Hello, So I'm writing a story where my main character, Aryle, is agender. Their partner is female-male gender fluid, and called Daisy or Dawson. I would like to write her/his character, and have written a preliminary one to keep the story moving, but before I draw her/his character deeper I have a question. Does your personality and likes/dislikes change between which gender you feel? And could you say this about everyone who is gender fluid [and why]? Thank-you.
As a person who could loosely be described as genderfluid: no. I'm the same person regardless of how I want to be perceived in terms of gender - my interests are the same, my traits are the same, because I'm one person. What changes is how I feel towards certain pronouns, my perception of and relationship with my body, and the terms I feel are relevant to use towards me. However, I did 'partition' aspects of my personality when I was younger, but more as a result of ignorance than my gender. I thought certain things about me were 'guy things' and other things were 'girl things' when actually...they were just...me things. I'd play up more 'masculine' aspects when I 'was a guy', and the same with femininity and femaleness. All I was doing back then was just playing up to the binary, really. I knew what society expected from guys or from girls and sorted aspects of myself into two binary camps of what society would call 'girly' or 'guyish', which was kind of silly when I look back at it. These days, I don't really think in terms of 'being a guy/girl/neither/etc'. My feelings just vary on how I'd like to look, or how I'd like to be seen. I can't speak for other genderfluid people - I'm just one person and I don't even strictly ID as genderfluid, haha.
Yeah I agree with oddsocks. My interests never change when I feel like a certain gender, but my feelings towards my body can change drastically. Since I'm AFAB, when I feel more "male" it definitely can give me some body dysphoria and change my outlook on the day. It's more of a self-conscious thing so that's something to keep in mind! Also, for your character, it might be better to just choose a single name. I go by a gender neutral name, Rae, that works for whatever gender I'm feeling. I've never met someone who goes by two names to fit their lucid gender, but I could be wrong on the same principle. From a writing standpoint it's going to be difficult for your reader to follow that the same character has two different names.
