And I get that -- I mean, I could be reading into your question a bunch of stuff that's coming from me, stuff I'm projecting onto it, and not what you meant or how you said it.
But here I am in GenderQueer Support & Talk, and a dozen or so other gender-variant themed Facebook groups, and I see so many of these questions --
"Hey, peeps, what do you think? I have my days when I'm not male or female but it's weird to be called 'he' or 'sir' and there are other days when I put on makeup, so do you think I could be a demigirl? I've been calling myself 'bigender' but lately I've been wondering if I might actually be a demigirl..."
-- (not an actual quote, but that kind of thing...)
... and when I read that it sounds like a chemist in the laboratory, trying to determine if Core Sample A contains potassium or silicon, bismuth or antimony. Like there's an absolute empirically correct answer. And like they're asking "Would one of my esteemed gender scientist colleagues help me decide how to test my sample and determine its composition?"
Connections
Does it annoy you when some old fart quotes some dusty-ass lyric from some song from before you were born and acts like because it was in this song that makes it profound or something?
Yeah, sorry about that, but I am sixty and sometimes I act like it...
I'd gather everyone together for a day
And when we gathered
I'll pass buttons out that say
Beautiful people
Then you'd never have to be alone
'Cause there'll always be someone
With the same button on as you
( -- Melanie, “Beautiful People”, circa 1971, obligatory YouTube link) cf: the sense of belonging, of not having to be alone because you have a shared identity with other people.
I do get that when a person is saying something like “I’m not sure if I’m a demigirl or if I’m more bigender” or whatever, part of what they’re often saying is “I might fit in with the other people who identify that way”. And believe me, I know what it feels like to be cut off from feeling like you fit in anywhere; I know what it's like to wish for a sense of belonging, to have a place where you fit in after a lifetime of sticking out as weird and different.
But let’s go back to the beginning of the journey. There was a social norm -- heterosexual and cisgender -- and that norm did not fit for you, did not work for you, it was incorrect and inadequate, it was wrong, and it was confining, right?
OK, I want to suggest to you, to all of you, that it is important for you to approach gender identity with the attitude that maybe no one out there has ever described your identity, that it has never been given a name. Don't get me wrong, I'm not wishing that on you, that you should have to create for yourself an identity and name it and explain it to everyone. But that you should hold it in your mind and heart as a possibility. That it is OK for you to walk away from "demigirl" and "bigender" and "genderfluid" and all of the others you encounter out there, saying (if it happens to be true) "NO, THAT'S NOT IT... NO, THAT'S STILL NOT IT... NO, NOT THAT EITHER..."
Why? Because otherwise -- if you haven't given yourself permission to do that -- you're confining yourself to slot yourself into one of these pre-existing identities. That makes it similar to just conforming to the cisgender hetero identity that was being foisted on you originally, something that doesn't fit but which you're allowing to define you instead of defining yourself. Oh, OK, it's only sort-of similar because there are a lot more choices instead of just one, and there's less focused pressure to accept them (and also less freedom from still being treated like a deviant as the payoff for accepting one of these identities).
But still, it's at least partially like that situation. You were willful enough and self-affirming enough to reject what didn't fit. I'm suggesting you hold onto that attitude and don't feel obliged to pick from any of the identities you encounter until and unless it fits.
Taste test identities
Somehow, having been a tomboy had taught me that the other side of "not fitting in" is a subtle subversive energy -- the power of difference
p 182, Marianne Dresser, in "Confessions of an Unrepentant Tomboy" / Yamaguchi & Barber, Editors, TOMBOYS
Gender is full of "shouldn'ts" and restrictions; if a gender identity is a net positive and not a net negative, it has to empower. I think it's NOT like a chemist trying to identify the elements in a sample. First and foremost, recognize that the absence of a gender identity is the absence of those gendered restrictions. Recognize also that all gender identities are social constructs: someone made them up and then continued to use them because they felt comfortable wearing them. Find what resonates for you. And if you don't find it out there, find it within yourself and give it a new name.
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