Core or Innate Gender Identity: Do You Have One?

I think this is an interesting question.

I have never felt like my gender was in question; all my life I have been male.

^^^

I feel that my masculinity has been questioned, but it's always been in terms of gender norms or specific roles I was supposed to fulfill as a man but had no interest in. Never have really felt anything other than male.

while it's quite hard to work out where one's sense of gender ends and where socially constructed gender roles/traits begin, my sense of being male feels definite because of what i don't feel - ie the deep need to get away from my assigned body that i assume trans people feel. set alongside that, whether my behaviour or personality variously codes as stereotypically masculine/feminine/gay seems kinda superficial

(xp) ^^^

thanks for creating this, I'm curious about the results, and the discussion that might follow from that.

I too have always felt male, but being gay meant that presenting maleness was a fraught enterprise anyway because in Kentucky in the 80s I had a secret worth keeping- and queerness makes you think about the possibility that people feel and desire otherwise than the gendered selves that they present, so even though gay male psyches are not necessarily like transfolks, there are certain narrative parallels.

I mean, I dunno, it's hard to talk about whether any part of an adult's psyche is "innate" because they have to think back to formative moments and they may falsify the memory of certain experiences based on who they turned out to be, narrating a compromise as if it was a conscious choice and thus an expression of who they really are/were when really things are more contingent and determined from outside by cultural scripts and frames of expectation. Often things in our past wind up being narrated as if they were choices/votes-for-normativity when really we are responding to an environment in which norms are encouraged and deviation discouraged. So the decisions people make about gender presentation have that shadow of compromise or misgiving or "faute de mieux" about them- years of a compliance/reward cycle tend to upstage fleeting moments of resistance or counterfactual imagining about what would have happened if someone had chosen to gender themselves otherwise (if that possibility was even legibly available to them in their environment).

(I don't think the rambling above are really about gender at all so much as about the nature of retrospection as a rear-projection of qualities whose "innateness" might be a bit tendentious- we trail behind us all the selves that we might have been but weren't but we don't necessarily relate to those versions of ourselves, and stories about innateness tend to reify who we are right now at the expense of the counterfactual-but-possible versions of ourselves)

I feel that my masculinity has been questioned, but it's always been in terms of gender norms or specific roles I was supposed to fulfill as a man but had no interest in. Never have really felt anything other than male.

otm

I have usually felt male except when [REDACTED], but this is important & there is no option for it: I feel fluid, like I could be female any time I choose. Obviously I'd need to take behavioural steps to achieve this, but I do feel that if I choose to perform as woman then can be one

maleness

assigned female at birth, am comfortable identifying as a woman although i have tomboyish traits and my doc tells me i have high testosterone.

what do all you guys mean by "feel male"?

is it just that you conceive yourself as being men or is it

idk

maleness

for me, being gay - once i was out - meant that, in comparison to how my str8 peers seemed to feel, whether i conformed or deviated from a social gender norm was less of an issue. there was less to prove, to myself and to the world - when many of the str8 men around me fell short of some threshold of masculinity they'd perceive it as a failing, something they needed to correct or compensate for, whereas i felt like i could act "masculine" or "feminine" as i pleased.

what do all you guys mean by "feel male"?

i don't really know tbh, apart from vague and nonsensical stereotypes of masculinity. performance of either gender feels like drag most of the time (to paraphrase rupaul). but i don't think it's as simple as that when you take into account what trans people experience.

i guess i feel cocksome usually

I don't feel the slightest bit female, but I find the vast majority of accepted male gender norms completely baffling/off-putting.

No, I don't feel like I have an innate gender. Every construct built up around "my" gender seems purposefully designed to make me feel disgusting, useless and alienated. It is not me, it has little to do with me. I can't identify with it. But nor can I identify with any other gender. I am a floating brain in a vat.

on the one hand i'm afraid of feeling like i'm stepping on "real" trans people's toes because i don't have a significant history of performing female. ultimately tho i think that's wrongheaded and would find it hard to deny how often i feel more like a woman than a man, even if i'm not quite sure what i mean by that.

TWS also otm in that the troublesome word here might not be "gender" so much as "innate"

Assigned female at birth and have a sense of feminine gender.

it's quite hard to work out where one's sense of gender ends and where socially constructed gender roles/traits begin

Truest truth. There was a time in my life, from about puberty to 13 or 14, where I intentionally presented as far more masculine, including preferring men's clothes. If I'd had the vocabulary for it, I may have talked about it in terms of gender identity. Looking back, though, I think it was more about rejecting the trappings of feminine gender as a way to try and reject the bullshit that comes with being a pre-teen and teen girl (which totally did not work). I've always felt comfortable with my assigned gender. Any discomfort has been with the socially constructed gender roles.

(Just in case, I am in no way shape or form suggesting that discomfort with socially constructed gender roles is at the heart of anybody's gender identity. I'm speaking to my experience only, and this was accurate for me. It would be gross and horrible to suggest that trans people just need to reject gender roles and I am not saying that!)

feel like this fluctuates from situation to situation, i don't ever really "feel" one gender or another though, i don't feel a lot of solidarity with humans so i suppose i see gender as a made-up thing, or yes, a performance. i mean... it's all stereotypical isn't it?

what do all you guys mean by "feel male"?

i feel male in the sense that my experiences in life, the way people treat me (positively, negatively, or otherwise), the expectations people have of me, the feelings i have about myself as a consequence of all that, etc., are inextricably linked to my gender

drew's post there is str8 queer fire

Every construct built up around "my" gender seems purposefully designed to make me feel disgusting, useless and alienated.

oh yeah. sometimes i forget that i'm supposed to feel this way, and when some tv show or magazine reminds me, it just sends me into a deep pit of despair.

No, I don't feel like I have an innate gender. Every construct built up around "my" gender seems purposefully designed to make me feel disgusting, useless and alienated. It is not me, it has little to do with me. I can't identify with it. But nor can I identify with any other gender. I am a floating brain in a vat.

― emil.y, Wednesday, December 11, 2013 3:22 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i feel p similar to this

the constant media reinforcement of gender constructs is so relentless that it almost feels like propaganda (and as someone lucky enough to be able to duck under feeling like it's aimed at me, it really is the most contemptibly stupid bullshit in every single way)

i've definitely had that feeling that emil.y describes, but obv it's different, since, you know

everyone otm, in fact

Relentless reinforcement of gender norms totally is propaganda. There's this sense of real terror/threat when people start questioning gender binary, and that terror/threat has been around for every challenge to traditional gender roles (and challenging binary gender is like the ultimate challenge to gender roles), cf just for one fun example anti-suffragette propaganda suggesting that if women get the vote, they will start acting like men by going to bars, and leave men to take care of the house and children (THE HORROR).

oh yeah. sometimes i forget that i'm supposed to feel this way, and when some tv show or magazine reminds me, it just sends me into a deep pit of despair.

follow-up: most of the time i just feel like a person, not any innate or socially constructed category. it's only biological functions and outside stimuli that make me remember i'm a woman. the stuff that goes through my head when i walk down the street usually has nothing to do with gender/sex -- but then some street harasser will comment about my boobs and i'll be thinking "oh riiiight, you're never allowed to forget, are you?"

Voted born male/feel male with a tiny feeling of guilt over not voting born male/feel no innate binary gender, not because I feel like I'm suppressing any kind of non-binary gender feelings (whatever those would be, and the fact that I don't know probably means that I'm not), but because of (as lex pointed out so well) my inability to understand exactly where innate vs. socially constructed ideas of gender begin and end. For me, being gay meant being very defensive about these things when I was younger; bring this up in front of my boyfriend and he will probably relay some since-regretted instances of me wincing at the sight of drag queens while we were out at a bar, or one long ill-advised rant I once went on about how the "T" in LGBT didn't really mesh with my conception of "LGB" (trans-peoples experiences were unlikely to resemble mine, I rather ignorantly argued, and thus should be considered as a separate thing--needless to say, I was politically naive enough at the time to fail to understand any possible relation between various strains of class, gender, racial and sexual politics). I had some need to assert the fact that *I* didn't want to be a woman, I just wanted to be with other men (like anyone gives a shit, I know).

A recent issue of Rolling Stone had an article on a child (now 7, though the issue began when the child was 3) who was born a male but who felt, and wanted to express herself, as female (it apparently became something of a high profile case when the child's school, under pressure from squeamish parents, wanted to ban her from using the girl's bathroom, though I must say I cannot recall hearing of the case previously). I found it very interesting that the "representative" that the writer interviewed from Focus On The Family (any guesses on where they stand on this issue?) identified himself as "proudly ex-gay" and blamed homosexuality on, I'm not kidding, a mixture of "poor parenting, molestation and original sin." It was a little disquieting for me to recognize something of my own previous transphobia in his idiotic homophobia; both, I would argue, that arises out of a severe discomfort with one's own sexuality, and one which, I hope, that I at the very least have mostly gotten over. Hence, I suppose, my guilt over how I voted here.

I'm too fucked up in this area to know what to say. Agender, genderqueer? something like that I guess.

xp to get bent: In fact my personal definition of street harassment is when I'm in public not specifically remembering that I'm a woman and then someone does anything that reminds me. Saying "Good morning" or "How are you?" isn't necessarily sh but it can been when it's gender attraction-coded, like "Ooh, good MORN-ing" or "How are YOU? Mmm."

xxxp ^yeah. like

i guess i feel cocksome usually

with the exception of one or two things I never have a strong feeling that my attitudes or experiences are determined by my genitalia or hormones, I just go about my day and if I feel any particular way I don't go "oh that's my testicles doing that", but then again I never really have to think about any of this cause prillij

bah drunk that is a response to gb that somehow is a response to quoted imago text also

yeah I mean *when* I consider my gender I usually feel irrevocably cocksome (or I feel that the presence of cock is significant & must guide my attitude to one of privilege-acceptance yeah), but there have been some liberating moments when I haven't, eg drag

usually I like to sublimate any sexual feelings into a cerebral realm where my own gender matters less than the excitable synthesis of attractions I can feel towards somebody

i also encourage active subversion of gender-normative function at all times, except when playing contact sports

It's funny, I don't feel bad about BEING female, and I suppose I'm pretty feminine--petite and have feminine physical mannerisms like putting my hands and feet in graceful positions, sitting w my knees together bc I wear skirts, smiling a lot, making an effort to be "nice." But when men insist on treating me in a way that's coded for female, whether it's come ons or excessive "politeness because LAYDEEZ" or smarmy flirting, etc, I'm disgusted and hate dealing w them.

I mean, female-ness, which is not to say "femininity," can never be neutral because it's defined by what masculinity is not, for some people. These are probably the same ppl who can't just treat you like a person because you're a woman and they have to have different rule for that.

I feel like those poll options are still too binary. I think there are biological factors that fall along a spectrum and social factors that fall along a spectrum, and all of those factors combine to create a person's identity in a complicated way that can't be mapped onto two genders or nine poll options.

i also encourage active subversion of gender-normative function at all times, except when playing contact sports
― veneer timber (imago)

So wtf is wrong with co-ed floor hockey or rugby or ultimate frisbee then?!?

also XP I agree with wk.

https://www.genderspectrum.org/understanding-gender

Trans people that I have known have talked to me about very strong feelings that they are in the wrong body, feeling alienated from their genitals and longing to not be in that body, with the complicated and painful overlap of this kind of challenge stacking up alongside puberty and the entrance into sexual awareness making for a really tortured period in their lives. By contrast, when I was in the closet as a gay teen I certainly remember thinking to myself "man having these feelings would be SO MUCH EASIER if I was just a girl, because then I could flirt and date cute guys etc.", i.e. very much a pipe dream about not having to deal with the awkwardness of homophobia and the reduced chances of reciprocation that come from being in a tiny minority (and now I do of course see that this very thought exercise is itself a kind of preposterous fantasy that 'being a girl' would magically mean 'being an attractive / desirable / popular / normal girl' to boot, with her pick of the jocks etc.)- but this was not a desire to have ladyparts or to be, physically, female. So I think there's some kind of virtual trans aspect to this kind of construction of a me-in-fantasy-as-another-gender, but it's way way off from the kind of 'bodyswitch' sensation that actually trans people describe quite frequently. I mean, not all trans people are the same either, but this narrative is pretty common, and it's different from our various complicated feelings of identifying with certain aspects of the cultural scripts for maleness and femaleness and wanting to opt out of others.

what do all you guys mean by "feel male"?

I mean that when I ask myself the question "what gender am I?" I always answer without hesitation "I am male" with little introspection and no doubt. This isn't tied to particular interests or behaviors, at least not consciously; it's just what I am.

I feel this so strongly that I can't imagine what it would be like for me to feel doubt or fluidity about my gender. It is one of the facets of my being that I consider incontrovertible, like my ethnic background.

sorry in advance for big image:

http://th01.deviantart.net/fs71/PRE/i/2011/226/2/2/gender_spectrum_blank_by_prettyfrog-d46km6h.png

interesting chart, but I'm not so sure I can imaginatively fill in the "agender" section- like I've seen people who present as genderqueer, but wouldn't a perfect sort of androgyny wind up being genderqueer? (I'm thinking here of, say, Genesis P'Orridge's Pandrogyne identity)

The Genderbread Person (also seasonally appropriate)

the notion of co-ed rugby i gotta say tests even my own post-gender fluidity. i am all for women playing in traditionally male team sports, but when the contact is so physical & strength-based....idk. i guess there are a few women who maybe could. i guess the most you could say is that gender wouldn't be a factor in which players got thwacked hardest or injured, but size/prowess

i only made that facetious addition because i play football & need to act in v traditionally 'masculine' ways in order to thug ppl off the ball & retain possession. nb i am NOT saying that these are things women can't or shouldn't do, but i am saying that they're socially 'archetypical' masculine traits. otherwise i don't think i perform in any way to type

surely agender ppl are those who simply don't want to engage with codes of masculinity or femininity, as opposed to pansexual genderqueer types who want both (and i'm much more in the latter camp myself, as twere)

like, say, rocks are neither male nor female, they're just rocks, and every rock is as much a rock as every other rock- so I guess to cash out "agender" i have to imagine a humanoid that is just "human" in a generic sense but neither male nor female (in which case androgynous people are both-at-once, and hence genderqueer and not agender)?

I know someone who goes by the name P3rson and I think P3rson is trying to live a truly genderless life, and the name is part of that opting out of both systems.

c) feminine gender *roles* are so prescriptive that women don't feel able to conform to them and this affects women's own perception of their own gender

This is interesting.

that is interesting. I would think male roles are equally prescriptive, however since they are historically more likely to be associated with traits seen as positive in society, maybe men are more likely to want to identify with *maleness.* OTOH, I would also guess the "penalty" for not identifying entirely as male is much greater for men, and hence men who don't feel an especially strong inclination against *maleness* are more likely to self-regulate and fall in line.

i agree that male roles are prescriptive, but equally prescriptive? naw

yeah i hadn't really thought about that point of prescriptiveness of social role being a deterrent to identifying as it. i suspect also that it doesn't apply so much for being male as being male is so much more about being whatever you want to be, with a relatively tiny number of active life desires that can't be absorbed into a wide sense of masculinity.

there have been ways for men to duck out of masculine expectations, if not voluntarily, that haven't been available to women cf. eunuchs, hijra, priesthood &c.

not necessarily voluntarily

also I wld be extremely interested what ppl from those classes thought of the idea innate gender identity

c) feminine gender *roles* are so prescriptive that women don't feel able to conform to them and this affects women's own perception of their own gender

Well, the ~I'm not like those OTHER girls~ trope exists for a reason.

Is there a line between "I'm not like those OTHER girls" and "I don't feel like a girl, at all" or even "I feel like a man as much as I ever feel like a woman" though?

I kinda feel like there is?

Because I honestly feel like I've got to the point where I don't think there's anything wrong with femininity or girlhood or femaleness, no matter what our society tells us. I just feel, very strongly, "I am not feminine". It is very hard to untangle guilt over the former from the feeling of the latter. But my deepest sense is that actually, no, the former is definitely a thing, but it's not the cause of the latter. It's just societal expectations that have made it so hard for me to tease apart the feelings of being not just "failed girl" but "girl traitor."

Like, I'm having such full-on feelings of "girl traitor" over my gender dysphoria recently that I don't even feel comfortable on the Girl Thread. Which used to feel very much like a safe space, and now makes me feel defensive and having-to-justify-my-non-girlhood. (But that could just be the usual general "I don't belong on ILX" defensiveness, too.) It's complicated. And not a very fun place to be at the moment.

There is a line, without a doubt. But you do definitely notice the "not like the other girls" thinking coming from girls or women who don't feel comfortable/have no interest in traditionally feminine roles/doing traditionally feminine activities and rather than seeing it as just another way to be a girl/woman, it gets coded as "this is what it is to be a woman, I'm not that, so therefore it is worthy of ridicule." If that makes sense...?

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. That where the line is, is between merely "not like other girls" (ergo either enlarge "womanhood as a category" or "leave womanhood") and "I am not like those OTHER girls, ergo feminine girls are ridiculous/bad/terrible."

It's not the case that the former *always* equals the latter, but I think some people have a tendency to read it that way, even when that reading is not inherent.

there have been ways for men to duck out of masculine expectations, if not voluntarily, that haven't been available to women cf. eunuchs, hijra, priesthood &c.

― ogmor, Sunday, January 12, 2014 9:14 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

these seem like pretty outlying and marginal examples to the discussion ITT. I would doubt any of the men in this poll ever considered taking refuge from masculine expectations by becoming a eunuch.

I think it is certainly within the remit of the thread, as some of those roles are what some cultures have traditionally done with gender non-conforming men, or men that would now be classed as trans*. Whether we have any eunuchs or hijra on ILX is another question, though, so it would have to be a discussion "talking about" rather than "talking from the position of". So perhaps it would be a discussion better had on the genderqueer thread? I don't mind, though.

I don't have a problem with eunuchs and hijira being discussed on this thread. I just mean that if we're talking about the restrictiveness of traditional masculinity vs traditional femininity, those classifications don't really change the discussion much for most men.

i.e. "Men historically could be eunuchs" does almost nothing to alleviate the kinds of modern, real-world gender pressures I thought we were talking about

As I see it, there are several braids going on at once in this thread.

One is about the modern, real-world gender pressures that cis people face; the other is about ways of expressing non-binary gender for those who find themselves outside the gender binary.

I don't think "eunuch" is much beyond a historical concept at this point,but hijra certainly still exist in the real modern world, in South Asia.

I guess so - maybe ogmor's comment was part of a different subthread than the one I thought. But the point I was trying to make is that men who don't feel specifically female (or entirely genderless) but who might feel like a binary male/female gender doesn't fit them perfectly are probably less likely to feel comfortable admitting it and more likely to "fall in line" as identifying 100% male. Much in the same way that I suspect "hetero" men are more likely to suppress or ignore whatever homosexual feelings they have, whereas I think women are less so.

Just to point out something which ought to be obvious, but the reason there are so few eunuchs today is because eunuchs in the past did not traditionally choose to become eunuchs, but the procedure was imposed upon them at a young age. It was not a voluntary escape from the role of masculinity.

Eunuchs were much more a byproduct of dynastic politics. A careful reading of Byzantine sources will also show that eunuchs were oftentimes were put in command of armies, hardly the place for the flabby, sneaky, soft-spoken stereotype we see in Hollywood movies. Their inability to father children ensured they could not become emperor, making it safer for the real emperor to invest them with near-imperial powers.

I would doubt any of the men in this poll ever considered taking refuge from masculine expectations by becoming a eunuch.

right, was thinking about the workings of masculinity in general rather than as experienced individually. seems curious how common the idea of a sort of third sex is & how it tends to be made up of ppl born male.

Although I agree with you, that most view "third sex" as male-born ppl rejecting maleness (because in most cultures, who gives a fuck what women do amirite etc) but there is always the counter-example of:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albanian_sworn_virgins

new band name

v interesting, i've never heard of the kanun, love how the ottomans indulged this stuff.

Reading these threads with great interest, thx folks.

I'm a cis het dude, but I have a slight frame, somewhat feminine features and wavy long hair, so it is genuinely rare for me to pass a day without being called ma'am and most strangers seem to assume that my girlfriend and I are lesbians. I started embracing it in college, crossdressing a few times a year, etc. Tbh I would do it more, because it's fun and I find it pretty empowering to stop fighting the misidentification for a minute, but I worry that it becomes appropriative past a certain point.

What's kind of interesting to me is how much more comfortable I feel with classically masculine behaviors when I'm wearing a dress or w/e. While I've never felt a strong sense of maleness being "wrong" for me, I tend to have a pretty negative view of it as a whole, and find myself pretty uncomfortable with it. Being a dude doing classically dude things (many of which don't actually have anything to do with maleness, but are just socially coded that way) feels bad, like I'm giving in to this historically destructive force that lives inside me. But when I crossdress, it feels like I'm coming to those behaviors through queer culture, riot grrl, etc, which makes them "okay."

Apologies if this is overly convoluted or vague, I'm still kind of working out what this all means to me.

"Working out what this all means to you" is exactly what this thread is for! So thank you for telling your story, it's a really interesting perspective to hear. I'm kinda wondering what you mean by "appropriative past a certain point"? If you felt like wanted to explain that further, but no big deal if you don't feel comfortable.

(I've been wondering around similar themes myself, lately, like, where "exploration" becomes appropriation, either in terms of cis or cis-ish people "appropriating" trans identities, whatever appropriating means - and also trying to interrogate my discomfort about whether "female" is in itself a marginalised identity, because women are the marginalised sex? It's complicated and I can't explain it. Like, trans in no way implies appropriation. But there's a long feminist discomfort with *cis* men doing drag, whether that's gender exploration as an artform, or a kind of co-opting. I don't know if that's a bullshit idea feminism is trying to outgrow or if there's something to it. But these are only my personal ~issues~ and I'm trying to work through them.)

I guess by appropriative I mean a concern that I'm trespassing in and taking advantage of a space that is rightly reserved for those who need it? Like, I'm a girly fella, but at the end of the day, I'm a basically hetero man, and in the workplace, in my family, when consuming media, etc. I'm treated as such; I have all those privileges. Some people may be a little put off by a skinny dude with long hair, but it's rarely (though not never) put me in danger because my body/self are in conflict with societal norms.

Crossdressing/queer culture feels like a needed refuge that I should be very careful about playing with. I may be overly neurotic about it, idk. I would like to make the distinction between drag and crossdressing, as I've never been particularly interested in the former (at least for myself). If I put on a dress and some makeup, it's with the intention of looking like an average woman you might encounter on the street, not a caricature of/tribute to (depending on your perspective) femininity.

Refuge might be the wrong word, I'm so sorry if my clumsy language offends anyone.

OK, thanks for the clarification. I thought that was what you might have meant, but I just wasn't sure. I think it's a good sign that you're aware of the possibility, that's enough to avoid it. It sounds like you're coming from a really good place, so please don't worry about offence!

I am just having some complicated feelings about a friend (not on ILX) who is going through his own gender journey right now, and some of the things he says really really rub me the wrong way. And I'm 90% sure that it's *my* discomfort and nothing to do with him, and he's doing/saying absolutely nothing wrong (maybe a little naive, but who isn't naive when you start exploring something?) and I'm trying to figure up what is up with *me* that I'm feeling this way. (Or maybe... I don't feel like he's "doing drag" but I do think he is ignoring his male privilege, or rather, *why* women act certain ways, in some respects.)

I've been reading these TERF blogs and while I can understand the wariness some women feel about female/feminine appropriation and commodification, or trans commodification in general, it seems that the line between the "authentic" and the "appropriated" or "commodified" is way too hazy to make a judgement call. And it seems like muddying the gender waters is generally a good thing, that it will lead to something more like a marketplace of gender rather than an imposition of gender.

Do not read TERF blogs, by the way. They are hateful things.

Like, I get that cis-queer/cis-straight-transvestite female performance can reinforce gender stereotypes (or are you talking about a different kind of male privilege I'm not intuiting?), but those brands of femme gender performance undermine masculine gender stereotypes, too. I don't want to say they are always pro-female/-feminine, because I know they can be parodic or misogynistic or just, like, reflexively/narcissistically autoerotic or whatever, but they CAN be and often are pro-female/-feminine.

And maybe making a hard distinction between trans women and cis (?) gender play/gender fluidity/feminine performance reinforces a One True Trans narrative; maybe femme genderqueer people and trans women are more self-realized and more ahead-of-the-curve than the latter more cis-leaning group of people.

That said, I think I get your reservations, at least partly.

OK, it's weird, and I am fully aware that this might be another form of "using the internet to self-harm" but I am completely fascinated/horrified by TERF blogs and pretty much can't stop reading them. I had several friends from the feminist community who suddenly turned TERF (or maybe they always had been, and discovering there were others like them bolstered their courage to speak out about it?) and reading their stuff was like falling down a rabbit hole.

I find TERFs compulsive reading in a way that I don't find, e.g. MRAs interesting, because in so many ways, twist for twist, their logic and beliefs mirror and reflect mine own, right up until the last minute, where I turn left, and they veer off into the right. And I've spent ages trying to figure out where, exactly, we diverge, and why, because "almost right" is way, way more seductive than "not even wrong".

And for me, understanding the idea that some people *do* have a core/innate gender identity has been key to understanding *why* TERFs are wrong. Because I suspect really strongly, that TERFs are women who do not have a strong innate gender identity - and so, because they don't have one, they believe that no one else can possibly have one. It's an easy mistake to make. (But... an inherent part of the whole feminist *project*, as it were, is *believing* that people's self reported experiences are what they say they are, even when they contradict The Privileged View.) So if you put together al these other agreed-upon ideas: Gender *roles* are socially constructed, women are marginalised people, the gender roles assigned to women are de-valued because women are marginalised, women have capabilities and interests way outside their prescribed gender roles, ergo "Gender" itself is kinda bullshit as a concept.

If you put all of these things together when you don't have a clear idea of an innate gender identity, it's very easy to come to the conclusion: "the only thing that makes *me* a woman is my vagina."

However, the moves from "the only thing that makes me a woman is my vagina" to "the only thing that makes *anyone* a woman is her vagina" and "I don't have an innate gender identity" therefore "anyone who says they have an innate gender identity is lying" and on from there to "any male-born person who takes on a female identity is the gender-based equivalent of blackface and ergo just as offensive" <-- these are not logical conclusions you can draw from the above. But without the missing ingredient of an "innate gender identity" they *seem* logically possible.

This is already "tl;dr" so I'm going to hit submit before I go on to "drag" and maybe even the intersection of "male privilege" with this stuff, but I doubt anyone will x-post in this time zone.

"Drag" and "Gender play" and "exploring gender fluidity" and "deriving a sexual charge from dressing as the opposite sex" and "dressing as another gender just to see what it's like" are a big gunnysack of things which are sometimes closely related, sometimes not related at all, which all get dropped into the same bucket. I'm going to try *not* to treat them as if they were all the thing, and talk about "Drag" though there may be some "gender play" mixed in as well.

Drag, specifically, cis men cross-dressing as women as an art-form or performance (though I recognise there is obviously F to M drag, it is seldom as politically problematic) - there are so many ways in which this manifests. Like any other artform, it can "punch" in different ways. There are definitely ways (pantomime dames, some drag routines) in which *women* (either individually, or as a group) or "trans people" are the target. This is not OK; this is never OK. There are other ways, in which "femininity" itself can be made the target. This is still definitely questionable, depending on how much it is understood *why* women perform femininity. "It is terrible and shallow and ridiculous to conform to femininity" is a bad, bad message. "Femininity is kind of a weird and arbitrary thing, and why do we give it so much importance in women and not allow it in men?" is a better message. Which brings me to the third kind of drag, which is drag which "punches" at that whole idea of "gender performance" itself. Both "femininity" and "masculinity" are up for examination and interrogation and championing "femme" and subverting "masculinity" are part of the performance. And this, on the whole is a very, very *good* thing. Then there is "gender-flipping" which isn't even "drag" on the classic level, but is definitely on this continuum, because it's putting "women" in male roles and "men" in female roles, in order to highlight the gross inequalities of gender roles. And this is one of the most powerful and effective tools there is to combat the gender binary.

These categories aren't set in stone, though, and there can be a great deal of fluidity and movement within a single performance, whereby it can move from one to the other. And that requires reading and interpretation and context in order to understand. It's complicated, and I recognise that these things are complex, rather than taking a hardline "drag is terrible!" vs "drag is GREBT!" stance.

And as complicated as all this stuff is, the "discomfort with male privilege" thing is more complicated, still, and I don't know that this is the place for me to think through my thoughts aloud on it.

It comes down to the question: What *creates* Privilege? *Being* something? Or being *treated* as if you were something?

I do think the latter has as much of (if not more than) an effect on creating both "Privilege" and the blindness to that quality as being Privilege.

But this is about Intersectionality, and how having marginalisation on one axis does not erase privilege on another. And it's also about "Passing" and the differences between "being" and "being able to be treated as" but so far as I know, no one except Lex has expressed a desire to have a thread on the complicated politics of passing, as it relates to immigration, race, gender, sexuality, class, and a whole bunch of other things tied in a big knot.

A+ posts BB, thanks

i'd be up for a passing thread if people felt there were issues not suitable for one of the existing priv/race/gender threads

i feel like the relationship between passing and priv is tied up with a lot of contingent things like "how often" and "to what ends?" it doesn't feel to me as if privilege automatically settles on yr shoulders like a cloak of invisibility at any moment when you pass for a more privileged status, because the priv is always stolen and liable to be revoked, maybe

but then is all privilege susceptible to that? is it possible to lose even yr male or white priv in some situations? don't mean purely in intersectional terms but in actual conditions at which a person's gender or race might simply be unacknowledged or challenged

not sure if passing needs a separate thread - feels like a natural fit for the existing priv/race ones (and i don't think i have any thoughts-at-length i need to write about it!) - but feel free if you do of course

I am was about to start a "passing" thread, due to the old Greenspun "Rule of 3" (x-post to Lex, bah) but I just wanted to say this...

I do think that there are aspects of male privilege, in specific, that are not about *being* male, but about "having been raised as if one *was* male" and therefore create a sense of expectations and entitlements in male-raised people, as well as a lack of awareness that those expectations *are* a privilege, that not everyone shares.

When a person who was raised as a cis male asserts that actually they are trans*, that set of male-taught expectations/entitlements are not *erased* by the marginalisation incurred by *being* and *being treated as* trans. They intersect.

(Just as my set of privileges for being a White person are not *erased* by my being an immigrant twice/three times over; however, they do *intersect* in tangible ways.)

The problem is, often if you say this to a trans woman or a Male-raised trans* person, they interpret it as "YOU ARE TERRIBLE" or "you don't have trans marginalisation" or "transmisogyny" or other incorrect assumptions. "You have privilege" means "you were assigned a set of cards, some of which were never even given to other people." You are not responsible for the cards you hold, but you do need to remain aware that other people hold different cards. Holding a good card in one suite does not mean you are not holding another, really bad card, in another suite. But that does mean that that first card, the good one exists, so please keep it in mind that other people do not. (Just as Cis women need to keep in mind that they are holding cards which trans* folk are not.)

I completely understand that this can *read* as transmisogyny, and in many cases, the attitude does go hand in hand with genuine transmisogyny. I'm trying to tease apart the nugget of sense from all the TERF madness, to understand where it comes from. And I also recognise I do have a huge dose of internalised transphobia generated by nearly 2 decades of trying to live in the closet. I'm working on that, but I do think there's a core of truth to be dug out.

Both cards that were "never actually given" and also cards which were "taken away, sometimes by force."

^^^this defines both female marginalisation, *and* trans* marginalisation.

(And I feel icky and gross and transmisogynistic for articulating my thoughts so poorly. But I still have my thoughts and need to work through them.)

when you pass for a more privileged status, because the priv is always stolen and liable to be revoked, maybe

I guess this is another thing about the "I'm not like those other girls" schtick which I admit I leaned on sometimes when younger

not only is it rude/hypocritical/narcissistic/counterproductive (what's wrong with "other girls"? are all other girls "other girls"? wouldn't it be more helpful to persuade people to rethink their stereotypes of "girl" rather than say, "yes, girls ARE like that, except for me"? I'm talking mainly to myself 15 years ago here)

but also, you're making an overt bid for a tiny parcel of male privilege, and it comes with a very short half-life and a high chance of getting your presumption handed back to you, "so we agree that girls are inferior, and you're inferior too" or "huh at least those other girls are ~pretty~"

in further confessions of myself at half my age, I used to have some pretty transphobic attitudes from annoyance that men seemed more able to opt out of manhood into womanhood whereas it seemed all I could opt out of womanhood into was failed womanhood, and a totally unfounded suspicion that they did so because of/by means of emphasis on ideas of womanhood that felt completely alien to me (I suppose because of that "no core sense of gender identity" => "not accepting others may have a core sense of gender identity" thing). but then I actually met some of these Others and realised that
1. it's not actually like that at all;
2. the tiny extent that it is like that is solely due to the transphobic world we live in, so the solution is to be more openminded, not less;
3. this shit is difficult and more power to anyone with the strength and perspicacity to deal with it

(I probably still slip up tho so feel free to call me out, though, uh, this post itself may well need calling out, for which I apologise but if you could keep to calling out the bits I haven't already acknowledged as wrong that would be great, thx)

Yeah, those are very very good points, Spacecadet, and echo many of my thoughts and experiences. (I think I hit on "the qualities of 'girl' are way, way bigger than your stereotypes" earlier, as a way of coping.) But I also had (and to some extent still have) those feelings of "men can become trans women, I can only become a failed girl" - but part of this was due to the whole narrative about trans people, in every goddamn media, was always trans women, trans women, trans women - and I didn't even know that trans men were a real, actual, possible thing in the world until about a decade ago, when I started to meet some - while on the Ladyfest tour, of all places! And part of it was due to those endless accusations, you know, "fucking feminists, they all just want to be men, really." (And what if I secretly did? Was that un-sisterly to the cause? Or just proving anti-Feminists right?)

Except all of these things are due to, well, misogyny, at the base of it.

And the solution is to be more openminded, not less. And to open spaces up, rather than close them down.

And yet, and yet, and yet... I am going to hit submit post now because I have finished replying to things in your post, Spacecadet, and have "examination-needing annoyance at this person on social media" rattling around in my head still, and don't want to mix the two up.

OK, I have thought a lot about this, and while I am still thinking this through, I believe I have got to the nub of the matter, as to why this friend - who I do support and feel like I should be encouraging - is actually on other levels, making me very annoyed, in ways which make me suspect that the annoyance says more about *me* than it does about *them*. They are *out*, and very into online advocacy, so I don't think it's *wrong* to discuss my feelings about them, though I do feel somewhat guilty and maybe underhanded about talking about them, rather than talking with them. (Though, really, how is this different from the "complain about your annoying co-workers" thread, in this regard?)

This person, who is male assigned at birth, has come out as bigender, and has been exploring their feminine gender. Which is interesting, and great, and in many ways a brave, strong, positive move to be making. So why I am so irritated by them in way that I do *not* get irritated at, say, Rev, when Rev puts on a skirt and says he feels very femme.

The last time it happened, the super-irritation, this person said something to the effect of "I am not a man in drag when I'm (in dress, wig, make-up, etc) I am a girl." And at this, my jerk-brain just went "NNNNNOPE!" And I had to think, why? Why am I so resistant to this idea? If a friend told me she was a trans woman, I'd say "Right. You are a girl." If a friend told me they were genderqueer and had masculine and feminine aspects, I'd agree and say "Yes! You are genderqueer!" So why am I so irritated at this person, saying that when dressed as a girl, they are a girl? Do I think they're guilty of (what I called upthread "the gender based equivalent of 'if you called your dad he could stop it all'")? No, I don't. They're super full-on committed to LGBT rights and feminism and living their activism, even if it's kind of a young, enthusiastic Tumblr-y way. So *why* am I still irritated? It must be me.

I started to think about myself. When I play with power tools, and then put on a suit and feel super-manly; and then lookit pictures of hott indie-rock dudes, and think "Right now, I don't feel like a girl desiring men, right now, I feel like man desiring men." - this is what I think: I feel like a man. I feel, specifically, like a gay man right now. Does merely feeling that way *make* me a gay man? It does not. I might *feel* like a gay man, but I *am* still a mind in a meat-locker; a meat-locker that has a vagina and bleeds once a month. If I decided that *feeling* like a gay man gave me the right to waltz into the Gay Threads and say "Hey, guys, I'm feeling really gay right now, give me some tips for how to get the santorum stains off my suit after I bang Interpol in the butt!" I would be laughed out of the fucking room. And rightfully so, because I would feel like I was trespassing on an identity that other people suffer oppression for living in.

So this is what annoys: why the hell does this person get to declare that they "are" a girl when dressed like a girl, when I can only ever get as far as I "feel like" a man when I am wearing a man's suit and fantasising about Daniel Kessler sucking my dick? Is it because I don't have a dick? Or is it because of something in the whole ugly process of being raised-as-a-girl, I have never been taught that I could just *be* and be accepted as being - I always had to justify, I could *seem* or *feel like* or *appear to be* - but just to say "I am this because my say-so entitles me to be"? Not without having to prove it. It's the whole thing many of us keep circling on this thread: do I not have a gender identity because I just don't have one; or do I not have a gender identity because I've been taught to second guess every aspect of my identity that doesn't conform to lousy stereotypes; or because I've been taught that my body will always be second-best, and the other kind is much, much better, but I will never have the *right* to the "best" kind, just this ugly failed girlhood.

So this is, completely, not about him at all. It is about me. And the right to say "I am a body" as opposed to always feeling "I have a body" is an expression of high-grade privilege, and fuck your privilege. In tailored suits and chelsea boots.

Ugh, I am basically a horrible person for thinking all of this.

I dunno, dude (heh), it would annoy me too.

I'm not very well versed in matters of privilege and identity, these are things I rub up against but don't worry about articulating very often. I have friends, relatives, acquaintances and co-workers of all stripes, and thus far nobody has pulled me up for treading on their identities although I suspect I am dreadfully clumsy and they are just polite.

I'm one of those vagina-owners who does not 'get' the desire to identify strongly with a set of prescribed gender norms. I this the most useful definition of gender is 'social construct', leaving the biology and anything that flows directly from the biology to the term 'sex'. Ergo there can be no such thing as 'innate' gender.

'Core' gender on the other hand, well, what the fuck is that supposed to be anyway? Does having one mean one is completely 100% happy identifying with the gender norms associated with one's biological sex? In one's own culture / society / family / house / knicker drawer? What? How can a gender identity ever be *core*, when gender seems to be a) highly personal and b) hard to define and c) fluid (on an individual and cultural level)?

If you need to invent a new gender to describe each person's preferred gender performance, what's the point of having a concept called gender at all? Is it a useful label? Let's say you get tribes of people coalescing around common gender-performance preferences (e.g. sewing and wearing skirts) but the sewing-and-skirts gender can (must, imo) include people of any sex & orientation. What's the utility of it? How does the group identity get maintained, other than by policing of the kind that harms those people who cannot quite meet the requirements?

So yeah, I get pissed off when people say things like 'when I do x I am being a girl', but I get just as pissed off no matter who's doing it, because there is no definition of 'girl' that isn't either idiotic and false (wearing a skirt) or problematic (having a vadge).

'I think', not 'I this'.

Heh. "Dude" is fine, though I've had to train myself out of using it as a gender-neutral form of address, it's just funny when female-persons use it to one another.

I kinda need to stop talking about this for a day or so, because I fear it is becoming thoughtwormy. (Says a person who will probably go on to talk about it at length.) And I'm also realising that annoyance at this person is, really, "annoyance at overly simplistic counters to a bunch of TERF and True Trans Narratives which are really quite complex and nuanced, being reduced down to 140 character slogans" as much as anything else.

But the thing is, if other people insist that they *do* have a sense of innate or core gender, or at least a sense that their genitals do (or don't) align with their sense of what sex they are or should be - who the hell are we to tell them they don't? One can only ever take people at their word, or be an asshole and deny others' personal experience. I can only accept others' self reported descriptions of their selves at face values; that is how I maintain my right to assert that I am, indeed, the way I am, even if that way is different to them.

I can only agree that "being a girl" is not synonymous with definitions that are either idiotic and false, or problematic. But I do not know what the acid test for "girlness" might even be!

http://www.thebolditalic.com/articles/4403-a-machine-that-helps-women-feel-sex-like-a-man-

worst Rex Harrison song ever

does anybody know anything worth reading on gender expression and ways in which it intersects with/evades commodity consumption?

I forgot about this thread. I've been thinking about having a discussion on here about trans/gender/feminism stuff (then inwardly groaning and walking away) for some time because this thread articulates a lot of what I don't understand. But I think one-to-one discussions have been more helpful than messageboard arguments.

I saw this pop up the other day and started writing something really long, then deleted it. I've been having a lot of thoughts recently about my place on the gender spectrum, and really want to talk about it. I feel like this is a safe space to do it because I'm relatively anonymous here -- nobody here knows me IRL or can connect to my social media presence except the few ILXors who are connected to me on Twitter. The only people I've ever discussed any of this with are my wife and a couple of therapists. But it's very nerve wracking to think about discussing publicly or quasi-publicly.