A member of this site from way back visited recently and declared the non-binary area quiet.

I agree, but I contend there are a lot of site members who are non-binary who just don't post much.

I invite anyone who considers themselves a non-binary member of Susan's Place to post here and be counted. If you'd like, you can tell us something about yourself we might not know.

I'm Suzi, who lived for 50 years obliviously as a man never dreaming I'd have gender issues. I now live full-time as a woman, but I don't really see myself as female, or not completely. My true gender is kind of a genderfluid mix of feeling female, male, agender, or something else entirely.

Quote from: suzifrommd on September 17, 2015, 08:14:08 PM
A member of this site from way back visited recently and declared the non-binary area quiet.

I agree, but I contend there are a lot of site members who are non-binary who just don't post much.

I invite anyone who considers themselves a non-binary member of Susan's Place to post here and be counted. If you'd like, you can tell us something about yourself we might not know.

I'm Suzi, who lived for 50 years obliviously as a man never dreaming I'd have gender issues. I now live full-time as a woman, but I don't really see myself as female, or not completely. My true gender is kind of a genderfluid mix of feeling female, male, agender, or something else entirely.

One.

I'm Devlyn, who lived for 50 years obliviously as a man never dreaming I'd have gender issues. I now live full-time as a woman, but I don't really see myself as female, or not completely. My true gender is kind of a genderfluid mix of feeling female, male, agender, or something else entirely.

Two.   

Hugs, Devlyn

I'm here! for a little bit anyway.

Can't remember my old handle. At one point I was a moderator and was living half my time on here - but I over stepped a line with sharing too much - and then the brother of my ex ferreted out my identity on here and it was a bit messy so I had my account deleted.

67 -- been closeted trans and aware on some level since about 4 yrs old.

We're entirely clear that we're cis-M, and not "stuck in the wrong body." We just WISH we were cis-F, the full-boat, menstruation, no androgen damage, etc.

But I'm not . . . and so "gender dysphoric" but learning to be more integrated, cohesive, less fractured in my ID. It gets political/philosophical.

Quote from: nicole99 on September 17, 2015, 10:22:31 PM
I'm here! for a little bit anyway.

Can't remember my old handle. At one point I was a moderator and was living half my time on here - but I over stepped a line with sharing too much - and then the brother of my ex ferreted out my identity on here and it was a bit messy so I had my account deleted.

When I came out, my friends told me, "There hasn't been a door on that closet for years!" Orientatation can be closeted. Gender is not an under-cover issue. Gender in intrinsic to who we are.

Hi, I transitioned as a TG woman 24 years ago, but recently had an epiphany where I completely embraced myself as intersex and a DES child.  I'm happy with my femme name/real name and I don't mind being addressed in femme terms even though I don't see myself as being a binary human person.

I am a 37 year old AFAB and I am androgyne.


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Sooo... I have always thought of myself as a transgender woman with tom-boyish tendencies.   Even as I become more and more feminine I still enjoy many of the things I enjoyed in my old guy self.  So, off I went to research non-binary topics - so very fascinating!   That said, while I have more to learn, I still feel like am just a tom-boy.  I love our endless diversity more every day.

Miril

Hi, all. I'm 22 and my gender lies somewhere on the slide from "agender" to "male," so I call myself non-binary and transmasculine.

I'm genderfluid, and hopefully in the future I'll be able to share my journey with you all, though every time I've tried to write this so far, I end up deleting the results - call me a perfectionist!

I'm 51, and don't identify as a woman, it's more an identity that's not male or female, but contains elements of each. With hindsight it's obvious that some (but not all) of my brain development occurred as female instead of male, and that's why I've never fitted in properly as a man. However, there's too much of me that's male for living as a woman to ever be an option, so I'm stuck in a kind of no man's land in the middle. I was trying to figure out what parts of my brain are female and what parts male, and I think my limbic system (and hence my subconscious mind) is largely female, whereas my cerebral cortex (the part that handles consciousness and abstract thought) is male.

I've got enough in common with the DES "babes" I've chatted to over the last couple of years to know I had some kind of exposure to synthetic hormones, which I think must have been during the second trimester only (so I had normal male hormone levels and male brain development during the third trimester of my prenatal development).

Quote from: HughE on September 18, 2015, 05:42:39 PM
I was trying to figure out what parts of my brain are female and what parts male, and I think my limbic system (and hence my subconscious mind) is largely female, whereas my cerebral cortex (the part that handles consciousness and abstract thought) is male.

I've never heard it boiled down into physiology like that. I have visions of line drawings of flayed people with arrows labelling things as male or female.

I think my parts are all human and that is about as far as I get. I think we have pretty much all the building blocks of the things people associate with male and female. But I find your perspective really interesting as a way of trying to understand yourself.

Hi - I'm 34, AMAB presenting male, fairly new here.  Gender identity: I consider myself 30% male, 30% female and 40% whatever.  However, since I was little I had a mild sense of body dysphoria about my bottom sexual characteristic that caused me decades of self-loathing.  Once I realised what was wrong and that it could be fixed, the dysphoria rapidly developed into a burdensome preoccupation.  Happy to continue to present male (even if I don't feel especially like a man), but would very much like to transition my bottom.

I am totally on-board with the diversely-segmented gendered brain idea.  I believe that most of my brain is mildly male, but the parts of my brain that control my sex drive and connect to my genitalia are strongly female, and it has a devil of a time trying to figure out what it's supposed to do with the wrong bit of "hardware".

I do like the idea of body mind maps, and perhaps our brain holding a map for a body that I did not have. So the part dealing with my vulva and curves had to be jury rigged to make use of the body I did have. I likened it to phantom limb syndrome. It may be complete crap but it was a way of explaining my dysphoria to others and myself. I could feel the curves that should of been there and my penis was this foreign object that while fun was not mine.

Quote from: nicole99 on September 19, 2015, 06:37:15 AM
I've never heard it boiled down into physiology like that. I have visions of line drawings of flayed people with arrows labelling things as male or female.

Yes. I guess because being trans has, until fairly recently, been treated as a mental illness, people have tended not to think of it in terms of physical differences between male and female brain development.

In this paper:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3146061/?tool=pubmed

they discuss research in which male brain development was induced in female Rhesus monkeys, by injecting the pregnant mother with testosterone at various stages of her pregnancy. One of the the things the authors say in their Conclusions section is this:

QuoteThe timing of sensitivity to prenatal androgens varies for different behavioral endpoints. During gestation, the basic connections of the neural circuits that contribute to the expression of juvenile and adult behaviors are formed in a complex process that occurs over time. Sensitive periods for the development of different behaviors can be thought of in terms of the development of the underlying neural circuits (Knudsen, 2004). Perhaps instead of two 'neural primordia' (one for male-typical behaviors and one for female-typical behaviors), there are many neural circuits, each of which underlies an individual behavior and develops at a different time during gestation. The presence or absence of androgens may act to organize each of those circuits in a male-typical or female-typical direction independently of the others.

Basically what they're saying is that, in Rhesus monkeys (as in human beings), the important stuff as far as sexually dimorphic brain development is concerned takes place over quite a long period of time (several months), and from their research it appears that different regions of the brain undergo their critical development at various times throughout that period. If there's a comparatively short period of hormone disruption (say a few weeks), you can end up with a brain where some parts have developed as male and some parts as female. That's what appears to have happened to me.

Interesting - I have long referred to my female/male gender parts as "circuits".  It's an apt analogy for what I experience.

I am 23, AFAB, and I am androgyne.

I'm now 61 and have set this aside, trying to push this away insisting this is all in my head. I'm not particularly concerned with the why. I've spent (and continue to spend) way too much time trying to figure this out like a puzzle. I'm trying now to pay more attention to how I feel about all this and what I need from this. Things for me move around A LOT. Sometimes I'm in tears really wanting to transition (MTF). Other times like today, things are on a low simmer and while not content, I'm not overwhelmed with this. I really don't think I've ever felt male. I think I slide around between some kind of androgynous state and a really crazy need to be something else. I think that if I felt like I could pass, I would transition and live on that side of the line and slide back and forth from there to the androgynous.


Dori.

Quote from: Lady Smith on September 17, 2015, 10:48:40 PM
Hi, I transitioned as a TG woman 24 years ago, but recently had an epiphany where I completely embraced myself as intersex and a DES child.  I'm happy with my femme name/real name and I don't mind being addressed in femme terms even though I don't see myself as being a binary human person.

Hello, I am Aazhie & I am 31 this year...
I think I am in about the same space myself.  I am transitioning FTM and much prefer male pronouns and have legally changed my name to a more masculine sounding one.  That being said, I enjoy being a femme flirt and I'm not really needing to own the entirety of being male.  I do enjoy my body as is, I am getting top surgery but think I be overall pretty happy with everything else.  David Bowie's adrogynous persona always seemed cool and I think I am fine being ambiguous and pansexual.  I prefer male or neutral terms, though for those who get confused I just tell them to use he/his/him because some people have to see me as a gender, not as the weirdo I am   Weird in the Gonzo from Muppets sense, not in a bad way!

I'm 21,  afab and I'm new here. I am either multi gender or gender fluid but describe it as essentially just non binary


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It's a bird!