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  1. - Top - End - #1441
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    Default Re: LGBTAI+ Questions and Discussion thread II: Make It Double

    Quote Originally Posted by ArlEammon View Post
    I'm not suicidal yet but I need help so I never get there.
    Or me. By all means find someone to talk to. I only get online once a day real quick but by all means holler if you need to talk.
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    Default Re: LGBTAI+ Questions and Discussion thread II: Make It Double

    If you had to explain what it is to not be straight or cisgender to someone who has never encountered an openly LGBTA person in the wild and has only the most dim and limited understanding of what a gay person even is, where on earth would you begin with educating them on basic background information and what is or is not generally considered to be a huge faux pas or deeply offensive?

    What resources would you direct them toward?
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  3. - Top - End - #1443
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    Default Re: LGBTAI+ Questions and Discussion thread II: Make It Double

    Quote Originally Posted by Coidzor View Post
    If you had to explain what it is to not be straight or cisgender to someone who has never encountered an openly LGBTA person in the wild and has only the most dim and limited understanding of what a gay person even is, where on earth would you begin with educating them on basic background information and what is or is not generally considered to be a huge faux pas or deeply offensive?

    What resources would you direct them toward?
    Is this about the thread with the Aasimar character?

    ~shrug~

    I dunno, you could direct them here and we'd answer any questions they might have as best as we're able.

    scarleteen is a good general purpose education website that has good sections (sexions?) on sexual preference and gender identity, though it is geared more towards teens and young adults.

    But... part of the problem I'm having with the question is most of the resources I know of are geared toward people who this is entirely new for... Like teens and young adults. Every grown adult I've met who has needed education has had to go with Q&A or teen focused resources.
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  4. - Top - End - #1444
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    Default Re: LGBTAI+ Questions and Discussion thread II: Make It Double

    Quote Originally Posted by Coidzor View Post
    If you had to explain what it is to not be straight or cisgender to someone who has never encountered an openly LGBTA person in the wild and has only the most dim and limited understanding of what a gay person even is, where on earth would you begin with educating them on basic background information and what is or is not generally considered to be a huge faux pas or deeply offensive?

    What resources would you direct them toward?
    I'd probably point them here.

  5. - Top - End - #1445
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    Default Re: LGBTAI+ Questions and Discussion thread II: Make It Double

    Bi/pan folks here, could you tell how and at what age you discovered your sexuality? I may be in a similar situation and would like some perspectives.
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    Default Re: LGBTAI+ Questions and Discussion thread II: Make It Double

    For me it was mostly figuring out that the ooooh dayum I get when I see a hot guy is generally the same ooooh dayum I get when I see a hot gal.
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  7. - Top - End - #1447
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    Default Re: LGBTAI+ Questions and Discussion thread II: Make It Double

    Short version, I was 17, lonely and wanted a relationship, and realised that I didn't care what gender my partner had, as long as I had a partner.

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    At around 14, when I started having interest in "more than friendship" relationships, I very shortly thought about if I was a lesbian (I still thought I was a girl then), but quickly came to the conclusion that nah, I wasn't, because I wanted a boyfriend.

    At around 15, I very shortly thought about if I was bi, but because I wasn't interested in anyone specifically, and society generally says that girls are supposed to only want relationships with boys, I quickly forgot about it again - after all, I wanted a boyfriend.

    At around 16, there was a girl at school who was really pretty, and I thought "if I was a lesbian, I'd totally have a crush on her". But because I wasn't a lesbian, I never thought anything more about it. (Also, she turned out to be... interested in very different things than I? Like, she was still very pretty, but intellectually/mentally really not my type.)

    At around 17, my group of friends had sort of a running joke that I was an elf, one friend was a vampire, one a werewolf, and one a zombie (all girls, I went to an all girls school). Werewolf friend wanted to change religious denomination, and here you have to go to the civil register office (or however it's called in English) to do so officially, and she asked me to come along for moral support. This office is the same where you go to legally get married, which led to our mutual friends joking about us actually secretly getting married, and we went along with it because it was funny.
    A bit later, vampire friend and I had to do a roleplaying/argument thing in English class - we had to pretend we were a couple with a child and had to discuss something about how we wanted to raise the child. Naturally, my group of friends again made a joke about it - that I had cheated on my "wife" (werewolf friend) and now had a child with vampire friend. (We decided that this had to mean that I was either a guy (which I didn't like) or elves (and therefore I) had to be hermaphroditic (an option I liked. Vaarsuvius might have something to do with this.) Of course they were both "angry" at me for "lying" to them, so I replied "That happens when you date an elf!", and because of course I didn't want to be an evil cheater, I made something up about elves naturally being polyamorous and me just not understanding human (or werewolf and vampire) customs, and wrote a little story about it. My friends liked the story, so I wrote more, and started researching – about hermaphroditic animals, which was sort of a stepping stone to me finding out about all kinds of queer stuff - intersexionaliy, polyamory (I had no idea this actually existed) and trans stuff (which I also had never heard of before), mainly, but this also brought the option of bisexuality back on my radar. And I realised that the thought of being in a relationship with a girl didn't bother me at all, and actually seemed really nice. (Around this time I also discovered the LGBTAI thread here, which taught me a lot.) And because I was still lonely, and still wanted to have a relationship, I decided that yeah, I really didn't care what gender a partner had, so I started identifying as bi.
    (Another thing was, that I have imaginary friends, and I daydream excessively, and around that time I gained two new imaginary friends, a girl and an (agender) elf, while the IF I had had for 3 or 4 years at that point (a boy, and yeah, he absolutely was my imaginary boyfriend) mostly went away - he still stayed around for a while, but after some time he was gone completely. The girl didn't stay around too long, but the elf is still here, 5 years later, and I'm really glad I have hir.)

    Anyway, a few months later I developed a crush on werewolf friend, thought she might like me to, asked her out and was rejected, I was heartbroken for a while, but I moved on and we are still friends (even though we don't talk as often anymore, cause we live in different cities now and are both busy with university). Oh, and I also figured out that I'm genderfluid some time after that – those of you who were active in the LGBTAI thread around 2012/2013 might remember.

    A bit later I also figured out that I'm (grey) asexual, which was actually way harder than realising I'm bi, because I really didn't know how sexual attraction is supposed to feel, and while I can imagine myself having sex with a partner, I don't really find people "sexy" or "hot" - I don't really see a difference between, say, a beautiful actress and a beautiful sunset. I mostly ID as grey-a (instead of just ace), because I don't want to count out the possibility that I might find someone attractive in the future, and I'm also not 100% clear what my feelings for werewolf friend were - how much of them were romantic, how much just really intense platonic friendship feels, and how much might have been sexual attraction. I'm adding the stuff about asexuality here because the process of discovering your orientation tends to be similar for aces and bi or pan people - "I feel the same for all genders" - and just the specifics (I find all genders attractive vs I find no genders attractive) are different (there are a lot of ace people, especially aromantic asexuals, who ID as bi or pan before they find out about asexuality/aromanticism - "I'm not straight, and I'm not gay, so I must be bi").
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  8. - Top - End - #1448
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    Default Re: LGBTAI+ Questions and Discussion thread II: Make It Double

    Quote Originally Posted by Dire_Stirge View Post
    Bi/pan folks here, could you tell how and at what age you discovered your sexuality? I may be in a similar situation and would like some perspectives.
    I was thirteen. I kinda figured it by, well, finding guys and girls both attractive.

  9. - Top - End - #1449
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    Default Re: LGBTAI+ Questions and Discussion thread II: Make It Double

    Quote Originally Posted by Dire_Stirge View Post
    Bi/pan folks here, could you tell how and at what age you discovered your sexuality? I may be in a similar situation and would like some perspectives.
    That's kind of a difficult question for me to answer, because it was a pretty gradual realisation. Even back before I was really old enough to have an actual interest in sex I guess I already felt the possibility of sex with men as well as with women was of potential interest rather than any negative reaction (which I would've thought at the time would be the normal response). As I got older and potentially actually interested I continued to be curious, so from time to time if I was looking up anything sexy online I'd look at gay stuff as well as straight I guess to try and figure out my own sexuality by observing my own reactions? I was an odd child. To be honest I wonder if one reason I kept wondering about it was because I followed some questionable logic like "This thing is generally considered weird, I am kind of weird, therefore maybe I might be this thing."
    Anyway, some time when I was 17 or 18 I would've said I was bicurious, somewhere between then and age 19-20 I went through thinking I could be sexually attracted to men but wouldn't want to actually date one and then dropped that disclaimer.
    "'But there's still such a lot to be done...'
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  10. - Top - End - #1450
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    Default Re: LGBTAI+ Questions and Discussion thread II: Make It Double

    Quote Originally Posted by Dire_Stirge View Post
    Bi/pan folks here, could you tell how and at what age you discovered your sexuality? I may be in a similar situation and would like some perspectives.
    I won't say exactly how young I was at the time but it my best friend, his sister, and myself in the woods with a case of beer, we all lost our cherries that day, and I enjoyed having sex with both of them, so I have basically always known, and I have actually always been comfortable with it. All of my friends today know which way I roll and don't care. Guess that means I have it pretty easy.
    Last edited by lylsyly; 2016-11-26 at 10:46 AM.
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  11. - Top - End - #1451
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    Default Re: LGBTAI+ Questions and Discussion thread II: Make It Double

    I mostly just got to thinking about things in a "what if" manner when I was in my 20s, after I had been gradually been drifting away from a community that taught me being anything other than straight was a bad thing, and asked myself if I could see myself doing things with guys, and realized that yes, I could. I would later find that doing things with guys really wasn't any different from doing them with girls for the most part.

    Then again, most features that I find attractive about people in general tend to be found more often in girls then guys, but guys with the same features are still attractive to me. What can I say; sexuality is weird.
    LGBTitp

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    Default Re: LGBTAI+ Questions and Discussion thread II: Make It Double

    Quote Originally Posted by Troacctid View Post
    I'd probably point them here.
    ...It's taken me entirely too long to realize that was a hyperlink. Yeessh my eyes.

    Thank you.
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  13. - Top - End - #1453
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    Default Re: LGBTAI+ Questions and Discussion thread II: Make It Double

    Moved from the support thread, and thanks, Coidzor ;)

    Okay, some background on this. As a child, I was very unclear on what the differences were between boys and girls. I knew I was a boy, and that girls dressed differently and had different hair, but that was it. I was never under any illusions of girls being weaker than boys or behaving differently or anything; I grew up playing SNES games with my female cousin who was way better than me. I didn't know the two sexes had different private parts until I was 7 and read it in a health book.

    After that, I figured that was it; gender referred only to body parts and nothing else made a difference; people could be as masculine or feminine as they liked and it wouldn't matter. I remember having some odd fantasies of being a girl then but generally felt that didn't matter. I was a guy with an active imagination, that was all.

    Now, of course, after encountering enough trans people, my views shifted again, but to what I am not sure. It's clear to me now that body parts don't actually define gender, but I don't believe personality and thought processes do either; and after all, feminine trans men and masculine trans women exist too. I ended up wondering about my own identity in all that too and having no method by which to determine it, eventually just settling on living life as before for lack of a better option.

    So this brings me to the question at hand: If gender is not body parts and it is not personality, what exactly is gender and how does one define it?
    LGBTitp

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    Default Re: LGBTAI+ Questions and Discussion thread II: Make It Double

    Quote Originally Posted by Me
    To be honest, I'd say the people who go on and on about little girls being weak and wimpy to little boys below the age of 5 are probably the real outliers. I must admit though, I'm curious as to how you managed to miss out on the subliminal messaging about women being mommies and men being daddies as a smol child.

    Gender is probably best understood as long as one understands that it's not really possible to understand perfectly. For the most part, gender is an internal, mental/metaphysical part of a person that may or may not be present, much like sexuality or empathy or a sense of humor.

    It's primarily about identity, but to say that it's divorced from the physical entirely is also to do it a disservice and bark up the wrong tree. So, too, its existence as a social construct and identifier shouldn't be dismissed and forgotten as irrelevant to grasping the concept.

    In a way, it's like the really, really old definition of a mystery, like in the religious sort of paradox-but-not-quite sense.
    I don't really have anything else to add at this point in time, though.
    Quote Originally Posted by Keld Denar View Post
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    Post Re: LGBTAI+ Questions and Discussion thread II: Make It Double

    Quote Originally Posted by Coidzor View Post
    ...It's taken me entirely too long to realize that was a hyperlink. Yeessh my eyes.

    Thank you.
    The National Center for Transgender Equality also has some useful resources.

    Quote Originally Posted by Dire Moose View Post
    Moved from the support thread, and thanks, Coidzor ;)

    Okay, some background on this. As a child, I was very unclear on what the differences were between boys and girls. I knew I was a boy, and that girls dressed differently and had different hair, but that was it. I was never under any illusions of girls being weaker than boys or behaving differently or anything; I grew up playing SNES games with my female cousin who was way better than me. I didn't know the two sexes had different private parts until I was 7 and read it in a health book.

    After that, I figured that was it; gender referred only to body parts and nothing else made a difference; people could be as masculine or feminine as they liked and it wouldn't matter. I remember having some odd fantasies of being a girl then but generally felt that didn't matter. I was a guy with an active imagination, that was all.

    Now, of course, after encountering enough trans people, my views shifted again, but to what I am not sure. It's clear to me now that body parts don't actually define gender, but I don't believe personality and thought processes do either; and after all, feminine trans men and masculine trans women exist too. I ended up wondering about my own identity in all that too and having no method by which to determine it, eventually just settling on living life as before for lack of a better option.

    So this brings me to the question at hand: If gender is not body parts and it is not personality, what exactly is gender and how does one define it?
    Good question. Gender identity is kind of a wonky concept to get your head around. Basically, some facts that you should know:
    • Gender identity is your internal sense of which gender you "belong" as. Are you more comfortable as a boy, or a girl, or somewhere in between, or something else entirely? That's your gender identity.
    • Gender identity is unrelated to cultural gender roles and stereotypes. A person who is completely alone on a desert island would still have a gender identity.
    • Gender identity is an innate quality, like sexual orientation. It can be fluid, but no amount of willpower can change it. (Many have tried and failed.)
    • Gender identity is a well-documented psychological phenomenon, and its existence is supported by a buttload of science.
    • And a special note for you personally: Your story as you've told it here is actually very similar to that of many transgender people, so it is totally possible that you may in fact be transgender!

    Also, hey, check out that link I just posted just now in response to Coidzor!

    Here's my Life Pro Tip for you: The whole point of questioning your gender is not to determine what gender you are—it's to determine whether there are gender-related steps you could take to better optimize your happiness. Don't worry about whether you're "trans enough" to do something you think will make you happy. Just do the thing.

    Here is a quick questionnaire that may help you determine whether you are transgender.
    1. I have here a button. If you press the button, your body will magically transform you into a cis-female version of yourself (i.e. what you might have looked like had you been born with XX chromosomes), and everyone in your life will accept you as if you were always that way. Do you press the button? What if the effects are permanent and irreversible?
    2. If you were to wake up tomorrow morning with a female body, how would it make you feel? What about in a week? A month? A year? Ten years?
    3. Would you rather be an average woman, or a rich, attractive, successful man? What about a man who is only slightly richer, more attractive, and/or more successful?
    4. If you were completely alone on a desert island like that hypothetical person I mentioned earlier, would you rather have a male or female body? What if a small group of friends and/or family were there too? A small group of strangers?

  16. - Top - End - #1456
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    Default Re: LGBTAI+ Questions and Discussion thread II: Make It Double

    Quote Originally Posted by Troacctid View Post
    Here is a quick questionnaire that may help you determine whether you are transgender.
    1. I have here a button. If you press the button, your body will magically transform you into a cis-female version of yourself (i.e. what you might have looked like had you been born with XX chromosomes), and everyone in your life will accept you as if you were always that way. Do you press the button? What if the effects are permanent and irreversible?
    If my partners' orientations switch to match, and everyone is accepting of me being gay... I think the answer would be yes (if it's not permanent, it would be yes either way). There are less compatible partners when you're a gay man than when you're a straight woman, but I already have two partners so that isn't as big an issue right now, and I feel like life would be easier as a man, based on how people have treated me when they have mistaken me for a man.
    I would miss being able to feel sexy without having to first wonder about the person's orientation, though. Being straight is definitely easier.

    Quote Originally Posted by Troacctid View Post
    If you were to wake up tomorrow morning with a male body, how would it make you feel? What about in a week? A month? A year? Ten years?
    (Edited to match my situation)

    My immediate concern would be losing my husband, who is straight. My next concern would be everyone else's reaction. Then I would figure out how things are different as a man. After that... it probably wouldn't make that much of a difference, except for the stuff I mentioned above.


    Quote Originally Posted by Troacctid View Post
    Would you rather be an average man, or a rich, attractive, successful woman? What about a woman who is only slightly richer, more attractive, and/or more successful?
    (Edited to match my situation)

    I would pick the richer, most successful person regardless of sex. With fortune and fame being equal, and in our current society, I would pick the man, probably. Again, I would miss being able to flirt and stuff with the majority of men. But I feel like I would get more advantages than disadvantages out of it.


    Quote Originally Posted by Troacctid View Post
    If you were completely alone on a desert island like that hypothetical person I mentioned earlier, would you rather have a male or female body? What if a small group of friends and/or family were there too? A small group of strangers?
    If I'm alone, I really don't care what body I have. It wouldn't even need to be human, really, although that's what I'm used to I guess. With a small group of other people, if they recognise me and treat me the same as before, I also don't care.


    I consider myself gender apathetic. The problem is that it mean I really don't understand the concept of having a gender identity, and that makes me feel disrespectful to trans people, like I'm saying "what's your problem? How does it make a difference?" but I know it does to trans people so it can be hard to talk about it without diminishing or erasing their experience.

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    Default Re: LGBTAI+ Questions and Discussion thread II: Make It Double

    Quote Originally Posted by Lissou View Post
    I consider myself gender apathetic. The problem is that it mean I really don't understand the concept of having a gender identity, and that makes me feel disrespectful to trans people, like I'm saying "what's your problem? How does it make a difference?" but I know it does to trans people so it can be hard to talk about it without diminishing or erasing their experience.
    I'm in basically the same position here, so here's a few pointers on how I see things:
    • I have no reason to think that I personally even have a gender per se. The whole concept just seems bizarre.
    • However, there are things that exist and experiences people can have which others don't get. There's that whole cliche about explaining colors to blind people, from which the takeaway is that colors are a thing, they can be detected by most people, and some people just aren't in a good position to really get more than a strictly theoretical perspective.
    • There are people who feel deeply connected to their gender. This isn't just trans people either - if you can't find a cis person deeply attached to their gender you aren't trying. This bears out in both personal experience and the boatload of science mentioned by Throacctid.
    • Given that information, there are two main conclusions that can be reached. Either there's some sort of mass delusion making people think gender is a big thing when it really isn't, or it's a big thing for a lot of other people that I personally don't get. The second of these is the more intellectually honest position; holding and loudly espousing the first one is a great way to be disrespectful to trans people (and cis people who are deeply connected to their genders, but as they don't really catch any flak for it from the wider culture I honestly can't be bothered to care that much in that case).
    I would really like to see a game made by Obryn, Kurald Galain, and Knaight from these forums.

    I'm not joking one bit. I would buy the hell out of that.
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    Default Re: LGBTAI+ Questions and Discussion thread II: Make It Double

    Quote Originally Posted by AmberVael View Post
    Its easy to get bogged down in all the rhetoric and shifting vocabulary around trans issues. Break them down into the kinds of things you think they're supposed to mean, or that people use them to mean, even if you're not sure they're accurate. Then examine those pieces in relation to yourself. Are you comfortable with your body? Are there ways in which you want to act masculine, and/or ways in which you want to act feminine? What pronouns feel right, or more importantly, which pronouns do you want? These things are far more significant than the definition of one or two words, and you don't need those words to uncover them.


    But if you do want to define gender - its a social construct. It is not your body, or your personality. Rather, it is an emergent property. It is not your body, but your body may have an impact on your gender. It is not your personality, but your personality may have an impact on your gender. Your choice of pronouns and the way you present yourself will also have an impact on your gender. Think of it like hit points in Dungeons and Dragons: hit points are largely derived from your hit dice and your constitution, but hit points aren't either of those things, and there are other factors that play into it.

    Because gender is not your personality, a woman can be masculine, or a man can be feminine. They are still perceived as female and male respectively, because there are other factors still supporting those gender identities. Similarly, a trans individual is the gender they identify with regardless of their sex, because gender is something more than sex, even if the two are still associated.

    In short, gender is a category we've created. Because we created it, its nature can shift and its boundaries can be fuzzy. There's this list of associated traits and characteristics that define it, and you don't have to check all the boxes to fit in, and the list doesn't remain the same.


    Which brings me back to the beginning - understanding yourself is the only way you're really going to figure out where you want to fit and how to get there. Because its not as simple as just some kind of binary data point that you can find somewhere and have it be settled. Its a category determined by many things, and a lot of those things are determined by your actions and your desires.
    So, here were my thoughts.

    Jor said this-
    Quote Originally Posted by Jormengand View Post
    Well, no. It's a very real part of one's psyche, not just some thing we've made up as a society. Sure, our understanding of it may be a social construct, but gender itself isn't. To claim it is is more invalidating of trans people than anything else, because it basically renders the whole raison d'etre of trans identities devoid of real meaning.
    See, the way I would describe it is to say that yes, the concept of gender is constructed by society, some categories with a bunch of associated traits.
    That said, those traits used to determine which category you're in? Those are absolutely a very real part of your psyche, and regardless of how gender is defined or constructed, those things are not going to change. You are you, regardless of what words, categories, or labels people associate with you.

    Which is why I think we're mostly agreeing here, just using our words a little differently. You're essentially using Gender to refer to the traits themselves, and I'm using Gender to refer to the category we've created as a society (or as you put it, our understanding of it).

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    Default Re: LGBTAI+ Questions and Discussion thread II: Make It Double

    Apologies for phrasing my questions non-inclusively, I wasn't even thinking that other people in the thread might answer them. Derp.

    Anyway, it's pretty common to hear people shrug and say, well, I don't think about it much, but I assume I'd be fine either way. You hear it from cis people, you hear it from nonbinary people, you even hear it from binary trans people who haven't worked it out yet. Probably because it feels like a rational, correct-sounding answer, I suppose? Generally it means you should keep thinking about it some more. Tweak the questions, change the parameters around a little, explore your feelings.

    Let's say you have to pay some amount of money to press the button, for example. How much would you pay? 5 bucks? 50? 100? 500? 2000?

    Let's say instead of having everyone accept you in your new body, it makes it so that nobody notices. You are the only one who even sees the change. You're still perceived as your assigned gender by anyone who looks at you. The change is just for you, not for anyone else.

    Quote Originally Posted by AmberVael View Post
    See, the way I would describe it is to say that yes, the concept of gender is constructed by society, some categories with a bunch of associated traits.
    That said, those traits used to determine which category you're in? Those are absolutely a very real part of your psyche, and regardless of how gender is defined or constructed, those things are not going to change. You are you, regardless of what words, categories, or labels people associate with you.

    Which is why I think we're mostly agreeing here, just using our words a little differently. You're essentially using Gender to refer to the traits themselves, and I'm using Gender to refer to the category we've created as a society (or as you put it, our understanding of it).
    Nooooo that's incorrect! Because trans people also experience dysphoria related to their physical bodies! Primary and secondary sexual characteristics are obviously NOT social constructs!

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    Quote Originally Posted by Troacctid View Post
    Nooooo that's incorrect! Because trans people also experience dysphoria related to their physical bodies! Primary and secondary sexual characteristics are obviously NOT social constructs!
    This doesn't disagree with anything I said whatsoever.

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    Quote Originally Posted by AmberVael View Post
    This doesn't disagree with anything I said whatsoever.
    It makes what you said extremely misleading! Or possibly off-topic, if you're going for some kind of "Rose by any other name" philosophical point about language? Like "Ah, yes, we say 'woman,' but that's just a word we invented! We could just as easily say 'smeerp'!"

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    Default Re: LGBTAI+ Questions and Discussion thread II: Make It Double

    I dunno, I guess I find it easier to understand this way. I know I struggled with it in a way similar to what Dire Moose was describing, and found it helpful to realize that its a category we use to describe a division in society. Its not exactly this or that, but a quality that arises from a broad array of traits - traits that are often intrinsic, but a category that is not intrinsic. Knowing that makes it easier to separate it out from being solely sex or masculinity or femininity, which is an area of confusion for a lot of people.
    Last edited by AmberVael; 2016-12-22 at 03:54 PM.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Troacctid View Post
    Anyway, it's pretty common to hear people shrug and say, well, I don't think about it much, but I assume I'd be fine either way. You hear it from cis people, you hear it from nonbinary people, you even hear it from binary trans people who haven't worked it out yet. Probably because it feels like a rational, correct-sounding answer, I suppose? Generally it means you should keep thinking about it some more. Tweak the questions, change the parameters around a little, explore your feelings.
    It's also because some people really don't have any attachment to a particular gender. It's the sort of thing that might undercut not having thought about it much (I can say that I absolutely have), but it's there.
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    Default Re: LGBTAI+ Questions and Discussion thread II: Make It Double

    Quote Originally Posted by Knaight View Post
    It's also because some people really don't have any attachment to a particular gender. It's the sort of thing that might undercut not having thought about it much (I can say that I absolutely have), but it's there.
    I meant that as the reason for why it's such a common answer even among people who aren't agender or similar, but yes, you are correct, of course.

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    On "most people who say 'I'd be ok either way' just haven't thought about it much" - my suspicion is that a pretty large fraction of nominally-cis people actually do not have a strong attachment to their gender. I've seen this discussion play out in a couple of other places, and the result there was that roughly half the group had a strong sense of internal gender and couldn't believe the other half didn't feel anything of the kind, whereas the other half couldn't figure out what the first half was talking about and were disbelieving that so many people felt that way. My working hypothesis is that if you define "agender" to mean just "no sense of an internal gender", then a large fraction of the population (maybe 1/3, maybe 2/3, probably not 99% or 1%) is "agender".

    If a person indicates they haven't thought about it much, fair enough to say "maybe they would feel differently if they thought about it more". But it seems presumptuous to say that even if a large number of people say "this isn't something I experience", they really must experience it, they just don't realize it. That seems like claiming you know better than they do about their internal sense of themselves. (And yes, I realize cis people do this to trans people all the time; it's presumptuous that way too, and extra obnoxious as there's a lot more history behind it.)

    TL;DR: if "I don't feel any sense of X" is a common reply, maybe that's because many people actually don't have any sense of X. That doesn't mean people who do have a sense of X are wrong/delusional! It would just mean it's common not to have that sense; it may also be common to have it.

    Quote Originally Posted by Troacctid View Post
    Here is a quick questionnaire that may help you determine whether you are transgender.
    I have here a button. If you press the button, your body will magically transform you into a cis-male version of yourself (i.e. what you might have looked like had you been born with XY chromosomes), and everyone in your life will accept you as if you were always that way. Do you press the button? What if the effects are permanent and irreversible?
    Would press, I think. Would also pay $2000 to press, because I think I'd earn it back in increased salary pretty fast. Wouldn't pay $100,000 to press; that would be a big financial hit if I was wrong about the increased salary thing.

    I'm asexual+aromantic, so losing partners (potential or real) wouldn't be an issue. I would probably find some aspects of male physiology annoying (I find some aspects of my current body upsetting too, but I've developed mechanisms to deal with those, and I'd have to find new ones). But I think it would be worth it to me, to not always be The Only Woman in the spaces I work and relax in, to not have my femaleness as a constant un-removable overlay on a huge range of interactions, coloring how people (but mostly men) see me. (Yes, maleness colors interactions too - but in my profession, it's the assumed default.)

    If you were to wake up tomorrow morning with a male body, how would it make you feel? What about in a week? A month? A year? Ten years?
    If it happened without my prior knowledge or consent I suspect all personal worries would be subsumed into "Wait, what, the laws of physics just did WHAT?" And/or thinking I was insane, especially if everyone else tells me I've always been male-bodied, as in that case "I have lost all my memories and invented a whole alternate life" seems like by far the most likely interpretation. If everyone else remembers me as a woman, then I'm pretty sure my first reaction would be a combination of trying to figure out how this had happened, and "Oh gods, my family / mortgage / job, how can I prove my identity"?

    (I like my life. Do not particularly want it disrupted.)

    But setting that aside... the thought of having a male body is not particularly appealing to me. However, the thought of being transformed into my brother's identical twin is much more appealing than the thought of being transformed into a woman with large breasts and a curvy figure.

    I hate the idea of people viewing me through a sexualized lens. When I hit puberty I (a) cut my hair short, (b) stopped wearing anything that showed my body shape for about five years, and (c) wore the tightest sports bras I could find in the hope that it would prevent breast growth. I got lucky; the body I ended up with is not very different in shape from the body I had at age 12, just taller. But I am not attached to the female-coded aspects of my body. (I also researched hysterectomies starting around age 12.)

    Would you rather be an average man, or a rich, attractive, successful woman? What about a woman who is only slightly richer, more attractive, and/or more successful?
    I'll go with riches and success. I would certainly not trade my current life for the life of an average man. I assumed the button above left intelligence/skills/career intact.

    If you were completely alone on a desert island like that hypothetical person I mentioned earlier, would you rather have a male or female body? What if a small group of friends and/or family were there too? A small group of strangers?
    Female, provided I have a lifetime supply of my medications with me (they stop periods completely, and also stop my ovaries from growing giant cysts that render me incapacitated with pain). If I do not have my meds, I will take a healthy male body over a pain-wracked female body.

    Small group of strangers I'd probably rather have a male body; I'd feel safer.

    Quote Originally Posted by Troacctid View Post
    Anyway, it's pretty common to hear people shrug and say, well, I don't think about it much, but I assume I'd be fine either way. You hear it from cis people, you hear it from nonbinary people, you even hear it from binary trans people who haven't worked it out yet. Probably because it feels like a rational, correct-sounding answer, I suppose? Generally it means you should keep thinking about it some more. Tweak the questions, change the parameters around a little, explore your feelings.
    And sometimes it means no I really have thought about it and my internal sense of my woman-ness is pretty similar to my internal sense of my nationality - that is, it's had a big effect on my life (influencing where I can go, what I can do, and how people regard me), I have an official document that lists it, it influenced the cultural messages I absorbed as a child. But I'm also pretty sure that there is no deep affinity to [country of citizenship] engraved in my DNA, because my nationality is entirely a social/cultural construct. That doesn't mean it's not important, or it didn't shape me - but if an American tells me how she's always just known deep down that in her soul she's Australian, despite never having even visited the country, then I am going to give her the side-eye. I don't believe in intrinsic nationalities. Likewise, I don't believe in intrinsic gender for me personally.

    But as Knaight says, all the evidence is that gender identity is "a big thing for a lot of other people that I personally don't get". (Knaight's post generally reflects my own feelings on the matter.)

    Let's say instead of having everyone accept you in your new body, it makes it so that nobody notices. You are the only one who even sees the change. You're still perceived as your assigned gender by anyone who looks at you. The change is just for you, not for anyone else.
    Yeah, in that case I have zero interest in pressing the button.

    Nooooo that's incorrect! Because trans people also experience dysphoria related to their physical bodies! Primary and secondary sexual characteristics are obviously NOT social constructs!
    Some trans people do - not all, if my understanding is correct. And since it's not all, that suggests you can have a sense of gender that is discordant with your assigned gender, while being perfectly comfortable with your body. This is mostly what makes it confusing to me; mental body maps miscalibrated to your actual body make perfect sense, but that's clearly not the only thing that's going on.

    I think (correct me if I'm wrong) that AmberVael is classifying primary/secondary sex characteristics as traits that are (very strongly) associated with a particular cultural gender category. Because humans have roughly binary biological sexual characteristics (yes, I know intersex people exist, and even non-intersex people have a wide range of physiological variation, hence "roughly"), these form a natural way to split up the categories. But the traits are not the categories; you can be culturally regarded as a woman/man while not sharing the primary/secondary sex characteristics associated with those cultural categories.

    Identifying with a given gender category can mean that you feel an affinity or identification with traits lying within that category - which could be physical traits, or activities, or qualities of personality, etc. Someone who cares nothing about any of the other traits in the category could want to be located in the category of "man" simply because they have a strong affinity for male-coded physiology (and severe dysphoria with their assigned-female body). But equally, someone might be fine with their assigned-female body and have no desire to change it, but always feel uncomfortable and out-of-place in female-coded spaces and activities, and want to be accepted as a man.

    My understanding is that this describes some people's experiences pretty well, and it has the advantage of covering both people who feel physical dysphoria and people who feel social dysphoria. But my understanding is that there are also people for whom gender identity is not about any identifiable traits, it's just a strong feeling that they are happier and feel more like their true selves when they are identified (by themselves and/or by others) as members of a particular gender category.

    Brains do not need codified reasons for the weird things they do. (My brain became irrationally euphoric in its first five minutes in Edinburgh, and no, I don't know why either.) I don't think trans people should need to construct a strict logical rationale behind those feelings of happiness/self-fulfillment when being associated with the "correct" gender, in order to have those feelings - and the actions that flow from them - respected and supported.

    As Troacctid also said, the main reason for poking at how you feel about these categories is to figure out how to optimize your happiness; others' stories about being trans may reflect common patterns, that you can use to guide your own understanding. But there's nothing that says you have to fit anybody else's pattern.

    [Usual disclaimer: I am AFAB and identify as a woman. I identify as cis unless people are using a definition that requires a sense of internal intrinsic gender identity as a woman, or similar. I am not an authority on trans people's experiences; what I've written above is from my own perspective, some of which I've learned by reading the writings of trans people on their own experiences.]
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    Quote Originally Posted by Ifni View Post
    On "most people who say 'I'd be ok either way' just haven't thought about it much" - my suspicion is that a pretty large fraction of nominally-cis people actually do not have a strong attachment to their gender. I've seen this discussion play out in a couple of other places, and the result there was that roughly half the group had a strong sense of internal gender and couldn't believe the other half didn't feel anything of the kind, whereas the other half couldn't figure out what the first half was talking about and were disbelieving that so many people felt that way. My working hypothesis is that if you define "agender" to mean just "no sense of an internal gender", then a large fraction of the population (maybe 1/3, maybe 2/3, probably not 99% or 1%) is "agender".
    I would be extremely wary of selection bias here. For one thing, a number of the cis people who are really attached to their gender and super committed to the whole "men are born men, women are born women, they're different and changing from one to the other is an abomination" thing. They have a tendency to end up really transphobic, and aren't as likely to show up in a discussion like that, particularly not one that isn't generally hostile. There's also the small matter of how many demands even cis people get to act their gender, the prevalence of terms like "man up" in language, etc - none of which is very consistent with a population where a big fraction just don't care. Heck, consider how mad a number of cis people will get towards being misgendered.
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    Note that it's also easy to say you aren't invested in it much if there isn't any incongruity in your gender, like, it's easy to say gender doesn't matter for you if you don't have body / social / whatever dysphoria...
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    Quote Originally Posted by Ifni View Post
    On "most people who say 'I'd be ok either way' just haven't thought about it much" - my suspicion is that a pretty large fraction of nominally-cis people actually do not have a strong attachment to their gender. I've seen this discussion play out in a couple of other places, and the result there was that roughly half the group had a strong sense of internal gender and couldn't believe the other half didn't feel anything of the kind, whereas the other half couldn't figure out what the first half was talking about and were disbelieving that so many people felt that way. My working hypothesis is that if you define "agender" to mean just "no sense of an internal gender", then a large fraction of the population (maybe 1/3, maybe 2/3, probably not 99% or 1%) is "agender".
    Honestly, I'm preeetty sure that nonbinary gender identities are waaay more common than most people think they are, because of the tendency of people in general to not question their gender? And the fact that nonbinary people can be less likely to feel a pressing need to, like, do anything about it, compared to binary trans people. Like someone can be AFAB and a demigirl, but unless she's like super into gender stuff, is she really going to think to make that distinction, or is she just going to think of herself as a woman? You know?

    It comes back around to the difference between "What is my gender?" and "What am I going to do about it?" If you're AMAB and you feel like you'd rather be a girl, is it worth distinguishing whether you're binary trans or nonbinary transfeminine when the solution to both is the same (identify as female and take whatever steps in transition that you are comfortable with)? That's how it was for me—after questioning for a while, I thought to myself, "You know, I could keep questioning and try to narrow myself down, but at this point, it's really just splitting hairs."

    Quote Originally Posted by Ifni View Post
    If a person indicates they haven't thought about it much, fair enough to say "maybe they would feel differently if they thought about it more". But it seems presumptuous to say that even if a large number of people say "this isn't something I experience", they really must experience it, they just don't realize it. That seems like claiming you know better than they do about their internal sense of themselves. (And yes, I realize cis people do this to trans people all the time; it's presumptuous that way too, and extra obnoxious as there's a lot more history behind it.)

    TL;DR: if "I don't feel any sense of X" is a common reply, maybe that's because many people actually don't have any sense of X. That doesn't mean people who do have a sense of X are wrong/delusional! It would just mean it's common not to have that sense; it may also be common to have it.
    Yeah, but if they had already thought about it and come to a firm conclusion, then they probably wouldn't be questioning, so they wouldn't be answering the questionnaire in the first place, see? So it all works out.

    I didn't mean to be presumptuous. I'm just speaking from my own experiences. A few years ago I would have told you I didn't have a strong sense of gender. My body was just something I kind of took for granted and didn't worry all that much about. But now, I look back and I'm like, yyyeah, I can see how I would think that, but no, haha, no, that was deeefinitely not correct, ha.

    Another thing is that people do this thing where they kind of assume that being cisgender is the default? So, like, you're cis unless proven trans? But if you're questioning, that's kind of a counterproductive assumption.

    Quote Originally Posted by Ifni View Post
    Some trans people do - not all, if my understanding is correct. And since it's not all, that suggests you can have a sense of gender that is discordant with your assigned gender, while being perfectly comfortable with your body. This is mostly what makes it confusing to me; mental body maps miscalibrated to your actual body make perfect sense, but that's clearly not the only thing that's going on.
    Well, if you're "comfortable" with your body, but you're more comfortable with a different body...I mean, it's all relative, right? It just depends on where you set your baseline. Plus, it's not just the visible body parts that matter, there are also sex hormones squishing around in your brain that can mess things up for you. Still very much a part of your physical body, but you can't point to it very easily, you know? It can be really hard to pinpoint where exactly the yucky feelings are originating from, but then you get on HRT, get the proper gender-juices flowing, and you realize that the yucky feelings have all gone away.

    Of course gender isn't binary, dysphoria is different for everyone, the usual disclaimers, etc.

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    Last edited by Troacctid; 2016-12-23 at 04:41 AM.

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    Default Re: LGBTAI+ Questions and Discussion thread II: Make It Double

    For the record, I started wondering about eight years ago, and I've gone back and forth a bunch, but in the end I decided on "gender apathetic". I sometimes "crossdress", but I define crossdressing as either binding, packing, etc and presenting as male, or wearing an dress or makeup or something. When I'm just wearing my regular clothes and no makeup, people see me as female too, but I'm not actively presenting as such, I guess? But it doesn't bother me. Online, I don't always notice if people refer to me as male or female, and I don't really care. But when asked for pronouns, I will chose female pronouns because I find it simpler, and I feel like being agender is more active than my passive lack of caring, and I don't feel like I actively have a lack of gender, rather than not understanding how gender works in the first place. It's like, if people asked me, "are you a triangle or a square?" I wouldn't know which to pick, but if they decided I'm one (or the other), I'd stick with it for the sake of convenience, since it's meaningless to me.

    I took the questionnaire because it interested me. As for the new questions, I'm not sure if I'd be willing to pay for the change. But if the change happened and I had the option to pay to change back, I don't think I would either. As for changing with nobody else noticing, sure, but I really wonder how sex would work. I can see myself curious enough to try it though, although it would be weird to be perceived in a way different from what I look like. I think it may make me feel trans, not because I have a strong gender identity, but because I would be perceiving my body as male and other people would be perceiving my body as female and that sounds really uncomfortable. So maybe I wouldn't do it, in the end, especially if people didn't believe me. But I'm still curious how sex would work.

    I guess I think of sex (the activity) as the main thing where sex (the biology thing) makes a difference. A lack of periods would be nice too, though.

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    Default Re: LGBTAI+ Questions and Discussion thread II: Make It Double

    (psst we'll need a new thread soon)
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