What makes you feel a/gendered?

[Zee]

Understanding that gender is something intangible its sometimes difficult to understand what might make someone feel one way or another. Ive heard it being described as being like a shoe that just fits and is comfortable. so what are your thoughts?

[Laurie]

Hi Zee,

  I think what my best indicator of being of the wrong gender was how I felt during my several decades of crossdressing before discovering I was Trans. What that feeling was is that when I removed my male clothes in preparing to don my female attire it feel like I was removing the weight of the world from my shoulders. With each piece removed my responsibilities as a man were stripped away. I ceased to be the bread winner, the husband, the father and the son that I was expected to me and the dismal failure at all of them with the exception of my job.
  Putting on my female attire was relief, and feeling good, enjoying the closeted freedom of feeling pretty. I could like myself for a time and wished I could stay a woman forever. Having to change back was like lifting those heavy responsibilities I hated again.
  Coming out as trans has been hard on me yet I am now able to be who I have always wanted to be even though it comes with pain, hurt and complications that I'm not at all sure I can overcome. But I wouldn't undo being me if I could. I'm a woman and I will die a woman.

Hugs,
   Laurie

[Tessa James]

For me gender is a wide and deep spectrum.  We can recognize ourselves and others within the spectrum but that place may be temporary, fixed or progressive such as in transition.  One place need not invalidate the truth of another in a very different place or state.

Gender may be deeply felt and intrinsic.  Some of us may not feel any sense of gender while others feel a secure and often oblivious congruence with whatever is between their legs at birth.  We own our gender and the manifestation or expression we choose to allow the world to see.  Clothing and behavior are not an indicator of gender for me.  Playing with dolls and having long hair or wearing jeans does not make one a girl or boy, for example.  Anatomy is not destiny now, if it ever was.

I love the queer community for having seemingly greater celebration of and tolerance for gender bending.  Girls will be boys and all those other musical numbers like Lola that laugh at a fixed gender expression have long been part of our life.  Gender is fun and we can allow a far greater sense of expression to call our own rather than live with the tyranny of # one or two.  Think outside the boxes maybe?

[Jessica]

For me gender is a wide and deep spectrum.  We can recognize ourselves and others within the spectrum but that place may be temporary, fixed or progressive such as in transition.  One place need not invalidate the truth of another in a very different place or state.

Gender may be deeply felt and intrinsic.  Some of us may not feel any sense of gender while others feel a secure and often oblivious congruence with whatever is between their legs at birth.  We own our gender and the manifestation or expression we choose to allow the world to see.  Clothing and behavior are not an indicator of gender for me.  Playing with dolls and having long hair or wearing jeans does not make one a girl or boy, for example.  Anatomy is not destiny now, if it ever was.

I love the queer community for having seemingly greater celebration of and tolerance for gender bending.  Girls will be boys and all those other musical numbers like Lola that laugh at a fixed gender expression have long been part of our life.  Gender is fun and we can allow a far greater sense of expression to call our own rather than live with the tyranny of # one or two.  Think outside the boxes maybe?

Wow Tessa, we have a lot of the same views.  I've tried to come to broader terms with being transgender.  Maybe all humans are transgender and where they decide to stop in the spectrum is who you are.  Hormone interactions in the womb dictate your anatomy but not who you are.

[Elis]

Simply put I don't know. For me I feel innately non binary (agender) the same way someone feels innately male or female. I just do. I think most people are non binary they just don't realise it because our society is strictly binary. Same with being bisexual/pansexual.

[Tessa James]

Wow Tessa, we have a lot of the same views.  I've tried to come to broader terms with being transgender.  Maybe all humans are transgender and where they decide to stop in the spectrum is who you are.  Hormone interactions in the womb dictate your anatomy but not who you are.

Then you are somewhat dangerous to yourself and others   Just a tease but truly I do recall feeling an enthusiasm for everyone being kinda queer at several points in my life only to be rudely disabused of that notion.  We have potential but only a few will take the risks to address their personal and sometimes unpopular truth.  What exactly is so subversive about loving every one regardless of gender?

[Jessica]

Then you are somewhat dangerous to yourself and others   Just a tease but truly I do recall feeling an enthusiasm for everyone being kinda queer at several points in my life only to be rudely disabused of that notion.  We have potential but only a few will take the risks to address their personal and sometimes unpopular truth.  What exactly is so subversive about loving every one regardless of gender?

I have been living my "self" all along, muddling along with this appendage that had its uses at one point.  Never thought I needed a change.  An analogy could be if you were born blind, you wouldn't know the difference.  Then I changed my chemistry and viola', I'm still the same person but feeling much more in balance with life.

Modern society has evolved from tribalism into what we have now.  In small groups, every person was important for the success of their close knit groups.  Stronger tribes swallowed up weaker ones,  who were treated as less value than the core members.  Generation after generation fostered hatred of different people than yourselves. 

And here we are trying to change the world.

[BT04]

I thought I was agender (and asexual) for several years, but I later discovered that it was due in no small part to the medications I was on at the time. When I realized that my brain chemistry could be so easily manipulated, I had a small crisis and gave up identifying as trans, though I continued to feel largely alienated from cis people.

I remember what it felt like, though, that sense of having nothing where most other people didn't just have a something, but a big and vital something. Due to the artificial nature of my experience, though, I did feel that something was lacking and tried compensating for it in a number of different ways. In the end I wound up dysphoric. I wonder, though, how a genuine genderless experience feels compared to what I felt, or if, sans dysphoria, they are actually largely the same?

Modern society has evolved from tribalism into what we have now.  In small groups, every person was important for the success of their close knit groups.  Stronger tribes swallowed up weaker ones,  who were treated as less value than the core members.  Generation after generation fostered hatred of different people than yourselves. 

I completely understand that you're trying to uplift here and foster optimism and hope, but I feel obligated to point out that your view of tribal human societies is grossly ahistorical, and that you do modern civilization no service by perpetuating such innaccuracies.