androgyne invisibility

[Shana A]

This came up in another thread, I think it deserves to be its own topic.

For me, one of the hardest aspects of being androgyne is invisibility. I know who I am inside, but the world doesn't necessarily see that from the outside. If I don't dress in an androgynous fashion, which is often the case for work and living in a rural area, then who the world sees is incongruent with who I am. While my pain of gender dysphoria isn't as intense as it was a few years ago, I still deal with issues brought on by this invisibility, and believe that my continuing feelings of depression are at the core of this. 

Even when I don't present as female, I find that people relate to me in ways that don't match my external gender. Quite often other women treat me as one of them, and I certainly have never known how to act to be one of the guys. I'm often mam'ed at the grocery store. Regardless of my external appearance, I make no effort to hide feminine or androgynous behavior, so people are picking up on subtle cues.

I'm interested in hearing from others about androgyne invisibility, and how it affects you.

zythyra

[no_id]

Hm. I try my best to make my appearance correspond with how I feel inside. When I walk down the street I look at the girls knowing I am not and do not appear as one of them, and it's the same with boys. However, what I often find frustrating is that they don't know why I do not fit in with them and am not one of them, and I often feel uncomfortable knowing that they draw their own incorrect conclusions. I think it's an invisibility due to the unawareness (and perhaps unacceptance) of androgyny....

... If that makes any sense.. 

[Tay]

People make ridiculous assumptions about me.  I've been called girl, boy... it.  I do hate being invisible.  I'm working on taking a step away from invisibility today.  I'm working on a letter to my best friend to explain my situation.  If anyone wants to read it, I'd be willing to share.

[no_id]

People make ridiculous assumptions about me.  I've been called girl, boy... it.  I do hate being invisible.  I'm working on taking a step away from invisibility today.  I'm working on a letter to my best friend to explain my situation.  If anyone wants to read it, I'd be willing to share.

Funny coincidence. I'm currently working on a journal entry trying to explain my androgyny without using terminology: like a rollercoaster ride through my life with significant little pitstops

[RebeccaFog]

Hi Tay,

  I'd be willing to read what you write.  It may help me to verbalize my condition better.

  I just realized that I am invisible again. I went through much of my young adulthood invisible as anything other than what others saw me as. I didn't know it at the time.  Now that I understand myself, I'm back to that condition.  Before, I didn't really notice it, but now I do.
  Something to investigate I guess.

I want to do as KK suggested and dig up some useful info to add to what we already have collected here. I still need time. I have some website stuff that I really should do first (instead of coming here and hanging out with you folks every minute of the day).

[Tay]

This is the letter.

(Name Removed)

This is a very hard letter for me to write.  I meant to tell you this a hundred times.  I tried a hundred times.  I'd try to steer the conversation so I could bring it up without just being point blank about it.  Time finally ran out and I have to tell you this before you find out in other ways.  The last thing I want is for you to think I didn't want to tell you.

You might wonder what the criteria was for time to "run out."  It was your return to gaiaonline.  Why?  Well, let me explain.  I don't know where to begin, so I guess I'll try to begin at the beginning.  Which was a long, long time ago.

Have you ever woken up one morning and realised something was horribly wrong in your life?  Something that you could not control, had never controlled and which had been there all along?  I don't know how old I was, but I can remember being very, very young and reading my name written out on a piece of paper.  I stared at it for a good long time.  Beth.  What did that mean?  Who was that person?  I did not feel like a Beth.  Beths were like Beth from Little Women.  I was not like that and I couldn't be.  I was not a Beth.  But I didn't know what I was.  I cast aside my doubts and moved on.  I've done that a lot.

I managed to not think about it again for a long, long time.  I was 18 before I really gave it much thought.  Looking back, there were some clues about me not being a Beth, but they weren't important at the time. 

You remember me shaving my head, of course.  You were the one who took off my heavy ponytail and put it into a baggie.  You held my hand while they shaved off what was left.  You helped me deal with that crazy ass, shaky lift they used to get us on the truck.

Soon after that, people started calling me "sir" and thinking I was a boy, thanks to my new haircut.  At first, I was angry.  I was not a boy.  Why would people think that I was?  With a bit of time, though, I began to question why I was angry.  Sure, I didn't feel like a boy or look like a boy, in my eyes, but why wasn't I upset when they called me a girl or "miss?"  Beth was a girl, but I had never felt like a Beth.

I did a lot of reading.  I thought, for awhile, that maybe I was female-to-male.  But the label of boy wouldn't stick.  I wanted it to, so that I wouldn't feel in limbo.  I read and read and read, searching for a description that fit me, proof that I either was or wasn't a Beth.

I freaked out when I couldn't find a word.  I pushed aside any doubts.  I decided.  I had breasts and a vagina and I was named Beth.  Clearly, I was a girl and I should shut up.  I stopped reading and researching.

Those doubts, however, wouldn't stay away.  I'd wake up in the night thinking "Whose life is this?  I'm not a Beth.  But that is my name.  What else could I be?" 

I think I repeated my research about 5 or more times.  Looking, searching for an answer.

I found my answer in the most unexpected place.  I was looking up a webcomic character named Vaarsuvius, who was from a D&D based comic.  Vaarsuvius' sex was unknown to all others in the comic and indeed, even to the comic creator himself.  In the article on wikipedia, there was a word describing Vaarsuvius.  The word was "androgyne."

It comes from latin roots.  Andro, meaning man and gyne, meaning woman.  It refers to someone who does not fit the gender binary.  There are many, many different types of androgyne, but the one which fits me best is "gender neutral."  I do not feel and have never felt like either a boy or a girl.  My name confuses me because it is a girls' name.  My body confuses me because it is a girls' body. 

I started a thread on Gaia, http://www.gaiaonline.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=24218219, which was designed both to educate people about my discovery and to allow me to examine it for myself.  It was never my intent to hide from you.  Please know that. 

I fear your reaction to this.  It isn't something easy to understand or accept.  I know that, and I know that, even if you DO accept it, it will take you some time.  Please forgive me for delaying telling you. 

If you want to know more, another good site, other than the first post of my thread, is http://androgyne.0catch.com. It has some nasty pop ups, but click them away and there is information there.

I'm truly sorry for not telling you sooner.  You're my best friend.  It shouldn't have been hard to tell you, but somehow it is easier to tell the faceless, nameless masses of the internet than it is to tell someone you love.

Thank you for reading,
Tay

[Shana A]

Thanks for sharing your letter with us Tay! I can certainly relate to what you write, although from the other side of the spectrum with male body and name which has never felt like it fit who I am.

zythyra

[RebeccaFog]

I think the letter is well done, Tay.

   You do very well at bringing up the topic in an organic way and not just throwing it out there. By the time you reveal the word 'androgyne' I had a good sense of what the condition is (but then I would considering I'm similar).  What I mean is that I believe a person who is unfamiliar with us should be able to understand what you've written whether or not they relate.
   I also get the sense that you are nervous telling your story to this person, but I have no opinion on whether that will or will not work for you. It seems to be a strength, though, because it gives the distinct impression that all you desire is to be accepted as who you are.
   I think you do a great job of capturing that feeling we have of somehow having our identities always just beyond our reach.

Thank you for sharing,

Rebecca

[Tay]

She's my best friend, ever since we were kids.  Her family took me in when I was homeless because of my parents' stupidity.  She was the one who held me when I cried when we were kids.  She was the one who cleaned the blood off of me when I got beaten up.  She was the one who filled in my memory on what had occurred when I got beaten up and lost all memory of a period of time.  She's been there for me for a long, long time.  Unfortunately, I fear that I may have procrastinated too long in telling her.

[no_id]

I really like the letter Tay. It's simple, honest, and like me I am sure she will feel how important this is to you, and how hard it was to write down each single word. Additionally, I doubt that you waited too long to tell her. As you said: she has been there for me for a long, long time..., and it shouldn't be any different now. It's good that you told her. I'm glad you did. And, those kind of people can never be cut from your life because they have a piece of you as you have a piece of them that no one else can ever have. No matter what.

[Kendall]

Well done Tay. Well written and to the point.

As for invisibility, for me even if I show androgynous expressions, even then I can still be invisible, with them thinking other things about me. So invisibility is a concern even to those that express in androgynous ways.

[Shana A]

As for invisibility, for me even if I show androgynous expressions, even then I can still be invisible, with them thinking other things about me. So invisibility is a concern even to those that express in androgynous ways.

Yes, that's so true. Because androgyny as we know it isn't generally discussed or understood by society, people are likely to assume we're something other than what we are.

zythyra

[Laurry]

Great letter, Tay.  Thanks so much for sharing it.  And don't worry, she has been your friend for a very long time, and even if her feelings are hurt and she is angry for a time, true friends don't go away.

I had just finished making a post in the other thread, regarding invisibility, when I saw this thread.  At the risk of repeating myself (and getting it wrong), I will try to make the same point here.

People have a need to label things.  This allows us to group things together and thus deal with them in similar manners.  This works fine for things like cars, washing machines and televisions, but doesn't work well with people.  Still, as a society, we group people as Male or Female.  Within those groupings, we may have things like Gay Male or Effeminate Male or Redneck Homophobic Male, and the corresponding female sub-groupings.  When confronted by someone with an androgynous appearance, we don't know where to group them and thus don't know how to relate.  This also applies to a person who is obviously one sex, but wearing the clothing of both sexes.

Sadly, we fall in that "uncomfortable" range.  We may or may not appear androgynous, but when we tell others that we are neither male nor female, it is hard for a lot of people to understand.  They still want to lump us into the Effeminate Male or Masculine Female categories.  Thus no matter how hard we try to express our true selves, it becomes misinterpreted and we remain invisible.

Wish I had an answer for how to make things work, but I don't.  Thanks to hard work by many, society at least understands what it means to be Transsexual.  It still doesn't completely accept it, but it understands what that means.  It is easier for them to understand because it still follows the binary gender pattern.  The Gender Spectrum or Gender Circle pattern is not an easy concept for society to grasp...we need much more work in educating the public. 

..Laurry

[shawnael]

It shouldn't have been hard to tell you, but somehow it is easier to tell the faceless, nameless masses of the internet than it is to tell someone you love.

Tay inadvertently answered your question for me. The feeling of invisibility is enormous because I can't bring myself to tell my loved ones. I don't want them to think differently about me, but I don't want them to keep treating me the way they do.

[Doc]

I think all trans people suffer from the feeling of invisibility -- people look at the person, gender eir, and then have their interaction with a gendered construct they've created in their own mind. The actual transperson doesn't feel fully involved or included in eir own relationships -- almost everybody e knows is relating to a woman or a man that they've invented based on the transperson's visible sex characteristics. If your friends and family and co-workers and all are percieving you as and reacting to you as a woman, but you feel you are a man or an androgyne, you feel left out of your own life.

One thing I've found as an androgynous-looking person and a person who's gender expression has always been (even when I tried so very hard to be a cool goth-girl) poorly matched to his physical sex is that people are often uncomfortable in relating to me, and as a result the polite ones pretend not to see me. I am almost physically invisible, often. Maybe it's just me having a terrible lack of presence, but I am constantly interrupted in speech and find it almost impossible to gain attention if I need to interrupt someone else. It's really one of the deepest irritations in my life, at times quite painful. Refusing to acknowledge someone's presence or allow his speech any air-time is a sneaky sort of beat-down -- the only thing he can do about it is yell, and that makes him the rude one.

[Autumn]

I believe my mannerisms and movement are becoming more feminine since I broke through the fear last year. I haven't really practiced or read up on how to change these things. I just notice myself doing them and go "Zuh, that's different." It took me many, many months to figure out why I started smiling last year.

I get sir'd, I get ma'amed. Often enough I get nothinged, not that I hold that against someone who's job is to deal with the public and making a mis-judgment is worse than just avoiding the question entirely. I don't bother correcting people. It's blown my girlfriend away that I get addressed like that. My mom's gotten infuriated for years. I grew a gigantic ugly beard for 8 years and it didn't stop the ma'ams, even as a badly dressed boy.

Now it's becoming an expression of myself. I just started a thread in the CD forum asking for subtle female clothing styles because I plan to begin switching over to exclusively womens' clothing for casual wear, though I'm not going to wear breastforms or makeup. Just be myself.

I've never seen anyone correct themselves if they haven't been corrected by someone who was with me, or if they didn't make the initial judgment before fully looking at me (an immediate correction then follows.) So I don't know if it's simply the old "people label you and then are unlikely to change" or if they just don't want to admit/don't care enough if they later figure it out.

I don't fit in with a lot of people. I've never fit in with groups of guys. Solitary ones here and there. For women, there's  the ones who hate me for not being masculine. Can't do much about those as a male in a social situation, it's completely 100% approved abuse. I get along pretty well with the rest and enjoy the sometimes lengthy conversations I get to have with them. As I've become less socially awkward and more comfortable with myself in general it's been rewarding.

Romantically it's a huge frustration though. When I start getting close to a woman as a friend it almost always ends up getting converted to some sort of relationship and that just ruins things. Think I hurt the esteem and cut myself off from  one longtime friend by not sleeping with her, even though I was going through a terrible breakup at the time. And recently I decided to take a chance at a relationship with someone I was only interested in as a friend because she said that her feelings for me would prevent the continuation of our friendship. Dramatic, sure, but nobody likes being rejected and it's happened time and again in different ways.

To be honest, I feel kind of nonexistent period these days. Seeing Kristi address me femininely in our odyssey update struck me as so strange because it's only been a very select handful of times that I've been referred to as such outside of ma'ams. Pretty much never. And I forget what my outside appearance says to everyone else, except when it ends up being negative. I hate that I'm held to male standards for physical capability and more. I'm in fantastic physical shape and a very healthy person, if I wanted to be able to kick serious ass I'd be able to, but I don't want that type of body. And because of my general appearance and mannerism a lot of people think I'm a closeted gay man, which is frustrating because if I was gay I'd be happily out of the closet. Hell I only wish it were that simple. My internal view is that I should have been a woman and that's generally enough for me these days, outside of shedding these awful clothes.

[Shana A]

I think all trans people suffer from the feeling of invisibility -- people look at the person, gender eir, and then have their interaction with a gendered construct they've created in their own mind. The actual transperson doesn't feel fully involved or included in eir own relationships -- almost everybody e knows is relating to a woman or a man that they've invented based on the transperson's visible sex characteristics.

Doc,

Absolutely! You've truly hit on a core aspect, other people have decided what they want to see, and we're not involved in the process. Even if we correct them, and say, not, I'm not male, not female either, they've already put us in one of those two boxes.

When I started this topic, I'd originally called it invisibility, then added androgyne before pressing the save button. Now I wish I'd kept it as simply invisibility as this really is an issue for all trans (and other) folks.

zythyra

[sparkles]

I find this a really interesting post as someone that is trying to come across as andro in everyday life and dress in such a way, i get a funny feeling that this is impossible to achully achive. ive now been mistaken for a gay man, a trans woman, a trans man. which i dont mind means im doing something right. i think what is important is that the people that matter to you understand, and this can only be achived by talking to them and explaining. even this is very hard to do as people find it hard to understand, it take us ages to and were living it. My partner at the moment is having a really hard time swopping from transgender/crossdressing to andro in her head when relating to what im doing, and these are closely related. The definition of andro is wide when you understand it or live it but to others i think it is a really small catagory that fits inbetween lots of others and is easly missed if not looked for. for the most part ive sort of given up trying to explain it to people, if they ask then il tell them, but you can become obsessed with telling everyone cos you want them to know when most of the time your friends just accept you for who you are anyway

[chillin]

Well really don;t fit in with the guys because I'm not a macho guy myself. I'm really quiet because I really and don;t talk to anybody when I go out on to a restaruaunt bar. I like sports so I share that interests with guys but I think I can talk alot more to females if I was one of them I feel. The thing with females is they have to really get to know me first in order for them to start talking with me.

What used to fustrate me is people would call me the wrong name all the time but I;m so used to it it doesn't matter anymore. It does feel like I;m invisible maybe probably because I haven;t played  up an androgynous look yet? I lived most of my life without knowing I was angrogyne until a few months ago.

[Louise]

Invisibility is not something that really bothers me.  In many ways I like being invisible, because then I am free to be myself without having to worry about how others perceive me.


For me androgyny has more to do with my feelings, attitudes and behavior than with my physical appearance.  My appearance is not really all that androgynous--particularly when I am wearing a full beard.  Other physical aspects of androgyny--manicured nails and shaved legs, for example--are things that I neither hide nor flaunt--they are just there.