Gender Identity, Revisited 6:09 pm / 22 December 2009 by shiva, at Biodiverse Resistance
I've been meaning for quite a while to revisit this post (which, i note, i wrote nearly exactly 2 years ago now) - since, in fact, Luke aka AnarchoAspie included it (along with this one) in his zine, for which i inexplicably can't find a link (which i would have sort of liked to have been given the opportunity to do a slight edit due to things like hyperlinks not showing up in a printed format, but never mind) - because i had a creeping feeling that i would no longer agree with parts of it. The desire to revisit it was increased when Urocyon posted her own response to it, here, and even more so when Amanda Baggs then referred to that in her post on intersectionality (which i need to write a further response to the class part of). (I'd like to note here that both Urocyon and Amanda are much better at writing clearly and concisely than i am...)
On re-reading, there's actually not that much that i feel differently about now. One thing that stands out is a terminology issue - throughout, i was using the phrase "trans people" to exclusively mean transsexual people, whereas i'd now go with a much wider definition of the term "trans", to tentatively even include the likes of myself (although it still feels a little potentially-appropriative, as someone who neither desires to physically transition nor transgresses gender in any visually-obvious-to-a-passing-stranger way (well, unless long hair counts, but i really don't feel like, at least combined with a beard, it does)... but i've been told by visibly-trans, transitioning-transsexual friends that i "should" use it, so...) There's also the uncritical use of the term "primary" to describe the subset of transsexuals who are aware of their transsexuality from early childhood, which i probably wouldn't use now because of the possible unpleasant connotations of a hierarchy of who is "truly" transsexual and who isn't (although, it has to be said, i'm not aware of any less-loaded terms to distinguish between those who know they are transsexual from an early age and those who come to realise it later in life - if such terms are needed at all, which they might not be).
I've also since then become more aware of the range of terms used to describe gender identity or lack thereof: while Amanda uses "nongendered", which works for me, i've also encountered "agender" and "neutroi" (although the latter seems to be used primarily by/for agendered people who wish to physically transition to a "gender-neutral" or "undifferentiated" form: i'm also not sure if it's singular "neutro" and plural "neutroi" (which sounds vaguely Greek), or singular "neutroi" and plural "neutrois", or singular and plural "neutrois" (which sounds vaguely French), nor how to pronounce it, so i wouldn't use that one for me). I've even discovered a forum which includes specific discussion areas for agendered/nongendered/neutroi(s) people, although i haven't got round to registering or posting there yet... so i'm no longer feeling quite as much like i did when i wrote another piece which somehow never made it into a proper blog post:
*I don't want to "do gender" at all. I feel like i don't have a gender, and more than that, don't want a gender. I want to live in a world where the concept of gender was never even thought of.
And that's never bothered me on an internal level - but then i see all these conversations about gender and genderqueerness all over the web, and they're all awesome, but the implication of them seems to be that everyone is supposed to have a gender identity and a gender presentation, even that it's impossible not to - and i just want to scream "BUT I DON'T! Am i a complete unperson?"
But then, maybe i'm deluding myself - maybe it is true that everyone has a gender presentation, whether they think they do or not... but in that case, what is mine? I say that i choose clothes purely for comfort and practicality - but then, is that *entirely* true? Aesthetics does play some role, because there's a range of colours that i buy clothes in - black and earth tones (brown, beige, khaki, dull greens), occasionally red or yellow, but almost never white, and absolutely never blue - that has to be aesthetically motivated, or else i'd buy clothes absolutely without regard to colour, right? But does gender have anything to do with that? Is my dislike of blue because of its association with masculinity, because of its association (in the UK) with political conservatism, or just because i think it's a visually ugly clash with the colour of my hair and skin?
I look unambiguously male because of my facial hair, but the only reason i have it is because i don't like the sensation of, and can't be bothered to spend time on, shaving. Likewise my hair is long mainly because i don't want to pay for a haircut. I have never worn any form of make-up, nor wanted to. This kind of not-caring seems to be culturally gendered "masculine", but i find it hard to see how not caring about appearance can be gendered any way at all, rather than being at a neutral, equidistant point on the scale (if a scale even exists). It strikes me, in fact, that not-caring-about-presentation equalling "masculine" is a sign of institutionalised misogyny - the male/masculine is seen as the "norm", and the female/feminine as the "deviant" "other", to the extent that whether you are male or female, not doing anything about one's appearance or presentation gets one gendered as "masculine".*
I do still often feel that fundamental level of confusion, though, due to the fact that i don't (and probably never will, based on the principle that personal experience is the only true and full understanding, or "who feels it knows it") really know what "gender identity" is - as Amanda says:
Gender is a concept that, while I understand intellectually that it is greatly important for other people, is entirely absent and incomprehensible to me. I imagine that it must be some collection of aspects of a person’s identity that all cluster together in most people’s minds, whereas I’ve spent my life oblivious to how they are connected or why I would want to connect them, and innocently trampling all over people’s ideas of what it means to be masculine, feminine, or even any particular point in the middle.
While i can completely get my head round (even tho i've never experienced it) the idea of feeling dysphoria about one's physical sex, on the level either of "body-map" issues or of needing a certain balance of sex hormones to function "right" physically and/or mentally, and i am aware of (and can perceive at least some of, even if i thoroughly disagree with, the cultural reasoning behind) the personality qualities regarded culturally as "masculine" and "feminine", it's the bit somewhere in between that i feel like i'm missing - the idea of being "a man" or "a woman", rather than being (or wanting to be) physically male or female, or choosing to present oneself as masculine, feminine, butch, femme, androgynous, or whatever. I'm not sure if this is completely a function of being agendered myself, or if some people might lack a gender identity themselves, yet understand in a more solid way what it is for others to have one - in which case, i'd need an additional term to agendered/nongendered, perhaps something like "gender-blind" (analogous to faceblindness, perhaps? although i'm not, or at least not strongly, prosopagnosic)? Gender-impaired? I don't know; i do know that i'm way over my head when reading, for example, discussions like the one between Trin and Elizabeth here, and, likewise, find it incredibly hard to get my head round the "conceptual sexual orientations" discussed here (since i don't know how "to gender" anyone...)
Anyway, yes, i'm back to posting now, and aiming to post a bit more regularly, but as i'm off for 5 days tomorrow to do the Family Christmas thing (which, as there's... interesting... family stuff going on at the moment, might be rather more preoccupying than usual), it might be a week or so til the next one. Hope everyone is surviving the weather, not having to deal with too much non-accepting-of-identities crap from their families, and enjoying whatever (if anything) you choose to celebrate at this time of year...
On re-reading, there's actually not that much that i feel differently about now. One thing that stands out is a terminology issue - throughout, i was using the phrase "trans people" to exclusively mean transsexual people, whereas i'd now go with a much wider definition of the term "trans", to tentatively even include the likes of myself (although it still feels a little potentially-appropriative, as someone who neither desires to physically transition nor transgresses gender in any visually-obvious-to-a-passing-stranger way (well, unless long hair counts, but i really don't feel like, at least combined with a beard, it does)... but i've been told by visibly-trans, transitioning-transsexual friends that i "should" use it, so...) There's also the uncritical use of the term "primary" to describe the subset of transsexuals who are aware of their transsexuality from early childhood, which i probably wouldn't use now because of the possible unpleasant connotations of a hierarchy of who is "truly" transsexual and who isn't (although, it has to be said, i'm not aware of any less-loaded terms to distinguish between those who know they are transsexual from an early age and those who come to realise it later in life - if such terms are needed at all, which they might not be).
I've also since then become more aware of the range of terms used to describe gender identity or lack thereof: while Amanda uses "nongendered", which works for me, i've also encountered "agender" and "neutroi" (although the latter seems to be used primarily by/for agendered people who wish to physically transition to a "gender-neutral" or "undifferentiated" form: i'm also not sure if it's singular "neutro" and plural "neutroi" (which sounds vaguely Greek), or singular "neutroi" and plural "neutrois", or singular and plural "neutrois" (which sounds vaguely French), nor how to pronounce it, so i wouldn't use that one for me). I've even discovered a forum which includes specific discussion areas for agendered/nongendered/neutroi(s) people, although i haven't got round to registering or posting there yet... so i'm no longer feeling quite as much like i did when i wrote another piece which somehow never made it into a proper blog post:
*I don't want to "do gender" at all. I feel like i don't have a gender, and more than that, don't want a gender. I want to live in a world where the concept of gender was never even thought of.
And that's never bothered me on an internal level - but then i see all these conversations about gender and genderqueerness all over the web, and they're all awesome, but the implication of them seems to be that everyone is supposed to have a gender identity and a gender presentation, even that it's impossible not to - and i just want to scream "BUT I DON'T! Am i a complete unperson?"
But then, maybe i'm deluding myself - maybe it is true that everyone has a gender presentation, whether they think they do or not... but in that case, what is mine? I say that i choose clothes purely for comfort and practicality - but then, is that *entirely* true? Aesthetics does play some role, because there's a range of colours that i buy clothes in - black and earth tones (brown, beige, khaki, dull greens), occasionally red or yellow, but almost never white, and absolutely never blue - that has to be aesthetically motivated, or else i'd buy clothes absolutely without regard to colour, right? But does gender have anything to do with that? Is my dislike of blue because of its association with masculinity, because of its association (in the UK) with political conservatism, or just because i think it's a visually ugly clash with the colour of my hair and skin?
I look unambiguously male because of my facial hair, but the only reason i have it is because i don't like the sensation of, and can't be bothered to spend time on, shaving. Likewise my hair is long mainly because i don't want to pay for a haircut. I have never worn any form of make-up, nor wanted to. This kind of not-caring seems to be culturally gendered "masculine", but i find it hard to see how not caring about appearance can be gendered any way at all, rather than being at a neutral, equidistant point on the scale (if a scale even exists). It strikes me, in fact, that not-caring-about-presentation equalling "masculine" is a sign of institutionalised misogyny - the male/masculine is seen as the "norm", and the female/feminine as the "deviant" "other", to the extent that whether you are male or female, not doing anything about one's appearance or presentation gets one gendered as "masculine".*
I do still often feel that fundamental level of confusion, though, due to the fact that i don't (and probably never will, based on the principle that personal experience is the only true and full understanding, or "who feels it knows it") really know what "gender identity" is - as Amanda says:
Gender is a concept that, while I understand intellectually that it is greatly important for other people, is entirely absent and incomprehensible to me. I imagine that it must be some collection of aspects of a person’s identity that all cluster together in most people’s minds, whereas I’ve spent my life oblivious to how they are connected or why I would want to connect them, and innocently trampling all over people’s ideas of what it means to be masculine, feminine, or even any particular point in the middle.
While i can completely get my head round (even tho i've never experienced it) the idea of feeling dysphoria about one's physical sex, on the level either of "body-map" issues or of needing a certain balance of sex hormones to function "right" physically and/or mentally, and i am aware of (and can perceive at least some of, even if i thoroughly disagree with, the cultural reasoning behind) the personality qualities regarded culturally as "masculine" and "feminine", it's the bit somewhere in between that i feel like i'm missing - the idea of being "a man" or "a woman", rather than being (or wanting to be) physically male or female, or choosing to present oneself as masculine, feminine, butch, femme, androgynous, or whatever. I'm not sure if this is completely a function of being agendered myself, or if some people might lack a gender identity themselves, yet understand in a more solid way what it is for others to have one - in which case, i'd need an additional term to agendered/nongendered, perhaps something like "gender-blind" (analogous to faceblindness, perhaps? although i'm not, or at least not strongly, prosopagnosic)? Gender-impaired? I don't know; i do know that i'm way over my head when reading, for example, discussions like the one between Trin and Elizabeth here, and, likewise, find it incredibly hard to get my head round the "conceptual sexual orientations" discussed here (since i don't know how "to gender" anyone...)
Anyway, yes, i'm back to posting now, and aiming to post a bit more regularly, but as i'm off for 5 days tomorrow to do the Family Christmas thing (which, as there's... interesting... family stuff going on at the moment, might be rather more preoccupying than usual), it might be a week or so til the next one. Hope everyone is surviving the weather, not having to deal with too much non-accepting-of-identities crap from their families, and enjoying whatever (if anything) you choose to celebrate at this time of year...
