Quote from: espo on March 29, 2011, 06:00:38 PM
I'm not saying we decide to take this on. I didn't and I doubt anyone does but if something like gender can't be explained then the word might be used incorrectly which is where all the confusion comes in. I'm just throwing my thoughts in the ring

Well, gender can't be "explained", but it can at least be defined. I'd say that gender is grosso modo defined trough the process of gendering. I call gendering the thought process that decide in which box you put someone (male/female or anywhere else on the gender spectrum). If you gender yourself as female, your inner gender is female. Things get more complicated when people around you don't gender you the same as how you have gendered yourself. In that case, we could say that gender also has a projected facet. When I say projected I mean that other people project the gender they have defined someone to be on the person without that person having done anything about it. 

Most of transsexual fights involve having people recognize that inner gender is really how we are to define gender and that people who project something else on them are mistaking. Since people usually don't like to be wrong, this is a fight that can last a long time...

   The definition or explanation is only of value in the context it is being used in. It also has to have a weight of that value as does the context being used. As there are as many contexts as there are conversations or statements, that leaves a definition or explanation with less value, no matter how much weight it has been given. What is of value is the context. It's the statement or conversation that carries the real value and weight of the word gender.
   This is true of most, if not all, labels (or boxes if you prefer) that we use in a rather constant way. As the context changes, so do the definitions and explanations. And the weight or value that are placed on all definitions, explanations, statements and of course, conversation.
   It's not limited to context being used. It's also dependent on the surroundings and point in time in which it is used.
   It's easy to pull something out of context, especially if it is from a further away span of time, and change the meaning or definition. Gender, as a word, has a very broad background from which you can pick and choose your meanings and explanations. Perhaps it is more relevant to give definition and explanation to You, I, Us, Them, etc.
 

Quote from: ativan on March 29, 2011, 10:07:57 PM
   The definition or explanation is only of value in the context it is being used in. It also has to have a weight of that value as does the context being used. As there are as many contexts as there are conversations or statements, that leaves a definition or explanation with less value, no matter how much weight it has been given. What is of value is the context. It's the statement or conversation that carries the real value and weight of the word gender.
   This is true of most, if not all, labels (or boxes if you prefer) that we use in a rather constant way. As the context changes, so do the definitions and explanations. And the weight or value that are placed on all definitions, explanations, statements and of course, conversation.
   It's not limited to context being used. It's also dependent on the surroundings and point in time in which it is used.
   It's easy to pull something out of context, especially if it is from a further away span of time, and change the meaning or definition. Gender, as a word, has a very broad background from which you can pick and choose your meanings and explanations. Perhaps it is more relevant to give definition and explanation to You, I, Us, Them, etc.

I agree with you that context is very important for a word, but there is a context in this particular situation. The context is that we want to know if being masculine or feminine has an influence on our gender. If we want the debate of ideas to work, it is essential that we all stick to the same definition of the word gender, otherwise any debating would be totally meaningless. For that reason, I think that the idea that we should all "choose" our own definition for ourself and stick to it is kinda unproductive.

But I agree that everyone has it's own view of what gender is, and I'd invite anyone who disagrees with the definition I've given to speak their mind. The goal being that everyone understand each other! (Isn't that the goal of language anyway?)

Quote from: Juliet on March 26, 2011, 06:04:38 PM
Are u able to articulate what the deep awareness and understanding is based on?

In the same way that most cis people know that they are innately men or women, I know that I am not either.

Quote from: Juliet on March 28, 2011, 04:51:47 PM
That is so interesting.  Does anyone else feel differently, or does everyone agree that gender has nothing to do with how masculine or feminine you are?

Gender identity and gender expression are different things. Thus it is possible, using my own experience to describe this, to feel more female than male, while not necessarily having a need to express high femme (although that can be fun once in a while).

Z

Identity is inside.  That's the best way I can think of to describe it.  Gender identity is in your head/soul/heart...inside.  The ideas of masculine/feminine are adjectives describe something outside of ourselves...behavior/style/speech.

Quote from: Zythyra on March 30, 2011, 09:18:42 AM
In the same way that most cis people know that they are innately men or women, I know that I am not either.

See thats the tricky part.  Because I think if you ask cipeople how they know they are innately men or women, I think most of them would start describing either the masculine qualities they possess or the feminine qualities they possess.
Yet you (and others i'm sure) can tell what you innately are without it having anything to do with femininity or masculinity, so I'm still at a loss on what you base it on.

Well I would have to disagree.  When you ask a trans person how they figured out they were really supposed to be male/female or why they thought they were supposed to be they will name instances where they were acting in a societal stereotyped male way or female way.  I would say a cis person knows they are men or women because they don't question it.  Some never have a question and think that their body or something must be wrong with them for their feelings towards their gender. 

Yeah but feminine guys still know they're guys, and they don't base it off being masculine.  There's something more.  But most cis people never had to question their gender, it was just there, just right, but the sense of maleness or femaleness is still there.

You ask Cisgender people what makes them the gender they are and they will paint themselves into a corner everytime, or just give up by saying they are what they are.
Just where is the line that changes you from one gender to the next? It's always different to different people and always fluctuating. How wide is the line? What are the percentages in each group and how many groups are there? Do they overlap in places?

If you're trying to determine who you are based on others, you're lost before you've started. You have to make the effort to understand yourself, in the most honest way you can. Then you can have conversations about gender and what it means to you and possibly others (to a degree). Here in the forest, the range of everything is quite broad and acceptable. With acceptable being the key. I would never expect someone to understand me completely, and I know I will never understand them as well as they do themselves.

To understand yourself, you may have to start accepting others as they are, and vice versa, understanding others will help you understand yourself. To accept yourself is the same process. Knowing the definition of something, doesn't mean you know something about it. It just means you can recite the definition. Doesn't mean you understand it.

Richie Nickel is a very feminine guy indeed but he doesn't consider himself to be a woman.    He is a very feminine gay guy.   Admittedly Nickel is something of an extreme case, but you can be very masculine in your interests and yet have a 100 % female gender identity.





http://www.richienickel.com/

So I'm still curious as to what it is that would make someone identify as a woman or man, if it has nothing to do with masculinity or femininity.
What are you basing it on, what clued you in, what solidifies it in your head/gut?  How do you know you are a man/woman?  How can you tell?
Can anyone answer that?

I'd say that masculinity and femininity are expressions to the outside - interactions from the internal to the world. (E.g, I value colour and so will wear a colourful clothing, I value the look of makeup and so will paint my eyes etc...)

Cultural masculinity and femininity comes from outside, (girls do this, boys do that...)

But gender identity (and most identity claims), I suggest is how we view ourselves from the outside - when we imagine ourselves from without. When I imagine myself from outside, I don't see a character of a male or a female.

I think this is how gender identity is different from gender expression and masculinity and femininity generally.

Does the soul exist?  If it does then maybe that's what we use to feel or identify male or female inside and it doesn't always match the physical body

Quote from: Juliet on April 02, 2011, 04:54:44 PM
So I'm still curious as to what it is that would make someone identify as a woman or man, if it has nothing to do with masculinity or femininity.
What are you basing it on, what clued you in, what solidifies it in your head/gut?  How do you know you are a man/woman?  How can you tell?
Can anyone answer that?

If anyone can answer that question, ether that person is lying or I am ready to pay a lot to know about it. I think that this is the most complicated aspect of being trans (at least it is for me). While I do feel like I identify a lot more with woman then I identify with males, I still feel utterly confused about my situation. If there was anyway for me to be 100% sure, I'd give up a lot to get it. However, I think that this is way more subtle then that. Gender being mostly a psychological matter, there is absolutely nothing clear cut about it. In some society in which the word "transsexual" doesn't exist, many people who would identify as transsexual today might have seen themselves as just "weird" cissexuals, and while feeling lots of pain about being in their gender, they wouldn't identify totally to the other one that they long to be. In other society, where there is a "third gender", they might have identify with this one.

So in the end, I think that there is no easy shortcut. While figuring someone else's gender usually take less then a second or two, for a transsexual, figuring out their own gender can be quite a challenge. Of course, most cisgendered people don't have that problem, since they never had to question their gender.

Quote from: babykittenful on April 03, 2011, 04:24:11 PM
If anyone can answer that question, ether that person is lying or I am ready to pay a lot to know about it.

Thank you x100 for being honest !

You're attacking this problem of who you are by asking others who they are and why, then trying to apply it directly to your self.
Why not ask your self if you're a person? What parts of humanity define that?
You know who you are, because you know all the things of where you've been, what has happened, what you've done......You know you are you and there is only one of you.

You know what you're gender is. You accept the reality of the fact that most of the world is between two different genders. You're trying to put a label, a solid unbending definition of who you are. Babykittenful...... that's who you are here. Do you have a soul? how do you know? What's your gender? How do you know? Is there anything that is in your past that would have changed you and made you into someone completely different? How do you know? Stop talking to yourself, stop the inner dialogue. Just be who you are. And then accept that.
Here's the answer to all your questions...........(                                              ).

Jaimey often has said it's the journey that's the fun part. It's what defines you. And what a long strange trip its been. And what it's going to be. The world doesn't define you, it's you who defines your world as you travel and live through it. The more you accept of yourself, the clearer the view of your world.

Hi, new to the topic (and the forum) but felt it is interesting.

Language is used by us, humanly speaking, to communicate. So there has to be at least some kind of "definitions". I think no one can describe sexuality only using gender and sexual orientation. A lot of factors come into play (as I see, at least):

- gender as in dictionary: male/female, as born?
- current physical gender, if trans
- preferred gender, or not, if gender fluid
- gender identity constructions (prefers dolls? cars? dolls & cars? none?)
- sexual orientation (bisexual? homossexual? heterossexual? also, definitions vary from people to people when speaking of trans people)

As with my case, I was born male; current gender, still male; preferred gender are both (gender fluid, as in mind); never "played with dolls or cars"; sexual orientation, preferring some 80% women.

But the part that matters: all of this may change through time. As ativan spoke (quoting Jaimey), the journey is the fun part.

Welcome and I agree with you except the last part about the journey being fun, it is for some not everyone. Its a freak'n nightmare for some but we all have denominators not in common

I really doubt that there hasn't been anyone here who hasn't had the nightmarish experiences that seem to go along with being Androgyne.
We are a group of self hating, depressed and suicidal people. We get ->-bleeped-<- from anyone who thinks only in terms of binary, including Transgenders themselves.
We are caught in the middle of our own rage at not being who we really think and feel we are. Our diet of self loathing has no bounds, it can go forever if we let it.
We can become that final last person who you can't even say 'things could be worse', because they can't. It's not that the glass is half empty, it is fricken empty.
There are days that tears just stream down our faces without control, for reasons we don't even know why, let alone understand. Can you scream into a pillow any louder? Have you ever beat your forehead with your fists until either your forehead or your fists gave up, but you still wanted to do it? Do you look into the mirror and despise the person you see? Do you even wonder if that is really you or you're just so ->-bleeped-<-ed up in the head that you just think you do?

I've spent 5 hours on a table with nurses and doctors screaming into my face to hang in there, slapped to wake me up again, hear my monitor flatline, only to come back to the screaming in my face. Then spending an hour being medi-vac'd to the only hospital equipped to deal with me in long term IC.
I was brought back again another time, and spent most of my time in isolation because I beat on the staff any any given chance. Because I hated them all, I hated all of you, I hated myself more than I hated you, but I wanted you to die mother->-bleeped-<-er first, just so I could look at the horror of death on you face.

I did this for seven years, on and off, out of over 50 of them. Do you want to hear about all the friends and things I've learned in those years? All the joyous times, the times I cried because I was so happy and felt at peace for a while? The not so bad and not so down days? The days that just rolled on by with nothing significant to talk about? Do you want to here about the hair raising stunts that should of killed me, but didn't cause I just knew I could do it?

Nobody here has had a fun journey without the nightmares either. We're not gifted that way. That's not how it works for anybody. For some it's not so extreme. For others, it's more so. You have to be able to look back and instead of the glass being empty, it's just a glass with water in it. Doesn't matter if it's half empty or half full, that's always a debatable point, but you can't deny that it is indeed a glass with water in it. And your life is the same. You can't deny that you are not the only one.
And that's why we come here. to prop up or be propped up, somedays it's both. That's the way it is and it's going to be.

I can promise you this,... that there is always someone here who feels for you, and will help you if they can. There will always be a shoulder to cry on if you want one. But most importantly of all things, we will try as a group when we can, to help you through the nightmares. But ya gotta say something better than some of you have fun and others have a nightmare. It just isn't so. What a Long Strange Trip it's going to be.


You're sick of hanging around, you'd like to travel
Get tired of travelling you want to settle down
I guess they can't revoke your soul for trying
Get out of the door, light out and look all around
Sometimes the lights all shining on me
Other times I can barely see
Lately it occurs to me
What a long strange trip it's been
Truckin' I'm a going home
Whoa, whoa, baby, back where I belong
Back home, sit down and patch my bones
And get back truckin' on
Grateful Dead

Quote from: soulfairer on April 12, 2011, 02:16:49 AM
Hi, new to the topic (and the forum) but felt it is interesting.

Language is used by us, humanly speaking, to communicate. So there has to be at least some kind of "definitions". I think no one can describe sexuality only using gender and sexual orientation. A lot of factors come into play (as I see, at least):

- gender as in dictionary: male/female, as born?
- current physical gender, if trans
- preferred gender, or not, if gender fluid
- gender identity constructions (prefers dolls? cars? dolls & cars? none?)
- sexual orientation (bisexual? homossexual? heterossexual? also, definitions vary from people to people when speaking of trans people)

As with my case, I was born male; current gender, still male; preferred gender are both (gender fluid, as in mind); never "played with dolls or cars"; sexual orientation, preferring some 80% women.

But the part that matters: all of this may change through time. As ativan spoke (quoting Jaimey), the journey is the fun part.

The one thing I'd clarify is that sex and gender are not the same thing.  So your born with a sex, probably a gender, and the two don't always match.