Quote from: peky on August 01, 2012, 09:08:44 AM
Your post is thought provoking. Could you tell me on the differences between androgyny and non-binary, and gender fluid?
Edge defined it pretty well. I don't think we adhere to very strict interpretations of definitions here. There is always a certain amount of overlap in many of them when compared to each other. That can be confusing, until a person does the same with those definitions.
Androgyn is used as the blanket term here, I have found that it works well despite the initial confusion it generates. To change that on this forum would start a needless and difficult discussion of just what all the definitions and terms really mean. As they all have some similarities to one another, as I said, it would be a long and difficult discussion and would drive the moderaters into overtime. It's happened to a degree, I was a part of some of those discussions and they got very heated and out of control at times. Suffice it to say that the initial confusion it generates is more easily overcome than redefining and refining every term used in this section.
That being said, I think it is prudent to remind ourselves that Androgyne (non-binary) is not a middle ground of the binary spectrum. It doesn't serve those who are in their transitions to refer or define them as non-binary at any stage of their transition. They are binary, moving along a difficult and sometimes impossible journey to align their appearance to their gender. Non-binary or Androgyn is not a spectrum with apparent ends. To define us as something in the middle serves no purpose, as there isn't a middle on the spectrum (if you wish to call it that). They are two different things that do hold a great deal of similarities at various times. Who is to say that at some of these times, they are one and the same at that moment? There is some very real speculation and discussion of this, or at least the discussion can be looked at as that being correct. As a part of those discussions, it can be held as true for the sake of that discussion. The forest is and has been a place for those who wish to reside here, whether as non-binary or not. It is on the road, so to speak, between male to female. But that road doesn't necessarily pass through the forest, yet there are many places that there are access to it. We may reside in the forest and work in a city. It's all just another way of describing the definitions and terms that as Trans*people, we use to make some sense out of the sameness and differences we all experience in our individual ways.
It's not the differences that define, as much as the sameness, that encompasses Trans* people as a whole. Yet it is the differences that we discuss to find the answers to our questions, about who we are. The fact that there are so many similarities to who we are makes defining who we are as individuals difficult. It can be time consuming to wade through what is the same and what is different. It can be difficult, even unreasonable at times. But that is a function of ourselves as individuals trying to use terms and definitions that can have some overlap or a great deal of overlap. It depends on the individual to as to how much there is. This will change as each of us grows in our own understanding of ourselves and where we are (on the road and visiting or a resident?).
I do hold myself to there being to distinct camps, so to speak, and they are binary and non-binary. We have a loose definition that we use and it is the forest and the cities. We do what we can with those definitions. We don't have to define the definitions as much as we would like, but we do use them as best we can.
Just the way I see it today.
Ativan
