I am starting to think we need a term for people like Arwin and others who try to claim there is no such thing as gender identity. Why not “genderdeaf”? It’s certainly understandable that someone who doesn’t experience a sense of their own gender would be prone to believe that there is no such thing as gender; their own lack of experience wrongly leads them to deny that anyone else could have such an experience.
Or maybe you have a gender identity that matches the body you were born with, so you don’t have to think about it the way a person with a mis-match would. Maybe you wouldn’t be as comfortable as you think if you were stuck in an opposite-sex body.
I’m not saying that this is the case, merely that it’s possible.
Very silly but potentially helpful analogy: I hate to shave my legs. I’m happy to just leave them “natural”. I think it’s silly that other women waste so much time and energy on body hair removal. Why can’t they just be happy the way they are? I’m not embarassed to wear shorts without shaving, so why should anyone else be?
Then again, my leg hair has always been sparse and light. I’m not actually running too far afoul of conventional beauty standards by leaving it alone. I’m obviously more comfortable with my natural leg hair than most other women, but is this because my personality is such that I’m inclined to be happy with my natural leg hair or is it because I lucked into the type of natural leg hair that I would be happy with?
Oh, I do hope that no one takes the above as trivializing the realities of being transsexual, or reducing it to a merely cosmetic matter. It’s just the first example I could think of to illustrate the idea that some people may be happy with their bodies because they’ve got the basic bodies they’d have chosen for themselves, not because they really have no preference.
Ummm . . . .
duh.
:slink:
OK, one final time, since I assume that I’m lumped in with Arwin here:
I’m not saying there’s no such thing as gender identity.
I’m not saying gender dysphoria isn’t real.
I’m not saying that gender dysphorics shouldn’t receive any and all treatment necessary to make them as happy as possible. Quite the opposite, in fact.
I am saying that I, personally, do not have a strong gender identity.
That’s it. No judgement, no denial of rights, no belittling, no accusations, no insults.
I’ve heard the term “gender blind” before, and it’s a term that I’d happily have applied to myself.
Read this from the other side: It’s certainly understandable that someone who, for some reason, has a sense of their own gender would be prone to believe that gender actually exists; their own experience wrongly leads them to deny that anyone else could lack such an experience.
And, for the last time, I’m not denying that other people have the experience. I just don’t have it myself.
There are a number of people who identify as genderless. But I think we may be discussing different things. You, I gather, do identify as a man, if for no other reason than your equipment (which can be part of one’s overall gender experience, and doubtless is for most people). What I’m hearing for you is that this identification is not a subject on which you feel great emotional intensity, which is also fine.
The problem arises, as you say, when some people use their experience to deny that transsexuals can exist. You seem to have gotten caught in the crossfire, as you wandered in with “I don’t understand what it means to feel like a man or a woman” when a different party was using superficially similar terms as the foundation of his/her theory as to why transsexuals just need a good dose of therapy to make them nice, normal, non-trans people.
You said “I’m with Arwin,” and from what you’ve said, I don’t think you are. You don’t understand what’s going on inside a trans person’s head. Arwin doesn’t either, and thereby posits that they do not, in fact, exist.
Well, if someone asks if I’m a man or a woman, I certainly answer “man”, yes.
Great.
Agreed.
OK. But Eve directed a fair amount of vitriol directly at me, which I found most unfair.
Well, I’m with him on some points, such as gender being overhyped in our society. I think everyone would be better off if we could learn to think of it as no big deal.
As I’m sure you can understand, this type of discussion is very irritating for Eve; I think that she was angry enough that she, unfortunately, misunderstood you.
I agree.
At present, however, as I’m sure you realize, 1) some people’s gender is a big deal to them because they are oppressed on the basis of their deviation from gender roles; and 2) some people’s gender is a big deal to them because it does not accord with their physical sex, a situation that would doubtless be palliated, but probably not eliminated, in a world without enforced gender roles.
Fair enough.
Absolutely.
So, is this the most polite Pit thread ever?
You’re not. I was thinking of someone else, actually.
That term, unfortunately, already has a different meaning.
Huh. I wonder if there are parallels between those of us without strong gender identities and those of us without religion? I have an equal lack of visceral understanding for strong gender identity and for faith in a higher power; neither makes sense to my gut. But I accept that as saying something only about me, not about the faithful or the strongly masculine/feminine. This thread reminds me a lot of a recent thread in which the religious were repeatedly called “delusional” by someone who lacked faith.
I dunno, just a thought. I tend to figure that if it ain’t something that can be explained through words, and if it ain’t restricting my freedom, I’m better off just accepting it as a bit of the wonderful variety of folks.
Daniel
Shudder What’s wrong with “they”? Brilliant gender-neutral 3rd-person pronoun, been in use for centuries as singular.
Daniel
The fight against ignorance takes a long time. I was on this board for at least a year before I figured out that gay people were the same as me in all the ways that really mattered. A year and a lot of patience from a lot of dopers repeating the truth over and over and over again. Since then, I’ve seen a lot of other new people show up who are/were in the same place I was. And the same patient dopers keep repeating the truth because that’s the only way some people are going to learn.
If Eve doesn’t have the heart for it anymore, then she needs to stay out of these threads.
Well, in this case, the main problem would be that it’s not a Swedish word :). “They” is certainly the word I’d use for a gender-neutral pronoun in English.
Really? What?
In some cases, I think, people have specifically paged her to the thread-so even when she tries to stay out of it, some people won’t let her.
That we certainly agree on.
Good point. Consider me a co-crusader in this particular fight.
Yeah, that and the gun they held to her head. Give me a fucking break. If threads of a certain type have started to annoy you, don’t post.
It’s really fucking irritating when very tolerant people who don’t want to deny someone any rights at all but simply don’t understand why someone feels a certain way are treated like they are intolerant bigots. Eve owes Priceguy a big apology for that out of line hissy fit.
If you feel like you are the wrong gender and need to resolve that medically, I accept that at face value. What the fuck is it to me? It’s not causing me any harm and there’s one more happy person on Earth at the end. If someone else feels like they personally don’t have a strong gender identity, why can’t that be accepted at face value too?
There was a thread some time back where a woman had a transgendered husband. She married a man who eventually revealed to her, after many years of marriage, that he really was a woman who needed surgery. She went through therapy with him. She helped him choose woman’s clothing and taught him how to apply makeup. She cared for him after the surgery. They are still friends but divorced. However, she still referred to her using the pronoun “he.” After all of the tolerance that she showed, after all she did for her husband, she was utterly flamed for it. For that one little thing after all she did, she couldn’t be shown even 1% of the tolerance and understanding that she gave.
If you want to be accepted for what you are, you have to give back equally.
Haj
I’m not 100% certain, but I have heard gender-blind used as a positive term for people who believe they don’t discriminate amongst the genders. A more common equivalent would be race-blind. In the suggestion of genderdeaf, I think the poster was looking for a negative term to apply to others. WAG, on the last bit, of course.
It’s already been said once in this thread, but I think it bears repeating.
It’s a common mistake to conflate a feeling of being masculine / feminine with a feeling of being male / female. These are not the same thing. You can be a masculine straight male (a Drew) or a feminine straight male (a Steve). You can be a masculine gay male (a Will) or an effeminate gay male (a Jack). All of these variations of masculinity and femininity and sexual orientation have one thing in common. They are all men, and do not believe themselves to be women, and have no desire to become women.
How masculine or feminine one is is certainly a related issue, but it is a distinct one. I am both extremely feminine–as I said in the other thread, I’m pretty sure I’m in the high nineties–and have a gender identity of female. But my being a feminine male did not cause me to identify myself as female. Feminine males, nomatter how feminine they may appear, are male. If you want to reverse it, and say that my transitioning from physically male to female played a part in how feminine I am today, I’d have to agree. But the two conditions are nonetheless distinct.
The following is not directed at any one poster, but is meant as a general response to those who say that they don’t have a sense of being male or female, or have a neutral gender identity. I’m not about to discount another’s personal evaluation of their own identity.
I think what many people may actually be expressing when they say they don’t have a strong gender identity is that they don’t have a strong feeling of being masculine or feminine, and are equating this with not having a sense of being male or female.
Do you have a strong sense of having kidneys? Unless you have some disease or injury to them, you don’t. You are actually incapable of sensation in your kidneys if they are healthy. On the other hand, if Mrs. Six were to perform a pressure strike in just the right place, you’d have a very strong sense of what your kidney felt like. We don’t notice things about ourselves that feel right. You don’t notice your stomach unless you’re hungry or have an ulcer. You don’t notice your tonsils unless they become inflamed or your SO sleeps on the couch because you’re snoring. You don’t take notice of your vision unless it needs correcting.
Now apply this basic idea to gender identity. If your gender identity matches your physical body, you aren’t acutely aware of it, because it feels natural, it feels right. Like healthy kidneys, you probably aren’t even aware that you have one if it is in healthy agreement with your body. For someone whose body doesn’t match her gender identity, for someone who is female but has a male body, there is a keen sense that the body, as a whole, is wrong, down to the very composition of the blood running through her veins.
Those of you who are saying you don’t have a strong gender identity, or that you have a neutral gender identity, I won’t dispute you. But the examples I see listed here all have to do with masculine and feminine sex roles, which are not gender identity. I do want to offer up the possibility that maybe that’s what you’re thinking off, and that possibly you do have a gender identity that matches you physical body, but fail to notice it because it’s a healthy match.