Analogies

[Huggyrei]

I've been trying to think some more of what gender feels like, in an attempt to find analogies to aid understanding. I think it's very easy to assume that everyone experiences gender in the same way as you do, and the sheer imcomprehensibility that this can cause is potentially a source of a lot of problems. From my point of view, the fact that I happen to be female assigned always seemed to be entirely incidental. I had several discussions with well-meaning women advising me to do

• because it would make me 'feel more feminine', a concept that seemed utterly confusing and nonsensical to me (if I wore a giant teddy bear outfit, I might feel more teddy bear-like, but why would that be a reason to do so?). It has gradually dawned on me however that for a lot of people, being a [man/woman/whatever] is an important part of how they see themselves. It sounds stupid, but this was a big revelation to me - suddenly a lot of past conversations made much more sense! This is why people still assume that breasts = [set of assumptions], because for a lot of people that *is* what they want (and it's been helpful to try and seperate this out from 'stuff that's actually sexist and harmful').
  
  Anyway, an analogy I have found useful is this:
  
  I am a geek. I think of myself as a geek. I enjoy hanging out with other people who are also geeks, and having geeky conversations about our mutually shared geek culture. I enjoy it when I am wearing, for example, my Doctor Who coat or Star Trek t-shirt, and as a result someone identifies me as a geek. I feel pleased and validated when someone recognises me as a geek and treats me accordingly. This is how I think of binary genders, except that the male/female subcultures are ones that a lot of people have identified with, and (most of the time) received approval for belonging to their whole lives, perhaps until they don't even think about it anymore. I am simply someone who never really got into it. Like at sixth form, when I tended to hang around with goths, but never felt a need to start wearing black and telling sad poetry myself, because I didn't have an idea of myself as a goth - although I was fine with doing those things if the mood struck! Being androgyne is like... enjoying sci-fi, but being baffled by fierce shipping wars or Trekkie vs Trekker discussions, and also liking sports.
  
  Thoughts? Any other useful this-is-what-gender-feels-like-to-me ideas? Anyone else took a long time to realise that other people did in fact feel differently (I really hope it wasn't just me who was surprised to find that some friends did in fact see themselves as 'masculine' or 'feminine', words that hold little intrinsic meaning for me)?

[suzifrommd]

I like this post a made a couple years ago:

What is social dysphoria like? Imagine you lived on a planet with humans and aliens. You are an alien. You look like an alien. The aliens all like you. But you don't find aliens interesting. They don't like letting you know anything about themselves. You get a sense that you belong with humans. When you're around humans, you feel more comfortable, more relaxed. You prefer books written by humans, movies about humans, and listen mostly to music by humans. It's not that you'd object to a friendship with an alien. But the kind of friendships that are important to you make most aliens uncomfortable.

So you try to spend time with the humans. They're not sure why you're there, but most of them are nice and tolerate your presence. You talk to them about their human things, you tell them about alien things when they ask. You feel like you're getting along well.

So you ask one of them to have coffee with you. Suddenly they change. They're too busy. It's just such a hectic time. You wander back to the aliens' area. They are friendly. They accept you in their alien way, which is something you don't relate to or understand.

What do you do? How can you fit in with the humans? You could disguise yourself as a human. Paint over your green skin so that it looks human-colored. Cover up your third eye. Of course it would be easy for humans to tell you're not really one of them. They would treat you like you're trying to get away with something.

Maybe a doctor could actually turn you into a human. Give you human colored skin and remove your third eye so effectively that there's no trace of it. But then you'd have to act like a human. Every second for the rest of your life. And you know you're not really one. Of course you're not completely an alien either. You're really just ... you.

So you go on hoping, looking for any humans who don't automatically say, "seems nice, but humans don't socialize with aliens". You meet one, be friendly, and then find out they're not interested in alien friends.

Welcome to social dysphoria.

https://www.susans.org/forums/index.php/topic,122039.msg953032.html#msg953032

[ativan]

My gender has brought me many difficulties in my life because I thought I was supposed to have one.
Turns out I never did, everyone else made me think otherwise, because they like to label things.
Once I got past the label idea and it's definitions as something that's true, I realized why references to it made me doubt people.
It also explained the doubts I had about myself, why I kept my feelings about gender a secret most of my life.
Everyone else seemed to have one, and I didn't. It made me feel like I was something less.

When I started to talk about 'the secret', I realized the only way to talk about it was to play the label game.
I still do. But I try to nudge people into the idea that it isn't about labels.
It's really like trying to apply those same labels to your description of what some call their soul.
Do you really have the need to use a gender label in describing that?
If you do, I don't think you understand what that might be, at all.
Who we are, at any point in our lives, is just something that we happen to be doing at the time, big things, little things.
The sum of what we have done and what we are doing right now, today and yesterday, thinking about tomorrow.

If I am part female, it would be 'Barbie' from hell, or at least on it's wheels.
If I am part male, I'm a bad example of being stronger than my emotions.
If society wants to define me, it's always been wrong. So have I when I have played that expectation.
The day I gave up on those expectations, was the day that gender stopped being an option or a desire to fit in.
I am the sum of my experiences and it turns out that gender really didn't have much if anything to do with them.
Because I never had enough of one, if at all, to keep me away from the things I've done.
I would have done them, just the same.

As a gender, I'm a huge failure.
As a person, I've done some pretty amazing things, as well as a few horrifying things.
Gender didn't make me do any of them, if anything, it got in the way.
But it wasn't this gender thing that got in the way, it was people who have expectations that gender defines something tangible.
It doesn't. It's a useless label because you can't define it in a finite way.
The only thing I've learned from 'gender', is how to sidestep it, and do what I want anyways.
Which comes in pretty handy at times.

I see so many people who's potential will never be reached because of labels.
That's one of the reasons I talk about not using those labels and why you shouldn't, here.
It's reaching your potential, why I comment about not using those label things here.
And getting rid of those damn expectations and use of labels is one way of doing that.
Be yourselves, not a gender. You're real, a tangible thing, a life. Not a discussion of what a label is or isn't.
If I told you that you will never be more than your gender would you believe me?
I don't think you would, no matter how hard I tried.

Gender is an imaginary line, boundary, concept used to explain something that is intangible.
A useless discussion about what will hold you back if you believe in their definitions that we can't agree on.
Stop pretending it is necessary to have one to live.
Your life begins at the end of your comfort zone. There's an edge there.
There's an imaginary comfort in labels, gender labels.
Step past that edge of comfort and your life will will begin to make sense, take on it's real meaning.
Be somebody, not a label, not a gender. Step over the edge.
Ativan

[eli77]

The only thing I've learned from 'gender', is how to sidestep it, and do what I want anyways.

<3 that! And I feel much the same.


But I do understand the value in labels. In the end it comes down to the point of any word in the first place--communication. We are a social species and it's hard and lonely out there in the dark. Labels are sort of like little campfires to gather around and share stories. Places where you can feel safe among your own kind. Places where (ideally) you don't have to worry about being misunderstood or ridiculed or told off for being who you are.

I still remember how desperately happy I was to meet another creature like myself for the very first time. How the world suddenly felt so much less scary, knowing I had someone to watch my back, to smile and laugh with over our private jokes that nobody else could understand.

I think often we wear labels not so much for ourselves, but for others. To recognize each other, to find each other out there in the dark. We all come to this forum because it is labelled "androgyne" and that means I can say things here that I would never risk saying anywhere else. Because I can trust you all to look out for me, to make me feel safe here in the forest.

So labels do have their place. I think the problems start when one tries to fit oneself to the labels, rather than the labels to you. If the label doesn't fit, you take it off. You don't try to smush yourself to fit.

Okay, Imma go wander off back into my analogy now. Hope some of that made sense.

[Jamie D]

You always make sense to me. 

[Huggyrei]

I've never felt a particular need for a label (hence my confusion when someone else assigns me one). However, given that the majority of the world does seem to be happy with the labels of man and woman, it would be useful to try and understand. As a roleplayer and writer, I'm curious in any case about getting inside someone else's head, and identity as a man or a woman is clearly important to a large number of people. Just the existence of trans men and women tells me that there must be something to this! I'm searching for a way to frame it in terms that I can understand, and perhaps get some interesting thoughts on what gender identity might be, not assign labels! Does that make sense?

Suzifrommd - thanks. That analogy does make it sound like gender as a culture, but also brings in a physical element. Do you think dysphoria is caused by a feeling that one's body is incorrect *in and of itself*, or more engendered by wanting to have the physical markers that make you 'feel' more like the gender you belong to, in accordance with the gender-culture's expectations? Or is it basically not possible to tell!

[suzifrommd]

Do you think dysphoria is caused by a feeling that one's body is incorrect *in and of itself*, or more engendered by wanting to have the physical markers that make you 'feel' more like the gender you belong to, in accordance with the gender-culture's expectations? Or is it basically not possible to tell!

Gender is wired into our brains and so touches a lot of our interactions with the world.

The gendered part of my brain wants me physically see myself as female. When I saw my shaved arms for the first time, I got an amazing sense of euphoria. But this is new to me, whereas for years the gendered part of my brain told me that women were suitable companions and men were less so, even when I had no idea that that was the message I was receiving.

I conclude from this that, at least for me,  gender wiring controls both my relationships with my physical self AND my social world in ways that are sub-conscious and emotional.

[Huggyrei]

Thank you - I find it interesting to read! From my point of view, I have friends who are male/female/other and I don't think of them any differently. As it happens, I have a body with female plumbing, and I'm ok with that; OTOH the thought of having a male one instead doesn't particularly bother me. Hoewever, I did feel uncomfortable when a combination of parental pressure and school teasing led me to shave my legs and armpits - but I don't know if this was an objection to being read as more female, or just the feeling that I had been pressured into eoing something I didn't particularly want to do in order to change my appearance for someone else.

[eli77]

Do you think dysphoria is caused by a feeling that one's body is incorrect *in and of itself*, or more engendered by wanting to have the physical markers that make you 'feel' more like the gender you belong to, in accordance with the gender-culture's expectations? Or is it basically not possible to tell!

I don't think the experience of dysphoria is entirely universal. We don't all feel the same things despite them all carrying that same label. For me, for example, my experience of dysphoria is entirely physical--my body was wrong and now it's better. I've also spoken to a couple of folks who are entirely on the opposite side--they altered their bodies to match their identity. Often we call them "body dysphoria" versus "social dysphoria" depending on the origin of the discomfort. Though many trans people seem to experience some degree of both, like Suzi. Those who are all the way on one extreme, like myself, are somewhat unusual.

[ativan]

I've never felt a particular need for a label (hence my confusion when someone else assigns me one). However, given that the majority of the world does seem to be happy with the labels of man and woman, it would be useful to try and understand. As a roleplayer and writer, I'm curious in any case about getting inside someone else's head, and identity as a man or a woman is clearly important to a large number of people. Just the existence of trans men and women tells me that there must be something to this! I'm searching for a way to frame it in terms that I can understand, and perhaps get some interesting thoughts on what gender identity might be, not assign labels! Does that make sense?

This makes a lot of sense. At times I feel like I can do just that, but it really is more role playing than actually becoming mentally equivalent to a male or female gender.
This is where it breaks down labels and strict descriptions.
Taken somewhat out of context, Sarah7's description is one that is colorful and invokes concepts rather than a clinical description.
'desperately happy I was to meet another creature like myself for the very first time. How the world suddenly felt so much less scary,'
The key words themselves are very telling of the nature of their experience.
Desperately, happy, meet creature like myself, the world less scary.
There is contradiction in the words, yet in context, they have far more meaning.
These are the kinds of descriptions that make sense in their own way, yet give a better glimpse of what they mean.
Would a label fit this description? I suppose you could, but to what end?
While everyone might not be so colorful in descriptions, it's the feeling that comes through that makes them so much better.
When we want to describe who we are, this description has more value and weight than the descriptions of most labels.
As a writer, is this the kind of help to see inside someone and maybe even let that become a part of you for whatever reason you want?
These are descriptions of not a label but of a persons self. An insight as much as a description.
I see these when I read what people have to say, sometimes you have to pick them out of whatever their comment may be, but they are there.
None of these are the standardized versions of description, which can be looked at in so many different ways.
They are the descriptions of a self, nothing more, but insightful rather than an attempt at a finite description.
For me, it's the labels and descriptions that attempt to be the finalized version of them that creates a level of confusion to those who first encounter them.
Is this closer to what you're looking for?
I see them many times in comments. In context they are less than when a part of them or more stand out like they are in bold type.
These descriptions of a self are helpful to me when I am 'required' to play the part of one more than the other.
They add the depth of those roles that make them more than just the stanardized ideals of male or female, which have a coldness, clinical feel to them.
Maybe that's why I fail to really be a labeled gender and just leave it at a gender or not.
Ativan