellent fashion designers. Lots of jobs that were traditionally given to one sex, like computer programming being a girl thing forever ago, got given to the other sex eventually.

So last we have gender identity. Who I am, or what it even means for me to say "I am a woman". I think gender identity relates all three personally.

Sexuality makes it easy for me to say that all this stuff happens at an instinctual level I have no control over. Some part of me deep down understands sex differences, and finds some attractive and some not. That same part of me, if I am looking at a crowd of people, makes it possible for me to use the strongly gendered English language. I see almost everyone at that instinctual level as a man or a woman, even when I am trying not to, like with one of my genderqueer friends.

So when I notice my own sex is one thing, and I know what other girls are deep down, part of me knows this is wrong, and part of me wants to change it. I can of course try to fight this problem with words, and downplay sex differences, and I actually do try these things. You see I try everything I can to deal with this problem. I believe I have such a strong urge to fix this problem because my body is making testosterone, which affects my brain like a drug. I believe this because I have been able to block my testosterone, and take estrogen, and have been able to feel the difference. While my urge to fix the problem did not go away completely, for the first time I can remember the volume was turned way way down. I feel amazing and right on estrogen. If I can't get genitals that work for sex, oh well; it's just sex. If other people don't consider me a woman, oh well, other people have lots of dumb ideas.

Making my sex hormones female was, it turned out, the biggest and most important change I needed. It's what being transsexual is to me at its core. Just fixing a hormone imbalance. Other people that are transsexual are of course going to have different answers. I am only speaking for myself. I'll take those other people at their word if they say they are transsexual. Something honestly far less important to me was taking the female gender role.

The female gender role is, to me, in a lot of ways liberating. I am much more socially apt than I ever used to be. I have a very powerful artistic side to my personality. And of course, it is terrific not having to fight or hide my powerful emotions all the time. But there are things that are inconvenient. Because gender roles really are exaggerations, and like a lot of cis women, the things that are being exaggerated are not traits I have. I am strong enough to lift things. While I am absolutely not a dominating person, I am also absolutely not a submissive person. I am still an engineer and, hopefully soon, a businesswoman.

Now it is true that some people, when they take on a gender role that is a little unusual or exotic for them, can have fun doing that. Some people even get aroused. And I totally get that. I try really hard to respect that, even though I don't experience it directly at that level. Actually, I try hard especially for that reason. Some men, for instance, really just enjoy being submissive in the bedroom while wearing the kinds of clothes we normally set aside for women.

So that's my personal experience with gender. My sincere hope was not to get you to agree with me. I just wanted to share my perspective hoping it could help you to make up your own mind as far as what all this is about

 

No I get that completely. And I am really sorry for being defensive.

I think the real problem isn't so much that you don't "understand". I think you understand yourself pretty darn well. You have come to terms with some things that are pretty hard to come to terms with about yourself. I think the problem is that you run into people that don't understand you.

I really know how much it sucks, when people want you to be uber feminine to be a "real" woman and uber masculine to be a "real" man. You are totally not a failure. You just want to be you! There are some things about me that are feminine but some things that are really not.

I was thinking about this the other day when I thought about what "full time" means. It means that you live every day "as a woman", right? Well what does that mean? I can right now raid my bff's closet, and just put together an outfit made completely out of her clothes, and go out, and people will say I am dressed up like a boy. Maybe the butt of my jeans would have a more flamboyant print, but nothing that would cause people to treat me like a girl. Everything she wears on a day-to-day basis would otherwise look pretty normal on a boy. A lot of her habits are really masculine too. She drinks out of the carton and goes nuts once March Madness starts for basketball.

And you know, you read stories about cis women, who because they don't act soft and feminine enough, they get harassed just like trans women whenever they try to do things like use the bathroom. So yeah. The problem here is so not on your end.

 

I agree with a lot of this, its part of what caused me to wait so long to come out and transition. I don't identify as %100 male, close enough to need a male body to feel comfortable but I have a bit of queer wiggle room if you will :icon_wink. The binary never really made much sense to me. The way I see it is that society created gender roles over thousands of years and they have become so ingrained in or brains that it is difficult if not impossible to think about gender without them. We not only have those thousands of years of historical gender roles but we also have modern society forcing them down our throats everyday through the media. You take that away and "most" people would say gender is defined by sex chromosomes and organs. But then you have intersex people and they throw a wrench in that definition. If you get down to it gender is in our heads and in our heads only. But with the influx of gendered information from society its damn hard to know what is in your head.

I just wanted to comment on this, transwomen are NOT men. They don't just take on the gender roles of women, they ARE women. If someone says that they identify as male/female/non-binary etc. take their word for it, even if you are unsure of how you see gender.

---------- Post added 7th Jun 2014 at 07:17 AM ----------

:eusa_doh: didn't see the last page to this, other people covered it a hell of a lot better than me

 

You know I don't think what I was saying before was a total loss. But I will tone down the analogy and make it a little less dramatic.

So I have a shellfish allergy. It's really bad. I have discovered a while ago, when cooking crayfish, that when I get it on my hands, it makes my hands puff up like they're infected. That's actually the safest way for me to tell if something is safe to eat. Eating it has sent me to the ER three times in my life.

There are people that don't believe I have an allergy. They think I am just saying so because I don't like shellfish - I LOVE shellfish - or to be special, stuff like that.

What I'm saying as far as how this relates to gender, is that no matter what you truly are, or say you are, or are becoming, or whatever. No matter what, there are people that simply won't believe anything you have to say. They just won't.

So being accepted as a man or a woman - even if it feels like that is what you need - just can't be what you focus on, because other people... really aren't the best judges of pretty much anything. Other people have their own world view. Their ideas are not any more valid than yours. I know sometimes, when there are a lot of other people agreeing with each other, it's hard. Tons of people still think being gay is a choice, and there are people completely surrounded by people that think that way, that doubt themselves and put themselves through all manner of unnecessary hell.

Other people don't get to be you. They don't know how you feel. You know how you feel. That's really what I was trying to get at.

Yeah, socially, you do have to conform to stereotypes to get acceptance, and that acceptance is important. That fact sucks. But what I learned from my shellfish allergy, is that the people that don't think I'm allergic? Will keep it to themselves, if I am not showing any doubt, and there are other people around. If they know I just will not eat shrimp, and arguing with me will get them nowhere, they just won't argue.

So just the same with gender, if you just ignore the BS, and just be yourself, other people may have their own opinions as far as who you "really" are, but those opinions won't matter. And it will turn out, you really don't have to conform to anything. Whether they're "really" accepting you or not, they will treat you like who you say you are.

And eventually? You will find perfect strangers treating you that way, as soon as they meet you, and you won't even notice until later that it happened

I think the reason this is a big deal, is because the person you are with might need to change eventually. You mentioned that boy parts are attractive to you. What would you do if you were in love with a trans woman, and they told you they really needed to have bottom surgery? Would you fight it or try to talk them out of it, or would you stay with your partner through even after they had girl parts?