Gender identity? What's that?

We have a thread for asexuals, so we might as well have one for those of us who don't really "get" this whole gender thing, or aren't sure where they fit in it.

Myself, I have a very stripped-down concept of self, based heavily on my speech patterns. These patterns don't appear very often in either gender, so I've never really felt masculine or feminine. I tend to think of male as the category I get thrown into, rather than the category I belong in (rather like how people keep assuming I have Asperger's syndrome.)

What's your story?

My kind of thread.

While usually I'd try so hard to figure out which gender I feel I fit into best, I find that it's much easier to act like a big, genderless blob.

...Minus the big blob part.

I've had my gender crisis beans. I'm pretty sure I'm a homosexual man now.

-pokes head in-

You said bigendered individuals could fit?

OH HAY.

Hi guys I'm bigender. :D

Physically I like being a man and some of the Double Standards are nice, but I've never really understood the whole gender identity thing since it seems to me like it's just giving weight to social expectations of gender. I don't have anything against transgender people but it's always seemed a bit weird to me. I mean, I could understand not liking your body and thinking you'd feel more secure and comfortable with(out) something between your legs but I've never understood gender identity. I just don't see the logic in actions or interests being "gendered".

I don't bother thinking about it.

The only things that really make me not want to be a woman are menstruation and childbirth.

Gender all seems to the same to me. Totally joining.

edited 3rd Aug '11 6:01:31 AM by lilylilium

Ooh, intriguing. But honestly, my blobbishness probably comes across more here than in real life.

Yup.

Bigender, reporting for duty.

Upon thought, probably this is the most accurate descriptor for me; I care about gender only insofar as it gets in the way of having a satisfactory life — basically the same sort of reason I'm pansexual.

Personally I do understand the whole impetus and individual motivation for gender roles — I just regard it as something destructive rather than something worth giving any priority at all.

Sometimes, I feel there may be a part of me that isn't so apathetic about gender identity. I'm not sure which part of this is how I truly feel. But, I think I'd rather not care.

I have no idea how this gender identity thing works at all, or why people care about it.

I have a penis, therefore I am a man. If I had a vagina I would be a woman. Why must it be more complicated than that?

edited 16th Nov '11 4:26:23 AM by Mukora

Because what you're talking about there is biological sex. Gender is something that's in the brain - more of a social construct than anything else. In my own case, my brain sometimes is completely convinced that it is female. Sometimes it's convinced it's male. This tends to go for weeks at a time, but in that time, despite the fact that I only have this one body, my brain does its own thing.

That's a very over-simplified view of why it's more complicated.

I still don't understand. If you have a penis, you are a man. It shouldn't matter how you act.

Even if I wore pretty dresses, makeup, and read Cosmo, I would still consider myself a man.

^ Aondeug once explained it as being like a phantom limb (though in her case, it's not exactly a limb . . .)

(I wonder how I would react if I lost a limb, and did in fact have phantom limb syndrome. I'm so used to thinking of my body as something apart from my self, I'd probably be incredibly jarred to know that my self retained the same concept of my body.)

edited 17th Nov '11 11:48:03 PM by feotakahari

I have no real experience with this sort of thing, but: if you transplanted my mind, exactly the same, into the body of a man and expected me to live in it, I would not immediately start thinking of myself as 'he' just because I suddenly had a penis.

Clearly, then, there is some sort of mental aspect to gender.

Here's a thought: If I was magically turned into a women, and was still attracted to girls, would that make me a gay?

It's a question that's been bugging me for a while now O///O

edited 18th Nov '11 2:29:16 PM by joeyjojo

Depends on what your mental gender would be. If you still think of yourself as a man, you would be straight. But if the new body makes you feel like a girl, then yeah, you would be a lesbian...

edited 18th Nov '11 2:40:59 PM by FuschlatzOReilly

Hmm . . . I don't think in any language that has gendered first- or second-person pronouns, and I've never needed to think of myself as "he" or "she." I wouldn't mind being described with feminine pronouns, though—I don't think "she" misrepresents me any more or less than "he" does.

Is it pompous to call myself "it"?

Depending on whether Joey thinks like me, you may be missing the point here. For me, at least, if I "felt like a girl" or "felt like a boy," I wouldn't feel like me.

edited 21st Nov '11 12:13:16 AM by feotakahari

-adds thread to watchlist- Throwing gender out the window f*** yeah!

I'm not quite sure if I'd be agendered, but I doubt being female-gendered while still being male-sexed (weird wording) would be good for me insofar as how other people react to me. Then again, I really think that anything that can/should be done by one gender should be allowed to the other. wait, i think i'm confusing myself...

There's something I've been thinking about, and I'd like to float it here before mentioning it elsewhere. You've all heard it said that a hypermasculine Flat Character who's biologically female is a "man in a dress," right? Perhaps you've gotten into an argument over that, saying that female characters shouldn't be prevented from being things that male characters are allowed to be.

I'm starting to think that the hypermasculine Flat Character is functionally the same whether in a dress or in pants, and is bad either way. I owe some of this to Manly Guys Doing Manly Things—a comic I don't entirely like or agree with, but which nonetheless presents a surprisingly deep portrayal of masculinity, then contrasts it with how shallowly it's been portrayed in popular culture. A truly interesting character can be masculine, whether male or female, but they must have something more to them than snarkiness and a temper problem.

edited 22nd Nov '11 6:02:58 PM by feotakahari

I always thought the problem with 'men in dresses' that it seemed to say "Yeah, sure women can be just as good as men! If they act, dress and talk exactly like them."

That is, for a woman to be 'relateable', all references to her female-ness must be expunged.