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How to even approach the question of gender identity?

Discussion in 'Gender Identity and Expression' started by Mihael, Oct 31, 2015.

  1. Mihael

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    As in title. How to even approach the question of gender identity? With sexual orientation it's way easier - I mean that sexual attraction is quite easy to spot. How to approach gender then? Side note: I'm not asking about "how to figure out if you're MtF/FtM", because this one is pretty obvious too. I'm asking how to spot the gender you feel, including a non-binary one. How does it feel like to feel like a woman or a man for you? Or agender? Or something else? How did you know that was it and not feeling like something else? What does it even mean to feel gender? How would you describe feeling gender?
     
  2. pinkclare

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    That definitely a tough one to articulate an answer to, but I'll do my best! There were several phases of gender feelings that first occurred at their respective age-appropriate times.

    My first feelings were very elusive (probably because putting anything into adult words at ages 3-5 feels very elusive!)... the best way I can put it is that boy-ness resonated more with me than girl-ness. It's difficult to explain this without relying on gender expression issues - ie, boy names, clothes, and expectations felt better to me. Although these things are definitely true, they are also true for many cisgender female tomboys. The feeling went beyond these surface things; I felt that there was a boy-ness inside of me that others couldn't see, and this was the first way I felt my gender.

    Shortly thereafter, still early elementary age, the body dysphoria reared its head. Then I knew I should be a boy because I knew I was meant to have a penis. Urinating felt wrong to me in a way nobody seemed to be able to understand. This feeling never went away until I was able to get surgery in my mid 20s. My brain expected my body to be male and this was the second way I felt my gender.

    In adolescence, when my sexuality became fully-fledged out, it was the sexual orientation of a male. A gay/queer male of course, which was confusing both to me and others, but still a male. I was always predominantly attracted to gay men and the relationships I desired were not of a female/male relationship - they were gay relationships that I desired. My sexual orientation was the next way I knew my gender.

    Finally, in my late teens, I started meeting transgender men. In their stories, I felt understood, validated, and at home. For the first time in my life, I felt my own experiences (along the sex/gender axis) reflected back at me. This was the final thing that was needed for me to definitively know that the gendered feelings I've had my entire life are those of a man.
     
  3. Alder

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    It can in fact be difficult. Gender, although present and there, is hard to pinpoint and recognize. It's like staring into a grimy mirror with a million things in the way; I'll try my best to answer this from where I am at this point in time.

    I feel like a lot of indicators might come from other signs, not necessarily looking inwards and going like "yup, I feel like a boy, there is definitely that....boy feeling there." That is incredibly difficult to do, though I'm sure there are people out there who can recognize their gender as simply as that. I would say think about how you want to be seen and treated as, and think about how you want your body to be. How would you feel if society consistently viewed, treated, and referred to you as a boy? How about a girl? How about if they treated you completely neutrally, and you never have to be in a gendered position ever? Does your feeling towards those questions change? It might if you're genderfluid, or genderflux. Many indicators come from how you desire to be seen, treated as, and how you want your body to be- that desire stems from somewhere, and it stems from gender identity. Dysphoria can also be a clue pointing you in certain directions, but then again- dysphoria is different for everyone, in terms of intensity and frequency and how it fluctuates. Also, for example if you're not a binary gender or a binary transguy or transwoman, you'd probably be pretty uncomfortable being gendered either way and just want to be seen as you rather than distinctively as girl/boy, or she/him.

    However, there is also much discussion about gender roles and gender expression. They aren't the same as gender identity, and I think that's what causes a lot of confusion sometimes. It takes a lot of sifting through, "is this who I am, what I want, or is this simply how I want to express myself? Why do I want to be _____? Do I simply desire that intrinsically, or is it something else?" Stuff like that.

    But I think with time it will definitely feel more clear. Your feelings are there, and so is your gender identity, it's just hard to recognize at first. In time, you'll probably get some general ideas about who you are, who you are most comfortable and happy to be, what body you want, if you are happy with your body or not (in terms of the gender/sex part) and how you want society to see you and treat you gender-wise in general. And also, gender therapists can possibly help with that, though I have less knowledge in that area and what they do, especially if you're in the middle of questioning.
     
    #3 Alder, Oct 31, 2015
    Last edited: Oct 31, 2015
  4. Mihael

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    Thank you for replies :slight_smile:

    Ok, let's move on. Two next posts are in making.
     
  5. Mihael

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    To be honest I don't understand any of this. I don't relate. Conclusion: I'm not a trans man. But I wouldn't jump into further conclusions, because of the amount of encouragement towards girliness/discouragement from behaving like a boy I met as a child.

    Prepare for hardcore questioning. I don't mean to offend you with my questions. I'm sometimes blunt :thumbsup: so please bare with me.

    Bolded:
    1. So how to distinguish being a tomboy who identifies with males from identifying as a man even in 10%?
    2. I'm sorry, I can't understand the concept of being meant to have a body part - or feeling wrong or right having something.
    3. Again, brain tells lots of different wierd things. It has lots of bugs and distortions in it. I also sometimes sense being a male - but so what? I'm female. It's a wrong wire in the middle of my skull. Why should I care?
    Why does it bug you so much? Or maybe you mean something else.
    4. I don't understand how a sexual oreintation of a male differ from that of a female. I mean sexual desire = desire of someone's body, feeling obsessive about touching it and so on. How does my/your own gender relate - no idea.
    5. Ok, I can't wrap my head around the concept of reflecting about relationships. Why does it matter what you are if you are with a loved one who loves you too?

    I mean, I'm a tomboy. An extreme one. I can't relate to other women, but I like my female body by itself and a position of a tomboy is okey for me. I don't always want to be a woman. It feels something like this: :bang::dry: I regret that I wasn't a tomboy when I was younger. That it wasn't an option. I envy men that when they are raised and then treated as adults, that their standards are a bit more sensible.

    [RANT]
    I wear dresses and makeup. This is most of my femininity. I don't get female socialising. I don't get their attitude to relationships or babies or shops. Me: shop. Do I need anything? Is my clothing tearing? No? Let's skip it. I don't get the need to talk about crushes all the time - I'm even ashamed of talking about my feelings. I'd sooner buy someone a flower or bake them a cake then stalk my "BFF" with my doubts if my crush likes me or not. I don't get all the fuss about kids either. I'd like t have kids some day, but it's not something I'd like to talk about all the time. I consider the problem not worth discussion.I'm not very talkative anyway. I'm not very romantic. I'm very sensitive bit under a thick shell of cold indifference, and most of it goes on inside my head. [/RANT]

    Anyway, everything has its cause, and character traits are not gender. So what is? People keep on talking about body when they speak of idnetifying with a gender, but I don't get it.
     
  6. Mihael

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    I love your avatar :wink: :slight_smile:icon_bigg X-Files!!!! :icon_bigg)

    Seen and treated as ... whatever. Really. I quite like my body. It's pretty. I think this sort of thinkning is not very realistic, because you don't know what body you are happy with until you have it - reality differs from fantasy very much . I have no idea who I would be if I was raised by different people, went to a different school, had different grandparents, met different people, let alone if were born a man! I could be a totally different person! I have no idea how I would respond to being a man, although I think I would be fine. I'm fine either way. I don't care.

    I can't think about my body or others' perception in irrational terms. I always end up with somehting like "it looks nice" or "people will always judge you and make false assumptions" "being female has the advantage that people are nicer to you" or " dudes have it better because they're trated more seriously".

    It's not that I'm super hyper comfortable with my body. every time it changes, I hate them. If I get thinner or chubbier, I hate it. If something grows, I hate it. If anything changes, I hate it. Everyone would feel like this. Then, I get used to the changes and I'm okey. I has its downsides, like every human body. I don't get this attitude. It's my shell. Period. End of meaning.

    Bolded: yes, gender roles. This is a big thing.

    I have a problem with them, but it results from me thinking different then most women. I'm a STEM lady with a love for "butch" things. That shoots me into outer space when it comes to relating to other women.

    I don't do anything for others to see me as anything. They'll see what they want anyway. I don't care anymore. I don't try to create a self-image either. I hold the view that "self" is an illusion we people like to believe in. Especilly its continuity. The concept of being the same person all your life is a deeply illusionary. The body isn't the same, the thought and feelings aren't the same. There's nothing that really holds "person" together apart from an illusion of continuity, a stream of consciousness if you please. "Person" is rather a concept applied to lots of different human beings, like "stream" is applied to water in a river bed, but nothing binds the water and pieces of water in it have nothing in common - we would be talking about the same river even if it changed its path drastically or didn't have water in it at all, however little sense it may make. I hope it is even remotely understandable? All in all, no. No to the concept of self. #math nerd tries to understand humans

    Somebody called me sir one day - I couldn't care less. It's their problem, not mine. However, the ability to manipulate how people perceive me seems cool and fun. Never mind. I just don't care that much.

    I think I would be uncomfortable if everyone told me I'm something and I would have a body of the other. That would complicate stuff. It would be just dumb of them. But if they acknowledged what my body is and then proceeded to gender, that would be fine.

    I think it would be best if people understood that I don't think "like a woman" but am one, which pretty much corresponds to "tomboy" state.

    I don't understand the concept of self-identity not based on observation.
     
  7. Matto_Corvo

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    The fact is I have seen tomboys with similar narratives as mine and I've often wonder what make me say I am trans man and they are a tomboy. It boils down to they are okay with being female while I am not. It has nothing to do with masculinity, feminity, gender roles, who has more priviliages than the other. It just that I do not want to live my life as a female when I do not view myself as one.
    If I approach it logically:
    - Breast are annoying, useless, sacks of fat that get in the way and have no purpose on my body. I waste money on shirts baggy enough to cover them up, and let's not start on the cost of bras. I have no need for them at all and wish then gone. I find the muscle chest of a man more desirable.
    - I hate periods, which is probably true of most AFAB. I find having a vagina pointless. I have no desire for children and those the reproduction organs I have are useless. Even in sex they are useless as I hate something being put inside me, and as a person of "female body" attracted to men you can see how that would be a problem. While I do not feel I am missing a penis, having one makes 100% more sense to me than having a vagina , which is a part of my body that is as annoying as having breast.
    - body build: I want the muscle and fat distrubion of that of a male. Sure a female can have muscles, but I personally hate the look (just the look, not the people who have it) and do not wish it on myself. To look physically like a male makes 200% more sense than looking like a female.
    -body hair: facial hair and cheat hair I really really really want. As in point above, I do not want on a female body. I know females can and do have both, but I do not want that for myself.
    -sexual relations: when I imagine myself in relationship I am a man with a man. I want the person I date to see me as a man, but most will not if this body is female. And even then, being trans means a lot of gay men would not want to date me. I actually am hardly ever attracted to straight men.

    I want to be a man, date as a man, viewed as a man, I want to look in the mirror and see a man. I am man.

    I'm also a little confused about your rant. Everything you ranted about is gender expression and no gender in itself.
     
  8. Mihael

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    I get that someone would WANT to transition, I don't get how you all "feel like wo/men" and hence have body issues.

    I could argue every single point you made - that you make wrong assumptions and body doens't matter this much.
     
  9. Matto_Corvo

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    Body doesn't matter to you[/]. But to another person it is important. To some people its not about the body but simply how people view them. We're all differnt like. We each hold different things important.

    As for 'feel like' part. Everyone feels gender diiferently as well. The 'feel part' is where my non-binary identity comes in. I do not understand what it feels to be male nor to be female. But there is something in me that refuses to let go of the belief that it should of been male. A feminine male, but a male all the same. Its not something easy to explain , and if you want someone to you'll be quickly frustrated because everyone has a different answer. Some might make sense and others will make no sense at all.
     
  10. Mihael

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    No. "Everyone has a different anwser" doesn't mean anything. The idea behind should be common, if all the people are talking about the same thing, which we assume, I hope.
     
  11. Matto_Corvo

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    That's your view. As far as I've seen in the last year, everyone has different answers. Some may be similar appearance but there is still a difference.
    Or is me experiencing my gender different from you mean that one of us is flawed in our view of the world?

    Everyone experiences everything in life different from the person beside them.
     
  12. darkcomesoon

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    I'd like to touch on this point quickly: as far as feeling uncomfortable with one's body goes, it comes in two forms, one more social and one purely physical. The social form is what you describe when you say that people "'feel like wo/men' and hence have body issues". In this case, it is a matter of perceiving your body as gendered or having other people perceive it as gendered. If you see yourself as a man, but everyone sees your body as a woman's body, that can be distressing. You want to portray yourself to others the way you see yourself. In this case, it is possible for you to argue that body shouldn't be such a big deal and we should just stop gendering bodies, though I would argue that you can't dismiss the importance of bodies as long as we live in a society that genders them. I can agree that we shouldn't gender bodies and ideally this type of dysphoria wouldn't have to be a big deal, but for now, it does matter.

    However, moving on to the second type, the purely physical dysphoria. This is entirely unarguable. If you strip away all the queer theory and the idea of gender as a social construct and think only about the hard science (which many people think is an outdated way of looking at gender, but I'm not here to take a stance on that particular debate), you are left with the medical definition of transness, which is essentially having your brain map of your sex characteristics be different than the sex characteristics you have. This can be hard to understand without having experienced it, but imagine this: picture looking down one day to find you didn't have an arm. You would be surprised, distressed. In your mind, you pictured your body with an arm. Your brain fully expected your arm to be there. But when you looked down, it wasn't. Your brain's map of your body involves you having two arms. In all likelihood, you do have two arms, which conveniently aligns with what your brain thinks you have. Dysphoria is like that. My brain doesn't think I have breasts, which is why it can be quite upsetting and uncomfortable for me to look at them. Physical dysphoria is supported by science; it is essentially fact. In this case, you cannot argue that body doesn't matter. The appearance of one's body can be vital to trans people in a way you very well may never understand, but need to respect.

    EDIT: Rereading this, I find that the last sentence may have come across as a bit accusatory (or something along those lines) but I promise that was not my intent. I get a bit too intense when I write these things sometimes.
     
    #12 darkcomesoon, Nov 3, 2015
    Last edited: Nov 3, 2015
  13. Just Jess

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    My approach to the question of gender identity has always been "what do I need to do, in terms of sex and gender, in order to live life day-to-day"
     
  14. Smoony

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    Emerry: I think you dismiss the vital role of what you like to call "fantasy".

    You imagine scenarios constantly, right? When you made this thread, you imagined or fantasized what kind of replies you might receive. Isn't your day filled from start to finish with micro-fantasies? Your brain creates these fleeting scenes to help you deduce what might happen based on your identity (in this case, androgynous) and your past experiences.

    Speaking from personal experience... my brain consistently casts me as a female in those fantasies whether I want it to or not. I see a female getting out of bed right before I physically get out of bed. I see a female sitting down to pee, then I sit down to pee. They're automatic. That identity is ingrained into me.

    Do you understand?

    ---------- Post added 4th Nov 2015 at 12:47 AM ----------

    Sometimes my body forces me to see myself as a male. And it feels wrong. Underwhelming. I would've been better off as the female in my thought processes and emotions. That is dysphoria.
     
  15. Mihael

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    Ok, I think I understand. Thank you all for bearing with me :wink: and I'm sorry if I offended somebody on my way.

    So just to make sure: is gender identity how you see your body very litarally and physically?

    (I would argue if it is a biological feature of the brain , because we can't know until there's more credible science about it than nowadays. However, the reason doesn't really matter for the sake of discussion what gender identity is)