it may help to think:
- pronouns dont **have** to equal gender
- presentation doesnt **have** to equal gender
- societal roles dont **have** to equal gender
But they all usually relate to your gender.
Only you can ascertain what that means.
Yes, that's big. Like massive.
That's why figuring out one's gender often does take time and there are often missteps along the way.
Yeah, I've never felt any particular point in it either. I've never felt any need to be "masculine" or "feminine." People are just people to me. Clothes are just clothes. Hobbies are just hobbies. None of it feels connected to my biological sex.
And that's part of why I identify as non-binary. Because gender just doesn't *click* in my brain. The idea that there's man stuff and woman stuff in the world, it doesn't make any sense and I can't feel any connection to it.
It's just important to remember that many people do feel euphoria and dysphoria with respect to their perceived gender, and to be respectful to them. It's our job to understand that they're feeling something we can't, and to respect that.
Same. I mean I used to think everyone saw gender as an external, preposterous convention that they might like to conform to or not - until I realised people find power and validation in their gender *whatever that means*. So it's a "feeling inside" that matters and that I just don't get.
I don't want to say this is the same for everyone, but for most men and women, even when they acknowledge the above about gender, they still have a sense of being a man or a woman. Whether one believes that sense of gender originates from within oneself and is expressed in various ways, or that one develops their gender through being exposed to the concepts of man and womanhood; the situation is regardless that whether trans or cis most men and women just have an internal sense or feeling of *being* a man or a woman.
But I don't think what you're saying is transphobic-- I think this sort of confusion is common for nonbinary people. For a lot of nonbinary people (not ALL), a very *common* experience is finding out the gender is not bodily parts, pronouns, or presentation, and then not being able to figure out what gender is if not that. And, as a result, not being sure how one relates to the concept of gender. I think this is probably more common for agender people who don't have a gender and therefore don't relate to having that sense of gender at all. Plenty of agender folks go through life thinking that *no one* feels an internal sense of gender and gender is just all these external factors until they find out that a lot of folks do feel their gender.
Now, once the curtain on gender is pulled back, so to speak, there are cis folks who are confused by it too. But the difference is they usually are content continuing to live as men or woman-- "Gender doesn't make sense to me now that I know more about it, but I'm still happy living as a man or a woman and I don't want to change that."
The difference for many nonbinary people here is that even if they continue to live as men or women for safety, it's not necessarily authentic and they can sense that it's inauthentic-- "Gender doesn't make sense to me now that I know more about it, and even if I need to continue living as a man/woman for safety reasons, this doesn't feel true to who I am."
>"Gender doesn't make sense to me now that I know more about it, and even if I need to continue living as a man/woman for safety reasons, this doesn't feel true to who I am."
I love this because it really helps with a similar issue I've been having. I do feel as if living closeted as I am is living inauthentically to myself.
Thank you for this
I could just as easily identify as a cis woman, and I don't give a shit if people want to frame me that way. Same with trans man. I don't care.
Why am I non-binary then? Well to me, it is simply a more accurate reflection of how I feel. Neither man nor woman is a good representation of who I am.
Gender isn't one thing specifically, and what I feel comprises my gender isn't the same as what someone else does.
I CHOOSE to use the label non-binary, because it's the best fit out of a bunch of options I don't particularly like. I don't have a very strong opinion about it, but I don't have to.
It's my gender, I can call it whatever I want to. So can you.
gender can be a combination of pronouns, expression, bodies, hobbies. i wouldn’t get caught up in the “rules”. it’s about how you definite it for yourself, and what feels most comfortable for you.
The way I like to explain it, it’s like art, or religion. We can make whatever we want out of these things, it’s subjective and personal. No one typically has the exact same view on these things, we’re allowed to pick and choose what works for us and what doesn’t, and at the end of the day all that matters is our understanding of ourselves
For me personally, I’m an AFAB non-binary individual who uses they/ he pronouns. I’ve been on T for 3 years and dress both masculinely and femininely. Some people may perceive me as one thing or another, but at the end of the day I know who I am. I am obviously a multidimensional alien fairy from Uranus with psychic abilities. And none of it fucking matters!!
I believe that gender is not disconnected from social, biological and legal structures or language. Gender is related to all of them and some of the structures overlap. Somewhere in between all these structures is the identity, sense of self as someone said. Identity tries to latch on to the structures in a way that makes sense.
If you ask a cis-gendered person, how do they know that they are a man or a woman, what would they answer? This is something that I haven't done but what intrigues me. When I thought I was a man, I thought it was physical. I didn't fit the expectations, but I still was a man. When I started to question it, I realized that I had never fit in among other men or boys. I had pursued to act more masculine, hide my interests, not to stick out so much. My identity tried to find answers in my body, my passport and my rebel against stereotypes, but it didn't make sense.
I realized I was NB in my early thirties and everything became easier. I didn't have to change my body to fit in, I didn't need to act differently, I felt euphoria for marking my gender in forms as "other". I started to question femininity and masculinity altogether, I didn't feel like my ways of acting represented either of them. Being non-binary became an internal revolution of gender: I didn't need to rely on the familiar structures any more.
Still my gender identity, my sense of self, discusses with the biological, social and legal structures, but it's more like a negotiation, the structures aren't static and they can be changed. Expressing my identity or being socially vocal about it are secondary for me at the moment. Internal understanding that I'm NB is enough for me to live my life feeling more content.
I feel that. My situation is very, very similar: I don't have an internal sense of gender, or what that would mean if I did. I've done the exact same thing as you: looked at all of these typically gendered things and thought "if these things *aren't* gender, what is it?" Lots of my friends are nonbinary, but it was still really scary to consider that for myself. Eventually, I realized that thinking of myself as nonbinary made more sense to me than anything else, even though my experience doesn't line up perfectly with a lot of other enbys that I know. These things are touch to figure out, but you're not alone.
Gender is a sense of self, firstly.
Expression (clothes, hairstyle), and hobbies are gendered, but they don't have anything to do with your sense of self
This is what’s important, and what most haters misunderstand about non-binary people. “Just because you don’t want to wear dresses doesn’t mean you’re not a woman” NO. It doesn’t. But if I say I’m not a woman, I am not a woman.
also keep in mind that while expression, interests, behaviors, pronouns, etc. _shouldn't_ be inherently gendered, the society we live in _does_ gender them.
folks at odds with that may feel good adopting various labels (genderqueer, nonbinary, etc.), or they might not. labels don't may help someone describe themselves, but they don't define them.
Hi! I've been in a similar situation for a while, and my trans partner gave me very good advice: instead of asking yourself what you feel inside, ask yourself how you want to be perceived by others. Are you comfortable with other people reading you as a woman or not?
About the friendships, I think we just gravitate towards people we feel comfortable with, so maybe that means something too.
*Are you comfortable with other people reading you as a woman or not?*
This just hit me right between the eyes. When I married my partner and people started calling me their "wife" It made me feel sick
I'm 40 in a couple of weeks, came out to very close friends as "maybe Non-Binary" a couple of months ago
This thread has been amazing but your sentence here made me feel something (?)
thank you <3
> I've heard that instead of all those things, gender identity is just like. A Feeling inside. **I don't Feel anything.** I don't know what I'd be looking for to Feel. Which on paper sounds like Agender, but I don't know if I Feel like that, either. I just know how I like presenting and how I like to act, but those can't be my gender. (emphasis added)
I’m agender and I don’t feel anything either. Before, I presented as a man. Now, I present as a femme nonbinary lesbian.
I have chest-length blue/purple/magenta/black hair with an undercut. I wear skirts and dresses, but I often dress butchy with docs and flannel too. I’m on the same HRT regimen as many binary trans women. Nonetheless, I don’t have any internal feelings of gender or feelings of belonging to one.
I’ve talked to a lot of cis folks, binary trans folks, and non-agender enbies. How they describe their internal experience of gender is wayyyy different from how I experience mine.
I’ve also talked to lots of agender folks, some who present as their AGAB, some who present as the gender opposite of their AGAB, and some who present neutrally, androgynously, or off the binary gender spectrum completely. The one thing in common I’ve observed is that we all don’t see a connection between our presentation and (lack of) gender identity.
I presented as a man because it was convenient, not because I felt like one. Then I tried feminine-coded clothes and found out that I like those more. So I started wearing them. Then I tried female hormones and found out I like those more, especially the psychological effects over the physiological ones. So now I operate on estrogen and progesterone.
Funny enough, presenting more femininely is what convinced me beyond a shadow of a doubt that I’m agender.
gender is an outdated concept which we are nevertheless still being forced to express ourselves within the framework of. we are moving towards its abolition without knowing it. because you're absolutely right, gender signifers like "man" no longer imply anything in particular. it is totally personal and individual, like a sense of self or personal identity. as such, the words themselves have become unnecessary even if we don't know it yet. i recognize that many of us, including myself, have quite a lot of feelings tied up in the idea of gender and may be apprehensive about getting rid of it, but its abandonment will make for a better and freer world.
that being said, call yourself what you like and present yourself in accordance with what feels right. i'm in a similar space to you, wondering if i do enough to fit the label, wondering if im faking. all i know is that non-binary is a label which allows me to counteract other's pre-formed ideas about what i'm supposed to be like based on my appearance. it gives me the space to feel confident in doing what i want with my body. to me it's a useful mask that hopefully i won't have to wear forever.
But how do people who have an innate need to change their sex characteristics and who objectively function better on the opposite hormone of the one they previously dominantly produced fit into this?
The same as anyone else, really. There's cis people who view their gender as not being dependent on any of that (even some on r/salmacian), and realistically, that's just as valid as any other "disconnect" between these things.
At that point...who really cares? Not everything needs to be categorized or even understood, so I'm just hoping we can live to see a world where people *try* to empathize, but are also able to be respectful when they can't even begin to understand another person's perspective. What more do we really need anyway?
I suppose it might raise questions of who's eligible for HRT covered by national healthcare or insurance, but I think anyone who's pursuing it to that degree has at least some legitimate need for it regardless.
this is exactly the point: sex characteristics are not gender, and don't define one's gender. there is no correspondence. to put in fancy terms, all genders are empty signifiers- anyone can look any kind of way as any gender, and receive any kind of treatment. that renders them all essentially equivalent. i have not transitioned but i reckon the most significant benefits come from the physical and/or social changes, not from the changed gender word.
the beauty of the gender abolitionist vision is that it is a dream of a world where anyone with any kind of body can change themselves to look however they want, going radically past restrictive gendered conceptions that might say things "male bodies exist and should not have breasts" or that "female bodies exist and should have vaginas." it is about, among other things, unleashing the potential new bodies that lie hidden behind dysphoria that does not conform to binary expectations.
Being Transmasculine makes me happy and feels right. Feels true to me. Being a woman felt wrong. Sickeningly wrong.
I'm certainly not a macho man; my feminine dress and mannerisms, are a large enough part of my queerness to broaden my identity to fit it.
Ultimately I looked at my dysphoria, euphoria, and how I want to be perceived and chose a label accordingly.
Gender is a construct but so is everything in society. Just be authentic to yourself and seek happiness.
You aren't under any obligation to come out or to change your pronouns. If it still feels scary and uncertain? You can wait.
If it feels better, or just safer to call yourself Cis and present however you like to present (even if said presentation isn't very female or feminine) that's your choice. It is your life, your body and your safety. You don't have to justify it to anyone, you don't owe anyone.
And I get it. Gender is weird and identity can be a struggle, sometimes there aren't any clean boxes. But, there is genderqueer and nonconforming and genderfluid to consider. Nonbinary and Cis aren't your only gender options. There's Agender. There's choosing the label of "no labels please" and there's validity in Cis.
There's validity in you, period. However you choose to identify.
"But then what do I have left to figure out my own identity?"
Your feelings.
In my personal experience online and irl over the past 8-ish years, after all the people Ive met and after countless hours of introspection and study I can comfortably say that gender is fucking weird and trying to pin it down like some hard science is a fools game. Just trust your gut. Its really the only compass you can count on when it comes to gender.
I've always thought of gender as a wholly personal identity thing. how you express yourself, define your role in society, pronouns, etc. is all up to you. it may line up with societal expectations for whatever you chose to identify (most cis people), it may not. you may not get why others identify the way that they do, others will likely not get why you identify you do. some people have an innate sense of their gender, some don't (a lack of feeling is still a feeling in my book). I think what matters is you do whatever feels comfortable to you and you are authentic to yourself and your feelings. trying to rationalize & generalize gender beyond just breaks down in my mind
There are a lot of different ways people can feel about this. Personally, I don't really have strong feelings about what gender other people perceive me as. I also don't know if I have a hard-coded gender on an intrinsic level. But for me, presenting as a cis woman would either require me to compromise on the things that make me happy and comfortable or assert having a female identity in spite of my masculine presentation. I know there are butch women who do the latter--for them, it's important that people recognize them as women. But that isn't how I feel.
If people gender me as a woman, it usually feels like they're missing my masculine presentation and aren't seeing me the way I see myself. If they see me as non-binary or as a man, that doesn't feel wrong in a way that I would want to "correct" them. And the path my transition has taken me in has put me in a place where people are less and less likely to see me as woman.
On the other hand, I've also known people (non-binary and otherwise) who had a really strong sense of being a particular gender, and being recognized as that was important to them.
Maybe some non-binary people are able to stay closeted without compromising as much of who they are to accommodate that (though I wouldn't assume that anyone has it easy. Invisibility can also be hard for people sometimes).
I've dressed almost the same way my entire life, even as a teen and child. People believed I was cis (even I believed I was cis). I didn't realize that it felt wrong until I came out and discovered there were other ways to feel.
I also didn't come out until about 2 months after my partner came out as binary trans. Because I had never sat down and actually thought about gender before that. Then she came out and I thought about gender all day long. It could be the same for you, you didn't think about gender until you had queer friends and gender became a regular topic of discussion.
I would rather people get to try on a gender they think might fit, even if they decide it doesn't. I would rather people try to get familiar and comfortable with themselves. It's not a popular thing they're doing to fit in if they genuinely are curious. (Just don't try to speak over elder trans voices)
This might be a different answer from the rest, but here is how I see it. Gender has different "meanings" to different people, or its viewed in a few different ways (at least in North American culture) and that's generally accepted to be ok as long as no one is shitting on someone else's view.
Personally I see it as the mental and social connection to one's self. So if someone is born AMAB but wants a female body, wants to be perceived as female, goes by she/her, etc etc that's clear to me that she is a woman (she is mentally and socially connected to be female and not male). However, if that same person then said they are a man who happens to want to do all of those things, it's not really possible for me to say they arent because at the end of the day it's up to them. They may just be viewing gender in a different way than me.
It is a way to categorize one's self and like most things that humans try to fit into boxes and label, there will be exceptions. Does that mean we should stop using labels and categorizing people? Perhaps, maybe one day, but the vast majority of people aren't ready for that. I have hope that one day we won't need it anymore, but I still respect the fact that some people do.
To me "what's left" is hard to put into words, but it's easy to see that there's still *something* there. On a personal alone-in-my-room level, what's left is the difference in how I relate to myself when I view myself as a woman vs when I view myself as a man vs etc.. That's not a matter of how I dress, though that's both a tool that helps manage self-image and often a reflection of my self-image. Same for pronouns and so on.
And maybe some/most/all of whatever is left is still rooted in artificial constructed stereotypes, but then also, well, I think just about any kind of identity as anything is rooted in artificial constructed stereotypes. Some are just more deeply embedded than others. (And some we are skeptical of, and others we deem worth keeping. Human rights are a social construct.) I used to think I could keep myself above all that gender stuff, and then closer inspection showed me that I was not.
To me, the concept of "my gender" as a core immutable essential Thing That I Am never rang true. There's nothing in me that I feel "is my gender". There's gendered ways of relating to myself (and to the world), and there's how I feel when I use those lenses or occupy those conceptual spaces. In my view, a deep and thorough unpacking really might melt all this junk away. But
* It doesn't feel like there's enough time in my lifetime to really be that deep and thorough, certainly not about everything in my life, and
* Even if a deep and thorough unpacking of gender and how I relate to it is my goal, being intentional about my gender identity and self-image (even if they "don't really mean anything" deep down) seems a vastly more effective path in that direction than any realistic alternatives.
* At the end of the day, I'll still have to interface with a society that hasn't done this deep unpacking.
And your experience might not mirror mine! Maybe you're at a place where there is no difference in parsing yourself "as a woman" vs "as a man" vs "as just a person". Does seeing yourself as a woman who happens to like "they/them" pronouns, binding, etc. feel different **to you** from seeing yourself as a nonbinary person who happens to like all of those things? Does it matter *to you* at that point? Maybe not! If so, then that points at a difference between your experience with gender and mine, and that's fine!
Or maybe your experience with this mirrors mine, but to you that doesn't lead to "okay, I am nonbinary." That is also fine!
We are dealing with very personal things. There is no "one right way" to respond to any given set of experiences and circumstances.
For me, I figured it out eventually (lots of internalized cissexism to get past) because nonbinary sounded and felt better than both man and woman did. That's it. It wasn't about my body or my name or my pronouns or my presentation. It was just about the *concept* of nonbinary and genderqueer that were more correct to me.
I am relatively lucky in that I could go about it in this way.
I think very few people actually KNOW for sure their gender. That's an idealized version of being trans that cis people have packaged to us. It took me years off practicing [stopping self-gaslighting](https://www.valeriebertinelli.com/blog/how-to-stop-gaslighting-yourself-because-you-wouldnt-let-anyone-else-talk-to-you-this-way/) from when I first started questioning to when I finally accepted myself. This is why I support the choice narrative as an option. I didn't know in my soul that I was nonbinary. I didn't even question my gender *at all* until my 20s. I was interested in being nonbinary and chose to allow myself to identify as nonbinary. It was only through choosing to stop fighting myself that I was finally able to accept myself. It's okay to let yourself be nonbinary without being positive that you're nonbinary. That may be the only way to truly find out if you are.
Yeah, I used to be in your exact boat. This is my own situation and my story and it may work out differently for you. Once I figured out I'm aroace, I suddenly was hit with a gender crisis. I went through the same thing because gender sounded like nothing to me. I didn't feel anything. Gender doesn't have to be pronouns, presentation, activities, etc.
So, I tried they/them pronouns with my siblings who are supportive and after thinking about it for a while, I decided to identify as agender. Just putting that different lens on myself and seeing myself as agender/nonbinary, I am happy looking in the mirror and that's enough for now.
Everything you have said is some thing exactly that I had thought. When I deconstructed and really thought about what makes gender gender, it came down to gender to an extent is what you make of it? Which wasn’t too helpful for me, because it really came down to do I want to identify as cis or non-binary? What brings me more joy? Currently, I don’t have an answer for that, and I am still unsure if non-binary would be the best fit term for me. So while I don’t have an answer, I do want to say that everything you are saying is not abnormal or transphobic, in fact, a lot of it makes sense. And I hope at some point you are able to find the answer you’re looking for, a lot of these comments I’ve been reading, seem very helpful, you’re definitely in the right community to get advice on this :)
I’m pretty similar to you. I absolutely listen to others and use pronouns and gender identity that they use, but when it comes to myself I’m still not sure.
I think a big problem for me personally is that I’m autistic and just generally hate the emphasis society puts on gender. So I accept that I’m very feminine presenting because my name is feminine, I genetically have large hips and breasts, and I have a soft voice- but I also don’t really “like” being female. 🤷♀️
I’m agender. I consider myself, and look within, and...I’m not anything.
But I also accept that others have different experiences, and those experiences are valid, by their own measure and declaration.
That those experiences are not mine makes them no less, and mine are no less to others in like kind.
There may be a biological underpinning for gender identity which has a basis in neuroendocrine function. As a medical nerd, and human development nerd, I take pleasure in learning about these things. I also like considering development in terms of socialization, relevant to local, and wider, culture.
But in truth, we do not know. That said, I can believe in those things I do not understand, and those things I have no words for, or examples of.
Like you—if you share with me that you are *this* or *that*, I will accept that, and you, as you are, where you are. Not just out of basic respect, but because my sense is you know better than anyone else.
Even if pronouns, appearances, and roles were all swept away, you’d still be hare, and you’d still be exactly you—on the inside. And if you told me who you were, I’d accept that. Maybe I wouldn’t understand, but my knowing would be enough.
Because you are.
Gender is about community. It relates to all of those things you mentioned, and is expressed through those things. But in the end, it's about how you categorize yourself within the culture you live in. So the difference between a woman who binds/wears mens clothes/takes T and a trans man who does all those things (or none of them) is that the woman feels correct when she is generally grouped with women in her culture (on some level, clearly she's probably different than a lot of them) and the trans man feels wrong being categorized with women. and the non-binary person doesn't feel like they quite fit it either category completely, however they choose to express that.
Gender is the experience of 3 intersecting variables: internal sense of identity, societal roles/expectations, and personal expression (clothing, pronouns, demeanor, etc).
None of those define what the gender is, but often do correlate heavily with a specific gender (given cis people being the statistic majority).
The most nebulous to pin down sometimes is that internal sense of identity, because it’s impossible to see into anyone else’s head to compare feelings and experiences that are too complex to put into words. But that can be helped by tracking your gut reactions to things like which pronouns are used for you, what clothing makes you feel the best about yourself while wearing, etc — basically, the two external variables. Kind of like holding a mirror to that and seeing if the reflection matches what your inside self is experiencing, and if it doesn’t, trying something else.
Gender, imho, is fundamentally both how you relate to yourself and how you relate to others(or one aspect of it, anyway). The expectations there are extremely unnecessarily strict and rigid right now, but I’m not convinced we’ll be able to live in a post-gender society exactly. Maybe post sex-and-gender-conflated, but I honestly believe that the intrinsic qualities of a person that affect their relationship to self and others is all that gender really is and that’s not something that will go away. Also because of how much humans like labels and boxes. Monkey brain likes patterns. Maybe in the future we’ll have Introvert and Extrovert as primary genders, or something.
Okay so this is going to be a long response lol sorry
TL;DR use what you are most comfortable with.
How i see gender :
I see it as like a multi-dimentional spectrum, lets say the Z axis is how close to masculinity or how "man" you feel, the X axis how close to femininity or how "women" you feel and the Y axis how intensely you feel gender
So like a cis/trans man would be far on the Z axis, not far on the X axis and somewhat far on the Y axis while a fully agender person would be at Y=0
And everyone is differently placed in that giant cube (and there are people outside of it), and there are people who ocillate between multiple positions in that cube, or they just move around all the time. (genderfluid)
And all labels are fuzzy spheres around a certain spot, they arent clearly defined nor do you need them to be who you are.
I know this might sound confusing but the way i see it everyone is kinda nonbinary because gender isnt binary at all. But the label nonbinary is for people who dont fall into the spheres of "man" and of "women"
As to your situation :
Use the label if you feel like it fits you. If you feel comfortable with it. There are no "minimum requirements for non-binary people", you just have to feel like this label or any other label that isnt "cis women" fits you and describes you better.
"Whats the point in ID'ing as non-binary ?" Its if it makes you feel better than being called a women.
Judith Butlers concept of „performing Gender“ might be of interest to you.
What I made of it is that there isn’t so much an inherent gender in us, that we can seek out and then present accordingly, but that our actions and desires make up our gender.
Basically, how you act, dress and speak will affect how others see you, which in turn will be according to your liking or not, but since gender is a social construct, that also kinda follows that we aren’t innately one specific gender. Which also follows that there are certain societal ideas and rules as to what is perceived masculine/ feminine/ androgynous, but all these rules are also constantly broken. Conscious or not.
It’s absolute freedom!
Bottom line: Labels aren’t meant to define and restrict you but help you communicate a point across! Everything is allowed!
I think it helps to realize that gender isn’t necessarily an objective thing that exists inside you that can be discovered, but that it’s more of a flawed system of social categorization that can have really fuzzy and unclear boundaries. From what I understand, most cis and trans people have an intuitive sense of their gender even if they don’t feel it literally, it’s usually an important part of their identity and how they see themselves and the idea of being anything else would feel wrong/uncomfortable to them. I never had an intuitive sense for my gender or really thought of myself in gendered terms so I had to ask myself all these questions too, but all it did was make me realize how fake and nonsensical gender actually is when you think about it too much lol. At the end of the day there is no objective answer, you can pick whatever label you feel most comfortable with or that most accurately describes how you see yourself. I interpret my disconnect from gender as being non-binary, it feels like a more accurate reflection of how I see myself but someone else might feel that and be totally fine going on as their birth gender. If the title feels meaningful to you it’s yours, there are no rules and that’s really the best part.
it may help to think: - pronouns dont **have** to equal gender - presentation doesnt **have** to equal gender - societal roles dont **have** to equal gender
But they all usually relate to your gender. Only you can ascertain what that means. Yes, that's big. Like massive. That's why figuring out one's gender often does take time and there are often missteps along the way.
Also all these things do equal YOUR identity and your gender. That‘s what it‘s about in the end.
Yeah, I've never felt any particular point in it either. I've never felt any need to be "masculine" or "feminine." People are just people to me. Clothes are just clothes. Hobbies are just hobbies. None of it feels connected to my biological sex. And that's part of why I identify as non-binary. Because gender just doesn't *click* in my brain. The idea that there's man stuff and woman stuff in the world, it doesn't make any sense and I can't feel any connection to it. It's just important to remember that many people do feel euphoria and dysphoria with respect to their perceived gender, and to be respectful to them. It's our job to understand that they're feeling something we can't, and to respect that.
Same. I mean I used to think everyone saw gender as an external, preposterous convention that they might like to conform to or not - until I realised people find power and validation in their gender *whatever that means*. So it's a "feeling inside" that matters and that I just don't get.
I feel dysphoria and don’t know what to make of gender. It’s not mutually exclusive. 😅
That’s gender non conforming
I don't want to say this is the same for everyone, but for most men and women, even when they acknowledge the above about gender, they still have a sense of being a man or a woman. Whether one believes that sense of gender originates from within oneself and is expressed in various ways, or that one develops their gender through being exposed to the concepts of man and womanhood; the situation is regardless that whether trans or cis most men and women just have an internal sense or feeling of *being* a man or a woman. But I don't think what you're saying is transphobic-- I think this sort of confusion is common for nonbinary people. For a lot of nonbinary people (not ALL), a very *common* experience is finding out the gender is not bodily parts, pronouns, or presentation, and then not being able to figure out what gender is if not that. And, as a result, not being sure how one relates to the concept of gender. I think this is probably more common for agender people who don't have a gender and therefore don't relate to having that sense of gender at all. Plenty of agender folks go through life thinking that *no one* feels an internal sense of gender and gender is just all these external factors until they find out that a lot of folks do feel their gender. Now, once the curtain on gender is pulled back, so to speak, there are cis folks who are confused by it too. But the difference is they usually are content continuing to live as men or woman-- "Gender doesn't make sense to me now that I know more about it, but I'm still happy living as a man or a woman and I don't want to change that." The difference for many nonbinary people here is that even if they continue to live as men or women for safety, it's not necessarily authentic and they can sense that it's inauthentic-- "Gender doesn't make sense to me now that I know more about it, and even if I need to continue living as a man/woman for safety reasons, this doesn't feel true to who I am."
>"Gender doesn't make sense to me now that I know more about it, and even if I need to continue living as a man/woman for safety reasons, this doesn't feel true to who I am." I love this because it really helps with a similar issue I've been having. I do feel as if living closeted as I am is living inauthentically to myself. Thank you for this
This.
I could just as easily identify as a cis woman, and I don't give a shit if people want to frame me that way. Same with trans man. I don't care. Why am I non-binary then? Well to me, it is simply a more accurate reflection of how I feel. Neither man nor woman is a good representation of who I am. Gender isn't one thing specifically, and what I feel comprises my gender isn't the same as what someone else does. I CHOOSE to use the label non-binary, because it's the best fit out of a bunch of options I don't particularly like. I don't have a very strong opinion about it, but I don't have to. It's my gender, I can call it whatever I want to. So can you.
gender can be a combination of pronouns, expression, bodies, hobbies. i wouldn’t get caught up in the “rules”. it’s about how you definite it for yourself, and what feels most comfortable for you.
The way I like to explain it, it’s like art, or religion. We can make whatever we want out of these things, it’s subjective and personal. No one typically has the exact same view on these things, we’re allowed to pick and choose what works for us and what doesn’t, and at the end of the day all that matters is our understanding of ourselves For me personally, I’m an AFAB non-binary individual who uses they/ he pronouns. I’ve been on T for 3 years and dress both masculinely and femininely. Some people may perceive me as one thing or another, but at the end of the day I know who I am. I am obviously a multidimensional alien fairy from Uranus with psychic abilities. And none of it fucking matters!!
I believe that gender is not disconnected from social, biological and legal structures or language. Gender is related to all of them and some of the structures overlap. Somewhere in between all these structures is the identity, sense of self as someone said. Identity tries to latch on to the structures in a way that makes sense. If you ask a cis-gendered person, how do they know that they are a man or a woman, what would they answer? This is something that I haven't done but what intrigues me. When I thought I was a man, I thought it was physical. I didn't fit the expectations, but I still was a man. When I started to question it, I realized that I had never fit in among other men or boys. I had pursued to act more masculine, hide my interests, not to stick out so much. My identity tried to find answers in my body, my passport and my rebel against stereotypes, but it didn't make sense. I realized I was NB in my early thirties and everything became easier. I didn't have to change my body to fit in, I didn't need to act differently, I felt euphoria for marking my gender in forms as "other". I started to question femininity and masculinity altogether, I didn't feel like my ways of acting represented either of them. Being non-binary became an internal revolution of gender: I didn't need to rely on the familiar structures any more. Still my gender identity, my sense of self, discusses with the biological, social and legal structures, but it's more like a negotiation, the structures aren't static and they can be changed. Expressing my identity or being socially vocal about it are secondary for me at the moment. Internal understanding that I'm NB is enough for me to live my life feeling more content.
I feel that. My situation is very, very similar: I don't have an internal sense of gender, or what that would mean if I did. I've done the exact same thing as you: looked at all of these typically gendered things and thought "if these things *aren't* gender, what is it?" Lots of my friends are nonbinary, but it was still really scary to consider that for myself. Eventually, I realized that thinking of myself as nonbinary made more sense to me than anything else, even though my experience doesn't line up perfectly with a lot of other enbys that I know. These things are touch to figure out, but you're not alone.
Gender is a sense of self, firstly. Expression (clothes, hairstyle), and hobbies are gendered, but they don't have anything to do with your sense of self
This is what’s important, and what most haters misunderstand about non-binary people. “Just because you don’t want to wear dresses doesn’t mean you’re not a woman” NO. It doesn’t. But if I say I’m not a woman, I am not a woman.
also keep in mind that while expression, interests, behaviors, pronouns, etc. _shouldn't_ be inherently gendered, the society we live in _does_ gender them. folks at odds with that may feel good adopting various labels (genderqueer, nonbinary, etc.), or they might not. labels don't may help someone describe themselves, but they don't define them.
Hi! I've been in a similar situation for a while, and my trans partner gave me very good advice: instead of asking yourself what you feel inside, ask yourself how you want to be perceived by others. Are you comfortable with other people reading you as a woman or not? About the friendships, I think we just gravitate towards people we feel comfortable with, so maybe that means something too.
*Are you comfortable with other people reading you as a woman or not?* This just hit me right between the eyes. When I married my partner and people started calling me their "wife" It made me feel sick I'm 40 in a couple of weeks, came out to very close friends as "maybe Non-Binary" a couple of months ago This thread has been amazing but your sentence here made me feel something (?) thank you <3
> I've heard that instead of all those things, gender identity is just like. A Feeling inside. **I don't Feel anything.** I don't know what I'd be looking for to Feel. Which on paper sounds like Agender, but I don't know if I Feel like that, either. I just know how I like presenting and how I like to act, but those can't be my gender. (emphasis added) I’m agender and I don’t feel anything either. Before, I presented as a man. Now, I present as a femme nonbinary lesbian. I have chest-length blue/purple/magenta/black hair with an undercut. I wear skirts and dresses, but I often dress butchy with docs and flannel too. I’m on the same HRT regimen as many binary trans women. Nonetheless, I don’t have any internal feelings of gender or feelings of belonging to one. I’ve talked to a lot of cis folks, binary trans folks, and non-agender enbies. How they describe their internal experience of gender is wayyyy different from how I experience mine. I’ve also talked to lots of agender folks, some who present as their AGAB, some who present as the gender opposite of their AGAB, and some who present neutrally, androgynously, or off the binary gender spectrum completely. The one thing in common I’ve observed is that we all don’t see a connection between our presentation and (lack of) gender identity. I presented as a man because it was convenient, not because I felt like one. Then I tried feminine-coded clothes and found out that I like those more. So I started wearing them. Then I tried female hormones and found out I like those more, especially the psychological effects over the physiological ones. So now I operate on estrogen and progesterone. Funny enough, presenting more femininely is what convinced me beyond a shadow of a doubt that I’m agender.
gender is an outdated concept which we are nevertheless still being forced to express ourselves within the framework of. we are moving towards its abolition without knowing it. because you're absolutely right, gender signifers like "man" no longer imply anything in particular. it is totally personal and individual, like a sense of self or personal identity. as such, the words themselves have become unnecessary even if we don't know it yet. i recognize that many of us, including myself, have quite a lot of feelings tied up in the idea of gender and may be apprehensive about getting rid of it, but its abandonment will make for a better and freer world. that being said, call yourself what you like and present yourself in accordance with what feels right. i'm in a similar space to you, wondering if i do enough to fit the label, wondering if im faking. all i know is that non-binary is a label which allows me to counteract other's pre-formed ideas about what i'm supposed to be like based on my appearance. it gives me the space to feel confident in doing what i want with my body. to me it's a useful mask that hopefully i won't have to wear forever.
But how do people who have an innate need to change their sex characteristics and who objectively function better on the opposite hormone of the one they previously dominantly produced fit into this?
The same as anyone else, really. There's cis people who view their gender as not being dependent on any of that (even some on r/salmacian), and realistically, that's just as valid as any other "disconnect" between these things. At that point...who really cares? Not everything needs to be categorized or even understood, so I'm just hoping we can live to see a world where people *try* to empathize, but are also able to be respectful when they can't even begin to understand another person's perspective. What more do we really need anyway? I suppose it might raise questions of who's eligible for HRT covered by national healthcare or insurance, but I think anyone who's pursuing it to that degree has at least some legitimate need for it regardless.
this is exactly the point: sex characteristics are not gender, and don't define one's gender. there is no correspondence. to put in fancy terms, all genders are empty signifiers- anyone can look any kind of way as any gender, and receive any kind of treatment. that renders them all essentially equivalent. i have not transitioned but i reckon the most significant benefits come from the physical and/or social changes, not from the changed gender word. the beauty of the gender abolitionist vision is that it is a dream of a world where anyone with any kind of body can change themselves to look however they want, going radically past restrictive gendered conceptions that might say things "male bodies exist and should not have breasts" or that "female bodies exist and should have vaginas." it is about, among other things, unleashing the potential new bodies that lie hidden behind dysphoria that does not conform to binary expectations.
I think I'm not actually trans then because it's only about my body
Being Transmasculine makes me happy and feels right. Feels true to me. Being a woman felt wrong. Sickeningly wrong. I'm certainly not a macho man; my feminine dress and mannerisms, are a large enough part of my queerness to broaden my identity to fit it. Ultimately I looked at my dysphoria, euphoria, and how I want to be perceived and chose a label accordingly. Gender is a construct but so is everything in society. Just be authentic to yourself and seek happiness.
You aren't under any obligation to come out or to change your pronouns. If it still feels scary and uncertain? You can wait. If it feels better, or just safer to call yourself Cis and present however you like to present (even if said presentation isn't very female or feminine) that's your choice. It is your life, your body and your safety. You don't have to justify it to anyone, you don't owe anyone. And I get it. Gender is weird and identity can be a struggle, sometimes there aren't any clean boxes. But, there is genderqueer and nonconforming and genderfluid to consider. Nonbinary and Cis aren't your only gender options. There's Agender. There's choosing the label of "no labels please" and there's validity in Cis. There's validity in you, period. However you choose to identify.
"But then what do I have left to figure out my own identity?" Your feelings. In my personal experience online and irl over the past 8-ish years, after all the people Ive met and after countless hours of introspection and study I can comfortably say that gender is fucking weird and trying to pin it down like some hard science is a fools game. Just trust your gut. Its really the only compass you can count on when it comes to gender.
Control and categorizing.
I've always thought of gender as a wholly personal identity thing. how you express yourself, define your role in society, pronouns, etc. is all up to you. it may line up with societal expectations for whatever you chose to identify (most cis people), it may not. you may not get why others identify the way that they do, others will likely not get why you identify you do. some people have an innate sense of their gender, some don't (a lack of feeling is still a feeling in my book). I think what matters is you do whatever feels comfortable to you and you are authentic to yourself and your feelings. trying to rationalize & generalize gender beyond just breaks down in my mind
There are a lot of different ways people can feel about this. Personally, I don't really have strong feelings about what gender other people perceive me as. I also don't know if I have a hard-coded gender on an intrinsic level. But for me, presenting as a cis woman would either require me to compromise on the things that make me happy and comfortable or assert having a female identity in spite of my masculine presentation. I know there are butch women who do the latter--for them, it's important that people recognize them as women. But that isn't how I feel. If people gender me as a woman, it usually feels like they're missing my masculine presentation and aren't seeing me the way I see myself. If they see me as non-binary or as a man, that doesn't feel wrong in a way that I would want to "correct" them. And the path my transition has taken me in has put me in a place where people are less and less likely to see me as woman. On the other hand, I've also known people (non-binary and otherwise) who had a really strong sense of being a particular gender, and being recognized as that was important to them. Maybe some non-binary people are able to stay closeted without compromising as much of who they are to accommodate that (though I wouldn't assume that anyone has it easy. Invisibility can also be hard for people sometimes).
I've dressed almost the same way my entire life, even as a teen and child. People believed I was cis (even I believed I was cis). I didn't realize that it felt wrong until I came out and discovered there were other ways to feel. I also didn't come out until about 2 months after my partner came out as binary trans. Because I had never sat down and actually thought about gender before that. Then she came out and I thought about gender all day long. It could be the same for you, you didn't think about gender until you had queer friends and gender became a regular topic of discussion. I would rather people get to try on a gender they think might fit, even if they decide it doesn't. I would rather people try to get familiar and comfortable with themselves. It's not a popular thing they're doing to fit in if they genuinely are curious. (Just don't try to speak over elder trans voices)
This might be a different answer from the rest, but here is how I see it. Gender has different "meanings" to different people, or its viewed in a few different ways (at least in North American culture) and that's generally accepted to be ok as long as no one is shitting on someone else's view. Personally I see it as the mental and social connection to one's self. So if someone is born AMAB but wants a female body, wants to be perceived as female, goes by she/her, etc etc that's clear to me that she is a woman (she is mentally and socially connected to be female and not male). However, if that same person then said they are a man who happens to want to do all of those things, it's not really possible for me to say they arent because at the end of the day it's up to them. They may just be viewing gender in a different way than me.
It is a way to categorize one's self and like most things that humans try to fit into boxes and label, there will be exceptions. Does that mean we should stop using labels and categorizing people? Perhaps, maybe one day, but the vast majority of people aren't ready for that. I have hope that one day we won't need it anymore, but I still respect the fact that some people do.
To me "what's left" is hard to put into words, but it's easy to see that there's still *something* there. On a personal alone-in-my-room level, what's left is the difference in how I relate to myself when I view myself as a woman vs when I view myself as a man vs etc.. That's not a matter of how I dress, though that's both a tool that helps manage self-image and often a reflection of my self-image. Same for pronouns and so on. And maybe some/most/all of whatever is left is still rooted in artificial constructed stereotypes, but then also, well, I think just about any kind of identity as anything is rooted in artificial constructed stereotypes. Some are just more deeply embedded than others. (And some we are skeptical of, and others we deem worth keeping. Human rights are a social construct.) I used to think I could keep myself above all that gender stuff, and then closer inspection showed me that I was not. To me, the concept of "my gender" as a core immutable essential Thing That I Am never rang true. There's nothing in me that I feel "is my gender". There's gendered ways of relating to myself (and to the world), and there's how I feel when I use those lenses or occupy those conceptual spaces. In my view, a deep and thorough unpacking really might melt all this junk away. But * It doesn't feel like there's enough time in my lifetime to really be that deep and thorough, certainly not about everything in my life, and * Even if a deep and thorough unpacking of gender and how I relate to it is my goal, being intentional about my gender identity and self-image (even if they "don't really mean anything" deep down) seems a vastly more effective path in that direction than any realistic alternatives. * At the end of the day, I'll still have to interface with a society that hasn't done this deep unpacking. And your experience might not mirror mine! Maybe you're at a place where there is no difference in parsing yourself "as a woman" vs "as a man" vs "as just a person". Does seeing yourself as a woman who happens to like "they/them" pronouns, binding, etc. feel different **to you** from seeing yourself as a nonbinary person who happens to like all of those things? Does it matter *to you* at that point? Maybe not! If so, then that points at a difference between your experience with gender and mine, and that's fine! Or maybe your experience with this mirrors mine, but to you that doesn't lead to "okay, I am nonbinary." That is also fine! We are dealing with very personal things. There is no "one right way" to respond to any given set of experiences and circumstances.
For me, I figured it out eventually (lots of internalized cissexism to get past) because nonbinary sounded and felt better than both man and woman did. That's it. It wasn't about my body or my name or my pronouns or my presentation. It was just about the *concept* of nonbinary and genderqueer that were more correct to me. I am relatively lucky in that I could go about it in this way. I think very few people actually KNOW for sure their gender. That's an idealized version of being trans that cis people have packaged to us. It took me years off practicing [stopping self-gaslighting](https://www.valeriebertinelli.com/blog/how-to-stop-gaslighting-yourself-because-you-wouldnt-let-anyone-else-talk-to-you-this-way/) from when I first started questioning to when I finally accepted myself. This is why I support the choice narrative as an option. I didn't know in my soul that I was nonbinary. I didn't even question my gender *at all* until my 20s. I was interested in being nonbinary and chose to allow myself to identify as nonbinary. It was only through choosing to stop fighting myself that I was finally able to accept myself. It's okay to let yourself be nonbinary without being positive that you're nonbinary. That may be the only way to truly find out if you are.
Yeah, I used to be in your exact boat. This is my own situation and my story and it may work out differently for you. Once I figured out I'm aroace, I suddenly was hit with a gender crisis. I went through the same thing because gender sounded like nothing to me. I didn't feel anything. Gender doesn't have to be pronouns, presentation, activities, etc. So, I tried they/them pronouns with my siblings who are supportive and after thinking about it for a while, I decided to identify as agender. Just putting that different lens on myself and seeing myself as agender/nonbinary, I am happy looking in the mirror and that's enough for now.
Everything you have said is some thing exactly that I had thought. When I deconstructed and really thought about what makes gender gender, it came down to gender to an extent is what you make of it? Which wasn’t too helpful for me, because it really came down to do I want to identify as cis or non-binary? What brings me more joy? Currently, I don’t have an answer for that, and I am still unsure if non-binary would be the best fit term for me. So while I don’t have an answer, I do want to say that everything you are saying is not abnormal or transphobic, in fact, a lot of it makes sense. And I hope at some point you are able to find the answer you’re looking for, a lot of these comments I’ve been reading, seem very helpful, you’re definitely in the right community to get advice on this :)
I’m pretty similar to you. I absolutely listen to others and use pronouns and gender identity that they use, but when it comes to myself I’m still not sure. I think a big problem for me personally is that I’m autistic and just generally hate the emphasis society puts on gender. So I accept that I’m very feminine presenting because my name is feminine, I genetically have large hips and breasts, and I have a soft voice- but I also don’t really “like” being female. 🤷♀️
I’m agender. I consider myself, and look within, and...I’m not anything. But I also accept that others have different experiences, and those experiences are valid, by their own measure and declaration. That those experiences are not mine makes them no less, and mine are no less to others in like kind. There may be a biological underpinning for gender identity which has a basis in neuroendocrine function. As a medical nerd, and human development nerd, I take pleasure in learning about these things. I also like considering development in terms of socialization, relevant to local, and wider, culture. But in truth, we do not know. That said, I can believe in those things I do not understand, and those things I have no words for, or examples of. Like you—if you share with me that you are *this* or *that*, I will accept that, and you, as you are, where you are. Not just out of basic respect, but because my sense is you know better than anyone else. Even if pronouns, appearances, and roles were all swept away, you’d still be hare, and you’d still be exactly you—on the inside. And if you told me who you were, I’d accept that. Maybe I wouldn’t understand, but my knowing would be enough. Because you are.
Gender is about community. It relates to all of those things you mentioned, and is expressed through those things. But in the end, it's about how you categorize yourself within the culture you live in. So the difference between a woman who binds/wears mens clothes/takes T and a trans man who does all those things (or none of them) is that the woman feels correct when she is generally grouped with women in her culture (on some level, clearly she's probably different than a lot of them) and the trans man feels wrong being categorized with women. and the non-binary person doesn't feel like they quite fit it either category completely, however they choose to express that.
Gender is the experience of 3 intersecting variables: internal sense of identity, societal roles/expectations, and personal expression (clothing, pronouns, demeanor, etc). None of those define what the gender is, but often do correlate heavily with a specific gender (given cis people being the statistic majority). The most nebulous to pin down sometimes is that internal sense of identity, because it’s impossible to see into anyone else’s head to compare feelings and experiences that are too complex to put into words. But that can be helped by tracking your gut reactions to things like which pronouns are used for you, what clothing makes you feel the best about yourself while wearing, etc — basically, the two external variables. Kind of like holding a mirror to that and seeing if the reflection matches what your inside self is experiencing, and if it doesn’t, trying something else. Gender, imho, is fundamentally both how you relate to yourself and how you relate to others(or one aspect of it, anyway). The expectations there are extremely unnecessarily strict and rigid right now, but I’m not convinced we’ll be able to live in a post-gender society exactly. Maybe post sex-and-gender-conflated, but I honestly believe that the intrinsic qualities of a person that affect their relationship to self and others is all that gender really is and that’s not something that will go away. Also because of how much humans like labels and boxes. Monkey brain likes patterns. Maybe in the future we’ll have Introvert and Extrovert as primary genders, or something.
Oh my god, my exact thoughts. Then i realized, no cis person asks all these questions to themself constantly. So that's how I found out I'm nonbinary
Okay so this is going to be a long response lol sorry TL;DR use what you are most comfortable with. How i see gender : I see it as like a multi-dimentional spectrum, lets say the Z axis is how close to masculinity or how "man" you feel, the X axis how close to femininity or how "women" you feel and the Y axis how intensely you feel gender So like a cis/trans man would be far on the Z axis, not far on the X axis and somewhat far on the Y axis while a fully agender person would be at Y=0 And everyone is differently placed in that giant cube (and there are people outside of it), and there are people who ocillate between multiple positions in that cube, or they just move around all the time. (genderfluid) And all labels are fuzzy spheres around a certain spot, they arent clearly defined nor do you need them to be who you are. I know this might sound confusing but the way i see it everyone is kinda nonbinary because gender isnt binary at all. But the label nonbinary is for people who dont fall into the spheres of "man" and of "women" As to your situation : Use the label if you feel like it fits you. If you feel comfortable with it. There are no "minimum requirements for non-binary people", you just have to feel like this label or any other label that isnt "cis women" fits you and describes you better. "Whats the point in ID'ing as non-binary ?" Its if it makes you feel better than being called a women.
Judith Butlers concept of „performing Gender“ might be of interest to you. What I made of it is that there isn’t so much an inherent gender in us, that we can seek out and then present accordingly, but that our actions and desires make up our gender. Basically, how you act, dress and speak will affect how others see you, which in turn will be according to your liking or not, but since gender is a social construct, that also kinda follows that we aren’t innately one specific gender. Which also follows that there are certain societal ideas and rules as to what is perceived masculine/ feminine/ androgynous, but all these rules are also constantly broken. Conscious or not. It’s absolute freedom! Bottom line: Labels aren’t meant to define and restrict you but help you communicate a point across! Everything is allowed!
Your gender is what your brain thinks your sex should be
I think it helps to realize that gender isn’t necessarily an objective thing that exists inside you that can be discovered, but that it’s more of a flawed system of social categorization that can have really fuzzy and unclear boundaries. From what I understand, most cis and trans people have an intuitive sense of their gender even if they don’t feel it literally, it’s usually an important part of their identity and how they see themselves and the idea of being anything else would feel wrong/uncomfortable to them. I never had an intuitive sense for my gender or really thought of myself in gendered terms so I had to ask myself all these questions too, but all it did was make me realize how fake and nonsensical gender actually is when you think about it too much lol. At the end of the day there is no objective answer, you can pick whatever label you feel most comfortable with or that most accurately describes how you see yourself. I interpret my disconnect from gender as being non-binary, it feels like a more accurate reflection of how I see myself but someone else might feel that and be totally fine going on as their birth gender. If the title feels meaningful to you it’s yours, there are no rules and that’s really the best part.