A Gender Survey and Being Bigender
Mar. 6th, 2019 08:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
baratronGender Census 2019
A survey for everyone who doesn't fit into just one of the two boxes of "always, solely and completely a woman/girl" or "always, solely and completely a man/boy". Do the survey if that fits you, and pass it on to your friends.
I don't talk about my gender a lot on my journal. I've identified as bigender for - goodness - at least since September 2005, according to this old livejournal post. I explicitly came out and defined it in a footnote to a post in April 2017.
Lately, the raging gender dysphoria has been a lot more than "between a few hours and a few days" per month, and more like literally half the month or more. So I probably should talk about it a bit.
I get the feeling that the way I experience gender is weird and unusual even within the category of people who are neither male nor female exclusively. I'm EITHER female, and completely happy with my body, voice and pronouns OR male, and having raging dysphoria. I can't just be genderqueer or non-binary or something else that is relatively common, could I? Noooo...
It was rather interesting for me to read this wiki page about the genderfluid spectrum a couple of weeks ago for a series of fanfiction stories that I'm writing. (One of the characters is explicitly non-binary and genderfluid, and I wanted to be sure of the differences between the two definitions.) I've always thought that "genderfluid" applies more to people who are usually between the two binary genders. Apparently "bigender" can be seen as a subset of genderfluid. Which is cool... but I really am at one extreme or the other.
Being bigender is weird because there's no way to transition. Any kind of medical intervention would mess with all of the time when my my body and head genders match. And a social transition would be confusing. There is no real way for someone with my body shape to look male. Even if there was, you'd be using different names and pronouns for me on different days - and I'm not sure how a person on the internet would know which name/pronoun combination was "correct" on any given day. I LOATHE gender-neutral pronouns applied to me.
See, I'm assigned female at birth and a feminist. This means that whenever I feel female, I want to be affirmed in my female identity. I want to be A WOMAN WHO DOES SCIENCE or A GIRL WHO PLAYS VIDEO GAMES or whatever. Using gender-neutral pronouns for me destroys that.
So for the most part, it's easiest for people to keep thinking of me as "Helen-Louise" and "female". But just... be aware that it isn't always right.
A survey for everyone who doesn't fit into just one of the two boxes of "always, solely and completely a woman/girl" or "always, solely and completely a man/boy". Do the survey if that fits you, and pass it on to your friends.
I don't talk about my gender a lot on my journal. I've identified as bigender for - goodness - at least since September 2005, according to this old livejournal post. I explicitly came out and defined it in a footnote to a post in April 2017.
*I am bigender rather than non-binary or genderqueer, so I am female except when I'm not. I have somewhere between a few hours and a few days of raging gender dysphoria per month where my entire body is Wrong, and the (actually bi but scared of women) gay man in the back of my head comes out. And the rest of the time it's just fine and I want to be addressed as "she/her" and recognised as A Female Geek Doing Nerdy Things. The conclusion I've come to is that my social and political gender is female, but my sexual gender is male.
Lately, the raging gender dysphoria has been a lot more than "between a few hours and a few days" per month, and more like literally half the month or more. So I probably should talk about it a bit.
I get the feeling that the way I experience gender is weird and unusual even within the category of people who are neither male nor female exclusively. I'm EITHER female, and completely happy with my body, voice and pronouns OR male, and having raging dysphoria. I can't just be genderqueer or non-binary or something else that is relatively common, could I? Noooo...
It was rather interesting for me to read this wiki page about the genderfluid spectrum a couple of weeks ago for a series of fanfiction stories that I'm writing. (One of the characters is explicitly non-binary and genderfluid, and I wanted to be sure of the differences between the two definitions.) I've always thought that "genderfluid" applies more to people who are usually between the two binary genders. Apparently "bigender" can be seen as a subset of genderfluid. Which is cool... but I really am at one extreme or the other.
Being bigender is weird because there's no way to transition. Any kind of medical intervention would mess with all of the time when my my body and head genders match. And a social transition would be confusing. There is no real way for someone with my body shape to look male. Even if there was, you'd be using different names and pronouns for me on different days - and I'm not sure how a person on the internet would know which name/pronoun combination was "correct" on any given day. I LOATHE gender-neutral pronouns applied to me.
See, I'm assigned female at birth and a feminist. This means that whenever I feel female, I want to be affirmed in my female identity. I want to be A WOMAN WHO DOES SCIENCE or A GIRL WHO PLAYS VIDEO GAMES or whatever. Using gender-neutral pronouns for me destroys that.
So for the most part, it's easiest for people to keep thinking of me as "Helen-Louise" and "female". But just... be aware that it isn't always right.
no subject
Date: 2019-03-06 11:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-03-07 08:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-03-07 04:42 am (UTC)YES. This is a major problem I have. My gender oscillates gradually from very masc to very fem and back again over the course of years. What I want are sex characteristics that I can take off and stick in a box in my dresser, and put on to properly fill out whatever I'm wearing that day.
My pronouns are they/them because the plurality of it is an accurate reflection of my approximately billions of genders. But I absolutely get you not wanting the neutrality of it—I've also said "my political gender is female", and I know several FAAB people in traditionally male professions who are some flavor of nonbinary but emphatically identify as female when it comes to being "a female programmer" or "a female lawyer" or "a female barber" or whatever.
no subject
Date: 2019-03-07 08:17 pm (UTC)The reason is that my female side is fairly neutral in expression. When I'm feeling female, I favour practical clothing like t-shirts, leggings, and boots - "feminine" only in terms of being cut to suit my body. (Or this is a girl's t-shirt.) It's my male side which is femme.
As a woman, I have no interest in make-up and fairly minimal interest in dresses. As a man, I want to wear tight jeans, shiny fabrics, flared skirts, PVC, ribbons and lace. I want to be tall and obviously male, but pretty rather than handsome - like a goth or rock star or a mage from another universe.
And I really empathise with the idea of being able to remove parts and put them away until they're needed. When I'm feeling female, I love my body. It's round and curvy, with big breasts, big hips and a big bottom. It's a really good woman's body. It's absolutely TERRIBLE for a man. What I really want is the ability to shapeshift - to take this body mass and transform it into a taller, leaner, flatter shape when required.
I think it would be interesting if that gender survey asked whether people choose to identify with one of the binary genders in some circumstances. I'll probably write to the author once I'm able to put coherent words together.