Quote from: Caroline on June 27, 2008, 11:20:24 AM
As for the body image part of figuring out what I am: I can take testosterone and feel like crap, I can take high doses of estrogen and progesterones and feel like crap. I can take the minimal amount of hormones necessary to stave off menopausal symptoms and feel great. I can play around with my body, hiding bits or accentuating them, I can pass as female, I can pass as male (with a bit of effort). I can blend characteristics and look androgynous and people will not be able to put me easily in one box or the other. I can totally hide ALL my sex characteristics, primary and secondary and feel my dysphoria significantly reduced.
"And, even if you had those feelings, they're so alien to the society at
large that they probably couldn't even express them even
internally (you'd have no reference) "
Do any of us have a true frame of reference for gender identity? Nobody can see what goes on inside another persons head. Just like the old question of 'how do I know you see the colour blue in the same way I do', how do you know how other people see 'female'? Gender identity just seems to be this deeply held feeling you have, you KNOW what you are, but it's impossible to explain why or how (at least I've never heard anybody explain the nature of it).
I'm not a 'he', I'm not a 'she', I'm not some blend of the two, I don't have that 'maleness' or 'femaleness' thing that other people seem to have and identify with. If anything, that's my frame of reference: other people seem to have those identities (usually one or the other, sometimes a mixture, sometimes both) and trying to apply them to myself causes dysphoria. That's the only reference I need. There are men, then there are women, then there is me, I'm not an intermediate state, I am what you get if a person is born without that 'maleness' or 'femaleness' present at all.
I am me, null-gender, neutrois, pronoun: it.
(heehee, I have a sudden wave of gender euphoria from typing that out 
)
I wholeheartedly endorse this explanation.
(Bumping the thread because I think it's a useful thing for folks to read-- "not-male" and "not-female" isn't an easy category to pin down by any means.)
Recently, I've seen a difference between neutrois and agender/genderless get expanded on by some smart folks about the internet. (I identify as some mix between agender and neutrois, or someplace in between them, but just use 'agender' for the simplicity of the word.) Neutrois is, as I've seen, defined as not a complete
lack of gender, as is the case with being agender and genderless, but rather having a gender that is
neutral-- not on any kind of spectrum. Passing for most nonbinaries of any stripe, and especially for those of us who are neutral-gendered or have no gender at all, is impossible without making the identity explicit, so presentation is often... not less important, but less precise. There's no metric we can go by like MtFs and FtMs can (as toxic as passing guides and advice can be).
There is an implication that neutrois people have a negative relationship with their secondary sex characteristics, and sometimes even genitalia, while genderless people are more ambivalent. But this isn't any sort of rule, and these feelings should definitely not determine how you identify.
My experience as an agender person is this: I identify with no gendered constructs, institutions, or narratives. I pick and chose the things that reflect my identity as a person without caring what gender it was meant for, and oftentimes only being able to understanding the distinction in a superficial way. If I woke up one day with no secondary sex characteristics, with no sex organs or genitals, I would not be unhappy. I have considered going on T, but the benefits to me would be minor compared to the drawbacks (face masculinization and fat redistribution vs more hair, higher libido, and enlarged clitoris).
For more resources from the leading neutrois activist, check out Micah's site,
http://neutrois.me.
