#non binary identity

[phemiec]

This video is the best explanation of the complications of gender discovery, and the smallthink of T3rf ideology I’ve ever seen. Plz watch it’s great. 

[the-real-slim-shady]

Hey guys, 

This is another name post, I know it’s like my fifth one, and trust me, it’s as annoying for me as it is for you. So I’ve decided to not change my name, to go back to Zoe. 

There are a few reasons for this. 

First is i’m not sure if I’m ever going to like actually come out, I might just like stay in the closet forever I guess, which sounds extreme, but I think it just might be easier. I’m going to have enough like homophobia to deal with, and I don’t think I can take transphobia on top of that. Changing my identity and the way I identify would just be so so annoying and tedious and people would still misgender me either by accident or on purpose, and I’d have to come out to literally everyone and I just don’t think I can do that. 

But secondly, even if I do come out, it is really weird for me to be called another name. I don’t hate my name, per se, I just thought of it as attached to a part of myself I didn’t want to be anymore. But now I think that even if I do come out, I still want to be Zoe. That’s like the name I’ve always known, and I have so many memories associated with it, and I don’t want to get rid of it. 

Please keep on using they/them pronouns for me on here, and if you know me irl please also keep using those, but I might like go back in the closet with my family and my other irl friends. Thank you all so much for being there for me and being supportive. I’m so glad i made this account. 

[aspiringteawitch]

Gender Shit

I've been putting off writing this post, because two days ago was Transgender day of Visibility and i didn't want to take away from that, and then yesterday was april fools, and i didnt want anyone think i was making a joke about this. In short, i don't fully identify as female, but am sorta comfortable identifying as such. gender presentation I've always like the idea of presenting more masculine. I have liked to wear more masculine clothing, and when i point it out to my parents, they often remark that I "dont look like a boy," when that's kinda the point. I wore a blazer to my gr9 grad, and am planning on making a suit for my high school grad. With the intention of looking more masculine. My own Body if i look really hard at it, and when I swallow really hard, i have an adams apple. And that makes me happy for some reason. I've gotten progressively short haircuts for years, going from a bob, to now a shaved sides style with a longer top. Sometimes, I would like to not have boobs, they're already pretty small. And in some clothes they aren't noticable at all. whenever someone points it out, it's always been framed as a bad thing. But i don't find it insulting at all. Pronouns/names I feel comfortable with she/her pronouns, but whenever I have the option to in games, i use the name Alex, and they/them. I respond to Alex as well, sometimes. And when I found out that there have been men named Alice as well when i was quite young, I was really happy! I thought that meant that my name could belong to a boy as well as a girl. Identity I don't identify with the term demigirl, which i feel like some people would call me, but at the same time, i dont feel entirely female. Non binary dosen't fit either, though. In conclusion, I have no idea what the fuck is going on, gender-wise. Can someone who knows more help? Might also change the pronouns in my bio to she/they, I dunno

[void-star]

I've been thinking a lot lately about gender, once again, with the current political swing shifting the culture around how we think and talk about gender on all sides of the political compass, across all schools of thought and the ways I'm feeling more uncomfortable again with the window of ambiguous tolerance closing and I am, once again, "one or the other" and it's usually misdirected transmisogyny.

"Woman" as a term appeals to me only when it is expansive-- when it doesn't denote one type of body dominant by one type of hormone or based in one type of assignment. I do consider myself to be related to traditions of female masculinity even as somebody who chose to pursue "FTM" or the trans masculine transition path and who did not come from Butch lesbian identity.

"Woman" is not appealing to me when it's restrictive-- when it comes with expectations of what my body should be like and do. When it's used as a template held up to my image which people can use to perform disappointment, hostility, and violence about the ways in which I fail to rise to the role or the future they relegate to me for it.

My earliest experiences with gender I would call being a very agender child that was policed to conform to interests, standards, and behaviors that were untrue to my personhood. Don't play with that, don't wear that, don't sit like that because you are a girl. Grow up fast and gain maturity or be ready to be an adult as soon as possible but don't be a slut about it. When I did engage with gender-confirming interests, not out of obligation but genuine enthusiasm, I'd get ridiculed for it.

I honestly did not like any of that. Which seems to be a lot of things discussed already and frequently by lesbian feminists.

It's important to know that I did not tackle my sexuality, really, until the issue of gender felt addressed first. This is partly also because I am asexual and do not experience sexual attraction, waiting for a moment in which it would suddenly "click" for me that I wanted to engage in physical activity with certain people because of ??? how they looked or what I thought their body would be like or some indescribable physical imperative that just never came.

But what this means is that I didn't become exposed to an expansive definition of "woman" before I transitioned. I tried, for a time, to be an expansive version of a "man." A female one, a femme one, a gnc one. Ultimately, I didn't like "manhood" either. There were some tangible differences in how I saw myself and moved through the world compared to men (cis and trans). There was incongruence in my form of relating to people, especially queerplatonically or romantically, when my relationships with queer men fell within the MLM side of the queer spectrum.

I crushed on people and wanted to build up romance with people the way I'd done so with my, in retrospect, questionably sapphic friendships growing up. With the first person I had a crush on, who identified as a lesbian, and reacted very negatively towards my transition.

I've only dated one cis man and that was because when I met him, I thought he was a trans man. If I had to guess, I would say he probably falls comfortably somewhere on the transfem spectrum but being that he was a dark skinned Black person from a conservative carribbean family and the one time he played with femininity, the intense transmisogynoiristic fetishization of his body from white cis gay men completely overwhelmed him, I don't think he had much room to play around with it.

I have gone on dates with people who ride the line between butch women and trans men, trans fem nonbinary people, and self-described "femboys" who I could not tell whether they were transmasc or transfem before. And in all of this, I think it became clear to me that I am somebody who is rather sapphic-dominant.

Except now I deal with, once again, "women" as restrictive. The transmisogynistic gatekeeping of who women are and what they can look like. Cultural signifiers of lesbian identity I don't have. Exclusion everywhere.

At any rate, I inhabit a body that's excluded on both sides. My gender changes based on who is perceiving me. I think this is as close to a nonbinary existence as I can get, However, it does make it difficult to anchor myself in existing material framework. I am conditionally gendered. I've been fine with this mutual exclusion until recently, and can't help but see the ways my experience overlaps with those of butch women and trans women.

It's just that I don't seem to be perceived as having those similarities, and have socially and culturally been rendered illegitimate. Even other leftists see reason to explain away my self-concept.

Thinking about Sara Ahmed's words around butch and trans women having to assert that they are women again and again and again and again. Thinking about what trans people must do to legitimize their genders again and again and again and again. The lengths trans women have to go to convince you they look enough like women to be considered woman. The way the system of trans medicalism and gender enforcement require you to place the burden of persuasion on how others perceive you.

I think I come back to this a lot. I'm not sure if the fight of asserting my gender again and again and again is something I really have in me. But maybe I have to. Assert myself as nonbinary. Assert myself as woman-expansive, if that even feels comfortable to assert. Maybe I do that in spite of the perception of my body on testosterone, and in spite of the fascism. But maybe it also drains me too much, idk.

It's wild to me that I can embody gender duality in ways I think mirror or reflect other tradition of gender beyond man and woman, but it's somehow so difficult for so many other people regardless of political alignment to understand.

[closet-keys]

Is it disrespectful towards one or more of the communities if a lesbian and a female birth assigned genderfluid person are dating and both want to/do keep their labels and both are absolutly okay with the way it is?

[Note: in this post, unless otherwise specified, when I say “women” I mean both cis and trans women. When I say “men” I mean both cis and trans men. When I say “aligns with womanhood” I mean a non binary person who exists within the oppressed class on the axis of misogyny and has strong cultural or political solidarity with women]

This is one of those complicated issues that I think gets messy because of the usually conflated but actually separated notions of identity labels as both political/cultural/historical connection and as very intimate definitions of our experiences and attractions that don’t always perfectly align. 

I’ve certainly known lesbians who are okay dating non binary, gender fluid, or agender partners. I know one woman whose attraction is probably somewhere near pan, but she aligns with the culture, history, and politics of lesbians very strongly, prioritizes women, is completely turned off my 99% of men, and sometimes introduces herself as a lesbian because of this. 

And as problematic as this gets the majority of the time, I’ve also seen much older lesbians remain in relationships with trans men who identified as butch lesbians for most of their relationship, despite not being attracted to any other men. When lesbians are willing to date trans men as a class of people it’s always problematic and rooted in transphobia, but in some of these cases where old lesbians stay with partners who come out as men, I kind of get it, because they stay out of commitment, love, and shared life experiences. Some straight women stay with trans women after they come out too, for similar reasons. It’s complicated for a lot of people. Certainly there’s conversations to be made about each of these situations and whether they ought to switch their identity labels to bi, which is entirely valid, but I can also see where that would feel upsetting in its own way. 

I think one example of a relationship like you’re describing which seems pretty respectful and healthy is the relationship between the creators of Chaos Life.  One is agender and doesn’t label their sexuality and the other is a woman who identifies as a lesbian and they make it work. 

For me, personally, my attraction and my lesbian identity is rooted in exclusive attraction to women. I can’t maintain romantic feelings or attraction towards men, non binary people, gender fluid people, or agender people– I can only truly maintain romantic feelings and attraction for women. I need to perceive someone as a woman to be attracted to them, so if I dated an agender or non binary or gender fluid person, I would either lose attraction towards them or be internally misgendering them, neither of which is any kind of foundation for a healthy relationship. 

But not everyone’s experience with the lesbian identity mirrors mine. There are non binary lesbians. There are lesbians who date anyone who aligns with womanhood no matter what their gender is. That’s all totally valid, and can be the foundation of respectful, healthy relationships. 

I think the central thing to ask in the hypothetical you gave is this: 

Is the lesbian able to find the other person attractive without misgendering them? Even internally/privately? 

Is the gender fluid person comfortable with their partner not finding them attractive when they are not a woman?

If you can say yes to those things, I think that’s absolutely fine. If those things aren’t really true, then I think those people would probably be healthier and more validated in their identities if they dated other people. 

Genuine honesty and respect is key.