Clarifying Gender Inversion

I participate on a message board where I've been variously characterized as an attention-seeking special snowflake, a "transtrender" wishing to be edgy, and dismissed repeatedly. But recently, I posted a response that, for reasons I still don't entirely comprehend, seems to have gotten through and made sense to people who previously said I was a pretentious jerk.

So, on the offchance that I said something more brilliantly than I yet realize, I'll repeat it here.



[ I am replying to this: ]

I think I said this before in one of Ahunter's threads, but I fear that by starting too many catagories and boxes you run the risk of them losing all meaning.

And on one hand, I hate to sound like I'm "gatekeeping", but surely there has to be SOME kind of criteria to actually count as LGBT, not simply just claim to be one, without actually having ANY sort of trait of such.

(This would probably be for another thread)

I'm reminded of Person A, and her whole, "I'm an asexual non-binary furry who's into BDSM" schtick.[

/end of what I'm replying to]

A whole bunch of gender identities (that "stargender" thing, "alien" genders, altgenders that invoke animal personae, etc) fall into the broader heading of genderfuck —*the notion that gender is a social notion with no redeeming features so we should fling our sabots into it and make it break down.

I respect the people who think gender in its entirety is a fucked-up notion and that we should deep-six it. I'm not entirely on board with it though.

I think on a biological basis there are two sexes, and a handful of variations that we can dump into "intersex", like Kleinfelder's and androgen insensitivity and plain old variances like having a 3" long clitoris and so forth. That's the physical.

We pay attention because sexuality hardwires a significant percent of us to have sexual attraction to the opposite (of the two conventional) sexes for reproductive evolutionary purposes. And because we pay such attention it becomes an important part of how we classify people.

GENDER is a sociologist's notion, the batch of concepts and expectations and nuanced interpretations that we have come to attach to those two sexes. (One such notion is that there are indeed just two sexes — we ignore the handful of intersex variations and hide them, surgically shoehorning them into conformity to a two-sex schema, and they are now actively resisting that politically). GENDER is often acknowledged and rejected as a bunch of stultifying old-fashioned bullshit notions about differences between the sexes, because WTF, we all grew up with feminism and we're so past that bullshit, right?

But if you peruse our message board (a good example of a decently educated community with a somewhat progressive worldview) you still see a plethora of posts popping up in which differences between the sexes are taken for granted. And if they proliferate there, one can readily believe such notions persist elsewhere, such as in one's hometown, school, or office.

If there are still a batch of persistent notions and expectations and interpretations etc, then the experience of coming up against them is still real. That's GENDER.

I dunno...maybe the genderfuck folk have the right of it, but I'm not that enlightened; I formed a reaction that's shaped like "No, I don't fit over here, I fit over THERE ", and having done so I lived decades with that understanding-of-self in my head.

Lots of trans folks (of the normal mainstream variety, M2F and F2M) did that too.

I may finally be getting my fucking book published. I say "may" because this is the third time I've had a signed contract and the other two times didn't put any books on Amazon's site or otherwise for sale anywhere, and I could manage to fuck this one up too. I'm not M2F. I don't think my body needs fixifications and I don't seek to be perceived as a female-bodied person (because I'm not). [b]Guin[/b] and others see me as seeking special snowflake status * and/or complicating up the map of reasonable identities. I don't. If anything, I think mine is simpler than what the conventional trans people wish you to comprehend:

M2F person: "I was born with a body that the hospital folks printed 'male' on my birth certificate. But who I am is a woman. And I am female, either with or without a medical transition, and you should regard and treat me as such"

Me: "I was born male. But just like the M2F people, I'm not the person my social environment assumes I am on the basis of my maleness, I'm a far better fit for the person my social environment assumes of people who are female. That makes me a sissy, or a male girl, or a tomboy-in-reverse, or whatever you wanna call it, but either way my body ain't the problem."

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responses:

[Person B]I think that post is worthy of a thread in its own right, either here on or the other board. It's interesting information and would make an interesting discussion.

[Person C]Hey there. I will confess to having been confused and irritated at times with your many posts and threads about gender.I pretty much gave up on reading them. Today I read your post in the Behind Your Back snark thread, and it was so well-written that it broke through my ignorance and prejudice. It clarified some of the things I have been confused about, and it really clarified your particular case. Thanks for posting it.

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