Some musings on bigender -n- stuff.
And the uniform of my new work.

aww, I'd say maroon is your color, jelly babe. you look lovely.

as to the bigender stuff - I must admit that I don't believe in such. No offense to those who label themselves as such, but I believe having dual or multiple personalities to be separate from gender issues. I find multiple personalitied peeps fascinating, but it's nothing to do with gender.

Quote from: Nero on May 25, 2008, 07:06:21 PM
aww, I'd say maroon is your color, jelly babe. you look lovely.

as to the bigender stuff - I must admit that I don't believe in such. No offense to those who label themselves as such, but I believe having dual or multiple personalities to be separate from gender issues. I find multiple personalitied peeps fascinating, but it's nothing to do with gender.

In the case of bigendered people at least one of those core personas is transgendered and this has unique implications. Gender might not have a lot to do with why they have multiple personas (could be spiritual, dissasociative etc..), but they definitely have resultant gender issues and probably face different obstacle's to unipersonal people. I think it is a very valid transgender label.

Quote from: Nero on May 25, 2008, 07:06:21 PM
aww, I'd say maroon is your color, jelly babe. you look lovely.

as to the bigender stuff - I must admit that I don't believe in such. No offense to those who label themselves as such, but I believe having dual or multiple personalities to be separate from gender issues. I find multiple personalitied peeps fascinating, but it's nothing to do with gender.

What about those people who believe that their correct body has both 'male' and 'female' primary and secondary sex characteristics and suffer dysphoria because they are missing body parts?

Quote from: Andra on May 25, 2008, 11:03:44 PM

Quote from: Nero on May 25, 2008, 07:06:21 PM
aww, I'd say maroon is your color, jelly babe. you look lovely.

as to the bigender stuff - I must admit that I don't believe in such. No offense to those who label themselves as such, but I believe having dual or multiple personalities to be separate from gender issues. I find multiple personalitied peeps fascinating, but it's nothing to do with gender.

What about those people who believe that their correct body has both 'male' and 'female' primary and secondary sex characteristics and suffer dysphoria because they are missing body parts?

That makes sense, Andra.

Quote from: NickSister on May 25, 2008, 09:45:29 PM

Quote from: Nero on May 25, 2008, 07:06:21 PM
aww, I'd say maroon is your color, jelly babe. you look lovely.

as to the bigender stuff - I must admit that I don't believe in such. No offense to those who label themselves as such, but I believe having dual or multiple personalities to be separate from gender issues. I find multiple personalitied peeps fascinating, but it's nothing to do with gender.

In the case of bigendered people at least one of those core personas is transgendered and this has unique implications. Gender might not have a lot to do with why they have multiple personas (could be spiritual, dissasociative etc..), but they definitely have resultant gender issues and probably face different obstacle's to unipersonal people. I think it is a very valid transgender label.

Thing is though - most people with DID have both male and female personalities. I'm not saying they wouldn't have gender dysphoria from this, just that the core issue isn't gender. I know a lady with DID and it's much deeper than gender. Something happened that caused her personality to split.

Quote from: Nero on May 26, 2008, 12:21:30 AM
Thing is though - most people with DID have both male and female personalities. I'm not saying they wouldn't have gender dysphoria from this, just that the core issue isn't gender. I know a lady with DID and it's much deeper than gender. Something happened that caused her personality to split.

So what you saying?  People who are multiple must feel that being multiple is pathological and they must concentrate all their efforts on fixing that 'issue'?  Is being multiple so wrong and pathological that it makes any feelings people have resulting from it automatically invalid?

If somebody experiences gender dysphoria or has a gender identity other than that which matches their birth sex, then they're entitled to define those feelings.  They may even decide to make physical changes based on those issues, regardless of people presuming to tell them that some other part of their mental setup is defective and is the 'real' problem.

Because guess what, if you're XX and identify male or XY and identify female, you're at serious risk of being told YOUR mental setup is defective NOT your body.  Have a rock, enjoy your glass house.

Quote from: Andra on May 26, 2008, 12:40:51 AM

Quote from: Nero on May 26, 2008, 12:21:30 AM
Thing is though - most people with DID have both male and female personalities. I'm not saying they wouldn't have gender dysphoria from this, just that the core issue isn't gender. I know a lady with DID and it's much deeper than gender. Something happened that caused her personality to split.

So what you saying?  People who are multiple must feel that being multiple is pathological and they must concentrate all their efforts on fixing that 'issue'?  Is being multiple so wrong and pathological that it makes any feelings people have resulting from it automatically invalid?

If somebody experiences gender dysphoria or has a gender identity other than that which matches their birth sex, then they're entitled to define those feelings.  They may even decide to make physical changes based on those issues, regardless of people presuming to tell them that some other part of their mental setup is defective and is the 'real' problem.

Because guess what, if you're XX and identify male or XY and identify female, you're at serious risk of being told YOUR mental setup is defective NOT your body.  Have a rock, enjoy your glass house.

I'm not saying they don't have a right to call themselves trans. Just that it's different. Their condition is causing the gender issues.

Quote from: Nero on May 26, 2008, 01:05:23 AM
I'm not saying they don't have a right to call themselves trans. Just that it's different. Their condition is causing the gender issues.

"As to the bigender stuff - I must admit that I don't believe in such" sounds to me pretty much like you were claiming that their identitys are invalid.  Also remember that a lot of people who are bigender/two-spirit don't have heavily dissociated personalities.  There's definitely a spectrum there.

What's to stop a person who was always transsexual experiencing a trauma that causes them to become multiple?  If you believe that brain sex exists, then the brain sex vs body mismatch is still there! Indeed you could say that the trauma of being transsexual in the first place could be a causal factor in a split!  Also there are people who believe themselves to be 'natural multiples' who have never been through any major trauma.  It certainly seems that trauma is only part of the issue, some people seem naturally prone to splitting.

Also, if the gender issues are the result of being multiple, why isn't every person who is part of a multiple system and inhabits a body that doesn't match their gender coming out as trans and/or gender dysphoric?

Quote from: Andra on May 26, 2008, 01:23:34 AM

Quote from: Nero on May 26, 2008, 01:05:23 AM
I'm not saying they don't have a right to call themselves trans. Just that it's different. Their condition is causing the gender issues.

"As to the bigender stuff - I must admit that I don't believe in such" sounds to me pretty much like you were claiming that their identitys are invalid.  Also remember that a lot of people who are bigender/two-spirit don't have heavily dissociated personalities.  There's definitely a spectrum there.

What's to stop a person who was always transsexual experiencing a trauma that causes them to become multiple?  If you believe that brain sex exists, then the brain sex vs body mismatch is still there! Indeed you could say that the trauma of being transsexual in the first place could be a causal factor in a split!  Also there are people who believe themselves to be 'natural multiples' who have never been through any major trauma.  It certainly seems that trauma is only part of the issue, some people seem naturally prone to splitting.

Also, if the gender issues are the result of being multiple, why isn't every person who is part of a multiple system and inhabits a body that doesn't match their gender coming out as trans and/or gender dysphoric?

I don't know. I suppose a person with DID could have gender issues as well. And I know that their personalities are valid, that DID is real. But DID is different than transgender. What I was trying to get at is I don't think bigender is androgyne. It's DID.

Quote from: Nero on May 26, 2008, 01:48:54 AM
I don't know. I suppose a person with DID could have gender issues as well. And I know that their personalities are valid, that DID is real. But DID is different than transgender. What I was trying to get at is I don't think bigender is androgyne. It's DID.

"But DID is different than transgender".  Of course it is, it's apples and oranges.  It's perfectly possible to be a fruit salad ;-)  You might want to do some more research into two-spirit identified people before you categorise them as all fitting into the medical definition of what constitutes being a dissociated multiple system.  Most bigender identified people I've come across miss this central part of such a diagnosis: "Inability to recall important personal information that is too extensive to be explained by ordinary forgetfulness".  I think you're trying to say that if a person has a male alter and a female alter while being male bodied then one alter is a cisman and the other is a transwoman.  (As there's no single person to be 'both').  This however assumes a level of dissociation that a lot of two-spirit people simply don't have.  I think we've just stumbled upon another assumed binary state that doesn't exist in practice ;-)

Also, can we refrain from throwing the 'disorder' word around please.  The term GID is bad enough, saying that somebodys gender identity is disordered, but the term DID claims that some people's very existence is disordered.

(This whole conversation ignores the people who identify as bigender as a result of feeling their body should be bisexed and are not two-spirit or multiple in any way)

Oh, I thought bigender meant the person feels they have two separate identities. As to people who are bisexed, I get that. Nothing wrong with having or wanting a mixed body. It's what I'll end up with.
But people who have different identities inside them - that's either DID or an androgyne giving names to both their masculine and feminine sides. Which is ok, if that's their interpretation of it. But as to being more than one person, that's a psych issue.

Quote from: Nero on May 26, 2008, 02:28:36 AM
Oh, I thought bigender meant the person feels they have two separate identities. As to people who are bisexed, I get that. Nothing wrong with having or wanting a mixed body. It's what I'll end up with.
But people who have different identities inside them - that's either DID or an androgyne giving names to both their masculine and feminine sides. Which is ok, if that's their interpretation of it. But as to being more than one person, that's a psych issue.

Like I said, dissociation isn't an on or off thing.  There're varying levels of blending of personalities, you need to break your binary thinking on this. 

"Psych issue"  You're throwing stones again, mind the glass...
This is somewhere where 'DID' is very much like 'GID'.  In neither case, what the people involved ARE isn't the problem.  It's various secondary issues that cause distress...

You know what,  lets make this one simple.

I'm a member of a plural system, origin of which is unknown but yet here i exist. Like it or not.
Along with that tidbit, the physical body in which this system resides is mid-transition and is able
to get by quite well with the chosen physical appearance.

So, that being said, the fact that we are 'multiple' and also transgendered as a whole seems to throw
out the whole notion that they've even remotely mutually exclusive. I mean,  last i checked, causation
doesn't matter one bit to recieving treatment for "GID", just the fact that the dysphoria exists is enough.

As for 'valid personalities',  i suppose that little bit is in question itself. Because most of the systems i know prefer to have their members referred to as people,  not personalities. As such, again, the suggestion that GID can't coexist quite easily with the existance of plurality seems a bit silly.  Since it would be quite obvious that a person who's identity doesn't match their physical sex and is distressed by said fact would have by definition dysphoria.

The tidbit about the 'condition' causing the gender issues is also just a bit off in my book. It causes the gender issues just about as much as the fact that someone breathes causes their gender issues since there's been no definitive proof of any causation for GID.

About this being a psych issue though,  that seems like a fairly abject dismissal of the reality of the situation. I think many people here would be quite offended if their identity was simply dismissed to the level of a 'psych issue' that needs to be cured and cut loose.

Does it make things difficult?  Yup,  sure as hell does. But that doesn't mean it shouldn't be treated as the reality it is either or dismissed as some type of fantasy any more than the desire to have a bodysex different from the one you may currently possess.

I think a bit of research into plurality may be in order also,  and you'd see that there are quite a few parallels to be drawn between DID and GID and the pushes to get both changed and modified to reflect what's really going on rather than what some psych without any first hand experience with the issue dreams up.

I apologise for being a bit rambly and going a bit off on a tangent, completely exhausted but i think this needed to be said from a first hand perspective.

if bigender is sometimes feeling male and sometimes feeling female.
I know i'm not pregendered
my understanding of gender is too mature for that.although parts of me are childlike

I am both at the same time

parts of me are always fem other parts are always male others both and other parts are unique to me (neither)
while still other parts change with my mood
I'm not talking body parts

so is there a name other than Weird for me ?

Edit: reworded to make more clear

genderfluid is the term generally used to describe that...
I always felt these were all different ways of conceptualising the same problem. That all these Bigender, Pregender, genderfluid etc... are just words used to try and understand different ways of understanding and expressing the key issue of being androgyne. Also it was for me more about the personal mental understanding of the self as opposed to body parts.

It's like if we all lost a leg - we'd all compensate in different ways. Some would put in a false leg, some crutches other people may go for a wheelchair.

Quote from: JC on May 26, 2008, 02:51:05 AM
You know what,  lets make this one simple.

I'm a member of a plural system, origin of which is unknown but yet here i exist. Like it or not.
Along with that tidbit, the physical body in which this system resides is mid-transition and is able
to get by quite well with the chosen physical appearance.

So, that being said, the fact that we are 'multiple' and also transgendered as a whole seems to throw
out the whole notion that they've even remotely mutually exclusive. I mean,  last i checked, causation
doesn't matter one bit to recieving treatment for "GID", just the fact that the dysphoria exists is enough.

As for 'valid personalities',  i suppose that little bit is in question itself. Because most of the systems i know prefer to have their members referred to as people,  not personalities. As such, again, the suggestion that GID can't coexist quite easily with the existance of plurality seems a bit silly.  Since it would be quite obvious that a person who's identity doesn't match their physical sex and is distressed by said fact would have by definition dysphoria.

The tidbit about the 'condition' causing the gender issues is also just a bit off in my book. It causes the gender issues just about as much as the fact that someone breathes causes their gender issues since there's been no definitive proof of any causation for GID.

About this being a psych issue though,  that seems like a fairly abject dismissal of the reality of the situation. I think many people here would be quite offended if their identity was simply dismissed to the level of a 'psych issue' that needs to be cured and cut loose.

Does it make things difficult?  Yup,  sure as hell does. But that doesn't mean it shouldn't be treated as the reality it is either or dismissed as some type of fantasy any more than the desire to have a bodysex different from the one you may currently possess.

I think a bit of research into plurality may be in order also,  and you'd see that there are quite a few parallels to be drawn between DID and GID and the pushes to get both changed and modified to reflect what's really going on rather than what some psych without any first hand experience with the issue dreams up.

I apologise for being a bit rambly and going a bit off on a tangent, completely exhausted but i think this needed to be said from a first hand perspective.

All I'm saying is that I don't think Bigender is a gender itself. It's DID.

Quote from: Nero on May 26, 2008, 11:44:41 AM

All I'm saying is that I don't think Bigender is a gender itself. It's DID.

Ok, lets see if I can simplify this...  (and all 'they' is singular 'they' in this post)  If a person feels they have some level of dissociation or there is a dialogue going on between two parts of themselves but there are NOT two separate, fully dissociated people in that persons head, and one 'part' seems 'male' and one seems 'female', what is that persons gender?

Don't say 'It's DID' because in that situation we're not talking about two independent people with separate gender identities.  Just because some level of dissociation may be involved doesn't invalidate their gender identity, so what is their gender identity?

To make a smart arse analogy... 'I don't think f2m transsexuals are really male gendered.  It's GID.  Your gender identity is a "psych issue"'

Quote from: Nero on May 26, 2008, 12:21:30 AM
Thing is though - most people with DID have both male and female personalities. I'm not saying they wouldn't have gender dysphoria from this, just that the core issue isn't gender

I'm not an expert on anything, but I do believe (in relation to GID) that if you spend a considerable amount of physic energy trying to shove away part of your personality that you/society disapproves of, you end up displaying all the symptoms of DID. Trouble is, as in the case of 'Dr. Jekyll', the suppressed bits have a habit of popping up at the wrong time ...

Quote from: Andra on May 26, 2008, 12:06:30 PM

Quote from: Nero on May 26, 2008, 11:44:41 AM

All I'm saying is that I don't think Bigender is a gender itself. It's DID.

Ok, lets see if I can simplify this...  (and all 'they' is singular 'they' in this post)  If a person feels they have some level of dissociation or there is a dialogue going on between two parts of themselves but there are NOT two separate, fully dissociated people in that persons head, and one 'part' seems 'male' and one seems 'female', what is that persons gender?

Hmm. You mean it's not two separate people? Guess I don't understand the term bigender then. Thought it was people with DID trying to make it just a gender thing.

Quote from: Nero on May 26, 2008, 01:46:41 PM

Hmm. You mean it's not two separate people? Guess I don't understand the term bigender then. Thought it was people with DID trying to make it just a gender thing.

Like I've tried to explain, dissociation isn't a binary state...  I guess if you can't get your head around that, this conversation is going nowhere.