Sorry for barging in, but... What do people mean when they say "core gender?"

Who we are deep inside, without the pressures of conformity Or social pressure, that place deep within that watches, comments, feels, and knows what feels authentic and what does not.  It may mean something different to you or others, and it may not be gendered, but is it Your truth as you experience it, without outside interference.

Jmo. 

Oh like one's real self stripped of personas and masks?

My core is determined solely by my DNA and the accompanying male hardwiring. On the other hand I am intensely aware of my feminine side and lean heavily there because I prefer it. I like feminine things, colorful dress and enjoy living in the presence of women over men. In an emergency I am fully capable of drawing out the male presence to take care of business. I am who I am and don't have to color it to make it pretty, convolute it to cause confusion, and above all I don't have to ever justify it for the sake of others or for a sense of personal validation.

Quote from: Edge on October 25, 2014, 09:02:31 AM
Oh like one's real self stripped of personas and masks?

Yes

Quote from: Shantel on October 25, 2014, 09:14:13 AM
My core is determined solely by my DNA and the accompanying male hardwiring. On the other hand I am intensely aware of my feminine side and lean heavily there because I prefer it. I like feminine things, colorful dress and enjoy living in the presence of women over men. In an emergency I am fully capable of drawing out the male presence to take care of business. I am who I am and don't have to color it to make it pretty, convolute it to cause confusion, and above all I don't have to ever justify it for the sake of others or for a sense of personal validation.

Lucky sister.  Yet you walked the path of self deception until one day your core said no.

And I admire you and your no bulls..t message.  Straight from your gut.

Also my hardwire was.altered..des controversy

i'm at a conference right now, for parents interestingly.
there was a joyful swedish woman who talked a whole lot about experiences that had forced her to rethink all she'd learned about learning and her role as a teacher.

one story she told has a lot to do about self discovery, though she didn't tell it that way.
she had asked the kids in a class to write down what they wanted to become when they grew up. very enthusiastically, no limutations too early in life. they gave typical answers like idol or professional soccer player, but one boy answered differently. what he wanted to become was "happy".

so next up to do is write down things they need to do in order to achieve that goal. and since she never told them anything was impossible, they all wrote serious answers like do more pushups etc.
but this one boy who wanted to become hapoy started writing a list and then crossed out the different items on it.
this teacher, having realized that kids usually have some of the most intelligent answers to questions that seem way diffficult to adults, asked the boy what he was doing, why he was crossing off all that he wrote.

what he answeres was that he figured that the best way to become happy would be to stop doing all the things that made him unhappy.

not very different from what i have learned through my discussions with the folks here.

so much of what taka said about core gender fits me. I would not apply the concept of gender to my core.

I don't know that core is solely determined by my DNA. Leaving spirituality out of it for a moment, there is the nature versus nurture argument. I do not know what my DNA would look like if we could truly understand the lexicon. I do know that my brain is not wired "normally". I have long liked the term, if we are using labels, of neural atypical, as it best sums up so much. My disabilities and abilities and gender and traits are wound up in this. But I doubt it's solely DNA. Our brain is deeply influenced in the womb and as infants.  I don't think you go through a childhood like I did without it affecting your core. So, to state it in a different way, I do not believe a "core" is a stable, unchangeable thing. I think I'm rambling.

I love Philosophy. "I think so therefore I am". But what am I? Male or female? Angel or demon? Sinner or saint? When it all comes down to it I am just human. No specifics, I sin and I do good. I am male and female. And as for the angel or demon part, that just depends on who I'm with if they want me to take them to heaven or put them through hell.

BTW Jessica, Philosophy in no means answers any of life's mysteries. If anything it makes life more mysterious. So actually delving into Philosophy makes life even more mysterious. If you ever find one answer, it leads to more questions. Almost like Psychology. But I don't believe their are no black or white answers in life other than we are born and we die. What we are before we are born is a great mystery and what happens after we die is a great mystery. Here is one for everyone philosophically. We are non existent for way more than we exist in The Great Scheme of Things. So what are we during our times of non existence in this world? Is it truly non existence?

"I think so therefore I am". Powerful words because what makes us think? Why do we think? Why are we the only animal that I know of that recognizes ourselves as ourselves in the mirror? Because we think. Other animals use instinct and we use reason to live. Why? OK the crazy chick will shut up now.

BTW it could be what is at our core is possibly who we are at those times between non existence.

Quote from: Jessica Merriman on October 24, 2014, 11:36:19 AM
Life is too short. Just live like you want to without driving yourself crazy.

I am female, period. Nothing else needs to be said.

I think the difference is that things aren't so cut and dry for me. I have to think about it, because I'm going crazy already. It's like, I don't know, it's --

It's like we're in a cave, you and me. And it's dark, and it's scary, and there's no pinprick of light directing me to the surface, not from where I'm standing. It's claustrophobic in there, and my god, we want out. You have a rope in your hand, one that's anchored to a rock outside, and you know that if you just keep walking, keep following that line, you'll be out of that place for good someday. So you call out to me, "Cameron, c'mon man, just use the rope!"

But me, I'm thirty feet away, and even though I'm trying, I'm reaching out, there's no rope that I can find. I don't have anything to hold onto. So I start stepping, hands out, blindly groping. I could be walking the wrong direction for all I know, but I stay where I am, I'll die. My shuffle is slower than yours, and sometimes it takes me in circles. I feel the walls. I talk to myself and listen for echoes to direct me. But eventually, I find my way to the surface with you.

Asking questions like this is my echolocation. I have to think and think and listen to those thoughts in order to figure out where I am.

Less metaphorically, identifying my core gender (for example) helps me process my transition goals. Ideally, I'd like to see a match-up between my internal self and my external expression, just like any other trans person. So I'm going to have to think about this a bit before I answer for myself!

Well, when I look into myself, I find a lot of things (sort of like my desk at the moment, only if it had 61 years worth of junk instead of only 10), but I have never found a gender.  Maybe it's because I'm a kind of concrete person (maybe that's why when I was a kid, the adults all said I had rocks in my head?) , but I don't even get what that means.  Male/female/intersex anatomical features I can understand. Gender roles & expectations I sort of get, in the sense of things other people try to pressure you to do/be/not do/not be.  But in your core?  What you are when you turn out the lights and crawl inside your brain?  I just don't get it.  I'm not saying that there aren't people to whom this makes loads of sense, I'm just not one of  them.

If I were to someday say that my core is "female" or that it's "male," it would have to be a conclusion, based on matching up my attributes and preferences to some checklist or other.  "Okay, I took the Cosmo gender-identity test, and it's saying I'm 80% female, 44 % male, 68% genderqueer, 31.4159 % unidentifyable other.  And, yeah, the article does say 'percentages may not add up to exaclty 100%.'  I'll go with 'female.'"

percentages aren't supposed to add up to 100%, in most cases.

gender may be exactly what you're describing, asche.
something constructed almost according to a checklist.
which kids do i prefer playing with, what toys do i like most, what clothing, what parts do i have, how do i like my parts, do i want these things to grow bigger, how would i like my parts to be different, what kind of people do i want to attract, in which way do i want to attract people of different gender or sex, what do i want to identify as, etc?
except that for most people, they don't consciously go through the checklist, but instead just trust the intuitive gut feeling that they're "....."
or with cis people, they just never question their assigned gender because there aren't too many red items on their checklist, and none that have to do about the physical aspect.

When I look to who I am, stripped of pretense and without the patina of my culture and my experience.  I don't see a boy or a girl. I see spirit and I see hope.  My gender is a layer, as is my intelligence and how I relate sexually to other people.  All this, at the core is artiface, at the core I am a human becoming.

Peace
Julie

Quote from: JulieBlair on October 27, 2014, 05:17:13 PM
When I look to who I am, stripped of pretense and without the patina of my culture and my experience.  I don't see a boy or a girl. I see spirit and I see hope.  My gender is a layer, as is my intelligence and how I relate sexually to other people.  All this, at the core is artiface, at the core I am a human becoming.

Peace
Julie

You know I was going to answer something to this line earlier. I didn't though. You said everything I was thinking Julie in one paragraph. Mine was like five paragraphs and didn't think everyone wouldn't want to read that much stuff. Kudos girl. I guess I just got a big mouth or too active fingers. Most people tell me I talk too much so why would typing be that much different.

I totally am a girl inside, but wrapped in an outer core of a fully male body, wrapped inside whatever I happen to be wearing, which is usually an androgynous style all my own. Is my girl brain or my male body my true core? To further complicate things, my brain isn't really fully feminine, I have some guy thought patterns, for sure, and my male body has some feminine features...

I don't think I have just one core, I am both at the core, one is more mental, and one is more physical, both are just as important to me.

Quote from: VeronicaLynn on October 28, 2014, 12:28:01 AM
I totally am a girl inside, but wrapped in an outer core of a fully male body, wrapped inside whatever I happen to be wearing, which is usually an androgynous style all my own. Is my girl brain or my male body my true core? To further complicate things, my brain isn't really fully feminine, I have some guy thought patterns, for sure, and my male body has some feminine features...

I don't think I have just one core, I am both at the core, one is more mental, and one is more physical, both are just as important to me.

I don't believe anyone's brain is exclusively one or the other. I believe most people believe what they are is what they are on the outside. I do believe we are special and not in a bad way. It is a pretty big accomplishment Spiritually to be able to disconnect the material body from the Spirit. Yeah we catch a lot of crap from it, but we are naturally disconnected between body and Psyche or Spirit and a lot of people spend their whole lives trying to separate one from the other. I mean the whole Ideals of religion is to separate the Soul, Spirit or Consciousness from the material world. It comes natural for us. So, is it a good thing or a bad thing? I guess it just depends on how you look at things. It's not easy for sure, but what in life is easy?

Separation, or communion.  But it starts with the heart.

Separation from the toxic world, that which corrupts, yes,  from the material, I do not do this.

I find the core within the heart, it is intuitive, instinctive, deep inside.  Not a matter of logic for me, not something I deduce.   A communion with the God of my understanding, where He is integrated into my heart, and takes complete control if I let that happen.  This is the God of my understanding and I wont force it here.  But I speak from my own heart and experience.  I would never have the stregth to survive without it.

But the core is heart.  When I hear others talk of darkness in the core, it deeply saddens me.  There should be joy in the core, and light and dancing and music.  But getting there, it took me a long time...

Hopefully I dont sound egoistic or nuts, but this is where I am.  Even in yoga or buddhism or the white occult we find connecting to the core, usually defined as a chakra or  breathing center in the diaphram (ever wonder why you hold your breath to suppress fear?  Breath is the seat of the emotions, according to the acting textbooks and best writers there).

Core is also the totality of our values, of our being.  It is our integrity.  It probably has got a big trans part of it, if trans is not shut down through non acceptance.  That is part of the journey, to accept our fluid natures or andro or mtf or ftm or Cis, into the deapths of our beings, make it our own, own it, make it a powerful place of stregth within the core, and then in that stregth move out into a hostile world and turn it upside down.

That is core to me, the seat of the essence of me, the definitions of who I am, intuitively.

And there is Spirit living in the core, mine, and also the One which watches over me, if you can accept this.  You dont have to accep that, but it is a key to what makes Satinjoy who sh'e is.  Since we are in the nonbinary section I dont want to cross over to the religion part, but core is not religion, it may be powered by it, but core is core.  Who we are deep inside, free of outside influences, our sense of self.

As I see it.  From a spiritual point of view, from an experiential point of view, all of us are different.  Or are we?

Blessings

Satinjoy.