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Androgyne vs. Neutrois...

Started by lady amarant, June 23, 2008, 12:44:19 PM

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Shana A

Quote from: lady amarant on June 26, 2008, 09:07:07 AM
And yeah, since Redfish brought it up, I wonder who WOULD win ...

Andra vs. Z maybe?  >:D

Goodness no, I don't want to fight with anyone... they'd most likely win anyway. When I was a kid, I was picked on all the time, I never fought back. I just tried to avoid violent situations.

Actually, when I read what Andra wrote in this thread, I sometimes feel rather similar to what sie describes, although I don't think I'm neutrois. I don't really know what I am anymore, but that's a whole other story.

Zythyra
"Be yourself; everyone else is already taken." Oscar Wilde


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Caroline

Quote from: lady amarant on June 26, 2008, 09:07:07 AM
Aw, thanks everybody so much for responding - it did help to ease the confusion a fair bit. So if I have this more or less straight, the next time I face the anti-non-ts-transgender (yeah, I find it massively confusing too) crowd, I can explain to their ignorant selves as follows:

androgyne - a group-name describing any non-binary gendered individual.
bigender - an individual who identifies as both male and female at the same time.
null-gendered - an individual identifying with no gender at all, an ungendered person
neutrois - a true "third gender", identifying as neither male nor female, but considering themselves a gender distinct from either.

And yeah, since Redfish brought it up, I wonder who WOULD win ...

Andra vs. Z maybe?  >:D

~Simone.


Not quite, you're nearly there though :)

I had to look the definition of null up to check I was correct:
QuoteNull:
1.   without value, effect, consequence, or significance.
2.   being or amounting to nothing; nil; lacking; nonexistent.
3.   Mathematics. (of a set)
a.   empty.
b.   of measure zero.
4.   being or amounting to zero.
As I see it 'non-gendered' or 'agendered' is a state of not having a gender identity, simply not being able to personally relate to the concept of gender.   On the other hand 'null-gendered' is a state of having a gender identity that occupies the null or zero point on the gender spectrum by not consisting of any 'maleness' or 'femaleness'*.  I don't consider the two synonymous as I've noticed a fair difference in perspective between people who don't have a gender identity at all and those who are null-gendered.

I think neutrois is best described as somebody who feels either non-gendered or null-gendered and who experiences body dysphoria and wishes to remove their primary and secondary sex characteristics to alleviate it.  (People can feel non-gendered or null-gendered without experiencing body dysphoria, just like some androgynes don't wish to have an intersexed body)

*I hate using the terms 'maleness' and 'femaleness' but I think it gets the idea across.  People towards being bigender would feel they have 100% of both (or thereabouts), androgynes some mixture in the region of 50%/50% and null-gendered people 0% of both (or thereabouts)
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Keira


Still, since there is so much that is gendered, how can you have 0% of both?
I think its a practical impossibility to be seen as such. Though, as an
identity, it could be something to strive for.

I guess there's plenty of things that are neutral. But, do you
avoid everything that can gender you, that leaves off a lot
in the social interaction arena especially where gendering by
others, if not by yourself, at least is universal.

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lady amarant

Quote from: Andra on June 26, 2008, 11:49:42 AM
I think neutrois is best described as somebody who feels either non-gendered or null-gendered and who experiences body dysphoria and wishes to remove their primary and secondary sex characteristics to alleviate it.  (People can feel non-gendered or null-gendered without experiencing body dysphoria, just like some androgynes don't wish to have an intersexed body)

*I hate using the terms 'maleness' and 'femaleness' but I think it gets the idea across.  People towards being bigender would feel they have 100% of both (or thereabouts), androgynes some mixture in the region of 50%/50% and null-gendered people 0% of both (or thereabouts)

So ... a neutrois is a null/non-gendered person whose dysphoria is strong enough to want to transition to being in an ungendered body, while an androgyne is a bi-gendered person, and there, BY CONTRAST, the dysphoria could be strong enough to want an intersexed body? And really then, the terms used should not be neutrois and androgyne, but null/non-gendered and bi-gendered, with neutrois and androgyne being the goal? Using that framework, the proper term for transsexual people then WOULD be transgendered, and for them the goal is to become either man or woman?

(Sorry if this take ends up offending anybody, but me be mightily confuzzled. Just trying to figure this out in my head.)



~Simone.
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Caroline

Quote from: Keira on June 26, 2008, 01:54:04 PM

Still, since there is so much that is gendered, how can you have 0% of both?
I think its a practical impossibility to be seen as such. Though, as an
identity, it could be something to strive for.

I guess there's plenty of things that are neutral. But, do you
avoid everything that can gender you, that leaves off a lot
in the social interaction arena especially where gendering by
others, if not by yourself, at least is universal.

I don't see what you're getting at here.  What do stereotypical gender roles have to do with gender identity? They're two very different things surely.  Do you insist that m2fs don't engage in ANY stereotypically male activities?  Pre-transition were you actually a man because you were read that way?  I'm pretty sure you'd regard yourself as ALWAYS having been a woman, which is contradictory to the thinking you've used above.  I don't see my gender identity as something contructed or to "strive" for either.  Doesn't this just feed the idea that transsexuals CHOOSE to ADOPT a different gender identity rather than acting based on something they always were?

Posted on: June 27, 2008, 02:45:48 AM
Quote from: lady amarant on June 26, 2008, 11:30:41 PM

So ... a neutrois is a null/non-gendered person whose dysphoria is strong enough to want to transition to being in an ungendered body, while an androgyne is a bi-gendered person, and there, BY CONTRAST, the dysphoria could be strong enough to want an intersexed body? And really then, the terms used should not be neutrois and androgyne, but null/non-gendered and bi-gendered, with neutrois and androgyne being the goal? Using that framework, the proper term for transsexual people then WOULD be transgendered, and for them the goal is to become either man or woman?

A null/non-gendered person may not experience body dysphoria at all. 

Androgyne is not synonymous with bi-gender.  In a stricter sense androgyne is in the region of 50% male + 50% female whereas bigender is in the region of 100% male + 100% female. 

Assuming for a minute that body image always matches gender identity, androgynes (intergendered people) would want an intersex body whereas bi-genders would want a body that's fully both male and female, rather than being an intermediate state (also ignoring the plural/multiple bigender people for a moment).

I don't think you can define neutrois and androgyne as being 'goals' any more than you can define woman/female as being the 'goal' for a female-gendered person (pre-transition m2fs would tend to get annoyed if you told them they weren't women yet). 

Non-gendered/null-gendered would be describing the persons gender identity without reference to body image.  Neutrois would be describing a person in a way that also included body image.

This all gets more complicated because androgyne can be used as a blanket term to cover the stricter definition of androgyne I've used in this thread and also cover neutroises and bigenders (and other genderqueers).
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lady amarant

... My head aches ...  :icon_zombie: :icon_headache: :icon_nosebleed:

Hehehe. Thanks Andra, I think I have kinda got what you mean. I kinda meant the same you said with the "androgyne and neutrois as goal" thing - just a breakdown of language skills more than anything else. What I meant was to say that the goal may be, for a dysphoric neutrois or androgyne, to pursue a body that either eliminates sexual characteristics entirely, or else exhibits both (respectively)

So, final attempt before my brain melts:

Androgynes (The Group):
bi-gendered - 100% male, 100% female
intergendered/androgyne (the individual) - somewhere inbetween, but ballpart 50% male, 50% female
null/non-gendered - 0% male, 0% female

a person might have any of the above gender identities but not have body dysphoria, should zir body-image match zir body, but WILL experience dysphoria and possibly desire transition to either a neutrois or intersexed body.

So really then, we can refine GID as having more to do with body image than gender identity. For cisgendered individuals, gender identity, body image and body all align, so funky bananas; For transsexual people gender identity and body image align, but body is in conflict; And for androgynes (the group) any combination of the three may not align.


Anyways, sorry for hammering on this so, and forgive my denseness, but it's important to me to get this right. I know how much it bothers me to be confronted with ignorant people, so I don't want to be on the other side of that fence.

~Simone
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Keira


Without being stereotypical, where do I talk of that!!
When you say 0% male or female, you've got to use a definition of both
to compared with. We live in society and regardless of our identity and
we use the language (verbal or otherwise) to define ourselves externally
AND internally. So, what would being 0% female or male mean in Iran
versus Iceland is VERY different.

In an extremely gendered society like Iran, being to express no gender
to others would be impossible (without being arrested and beaten).
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)



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Caroline

Quote from: Keira on June 27, 2008, 10:41:27 AM

Without being stereotypical, where do I talk of that!!
When you say 0% male or female, you've got to use a definition of both
to compared with. We live in society and regardless of our identity and
we use the language (verbal or otherwise) to define ourselves externally
AND internally. So, what would being 0% female or male mean in Iran
versus Iceland is VERY different.

In an extremely gendered society like Iran, being to express no gender
to others would be impossible (without being arrested and beaten).
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)

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  :laugh: )
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Kinkly

from what I see there are 6 ends, 3 lines
or each side of a cube
male - female
Omnigendered - Nullgendered
single - milti (bigender)

and the place on any line for some people is static other people it moves a bit or a lot
I move around on all 3 lines 2 different amounts
if i were to list all my traits as
male,fem,both,other now would give different results to yesterday or tomorrow
I don't want to be a man there from Mars
I'd Like to be a woman Venus looks beautiful
I'm enjoying living on Pluto, but it is a bit lonely
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Lo

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  :laugh: )

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.
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