Don’t know what “pear white” is, Matt. If I drink some, it won’t, like, do something to me, or anything, right? Not that there’s anything wrong with that! Its just, well, a little late in the game to change jerseys, ya know?
And “address your post”? Like post #345, addressed specificly to you? Shitfire, brother, that post is longer than my attention span! You lost me, advise.
It’s Celestial Seasonings. Yeah, pretty gay. And my post is #350.
Sorry, don’t know how I missed it. Right there it was. And Celestial Seasonings is gay? Oh, crap, does this mean I can’t buy my socks by the bag at K-Mart anymore?
I accept that what have differences of opinion here, and that they are not likely to be any more resolved than they are. When I say I am an ally of the community, I certainly don’t mean to the extent that you are, and that is unlikely for a myriad of reasons.
Sweet Jesus, Matt there’s a gazillion goddam communities out there, have a heart! I’m only one man! A damn smart one, sure, but still… Cut me some slack here, OK? I mean, you walk down the streets, how many people do you see walking along and pondering the fate of the transgendered community?
If nothing will satisfy but a committment that matches your own, I’m afraid there simply isn’t any chance that’s going to happen. Its not that I don’t care, its that I don’t care as much. There ain’t that much of me to go around! Fishes and loaves only works for Jesus, and I’m not even Jewish. If the good wishes and support I offer is sufficient for your respect, I’m glad, if not…que sera, sera.
For myself, this is the hardest part. I think of myself as mildly to moderately gendered: if I were to describe myself, “male” would not be in the top ten descriptors. It’s just not amazingly important to me. I don’t imagine that I’d be that different were I female.
So when people talk about feeling as if they’re the wrong gender, it doesn’t make visceral sense to me. What does it mean to feel like a male, or feel like a female? I just can’t grok.
There are a lot of things I can’t grok, though. My inability to grok it doesn’t mean that I can’t accept that the seriously gendered folks are telling me the truth.
Their experience of their gender is real, just as real as my lackadaisical experience of mine. As long as they don’t tell me that I really do feel like I’m male, I won’t tell them that they really don’t.
Daniel
I wasn’t referring to the extent of time and energy - just the basic acceptance of the same goals.
To be a trans ally, you don’t have to run for office or spend your nights writing press releases or flyer-poster all day or otherwise storm the barricades. But you do have to accept that they are who and what they say they are and not second-guess them. It’s the irreducible element of trans acceptance. Left Hand of Dorkness talked about it pretty well.
Well, sure, within the parameters outlined by Kimera above, no prob, Bob.
That’s it? I can go out and play now?
Perhaps it doesn’t seem important because you don’t have any questions about it. You’re male, and that’s it. If you weren’t sure, then it would rise in importance level, don’t you think?
I think that was what Leftie was getting at. I’ve actually discovered exactly the same thing; I once related to a trans friend of mine that, if I’m not thinking about it, my gender is completely off my radar. There have been a couple times where it’s actually taken me a moment to remember what sex I am - it’s such an irrelevant matter to me that I just never really think about it. And my friend was shocked - there she is, saving up for sex reassignment surgery, visiting a psychiatrist so she can be prescribed hormones, and of course her gender is an absolutely central thing to her. It’s a big issue in her mind because it’s a big issue in her life; going around with a penis when you ought to have a vagina has got to weigh on your mind some.
I’m pretty sure Leftie was just explaining why it’s not immediately obvious what an important thing this is to some people - I’m pretty sure he wasn’t trying to say it isn’t actually an important thing.
This really doesn’t map well to the issue of LGBT rights. Historically, the biggest challenge that gay rights has had to overcome is one of visibility. This was not a problem for blacks: a black person only had to look in the mirror to understand how he was “different” from mainstream white society. He could look around his family and neighborhood and see plenty of other people who look like him. Visibility wasn’t an issue for race-based civil rights, because race is our most visible distinguishing characteristic. For issues related to sexuality, this is not as easy. If you read coming out testimonials, particularly those from before the emergence of gay rights as a potent political force, you’ll be struck by how often the discovery of the term “homosexual” came as a revelation to people. Accounts of people reading about gays for the first time and having the epiphany, “That’s what I am!” are very common. This holds true for transexuals, as well. It’s important that the gay rights movement include all the flavors of alternative sexuality not just as a way of convincing straight America that we deserve rights, but also to let those who are still closeted or confused as to what they are know that there are other people like them in the world. If the gay rights movement were to present itself as strictly a gay rights movement, and not put transexual rights onto their public agenda, a large portion of the transexuals out there are simply not going to see it as a movement that includes them, and remain isolated and politically powerless.
I’m afraid I don’t understand the distinction you’re trying to make here. Both paragraphs seem to be saying exactly the same thing to me.
Nope–to me, it’s really NOT very important. As a teenager I was terrified of being androgynous, but at some point I thought, “So what if I am?” and life became a lot easier for me.
I’ve felt more gendered as I grow older, but it’s still not especially important to me. I’m not going to get SRS, but that’s because it’d complicate my life, probably reduce sexual sensation, and be painful as hell, not because the idea of being a woman is weird to me.
It’s funny, though: I think most folks feel gendered more heavily than I do, and so (without meaning any offense at all), folks try to understand what I’m saying as if I’m saying I don’t question my gender, instead of understanding it as what I’m actually saying. I think that most folks’ gender identity is so ingrained that it’s very difficult to viscerally understand a different approach to it.
Daniel
Well, that explains a facet of your username that I never thought of before! 
Ohmygod I LOVE Pear White. And of course it’s gay; it’s only one L away from the greatest action star of the silent screen. Plus it’s my new stage name! But only because I’m pasty white and shaped like a pear. . . .
Cool. I’ve heard from a fair number of people who truly don’t feel much identification with the gender they usually identify as, whether to the point of IDing as androgynous or nongendered, or just IDing on the basis of their genitals and not much else. It certainly stands to reason that some people would have a greater or lesser sense of gender.
I spend a lot of time without a particular feeling of gender myself. Other times, when I do feel my gender, it’s apparent that I’m feeling something very different from the sensation that other men identify as “feeling like a man,” which is part of the reason I ID as genderqueer.
That’s just your testicles dropping. I assure you it’s perfectly normal.
I am unable to understand this. I want to understand it. Can you explain?
First, ha-ha about the testicles dropping.
Second, are you right-handed? If you woke up tomorrow lefthanded, would it devastate your self-image? Do you ascribe a set of personality traits to being right-handed, and do you sneer at right-handed people who do not have those traits?
That’s about how I feel about gender. I am left-handed, but if I woke up tomorrow as a right-handed person, it wouldn’t have a great impact on my identity.
Daniel
I’m glad you took it the way I meant it.
Actually, I’ve always been ambidextrous, dominantly right-handed. I’m a lot more left-Able now than I was last year, though. (Jesus, I hope I’m not stumbling into some kind of lurid innuendo here. Evil Captor, can I get a ruling?)
I guess I just don’t understand your analogy.
Yeah, I’ve long figured that I’m some variety of genderqueer. I don’t particularly feel “male” most of the time (it’s enough of a revelation when I actually do something “manly” that I actually wrote about one such experience in this thread.) I actually think if I could wave a magic wand and become female, with fully functioning genitalia (and preferably not with broad, manly shoulders) and so forth, I would consider it. I have no particular discomfort with my wang or any feeling that it doesn’t belong, but I think “IDing on the basis of [my] genitals and not much else” is a pretty accurate description of my approach to the whole thing.
You’re assuming I fully understand it 
Hm. I have occasionally felt a very strong sense of my gender. It seems to me to have the same impact on other men when they identify “feeling like a man.” But it seems to be quite different from feelings so identified.
Most men, even if they’re not at all stereotypically macho, seem to share some kinds of experiences that they regard as being essentially masculine, or somehow affirming their masculinity in a positive way. I don’t share any such experience. When other men have tried to include me as “one of the guys,” it’s fallen completely flat. It’s not just a matter of not being interested in the activity - it’s a feeling of who ARE these people?
Men in general seem to have this thing of a sense of their masculinity or maleness, however defined, which I don’t really have to anywhere near the same extent; in its place there’s this unusual bunch of feelings and impulses that seem to be my gender.
I burp and fart a lot.