Being outside the gender spectrum

[Casey]

Here's a quote from the Wiki entry on genderqueer (the emphasis is mine):

Some believe they are a little of both or feel they have no gender at all.

That's one concept (among many) I can't seem to grasp. Last year, heck even as recently as February, I would have told you that my gender was male. These days I say that my gender is other. It feels different than I would imagine "both" would feel like. It's simultaneously an equal mix of male and female while at the same time somehow transcending a simple blend of the two. But I stil feel like I have a gender.

What really intrigues me is that some people say they have no gender but also say they are N% male and M% female. Wouldn't being able to describe yourself in percentages mean you have a gender? I also read one person's account where she doesn't subscribe to the concept of a gender continuum so she places herself outside of it. But she also says that being outside the gender continuum is almost the same net effect as being between man and woman.

What concept am I failing to grasp here? What paradigm needs to be shifted for me to understand the concept of having no gender? Maybe I'm just too certain that I have a gender to get the concept. I'd love to hear what others think, even if you don't get the concept either.

[Melissa]

My guess is that it means they don't identify as either gender.  I don't know why they would quote percentages though.

Melissa

[beatrix]

My guess is that it means they don't identify as either gender.  I don't know why they would quote percentages though.

Melissa

I imagine it helps to quantify things objectively.  For me, it's too unstable to put to percentages on it, but if I could I would.  It's not that I don't or do have a gender, but that things seem to change for me.  The past week, I've been OK as a guy, but for a month before that I was the other way: upset that I couldn't show my "feminine" side.

Which is totally unhelpful, I know, and I'm sorry.

I've been trying to deconstruct the idea of gender in my head and it's a fun excercise.  Attempting to not use certain pronouns, etc., and incorporate that into some writing I've been doing (started a new blog) has kind of been a head-tripping thing, which is awesome, and with none of the nasty chemical reactions!

[Kendall]

I agree that maybe it means they dont want to identify as either, so instead of mixture they dont even think about what is gender . Not that they dont have any amount of gender, meaning they have a mixture of both. I would guess that a non gender would try to neutralize any expression of gender, or maybe its more like eunuch-like. I am curious to hear from others that identify as neither also.

[Louise]

I don't know if this helps any, but one might compare gender identity with national identity.  Some people strongly identify with their nationality, others consider themselves to be cosmopolitan and not tied to any national identity (even though all of us are born into some national group or other, just as we are all given a gender identity at birth).  Some people emigrate and change from one national identity to another, or more likely assume a new hypenated nationality.  The analogy of gender and nationality can't be pushed too far, but I think it has some interesting similarities.  Jeffrey Eugenides' Middlesex (the 2003 Pulitzer prize winning novel) explores both gender and national identity.  The protagonist is intersexed and while raised as a girl discovers his male identity in adolescence; he is also a third generation Greek-American whose story is told in the context of his grandparents' emigration.

[Furanshisu]

Good analogy Louise. Changing countries is a pretty scary thought too, like worrying about fitting in and stuff, or at least acceptance.

Perhaps identifying with no gender is, besides a rejection of the gender concept, just being- regardless of this stuff- I guess doing what you like and not feeling like any specific thing but yourself. I guess it would entail Louise's cosmopolitan concept- which I like, though the world is much bigger.  It reminds me of years ago sometimes I'd look in the mirror and think, hmm, my name isn't "me", not that its bad or unfitting or I want to particularly get rid of it (cept the middle one, ick) but I don't feel like I am my name- its more of an identification convienience, and I don't even like telling it to people so much. I guess that could be both and neither then, kind of like letting people call you what ever they want. Just doing your thing. Or some might purposely hide traits, rather than just hold them as traits that anyone can have.

In my psych book there's a famous diagram of four boxes to illustrate personality traits- masculine, feminine, androgynous (high both), undifferentiated (lacking both). Not sure how literal you can take that since you can't have no personality unless you're unconscious or something. I don't quite get it anymore- like what is masculine or feminine anyway? I get it from a culture expectation or animal instinct way, but those don't really have much to do with me. Maybe I live in a rather liberal area.