In an earlier thread, Sephirah said that my perspective, which seems so different from everyone else's, can be helpful, so I thought I'd natter on a bit about my perspective on gender. Feel free to skip this post if you're not interested.
One way in which I seem to be different from other people is that I'm not all that hung up on what I "really" am. A lot of people seem to want to come up with a label for themselves -- "am I non-binary, or a cross-dresser, or what?" Me, I find such things mostly useful for finding people who are sort of like me, so I see who I feel most comfortable hanging out with and use whatever terminology they use. I notice that the trans people I relate best to are mostly non-binary, and I can't be bothered with whether I'm "really" a woman or a man, so I use the term non-binary for myself. But if you want to think of me as a trans woman, or even just a woman, I'm fine with that. Besides, I feel more comfortable around cis women than cis men, anyway.
Basically, my experience of "gender" has been all those things people try to make you be because of whether you've been assigned "F" or "M," and the things they tried to make me be were mostly things that I didn't want to be and in many cases couldn't be anyway. I know that for some people, feeling that they are "male" or "female" is a big deal, so for them, "gender" is more than just about gender rules. But for me, I just want to be me, and the choice of "male" or "female" is mostly about what kind of gender policing I'd rather deal with. If I have to choose a gender identity, I'd choose "techie" or "radical feminist." (But definitely not "male" -- my experience of masculinity was so awful I want nothing to do with it.)
That's one reason why I post here and not in the transgender or transsexual forums. People there seem to spend a lot of energy on questions that I just don't care about. I'd rather discuss how to be a human. (And, for extra credit, how to be a decent human.)
