Feminist and Dysphoric: How to mediate the two?

[androgynouspainter26]

I've always had a very liberal view about gender: pronouns, clothes, pretty much anything besides sexual characteristics (primary and secondary) are, in my view, cultural constructs.  On a very general level, the only true differences between men and women should be structural; you can argue over the subtle differences in personality independent of cultural factors, but on a macro scale, I've always believed that we are all the same.  Gender, though not sex, is nothing more than what we make it out to be.

At least, this is one half of the picture I have.

The other half is that despite this I feel the need to be seen as female, and feel more comfortable in clothing that our society has deemed as "feminine".  I feel the need to pass a lot of the time as female, despite the two categories being almost completely arbitrary in another part of my mind.

The closest I've come to explaining all of this is that the only truly biological factor at play is that I have literally been born into a body incongruent with my brain's structure.  My need to transition isn't based in preference, certainly, which is what everything beyond psychical transition must be, even though it feels so much stronger.  Perhaps this is simply my need to feel validated?  What are all of your thoughts?  How do you explain feeling more comfortable in, say, a dress than in cargo shorts, even though a dress has no gender other than what we assign it?

[Oriah]

I've always had a very liberal view about gender: pronouns, clothes, pretty much anything besides sexual characteristics (primary and secondary) are, in my view, cultural constructs.  On a very general level, the only true differences between men and women should be structural; you can argue over the subtle differences in personality independent of cultural factors, but on a macro scale, I've always believed that we are all the same.  Gender, though not sex, is nothing more than what we make it out to be.

At least, this is one half of the picture I have.

The other half is that despite this I feel the need to be seen as female, and feel more comfortable in clothing that our society has deemed as "feminine".  I feel the need to pass a lot of the time as female, despite the two categories being almost completely arbitrary in another part of my mind.

The closest I've come to explaining all of this is that the only truly biological factor at play is that I have literally been born into a body incongruent with my brain's structure.  My need to transition isn't based in preference, certainly, which is what everything beyond psychical transition must be, even though it feels so much stronger.  Perhaps this is simply my need to feel validated?  What are all of your thoughts?  How do you explain feeling more comfortable in, say, a dress than in cargo shorts, even though a dress has no gender other than what we assign it?

Understanding how arbitrary the social constructs of gender are doesn't always make it easier to transcend them....we have been indoctrinated into it, and this is our culture.......and humans are social animals.

[kinz]

what oriah said, totally.

i think another part of this is that what is socially constructed doesn't exist in a vacuum either. so recognizing that aspects of gender expression (clothing & body language), language (body & spoken), gender, sex, etc. are all part of a system that exists and assigns sometimes arbitrary social variables to particular behaviours and presentations and embodiments doesn't mean that all of a sudden you exist outside of them—because other people will still make judgments based on how society perceives those particular behaviours, presentations, and embodiments.

"passing" is one of these things: obviously none of us know what it would be like to live in a world where people made zero assumptions about gender based on social cues like voice, clothing, body, etc. and because this is a world where being visible as queer or trans, and especially as a trans woman, is sometimes unsafe, sometimes how to dress becomes a much more complicated question than "what do i want, independently of what other people think". you know? and it goes both ways too, i know that sometimes early in my transition when i was still presenting as a dude to some people i felt that i couldn't wear x or y article of clothing because i didn't want them to know that i was trans. after i transitioned, i was sometimes afraid that i would be seen as straight if i wore anything that could only be worn by ladies, so i presented in a really hypermasculine fashion even if i didn't always feel comfortable with it.

basically, no matter how much or how little gender YOU assign to the dress, everyone else around you is liable to do that, and it can be an act of safety or of validation to modulate your presentation based on that. so yeah, it's arbitrary, but realizing it's arbitrary doesn't make the whole world realize that it's arbitrary.

[Adam (birkin)]

Well, part of passing as female is appearing female-sexed. I agree that the only difference between men and women is the physical sex...so, if you want to be female-sexed (or closer to since we can never truly change our sex) that's enough reason to transition.

Truthfully, if you were seen as male, it would be a reflection of the fact that your physical sex was not closer to female.

[suzifrommd]

I've always had a very liberal view about gender: pronouns, clothes, pretty much anything besides sexual characteristics (primary and secondary) are, in my view, cultural constructs.  On a very general level, the only true differences between men and women should be structural;

Two experiences have contradicted this view for me: Raising a son and daughter and my own transition.

I think there are numerous differences between male and female.

It really bothers me that this becomes a political issue. Somehow by saying "females tend to ... males tend to ..." people hear that as "females can only be ... males can only be ..." The politicization of gender differences make it hard to talk about the realities.

The change from male to female has brought so many unexpected changes that it's made me into a believer that differences are real.

[eli77]

I've always had a very liberal view about gender: pronouns, clothes, pretty much anything besides sexual characteristics (primary and secondary) are, in my view, cultural constructs.  On a very general level, the only true differences between men and women should be structural; you can argue over the subtle differences in personality independent of cultural factors, but on a macro scale, I've always believed that we are all the same.  Gender, though not sex, is nothing more than what we make it out to be.

There is a frequent issue in our society where we hear "cultural construct" and our brain reads "fake." And this is actually not how it works at all. Environmental factors are not somehow magically less important or less real or less valid than biological factors. You exist in a society, in a culture, you absorb that culture's norms in some form, and your brain actually alters in response. Because plasticity. It's a thing.

So simply KNOWING that x thing is a gender norm instilled by our culture doesn't make it NOT a gender norm. If your brain gets wired SOMEHOW to thinking that yer a girl, well congrats, yer a girl. Done. Over with. All research indicates that cannot be altered, too bad. And then just because you believe consciously that dresses are just arbitrary chunks of fabric, doesn't mean you aren't going to want to wear them and feel more comfortable wearing them. Because girls wear dresses, yo. That's how it is. If only boys were supposed to wear dresses in our society, you'd be all about getting into some pants.

Basically you either end up feeling more comfy fighting the norms or you feel more comfy obeying the norms, but at no point do those norms not have a profound influence on your identity. Because you grew up in this society, in this world, and it made you who you are. It created your identity, the language you have to describe that identity, and even the beliefs you have about gender. You are a social construct. You are more comfortable walking around in a dress for the same reason the idea of wearing one sounds like about as much fun as having my skin peeled off.

But you know, s'okay. S'okay to like dresses and makeup and femme-y stuff. That can be who you are. It doesn't mean you are somehow betraying your ideals. It doesn't make you lesser. It just make you, you. There is no real way of checking out of the system. Clothing is an endless collection of symbols and all those symbols are socially derived. What you can do is choose what you wear with intention, with awareness, with an understanding of WHY you are doing it. And "because it makes you feel good" is a pretty cool reason.

sometimes how to dress becomes a much more complicated question than "what do i want, independently of what other people think". you know?

I'd flatten it further than that and say "what do I want" is pretty much 100% dependent on the norms instilled in you by other people. If you choose to walk around naked, painted in rainbow colours, and with a stuffed chicken on your head, you are just as much in dialogue with your society, with other people as you are wearing the most normative of clothing. Do you know what we call people who behave independently of that dialogue with society? We call them sociopaths. Nah good dude.

My choice to dress "non-normatively" is just as much a part of that greater conversation as anything else. And the reason I feel comfy dressing the way I do is because of the environmental factors that shaped my identity.

So basically: OMG THERE IS NO ESCAPE HELP HELP SOCIETY IS IN MY BRAIN. Oh well. You look super smexy in your dress though, so there is that.

[Kaelin]

Needing to "be female" and to "be feminine" is still an acceptable combination in the feminist circles where I was involved.  The only way people are empowered is if they're free to be who they are, whether that means they end up showing most stereotypes or defying most stereotypes.  It's the subtle difference between anti-conformity (needing to break the rules) and nonconformity (breaking the rules only when they happen to be in the way of what seems right).  The latter, I think, is more fulfilling.  While some components of it are negative, femininity as a whole is not a bad thing, so you're welcome to adopt any components that add to who you are (and that dress is definitely okay!)

To answer the question at the end of the first post, I don't know if I can precisely grasp my reasoning the first time I went for a skirt, but the aesthetic of it, perhaps especially the fact is was shiny, drew me to it.  It's probably no mistake that many skirts and dresses draw attention to them, from women and men alike.  The attraction to wear the skirt was strong enough to override my own fears of violating this gender taboo (at least when no one was looking).  Now I like many dresses for broader aesthetics (shape, color, length, etc), and after some time I've been able to assemble a formidable collection I've put to good use... as someone between male and androgyne.  When I feel I am in a situation that is more-suited for being expressive and don't have to dress as functionally, dresses feel good in those moments -- cargo shorts simply do not deliver the color/shine/shape/fabric/detail that my specific group of dresses do.

I like cargo shorts, too, though -- my contempt lies more with jeans and suits, for functional reasons.  Yes, my dresses are usually still more functional and comfortable than suit + jacket + tie, although that may say more about lousy a suit + jacket + tie combo can be.

While you may be after "feminine clothes," I have a suspicion that your draw is more nuanced than that.  You won't wear just any type of "women's clothes."  You've got certain standards, and these standards that will eliminate probably a strong majority of "women's clothes" might just eliminate all (or nearly all) "men's clothes" you've seen as well.  Of course, that sort of conclusion may be the sort of thing you want to hear rather than what is true, but it is definitely possible.

I hope this helps.

[androgynouspainter26]

Thank you all for your replies!  Birkin, I think you make a very good point about how our need to be seen as one gender is routed in our need to BE another sex (or something along those lines). 

To all of you who say that gender as a cultural entity still can have the same sort of influence: I don't fully agree that environmental factors are just as fixed as biological ones.  I happen to be the sort of person who disregards this failed system quite regularly.  I will wear a black dress one day and a three piece suit the next (almost always wearing red or purple lipstick, of course), it's all just a question of what I prefer.  But whatever I wear I still want to be a woman...anyhow, I think we all need to do what we can to disband such an oppressive system. 

[kinz]

Thank you all for your replies!  Birkin, I think you make a very good point about how our need to be seen as one gender is routed in our need to BE another sex (or something along those lines). 

To all of you who say that gender as a cultural entity still can have the same sort of influence: I don't fully agree that environmental factors are just as fixed as biological ones.  I happen to be the sort of person who disregards this failed system quite regularly.  I will wear a black dress one day and a three piece suit the next (almost always wearing red or purple lipstick, of course), it's all just a question of what I prefer.  But whatever I wear I still want to be a woman...

of course you are! at the same time, "disregarding the system" is still acknowledging that "the system" is in place. so like i said, regardless of what your clothing is, what your behaviour is, what your embodiment is, people are going to make this set of assumptions based on the sum total of their understanding of how they have experienced gender in their environment. essentially it's something like a huge categorical analysis. when the only two genders most people know are the two socially legitimized roles, then people are going to learn to categorize everyone into one or the other. it's even worse because the system will work overtime to reconfirm itself; even people who might fall outside of what society might consider the two poles will still face people doing their fool best to pull them to one side or the other.

it's a lot like the matrix. even if you figure out you're inside the matrix, you're still inside.

anyhow, I think we all need to do what we can to disband such an oppressive system. 

well, you won't see me disagree there.

[Dread_Faery]

Getting to the party extremely late, but it's an interesting topic.

I am slowly coming round to the idea that talking about gender as an innate trait is as essentialist as the penis = man, vagina = woman trans-antagonistic crowd (also in parallel to this a lot of our understandings about biological sex are culturally constructed). At the same time my understanding of gender via the process of transition is that I felt a strong physical need to correct my body, I've never felt like a woman because frankly I have no idea what being like a woman feels like, but I have a pretty good handle on what it feels like to be me, and part of that is being female bodied.

Gender is often unpacked into gender identity, gender roles, and gender presentation: gender identity often being considered innate, gender roles being defined as culturally constructed and gender presentation being the language we use to communicate both our gender identity and whatever gender roles we want to take on. The problem with this in my eyes is that by deeming gender identity to be an innate, essential part of us, we completely ignore the fact that we internalise gender roles all the time. Yes gender roles are cultural constructs and enforced by society at large be we also enforce them in our heads. There's been a lot of interesting research recently on neuroplasticity, the ability of our brains to effectively re-wire themselves into new patterns from outside stimulus, so if you are bombarded with a message that you should act and be a certain way for long enough, eventually your neural pathways will change so that behaviour is hardwired and essentially innate. I remember reading an article about structural differences in male and female brains and the conclusion was that there were some, but they were so small as to make no real difference - however externally enforced norms of male and female behaviour could re-wire neural pathways to make them seem innate.

However, all that aside, I do think there is that is innate about gender identity, but I think it's physical rather than to do with thought patterns and behaviour. We all have this innate sense of our bodies - we know where our limbs are when our eyes are closed, we have a sense of how our body should be, it's about physical realities and not behaviours. I think that if you have brain that is expecting one physical reality but is presented another one, and is running on the wrong hormonal fuel, you are going to experience intense physical dysphoria about that mis-matched reality. Kind of like if you woke up one morning and some mad scientist had grafted and extra limb on somewhere, it just wouldn't fit into your innate perception of your physical reality. Of course you can experience dysphoria around gender roles, both external and internal and those are just as valid even though they don't come from the same place as this sense of your physical reality. I also believe that this physical mismatch is not absolute, so it's not a case of one or the other, but everything between and outside binary notions of male and female, which is why some people feel better just going on HRT and some people need to make major physical changes to their bodies.

This ended up being a fair old essay, and I recognise that I'm just talking from my experiences, but I'd really like to know what people think on this line of thought, it currently makes sense to me and a few friends I've discussed it with, but you know, nothing is absolute and unchangeable.

   

[androgynouspainter26]

Dread Fairy,

I can't tell you how happy I am to find someone here with something thoughtful to say.  Here, it's a...rare occurrence.  In the seven months since I posted this, I've since been able to reconcile a lot of what I've been feeling with my fairly radical views on gender.  For the most part, I think you hit it right on the head!

I don't know if you've read Whipping Girl, but on the off-chance you haven't, you should.  Julia Serano is an arrogant writer, and heavy-handed as can be, but makes some very good points that you might enjoy reading.  One of the better points she makes is that, in her view, a misaligned gender identity isn't really about gender at all, it stems from sexual dysphoria ("Unconscious sex" she calls it) and how we innately manifest that dysphoria by taking up behaviors and roles that are associated with the opposite sex.  Neuroplasticity is a component of this complex we've built surrounding gender (the idea of there being an binary, or a spectrum, or anything else) but the biggest aspect in my mind is really the social element.  Just because something is socially constructed, doesn't mean it's any less "real".  Gender is pervasive in all aspects of life, and even as someone who is as anti gender essentialist as can be I don't deny that none of us can really exist independent of it, except in parts of Brooklyn and some collage campuses.  I wonder if this means that we play into this system as a way of relieving symptoms of our dysphoria. 

The reverse phantom limb allegory is actually the only way I can explain dysphoria to my cis friends.  I don't agree though that this mis-matching of parts can exist on a spectrum though...the way I see it, there are only two sexes (even if there are many more genders, because, you know, gender isn't real) excluding a few outstanding medical cases.  My theory as to why some people feel the need to go further than others is that although we all have the same problem, we may feel dysphoric with differing levels of intensity.  For me, those levels have been far from static.  I used to be a lot more dysphoric about my body than I am now, although I may one day still have surgery.  I used to feel dysphoria just by looking at my own face, but as I've just now begun to pass on rare occasions, it's starting to change my self-perception.  While I doubt I'm ever going to pass fully and feel fully secure in how I look, the point I'm trying to make is that even if we all have the same condition, the treatment we need can change from person to person, and even for a single person over time.

This line of thought IS a good one if I do say so myself...I arrived at it myself and didn't even know the likes of Serano agreed with me until after.  It seems to make more sense than the (sadly pervasive where I am now) notion that "everyone has a gender identity that has nothing to do with sex, and we should all have badges stating our pronoun preferences because using neutral ones is not respecting people's identities, because that one syllable word is an innate part of who you are".  Thanks for the insight!

Best,
Sasha

[Dread_Faery]

I'm really glad I'm not alone in questioning notions of gender and gender identity, certainly my feminism is quite radical in its outlook towards gender though more anarchist in terms of politics. The whole "born this way" narrative bugs me, even while recognising that there was an innate aspect to my gender in the way I just knew that my physical body was wrong. Any form of essentalism is inherently wrong in my understanding, whether applied to biological sex or gender. I really like this concept of subconscious sex, because it completely removes dysphoria and being trans away from what are really murky notions of gender identity and roles. I will find a copy of whipping girl and give it a read, it sounds interesting.

Regarding the spectrum of biological sexes, given that intersex people do exist, notions of xy = male, xx = female just don't seem to fit biological reality. In fact reducing sex to a simple binary is definitely a social construct around how we view notions of being male and female. Given that there are many variations of physical sex is it unreasonable to believe that someones subconscious sex could fall outside that binary position? I don't know, I could very well be wrong, but I seem to be naturally suspicious of binary realities as they don't reflect the nature of the world. But as you said, however we arrive at our perception of our gender, it's real because it's real to us. I definitely dislike the way TERFs and other trans-antagonistic types trot out the gender is a social construct as a way of invalidating trans peoples experienced realities.

[Sosophia]

I think that between wearing a dress and cargo shorts  there is a difference more than what we assign it , ur legs are not held or at all in the dress depending of the dress while the cargo short does in a way , i m maybe wrong but i think in clothes there is at time some unconscious symbolism that is more than what gender we assign them to be , but i m may e wrong and its all the same what u mean. For example , itsnot a clothe  , but my psychiatrist told me the handbag of womens  is kind of an unconscious symbolism of the womb .

[androgynouspainter26]

You know, I do believe that gender is a social construct, but sex is not.  So dysphoria is real, even if the manifestations of it often are not.  I despise the rad-fems as much as the next gal, but they have one, single point that I learned something from: We do tend to enforce gender norms rather than transcend them.  This doesn't mean they are real, just that we tend to barricade ourselves into these binary categories.  Part of it is the complex we've created surrounding who is and who is not trans-ten years ago, I would not have been considered a "real" transexual because I'm rough and edgy, I rock a short haircut, and I don't usually wear floor-length pink dresses.

That's a valid point about intersex people, but I suppose my counterpoint would be that intersexuality is very rare, and transsexuality is also very rare-so it stands to reason that the number of people who could be transgender and yet not feel the need to have surgery would be utterly minute rather than a nice, big majority.  I guess it's hard for me to believe that if there are an infinite number of possible outcomes for "expected anatomy".  The brain doesn't print maps on a spectrum.  And yes, you absolutely should read Whipping Girl!  As a fellow radical queer girl, I think you'd really love it; I don't know a single queer trans girl in New York who hasn't read it.  Just take everything you read with a grain of salt.  Not everything in the book is spot-on...even if Julia acts like it is.

Sophia, there's a point to what you're saying, which is that these things cary great personal significance, but that significance is a symptom.  You don't like handbags because you are a woman and aren't a women because you like handbags.  Anyone who tells you that should be ashamed of themselves...but as a woman who has been denied the right to express any femininity for many years, it only stands to reason that you'd really like bags.  Think of it as...making up for lost time.  But it does NOT make you what you are.

[Dread_Faery]

I would argue that while sex is a biological reality, how that reality is interpreted by society at large is largely socially constructed, which is why you here horror stories of intersex infants being "corrected" at a young age to fit notions of that biological reality. That said it's a whole other can of worms to delve into and I'm only just grabbed the can opener.

There is definitely a lot of worth placed on binary identities within the Trans community, perhaps to the point where we could talk about binary privilege with a straight face. When it gets to defining biological realities the only one I can talk about with any real certainty is my own, after that it's just conjecture, and very likely to be wrong, though if it opens up new avenues of thought for myself and others it will be worthwhile.

[Sosophia]

I didnt meant that liking handbags makes of me a woman , i just mean its some representation of a womb because its a pocket like thing like the womb in a way , and that i might like it for that , not that it makes me a woman or not , even some womens hate their uterus from what i came too see . And i think that wishing that i had a womb is part of me but maybe its not defining of anything , and i do not really wants to be like most womens are nowadays.

[♥︎ SarahD ♥︎]

Wow.. I'm going to fully confess here, the things talked about in this topic made my brain melt lol!  It may very well be because I have a cold and my brain is all fuzzy, but I had a really hard time trying to grasp the complex nature of what's being said especially in the more recent posts, and I'm 99.9% sure that I still don't understand in spite of re-reading things several times.

With that in mind, I'm going to lay down my own thoughts here, and perhaps one of you with a brighter mind than my own right now can let me know if it runs with or against the ideas being discussed here lol

I've come to the conclusion that gender isn't inherently a sliding scale between "masculine" at one end, and "feminine" at the other, but rather its a constellation of traits that make up who you are.  It's about how your brain is rigged to process information coming in from your senses.  Is your brain wired to be empathetic or sociopathic?  Is it rigged to process information using logical reasoning or intuitive reasoning? Is it good at multi-tasking or spacial reasoning?  You get the idea.  Each mutually exclusive set of traits can be thought of as each having a sliding scale from one extreme to the other, and all of the traits that make up the way you process the world come together to make up you - your personality.  Gender is really the names we give to particular constellations of traits, just like we give names to certain patterns of stars in the sky.

Is your brain rigged to process information intuitively, is highly empathic and good at multi-tasking?  We call that a "female / feminine" constellation.  We might say the opposite (logical, less empathetic and good at spatial reasoning) is a "male / masculine" constellation.  Are these labels arbitrary?  Yeh to a large extent, they are.  They come from the fact that we see particular constellations of traits appearing more frequently in one particular sex than another.  The problem of course is obvious - "female / feminine" and "male / masculine" doesn't cover all the possible combinations by a long shot.  Even with just the three traits I mentioned above (note that is far from an exhaustive list of traits), you can't possibly accurately describe all 27 combinations they could be in if the traits were treated in a binary way with just two constellation definitions, never mind the hundreds of possibilities if they're treated as a grey-scale, and never mind the thousands of possibilities when you take into account all the different personality traits a human can possibly have.

Is gender inherited at birth?  Yes, in the sense that your personal constellation of traits is set at birth and you can't really do much to change that, but no in the sense of how we define / label those constellations.

As I say, gender identity is the label given to your constellation of traits.  But where we get those labels from in the first place really boils down to comparing ourselves with other people (imho).  Who in society do I know who has the same (or similar) constellation of traits to myself?  Family members, friends, celebrities and the like are all valid societal pools to draw from when trying to discover those we can identify with and in turn help to define ourselves.  Does your constellation align with the typical constellations of women?  Then your brain says "oh, I must be a woman, I should do what they are doing".  Notice how your own physical sex doesn't factor in here?  That's where I think the dysphoria comes into play - your brain has locked on to (for example) women because it identifies strongly with them because its constellation of traits is the same or similar to theirs.  When society then turns around and says "no, you have a penis, so you can't behave like that, you have to behave like you have this other constellation of traits instead", your brain naturally goes "wait.. what..?! 0_o"

Oh crikey, this is getting long lol.  I'll leave it there but hopefully you all get what I'm trying to say here

[Sosophia]

Oh crikey, this is getting long lol.  I'll leave it there but hopefully you all get what I'm trying to say here

Yes i understand what u mean , and i feel and think about it about the same way

[androgynouspainter26]

I would write a longer post because it's a worthy topic, but I don't have very much time-I disagree that these traits are innate, fixed at birth.  Looking at how much I've changed in the past few years and how much people change in general, I think we're proof that gender is hardly fixed or immutable.

[Jen72]

From my perspective at least I would have to say the constellation of you is innate but yes you do grow and change over time.  For the most part as you age you do change but to a heavy degree most of the traits that you start with will not truly change because it is you.  That being said over time some degree of those traits may change.

One example I can think of that kind of mixes two traits is this:

When I was younger I was more logical yet as I have grown older I have become more intuitive.  Then since I was logical to begin with I then use my logic to explain the intuition if possible.

Which is to say that I have an innate logical side yet have grown an intuitive side and if these really are polar male/female then I am indeed a mix of both. But really this is merely one combination of me so the whole mix of combinations create something not just a few traits. 

Therefore if you add all the traits together and some are weighted differently create you then its what you make of it and what society perceives as male/female added to the mix.  What alters our perspective of gender then relates as to what society deems male/female and we then process that as one or the other but with all the possible combinations we then get a gender spectrum and to what I believe is transgender have come to a realization that they no longer fit into the typical male/female ideology of societies perceptions of gender roles. At which transgender try to find a solution to fit in or even rebel against the societal norm.

All in all what I am saying is we are truly born with some traits yet as we grow and change so do the traits change but our starting traits if you will are more ingrained to you and are stronger so they will trump the changes to a degree. Since no matter what happens the past is with you but you can change the future. Hopefully taking the positives from the past into the future not the negatives:)