But what does that mean?
You know that instinctual feeling you have when someone addresses you as the wrong gender? That’s what we’re talking about. I get that there are some androgynous people who don’t feel a thing, but most people do.
If I refer to a woman as a man, she sees it as an insult. If I say a guy is being girly, that’s an insult. it’s a violation of identity. The exact things that are male and female vary across cultures, but they all* have the dichotomy. There seems to be an instinctual need to divide between male and female.
Why do you keep insisting on looking at the outside to determine identity?
*I’m sure there are small exceptions, but they are really small. Like male girls (or female men) --who I did not mean to leave out in my previous comment.
Personally, I am a man, but I would swap my male body for a female one any day of the week if I got the offer. But I guess that’s not what you meant.
Are there any gender-conflicted persons out there who think to themselves: “Well, I seem to identify mentally as gender A, but my body is gender B… and it’s awesome, I’m keeping this arrangement”? Or does feeling like gender A always means that, if you have body B, you’ll desire to be restored to the “correct” body?
Does the question even make any sense at all?
** coughs ** Post 77 directly overhead.
Ahh, this feels like me. I’ve never heard anyone else put it like this. I’m a person first, who is both male and female. Neither part is wrong.
If we could somehow painlessly, easily, instantaneously create the perfect ideal body for everyone I’d choose to be neither male nor female but both. Since that ideal will never happen, I’m fine with my body portraying only some parts of me and staying as I am.
Like others have discussed, this identity of mine was self-evident to me by age 6 or so. I came to terms fairly quickly with the fact that my body was only part of what I was and didn’t have any crises. And I enjoy every time strangers, despite my long hair and obvious breasts, flip flop between calling me a man and a woman. Having that aspect acknowledged is really nice.
What prompts them to call you a man? Clothing? Behavior?
The difference is, if someone were to address me as a woman, I would be offended because I know I’m a man, and I know I’m a man because I have male genitals and a male body form. If someone can know that they are male/female despite not having a male/female genitals/body form, then it raises the question; what is a man? What is a woman?
That, more than anything else, is what befuddles me.
A combination, most likely. I don’t style my long hair except for special occasions. I wear comfortable unisex-styled shoes. I don’t wear makeup. I genetically have thick ankles and wide shoulders. I wear men’s clothing a fair amount because it fits and it’s comfortable (women’s fashionable clothing is generally styled too tightly for me). I don’t carry a purse.
I picked up a lot of male mannerisms from the period between 6-14 where I noticed that in media, all the characters that were awesome, cool, powerful, respected, etc were men (King Arthur, Batman, Red Ranger, cowboys, etc). I wanted to be all that too, so I concluded that obviously I had to start acting more like a man if I wanted to be awesome, powerful, etc. Lean against walls, drape your arms across chairs, put your hands in your pockets, roll your gait a little, don’t wear pink, don’t wear dresses. Now it’s just the way I am. Media shaped that part of me a lot.
Apparently my friends generally thought I was a lesbian before they got to know me. I’m not. I’m definitely an androphile.
I don’t have any idea what you mean, and I don’t consider myself androgynous at all. I wouldn’t be completely unbothered if someone mistook me for a woman, but it bothers me when people ask what race I am or when they mispronounce my surname, and I don’t think those are innate aspects of my identity. At least I understand why they ask about race. Since I look very masculine, confusing me for a woman would be like insisting I have blond hair or I’m short and skinny.
I know I’m male, and have no doubt about it, because I physically resemble males and I’ve been told my whole life that I’m a male, a boy, or a man. I can’t imagine what it would be like for those things to be true but to “feel like” a girl or woman, or vice versa. I suppose identifying with girls and women would be part of it, but again, I felt some of that growing up, and occasionally wondered if I’d have been happier as a girl, without it ever occurring to me that I might be one. And as I said, I don’t feel (or look) androgynous in the slightest.
Bemusement is all I would feel if someone misgendered me. I don’t look male at all, so I’d wonder why they thought that. I’m not offended when someone thinks I’m “not old enough to have a child” like a lady I met at the park exclaimed when I made a reference to my daughter, even though obviously looking like you are twelve is not a compliment. If I did look male but identified as female, the mistake would be logical, so I would still not care.
I’m not androgynous, whatever that means.
Obviously many of us don’t have that “instinct,” so I am doubtful of it being as instinctive as you say. Calling anyone “girly” is an insult, because society equates being weak, prissy, helpless, and incompetent with being a girl, and calling anyone the gender you know they are not is insulting because it is clearly an attempt to insult someone. That isn’t really related to “feeling” male or female. “Feeling” male or female can’t just mean you aren’t offended when someone uses a particular pronoun, so you must be that thing.
Why worry so much about having a “gender identity” at all?
I think for some people “being a man” means absolutely positively nothing other than “having male physiology”. And you may be one of them.
It’s rare. For most people, there’s a huge and complex morass of notions that “go with” having the male physiology. Ever heard the phrase “prove you’re a man”? Are you acquainted with the notion that the demand to “prove you’re a man” would not be satisfied by yanking your pants down and showing that you do indeed have male physiology?
See also “be a man about it”, and the adjective “manly” to refer to something other than male physiology.
Along the same lines, phrases like “a real man”, not automatically applied to anyone with male physiology but reserved for those who exhibit a lot of those other characteristics that I alluded to. “Act like a man”. “Man up”. Also lots of things (other than male bodies) that are described as “manly” including behaviors, aesthetic tastes, preferred ways of spending time and other priorities and values, and so on and so forth.
For the sake of contrast, perhaps you have heard males taunting other males with hostile phrases that imply that the male being taunted is not a man? “Pussy”, for example?
You’re either nodding with recognition or you’re not. Assuming that you are, consider that most people growing up against that backdrop internalize those extra notions and that taken as a whole they can hold the same importance as the physiology when it comes to their idea of what “man” means. Or perhaps more importance.
There’s a phrase you may have heard: If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck. If it looks like a man, walks like a man, acts like a man, talks like a man, then if the only thing missing from the picture is the specific male anatomy, is it a man? What else would it be instead, a woman? A woman who looks like a man, walks like a man, acts like a man, talks like a man, but has female parts? Or does it make more sense to say what we have here is a man who looks like a man, walks like a man, acts like a man, talks like a man, but has female parts? And that’s from the outside. The real important thing is how the person perceives his (or her) self. This person is no doubt aware of having female equipment but is also aware of having nearly everything else in common with men, not with women. Why should the plumbing be the primary determinant when the important outcomes of identity is who you hang out with, who else you consider to be like you are, and which assumptions about how you like to be treated are going to come closest to the mark?
People are told to “be a man” when they:
- Presumably have a penis and testicles and
- Are acting like sniveling weaklings, i.e. “women”
This is society’s idea of what “being a man” is, NOT an inherent internal state. If your behavior/demeanor inspires others to call you a woman and degrade women in the process, the conclusion that you must therefore be a woman is based on the bigoted views and accusations of observers. Sure, the idea that you can get a pass to cry and be a weakling by declaring yourself a woman has more appeal that being a snivelly male weakling I guess, but that doesn’t make one a woman.
Perpetuating the idea that there is looking “like a man,” acting “like a man,” etc. perpetuates the offensive idea and reinforces the false dichotomy that men are strong, while women are weak, men are rational, while women are emotional, etc. instead of contributing to knocking it down.
The tone of your post here implies that a male-bodied person who identifies as a woman is “settling” in order to “get a pass”.
I don’t need your permission to cry. I’m not weaker than male-bodied people who react to the sissy-shaming game by masculinizing themselves enough to end the harassment.
I don’t regard women (or girls) as in any way inferior. I suppose I’ve gotten over thinking they are a superior life form, but that’s because I outgrew the “people like me” chauvinism that caused me to think of myself (and the other girls, the female girls) as better than those alien creatures the boys.
As I’ve said before: I didn’t start this shit. Other people made an issue of me not being like other boys and of being like one of the girls instead. Other people said I was girly. Other people said I wans’t like other boys. And in response to them making an issue of it, I said “yeah, so?” and realized I agreed with them and that I was quite proud of it.
Then decades went by and it’s been how I identify for far far longer than not. I don’t need your permission to identify as a girl or woman.
Settling for being a woman? No, since the person isn’t the one who has deemed women inferior in the scenario–it’s the accuser who clearly has. They aren’t saying “you are a different, but equally good thing” when they call someone a pussy. They are saying men are better than women in general, but that person in particular doesn’t measure up.
My permission? A man who cries is a man, crying. Nobody of any gender needs anyone else’s permission to cry or wear pink or whatever.
Society clearly transmits the opposite message when men are accused of being like women to mean that they are weak.
That reinforces that it is not an internal state of “feeling like a woman” or “feeling like a man,” but a reaction to external circumstance.
Obviously not. As a woman though, I hope you can understand how I, a woman, am not happy about a person essentially saying “I cry and I’m weak, so I am a woman.” A man can cry every time he breaks a nail, wear nothing but pink lace ball gowns, and dream of marrying a handsome prince, yet still be a man.
I’ve always felt pretty androgynous, ever since I was a tiny kid. When I was little I wanted to be a boy, and for a while I wondered (retroactively, since obviously as a kid in the '70s I had no idea) whether I was trans. But as I spent more time sorting myself out, I realized that what I really want to be is neither male nor female. As far as I’m concerned, it only matters when it does (that is, during sex). The rest of the time, I’d really just rather be “me,” without gender being part of the equation. I love the look of androgynous people. I want the freedom to act like a guy (which I do in a lot of ways), dress like a guy (which I do in even more ways) and have no interest in things like babies and childrearing (which I don’t), but still enjoy things that would be considered effeminate for real guys. What I definitely don’t want is for people to treat me a certain way due to assumptions they’ve made based on my gender. Any time they try, I set them straight fast (sometimes a bit overly emphatically) and I don’t get along well with people who insist on cubbyholing me as “female, so treat her these ways.”
I’ve been really lucky that I’ve endured very little of what might even be generously called sexual harassment, and I’m grateful for that because I’m sure I wouldn’t deal well with it.
If I woke up tomorrow as a guy, I’d probably be cool with it, except that it would kinda mess up my 26-years-and-counting happy marriage. 
If that weren’t a factor, I don’t think I’d have an issue with it at all, honestly.
Sorry for jumping down your throat AnaMen. I don’t think our perspectives are all that different, so much as our choices in how to conceptualize and describe them.
I’m sorry if anything I’ve said has touched a nerve. My problem is with the enforcement of gender “norms,” not any individual’s response to their self-appointed guardians.
My general response to someone accusing me of not being a real man would be to not care, because I know what I am and I don’t need to prove it to anyone.
I can see the point you’re making that some people might associate the concepts of “man” and “woman” more with cultural expectations than with the facts of biology, but it’s an alien one to me.
I’m another who doesn’t entirely understand what gender identity means. I’m a kinda butch woman. I’m straight, and I’m old enough that “trans” wasn’t one of the things I even considered as a kid. I did sometimes wonder if my life would be easier if I were male. But I never really objected to being female.
I have a close friend who recently came out as trans. At first, I think he intended to transition to female, but after a lot of therapy he’s decided to live as a gender-transgressive man who wears frilly feminine clothing. He sometimes thinks of me as trans. I think the major difference betwee the two of us is that I was raised by feminists, in an age when it was socially acceptable for girls to do “boyish” things. So no one ever told me “you have to act this way because you are a girl”. So I grew up comfortable with my sex, even if I never really felt very feminine. In contrast, he was constantly told not to be effeminate, and guided towards “masculine” things.
I doubt that all gender disphoria is caused by how people are reared, but I bet that’s an aggravating factor in a lot of cases. And I suspect the disproportionate number of transwomen as compared to transmen among Americans today is due to it being so much easier for a woman to “act male” than vice versa.
This argument confuses me a little. Most trans people “pass” better as the gender they were orginally assigned. That’s sort of how it got assigned to them, after all. I assume they mostly transition for reasons other than wanting to avoid being beaten up.
Huh, I think I’d know exactly what to do with it. I may even have had one in dreams from time to time. But I’ve never felt like I missed having one or anything. And I’ve had lots of dreams of flying. I guess my dreams aren’t all that tightly bound to my body.
Well, the ones I’ve known have mostly dated bisexual women. I guess it’s harder if you are trans and not into women.
Nope, I have no clue what that feeling might be. I have a deep voice, and am often mistaken for a man over the phone. I don’t care. I don’t usually even bother to correct the person unless they need to know who I am.
This is a fascinating thread. The human condition is truly diverse.
For myself, I can imagine having a women’s body. I would be okay with that. I just don’t think it would be much fun on a day to day basis - with the boobs and all the cleaning issues. Even given that I would be OK.
In terms of having sex, yes, I could be the vagina-having partner. For the right partner.