#(also this doesn't only mean cis women but all the ppl that identify as female)

[detransraichu]

trans ppl need to stop assigning gender identity to cis people.

you might experience womanhood, manhood, being afab etc differently but for me personally i'm a woman bc i'm just a female human, the way that there's male cats or female cats. it's just a body type for me, nothing else, i didn't choose to be it and i just don't need to change it. intersex cats do exist, but we typically still say male & female and casually call our kitty a girl or boy, right? we still talk about male & female dogs reproducing or getting neutered and having different body needs but we still see them as just dogs, we don't impose gender roles upon them so they just vibe in their sexed bodies. that's what i do, i just live in my body and vibe, i don't have womanhood outside of my body, though my body impacts my life in huge ways with afab body issues and misogyny being mostly directed at ppl who look like me, naturally or thru surgery/hrt. i understand that's not the set of beliefs others may have for themselves. i've been told i'm nonbinary for not having an inner feeling of gender, for just having my sex/agab, for just being a female human, a female animal. but to me it's complete freedom and explains everything abt myself!! it's been personally incredibly healing to identify as just a female human. i was born with a certain kind of body and it means NOTHING about me or what's going on in my mind. i can have the exact same thoughts and feelings as someone born amab (except the misogynistic thoughts lol) can bc everyone's brains are unisex. we're all just people, just humans, sexed humans who aren't defined by their bodies. while human experiences are very varied and amab & afab lives are often very different in certain ways, no study has yet convinced me that human brains aren't neutral and that all cis people have a gender identity and girly brain & manly brain are a thing. i don't have ~womanly energy~ inside me, and neither does the grand majority of cis women honestly. we didn't choose to be women, we were born into a body type and don't care to surgically alter it or use different pronouns. i don't really believe in souls either, at least a lot of the time i don't. i think everything outside of bodies should be gender neutral, and bodies are just two different types (small ova gametes & larger spermatozoa gametes) each w different varieties in very rare cases, only around 1.7% of people are intersex and all are still afab or amab after tests are done to figure out what kind of gametes they have. they also often have health problems, and fun fact, those people tend to prefer the term people with DSDs, aka differences of sex development. my body matters to me, i live in it, but it doesn't define me and it's male society that tries to make me reduced to my body type. i used to have severe dysphoria for most of my life but it was treated, and i healed, and now i know that i personally don't experience a gender identity. i'm cis, but i just have a female/afab body type. that's how i comprehend my womanhood. this isn't to invalidate trans women, they can have a different experience of womanhood, whatever womanhood means to them. but i was just born female. i have mixed feelings about it sure, cuz who tf is overjoyed at living under the patriarchy as an afab woman? from birth we're treated differently, sometimes even before birth. but i'm coming to terms with my femaleness. i'm just a human animal, a female animal of the human species. that has been wayyy more freeing for me!! and it's #valid

#lay text #transmasc #transfem #nonbinary #kicking the hornets nest once more sorry lol #it's just a thing that trans ppl keep doing!!! #everybody experiences the concepts of man/woman differently #but for cis people THIS is what it's like #yet they try to say that we identify as something. when we were just born into a certain sexed body #and use the term traditionally associated w that body type #and just feel fine about it #seeing it as neutral (except for misogynistic men) #but ppl just don't get it :/

[shieldretired]

// It’s International Women’s Day! Where are all the ladies Steve can give flowers and his undying support and adoration?

#(Steve is drinking his daily Respect Women juice) #(and he wants to give every single one flowers and a heartfelt thank you) #(also this doesn't only mean cis women but all the ppl that identify as female) #(where are u let him love you in general and today especially) #★ ( ooc )

[kae-karo]

hi! me again! i understand that bi/pan people with a preference would never be considered lesbians but i had it presented to me as being like bisexual homoromantic which would be as valid as being ace and homoromantic right? and i don't understand how A's id could affect or imply anything about B's id? like the acknowledgment of demigirls doesn't affects girls being fully girls? as far as pronouns isn't the whole point that they ARE gendered, otherwise we would all just be they/them? (1/2)

non queer people very much understand pronouns to indicate gender. so why is language malleable when it comes to redefining gender and pronouns but not when it comes to using orientation labels differently? also i read that carrd and want to clarify i would never make the argument that trans people aren't "really" the gender they id as. also, i'm sorry for asking so much but i'm just trying to understand.

--

hi dear! for context (x) and please don’t apologize for asking questions! there are so many people who would rather shut down and not try to understand, i will always greatly appreciate people who are actively trying to learn

also sorry this got wAY too long lmao i have a lot of thoughts, apparently...

as for the way the term bi/pan lesbian was presented to you, that’s totally understandable! and again, per my lil caveat, the idea of expressing a difference in romantic and sexual attraction with a single term (like being bi/pansexual but lesbian in terms of romantic attraction) is totally chill but i think the part that starts to come into question is the large movement of people who were using bi/pan lesbian in the way i described in my other post (ie as a way to express that they are “lesbian but with some attraction to men, still”)

in terms of how person A identifies and how that affects person B, the point is less about an individual interaction - no, how a stranger chooses to identify themself does not directly affect my identity. to your notion of demigirls and the fact that they don’t negate the identity of women, that’s totally true! it’s not so much that a person’s identity negates another’s, more that the words a person uses to identify themself can affect others, because we tie certain terms with certain experiences. by a group of people commandeering terminology that already has an experience tied to it, the people who already use that terminology (because they have that experience) can start to feel as though their experience and identity are being called into question

okay, so if bi/pan lesbians become a standard terminology to describe ppl who would id as lesbians if not for some attraction to men, that could start to bring into question whether all or any lesbians could be attracted to men (as the person in the tweet mentioned). now (certain) men may start to believe that any person who ids as a lesbian might still be attracted to men, so these certain men may think that they have a chance with that lesbian even though the man ids as a man! this could lead to harassment, or the lesbian in question may already be prone to some internalized homophobia. now they’re starting to wonder if their attraction should include men because they id as a lesbian (and apparently, lesbian could include attraction to men), or if they’ve just been ‘confused’, as people may have told them before, and they start to doubt their own identity and whether ‘lesbian’ is the right reflection of their experiences (which it is, except that the term has been hijacked and presented as including experiences that actually belong in the bi/pan community)

and, once again, the way the terminology is structured (a ‘bi/pan lesbian’) seems to imply that the person in question doesn’t want to be attracted to men. if they did, why not use an umbrella term like bi or pan as their identity? the only distinguishing feature here is that one is inclusive while the other says ‘i’m attracted to women primarily and would like to identify as a lesbian, except for that pesky bit of me that’s attracted to men too...’ again, this is a harmful ideology to let grow, not only for those already identifying as bi/pan but for baby queers who may not fully understand their own identities yet! or for people outside the community who are trying to understand to the best of their abilities as allies!

to that end, it also propagates that harmful rhetoric of ‘oof, doesn’t it suck to be attracted to men lmao’ like MAN that’s really hurtful to guys??? and that rhetoric already exists. notions like this (where a wonderful umbrella term is turned into something that seeks to minimize attraction to men/male-aligned genders) can be so harmful not only to cis men and transmasc/trans men who are a part of the community but men outside the community as well

okay with regards to pronouns: i think this is where we start to get into the deconstruction of gender as a social construct. i feel like the most apt analogy here is the one i provided in the other post: names. names have, throughout history, been gendered (for the most part). sally was a girl, timmy was a boy. but we’ve started to deconstruct that as we’ve started to recognize that there are more than 2 genders (as a societal whole, i’m aware that this hasn’t been news in a while for people in the queer community). you have names like alex, sam, riley, names that you can’t look at and go ‘ah, they are [certain] gender!’ which is awesome for everyone! esp for people who are sensitive about their gender identity and for whom it is bothersome, upsetting, or even triggering to be misgendered!

pronouns are grammatically just a substitute for a noun, they take the place of the noun for the sake of ease of speech/writing. so the first question here is why, if we’ve extrapolated and separated the idea of someone’s name from their gender and acknowledged that the thing that we refer to them by is just...a noise they like, then why is it necessary for pronouns (another thing that is just a noise the person likes) to be inherently tied to a gender? a gender is a representation of an experience, but people who use the same pronouns may have nothing in common in terms of their gender experience!

now, you could argue that people who use they/them pronouns may be able to rally around a shared experience/frustration with getting others to use and accept those pronouns, but they likely aren’t all going to share a gender - maybe some are fem-aligned, or masc-aligned, or genderfluid or agender or any other gender on the massive spectrum of possible gender identities. but the way that they ask others to refer to themselves purely as an individual does not help give any insight into their experiences or community! 

you stated that ‘as far as pronouns isn't the whole point that they ARE gendered?’, so my question here is what purpose do pronouns actually serve? they allow you to refer to a person without using their name, right? so if we’re talking outside the world of grammar, i would argue that a person’s pronouns are an extension of their name: the purpose of a name and/or pronouns is to ensure that they make the user of said name/pronouns comfortable in their identity when being referred to. they are whatever gender they are (if any at all) - they may choose a name and pronouns to help them feel more comfortable in who they are. in fact, they may choose a name and pronouns that they didn’t use from birth simply because they do not feel comfortable with them for non-gender-related reasons, too!

and i can hear you thinking ‘okay, so why can’t we do that with labels like sexuality and just let people use whatever feels okay?’ and this is sort of the way i think about it: there are certain words we have defined with clarity in order to help us as a community understand ourselves and each other. we all agree that cis = you are the gender you were assigned at birth, trans = you are not the gender you were assigned at birth. lesbian means attraction to women/fem-aligned genders, ace means feeling no sexual attraction, bi and pan are siblings of each other that define attraction to all genders (which may or may not include preferences). male and female as genders have clear enough meanings that we use them in our other definitions, and nonbinary is a lovely catch-all umbrella that can encompass anything outside ‘male’ and ‘female’, even though there are also more specific identities that fall under that umbrella

(quick aside - fwiw i don’t think gender definitions are necessarily malleable in the same way pronoun ‘definitions’ are, i think there are gender experiences that we have not yet given formal terms to and that people may switch around between existing gender identifying terms as they look for ones that get close to their own and i think there’s still a question of what it even means to be a certain gender without reference to other genders, but as it stands, people who identify with certain gender terms do so because of a set of shared experiences that fall underneath that gender term)

what we have not done is defined an individual’s right to their experiences. if someone feels attraction to all genders with a preference for men, there’s a word to express that! if a person feels like they might shift between a variety of genders on a regular basis, there’s a word for that! if a person does not feel romantic attraction, there’s a word for that! and the reason we use these words with pre-defined definitions is so that we can identify people who share our experiences - if someone identifies as a lesbian, they can seek out other lesbians and know that they are among a group that understands what they have been through or are going through. if someone experiences attraction to all genders with a female/fem-aligned preference, they are likely not going to find a community that understands their experiences if they look for people who identify as lesbian

but if a person decides that hey, i feel most myself when people call me ‘emma’ even though that wasn’t my assigned birth name, that is when we step back and say ‘yes, that’s awesome! you do you!’ because there is no pre-defined definition of that name - yes, there’s a societal gender often associated with it, but it doesn’t provide anyone any benefit to assign a definition of an experience to that name. nobody is out there going ‘where are all the ‘emmas’, the ‘emmas’ understand my experience and i want to find them so that i can feel as though i’m part of the ‘emma’ community’

now, idk about you, but if i hear that someone uses she/her pronouns, that means....almost nothing to me, except that i know that they prefer those pronouns! in the same way that someone saying ‘oh, my name is emma’ means nothing to me except that their name is emma! whereas if someone says to me, ‘i’m asexual’, i know from their choice of identifier that they fall under the ace umbrella and awesome, this person might understand how i feel about certain subjects! (obviously ace is a huge spectrum in itself, but you get the idea)

in summary:

an orientation or a gender relates to an individual’s experiences, and the general definitions we have assigned to certain orientations and genders should remain somewhat clearly-defined in order to provide a sense of community for those that fall under the orientation/gender in question. that is not to say that new orientations/gender terms can’t arise to describe new experiences that do not already have a definition. the irritation with the ‘bi/pan lesbian’ discourse is that the experience described (attraction to all genders with fem-aligned preference) already has a defined term (bi or pan) that is contradictory to the term ‘lesbian’

the reason pronouns don’t need to fall under a clear definition is that they are not a signal to indicate a uniting experience - their purpose and function is equivalent to that of a name: it’s a way to refer to a person that makes that person feel comfortable, and it’s perfectly fine not to have a rigid definition for pronouns in the same way that you wouldn’t assign a name to have a rigid experience or definition associated with it

i know it’s a long read, but i hope that helps clarify my thoughts on the matter!

#anon #ask

[bi-asstronaut]

hi! a good friend of mine doesn't understand nb genders (especially the fluid ones & agender). she thinks nb ppl have a mental problem, bc as she sees it- gender is about deciding (between female/male), while nb is not deciding. in general she's very understanding and open, but I couldn't explain her (plus I'm cis and don't want to say something harmful). how would u answer the question of "why are nb genders are actual genders? why are they not a problem of making decisions?"

Hi Anon! Thanks for sending me this ask. I’m not an All-Knowing Expert on nb genders because I’m nb myself, since everyone experiences their gender differently, but I’ll do my best to answer your question.

It can be very difficult for non-nb people to understand what being nonbinary means or “feels like”, simply because they’ve never experienced gender outside the binary themselves, so I understand why your friend has a hard time seeing where we’re coming from. Nonbinary isn’t a disease or a mental illness, just like being binary trans (a trans man/woman) isn’t, and it’s also not about not making a decision. If anything, I think being a cis person has more to do with not making a decision than being nb does - Cis people are comfortable with the gender they were born as and don’t have to go through any of the processes nb people (and binary trans people as well in some cases) may have to; processes, which, to me, are filled with decisions. Am I really nb? Do I want to change my name? Do I want to alter my body in any way? How should I dress to best express who I am? Does dressing how I want to/expressing my gender have any consequences for me? etc. I hope that answers your question of why I think nb genders aren’t about not making decisions.

To understand why nb genders are actual genders, I think it’s important to understand that gender is largely a social construct. What many perceive as being something inherently “girly”, feminine, “boyish” or masculine is actually just… stuff. It’s just objects and concepts. A dress or a skirt is just a piece of fabric cut and sown in a certain way, but lots of people think it’s inappropriate for a man or a boy to wear because it’s “girly”. And to think that the notion that gender is determined by chromosomes can shut down any argument because it’s biology is actually wrongful and completely ignores… actual biology. For example, a quick google search gave me Klinefelter syndrome, a genetic mutation where a person is born with an extra X chromosome, so that their sex chromosomes are XXY. In rare cases, they can even have two or three extra Xs (XXXY or XXXXY). Physically, this shows as low levels of testosterone, which means less-developed “male” characteristics and more-developed “female” characteristics. An example that may seem even more out of this world are people who have a genetic mosaic, where they possess XX chromosomes in some cells and XY in others. How are we supposed to determine whether this person is male or female if we go by chromosomes alone? I think it’s much easier to just ask what the person feels like.

(Not to mention the fact that the biology argument completely erases the existence of intersex people, but I don’t know enough about this subject to speak about it.)

With that said, I think one of the keys to “unlocking” how someone can be nb is being able to differentiate between sex and gender. Typically, sex is defined as what’s going on with your body, while gender defines what goes on inside your head. That means that your body and your gender don’t have to match up whatsoever. Trans women are still women and trans men are still men if they identify as such, regardless of how their body looks. This also goes for nb people - We’re still nb, no matter what our physical characteristics may be and how we choose to dress.

I’d also like to point out that a large number of non-Western cultures recognise more than two genders and otherwise gender non-conforming people, but these genders are often intrinsically linked to that culture’s traditions and beliefs and should therefore not be used by people outside that culture. A relatively well-known example of such a gender is “two-spirit”, which is used by some indigenous North Americans to describe “certain people in their communities who fulfill a traditional third-gender ceremonial role in their cultures.” (Wikipedia) The fact that many non-Western cultures recognise and have recognised more than two genders for centuries should be a good indication that identifying as nonbinary isn’t a new thing made up by hipsters and teens who just want to be cool and different.

tl;dr:- gender is a social construct built on concepts and things that have come to be seen as “girly” (feminine) or “boyish” (masculine), but which have no inherent gender, such as clothing- sex/physical characteristics and gender are two different, separate things and they don’t have to match up- using chromosomes/biology as an argument against trans and nonbinary genders is wrongful and erases intersex people- more than two genders are recognised in many non-Western cultures

This got really lengthy, but I hope it answers your questions and questions your friend may have! If you want me to elaborate or answer another question, feel free to shoot me another ask.

And if there’s anything in my reply that’s offensive, wrong or could be worded better, please let me know.

Further reading and watching (I’m on mobile so I apologise for the ugly links):- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nlc8H4WUqEs (“Proof that there are more than two genders”, uploaded by Riley J. Dennis, a nonbinary person)

- https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLjIGlYSe6iDxaIAsFhQ7eLoYlo35JNAKy (“The ABC’s of LGBT+”, uploaded by Ash Hardell)

- For your friend about being genderfluid and agender specifically: http://gender.wikia.com/wiki/Gender_Fluid (the definition of being genderfluid)

- https://www.google.dk/amp/s/www.teenvogue.com/story/what-is-agender/amp (a rather lengthy article that includes an agender person talking about what being agender means to them, a doctor who works with gender, pronoun usage, and other things) (I only skimmed it, but it seems respectful and good)

#woo boy this got long i’m.... sorry #when i get asked about gender there’s no knowing where it’ll go #it’s a subject i like talking about and which i think is important #anyway uhhh thanks for the ask have a good day #nonbinary #nb #gender #long post