Gender
Posted: Thu Aug 25, 2011 4:33 pmHey Twoism. I wanted to open a serious, honest discussion of gender on the board, because in general I respect the way you guys handle topics like this over and above other places on the internet.
Recently, I've had my perspective on gender roles vastly expanded, and I've had my eyes opened very drastically on my own gender identity. I mean very recently, like, this past 6 or 7 months. It's one of the things I've been "going through" that made me not want to talk much here lately, but I think I'm ready to say something about it.
I know Twoism has a lot of members with very progressive and embracing outlooks, and I know we have a few LGBT users from the other thread, but if I'm reading the atmosphere here accurately, most users seem to have fairly conventional outlooks on their gender (of course, please correct me if I'm wrong about that; I would love to be wrong about that). I've come to realize recently that my own gender identity is way weirder and more complicated than I thought it was, and I was wondering if anyone else here could relate?
So I'm not really talking about sexual orientation, so much, but the way you see your own gender. I used to not even know what to say to that question, because it seemed like a trick question. A couple years ago, I would have said "What do you mean, the way I see my gender? I look down and I see a penis. That answer your question?" But I've come to adopt a very different view. For one thing, I observe a huge distinction between sex (your biology) and gender (your personality).
With that distinction in mind, it occurred to me that I actually am at odds with ('shun' at the very worst, 'am uncomfortable with' at the very best) the overwhelming majority of male gender identities embraced by most people. Once it was proven to me that you can make your own identity, and you can alter your biology (to a degree) to reflect what's inside of you rather than fatalistically accepting what body you were given as determining who you are, I realized a lot of things about myself.
A few examples: I have never felt the word "man" describes me. At first, I thought this was just because I was chronically "young", but all the social connotations of the word "man", along with "manly" or "manliness", are things I don't relate to and don't consider part of who I am. "Boy" comes closer to describing who I am than "man", but even that is a bit confused. I remember before I went through puberty, and my skin was so light and fair and soft, and there were no coarse, ugly hairs all over it. When I was very young, I exhibited a number of androgynous features - I had enormous bright blue eyes, a big lippy smile, feathery hair, and an absolute lack of any kind of male machismo. My face, being a young child's face, could've been mistaken for a girl's face easily (and often was).
Recently I started to recall a number of my fondest memories growing up - of playing dress-up, and dressing up in a sunflower yellow summer dress, and a golden curly wig, and pretending I was a pretty girl all day long. And when my older sister would bring a group of her girlfriends over to the house, they would always let me hang out with them because they thought I was an adorable little boy, and they would teach me to act like a girl with them - make up, Valley Girl talk, dishing, flipping my hand (what-everrrrrrr). My friends, growing up, were mostly boys, but I always had a couple of extra-close friends, friends I felt safe with, who were girls - usually tomboys. I could be myself around them, because they didn't seem concerned with acting "girly" just as I liked feeling like I didn't have to act "manly" around them.
Over many years, that girly little boy got better and better at "playing the role" of being both biologically and socially a male. But I'm actually starting to see how many of the choices I've made in my young adult life have been, either incidentally or deliberately, moves that took me farther and farther away from being "socially male", at least in any kind of conventional sense. At the very least it can be said that I've been headed for the outer fringes of malehood. I deliberately steer clear of most of the really typical, mainstream ideas of manhood - as I'm sure many other Twoismers do as well; they're mostly repulsive and backwards. And as for my penis, let me just say that I "tolerate" it and would be quite happy without one. My jeans would fit better, at any rate. Suffice to say, if having one's penis and testicles removed were less painful and costly, I would do it. I may do it, actually. I have no particular fondness for my genitals. If anything, I find them to be an annoyance and an intrusion.
So, where is this leading? Am I transgendered; born with a body the opposite sex as my personality? Well, no, I don't think so actually. I think I'm certainly gender-queer, but I don't feel as though I was meant to be a girl. I think my gender identity is best expressed by harkening back to when I was a very young boy - I was unconcerned with my biology and I hadn't yet let it come to affect my view of who or "what" I was yet. I was very -free-. I was free to dress up as a girl and talk like a girl if I wanted, and girls welcomed me into their midst as "one of them", or at the very least, an ally. My body was delightfully androgynous, my features could be a boy's or a girl's, and I was a soft, light-skinned thing completely devoid of curly body hairs.
It's toward this kind of freedom that I find myself striving these days. I believe that I was born with the capacity to be a girl or a boy inside. I believe that I was born with a beautiful radiant personality with the full spectrum of humanity inside, male to female. I'm a human, right? So why should I feel like HALF of the entire human experience is cut off from me? The world is not "no boys allowed", nor is it "no girls allowed". I want access to both forts. I want dual citizenship. I want an international passport to cross any gender boundary whenever I please (after all, I couldn't visit most of my friends if I couldn't).
I haven't said much to Twoism, or, to be honest, MANY of the people I used to talk to as recently as a year ago. I've been kind of tunneling into this part of myself, and I just don't think most people understand what it's like to go through this. I think most people are pretty content with their gender identity; most people seem to require very few "tweaks" to their gender identity to get it from mainstream to what makes them happy. I think few people ever consider their genitals (I'm talking penis, testes, testosterone, the whole kit and kaboodle) and think "I'd be happier with out it. I wish I didn't have it." Which is fair. I'm not trying to condescend to people for not being as gender-queer as me. But my point is, sometimes I feel like I'm going through feelings that most of the world doesn't understand - not even the part of the world that tends to understand the OTHER bizarre bullcrap I go through, like drug experimentation and stuff.
I've been sharing and exploring these thoughts and feelings with a very small group of people - some of whom are transgendered, some of whom aren't - with whom I am very emotionally intimate and trusting. The good news is, I have -very- accepting friends in these people, who understand me when I explain myself this way. In October I have plans to shave my legs, dress up as a girl, do my hair up, do my makeup, and go out to a bar as a girl with one of my closest friends. I am -hugely- looking forward to this. I'm even getting both ears pierced so I can wear dangly earrings.
I've always known Twoism to offer thoughtful and understanding replies on a fairly regular basis to topics like this, so I'd like to open up for discussion what I've been talking about. Does anyone else feel as strongly opposed to traditional gender roles? Does anyone else feel that they, personally, have an especially odd gender? I find that most discussion on gender is very limited, narrow, and confining. It puts people like me in boxes. It says "What, so you don't think you're a man? No? So you're a woman? No? Well sorry but you've just exhausted your options." But I don't think that's true at all. I think there are a vast multitude of genders, waiting to be created. I'm a girlyboy. What are you?
Recently, I've had my perspective on gender roles vastly expanded, and I've had my eyes opened very drastically on my own gender identity. I mean very recently, like, this past 6 or 7 months. It's one of the things I've been "going through" that made me not want to talk much here lately, but I think I'm ready to say something about it.
I know Twoism has a lot of members with very progressive and embracing outlooks, and I know we have a few LGBT users from the other thread, but if I'm reading the atmosphere here accurately, most users seem to have fairly conventional outlooks on their gender (of course, please correct me if I'm wrong about that; I would love to be wrong about that). I've come to realize recently that my own gender identity is way weirder and more complicated than I thought it was, and I was wondering if anyone else here could relate?
So I'm not really talking about sexual orientation, so much, but the way you see your own gender. I used to not even know what to say to that question, because it seemed like a trick question. A couple years ago, I would have said "What do you mean, the way I see my gender? I look down and I see a penis. That answer your question?" But I've come to adopt a very different view. For one thing, I observe a huge distinction between sex (your biology) and gender (your personality).
With that distinction in mind, it occurred to me that I actually am at odds with ('shun' at the very worst, 'am uncomfortable with' at the very best) the overwhelming majority of male gender identities embraced by most people. Once it was proven to me that you can make your own identity, and you can alter your biology (to a degree) to reflect what's inside of you rather than fatalistically accepting what body you were given as determining who you are, I realized a lot of things about myself.
A few examples: I have never felt the word "man" describes me. At first, I thought this was just because I was chronically "young", but all the social connotations of the word "man", along with "manly" or "manliness", are things I don't relate to and don't consider part of who I am. "Boy" comes closer to describing who I am than "man", but even that is a bit confused. I remember before I went through puberty, and my skin was so light and fair and soft, and there were no coarse, ugly hairs all over it. When I was very young, I exhibited a number of androgynous features - I had enormous bright blue eyes, a big lippy smile, feathery hair, and an absolute lack of any kind of male machismo. My face, being a young child's face, could've been mistaken for a girl's face easily (and often was).
Recently I started to recall a number of my fondest memories growing up - of playing dress-up, and dressing up in a sunflower yellow summer dress, and a golden curly wig, and pretending I was a pretty girl all day long. And when my older sister would bring a group of her girlfriends over to the house, they would always let me hang out with them because they thought I was an adorable little boy, and they would teach me to act like a girl with them - make up, Valley Girl talk, dishing, flipping my hand (what-everrrrrrr). My friends, growing up, were mostly boys, but I always had a couple of extra-close friends, friends I felt safe with, who were girls - usually tomboys. I could be myself around them, because they didn't seem concerned with acting "girly" just as I liked feeling like I didn't have to act "manly" around them.
Over many years, that girly little boy got better and better at "playing the role" of being both biologically and socially a male. But I'm actually starting to see how many of the choices I've made in my young adult life have been, either incidentally or deliberately, moves that took me farther and farther away from being "socially male", at least in any kind of conventional sense. At the very least it can be said that I've been headed for the outer fringes of malehood. I deliberately steer clear of most of the really typical, mainstream ideas of manhood - as I'm sure many other Twoismers do as well; they're mostly repulsive and backwards. And as for my penis, let me just say that I "tolerate" it and would be quite happy without one. My jeans would fit better, at any rate. Suffice to say, if having one's penis and testicles removed were less painful and costly, I would do it. I may do it, actually. I have no particular fondness for my genitals. If anything, I find them to be an annoyance and an intrusion.
So, where is this leading? Am I transgendered; born with a body the opposite sex as my personality? Well, no, I don't think so actually. I think I'm certainly gender-queer, but I don't feel as though I was meant to be a girl. I think my gender identity is best expressed by harkening back to when I was a very young boy - I was unconcerned with my biology and I hadn't yet let it come to affect my view of who or "what" I was yet. I was very -free-. I was free to dress up as a girl and talk like a girl if I wanted, and girls welcomed me into their midst as "one of them", or at the very least, an ally. My body was delightfully androgynous, my features could be a boy's or a girl's, and I was a soft, light-skinned thing completely devoid of curly body hairs.
It's toward this kind of freedom that I find myself striving these days. I believe that I was born with the capacity to be a girl or a boy inside. I believe that I was born with a beautiful radiant personality with the full spectrum of humanity inside, male to female. I'm a human, right? So why should I feel like HALF of the entire human experience is cut off from me? The world is not "no boys allowed", nor is it "no girls allowed". I want access to both forts. I want dual citizenship. I want an international passport to cross any gender boundary whenever I please (after all, I couldn't visit most of my friends if I couldn't).
I haven't said much to Twoism, or, to be honest, MANY of the people I used to talk to as recently as a year ago. I've been kind of tunneling into this part of myself, and I just don't think most people understand what it's like to go through this. I think most people are pretty content with their gender identity; most people seem to require very few "tweaks" to their gender identity to get it from mainstream to what makes them happy. I think few people ever consider their genitals (I'm talking penis, testes, testosterone, the whole kit and kaboodle) and think "I'd be happier with out it. I wish I didn't have it." Which is fair. I'm not trying to condescend to people for not being as gender-queer as me. But my point is, sometimes I feel like I'm going through feelings that most of the world doesn't understand - not even the part of the world that tends to understand the OTHER bizarre bullcrap I go through, like drug experimentation and stuff.
I've been sharing and exploring these thoughts and feelings with a very small group of people - some of whom are transgendered, some of whom aren't - with whom I am very emotionally intimate and trusting. The good news is, I have -very- accepting friends in these people, who understand me when I explain myself this way. In October I have plans to shave my legs, dress up as a girl, do my hair up, do my makeup, and go out to a bar as a girl with one of my closest friends. I am -hugely- looking forward to this. I'm even getting both ears pierced so I can wear dangly earrings.
I've always known Twoism to offer thoughtful and understanding replies on a fairly regular basis to topics like this, so I'd like to open up for discussion what I've been talking about. Does anyone else feel as strongly opposed to traditional gender roles? Does anyone else feel that they, personally, have an especially odd gender? I find that most discussion on gender is very limited, narrow, and confining. It puts people like me in boxes. It says "What, so you don't think you're a man? No? So you're a woman? No? Well sorry but you've just exhausted your options." But I don't think that's true at all. I think there are a vast multitude of genders, waiting to be created. I'm a girlyboy. What are you?
