[PAX] Are you genderqueer?

[Soulful]

How do you feel about your gender identity? Do you consider yourself genderqueer? Poll added.

Gender

• A socially constructed system of classification that ascribes qualities of masculinity and femininity to people. Gender characteristics can change over time and are different between cultures. Words that refer to gender include: man, woman, transgender, masculine, feminine, and gender queer.
• One's sense of self as masculine or feminine regardless of external genitalia. Gender is often conflated with sex. This is inaccurate because sex refers to bodies and gender refers to personality characteristics.

Gender Identity
The gender that a person sees themselves as. This can include refusing to label oneself with a gender. Gender identity is also often conflated with sexual orientation, but this is inaccurate. Gender identity does not cause sexual orientation. For example, a masculine woman is not nescesarily a lesbian.

Gender role
How “masculine” or “feminine” an individual acts. Societies commonly have norms regarding how males and females should behave, expecting people to have personality characteristics and/or act a certain way based on their biological sex.

Gender non-conforming/variant
Displaying gender traits that are not normatively associated with their biological sex. “Feminine” behavior or appearance in a male is gender-variant as is “masculine” behavior or appearance a female. Gender-variant behavior is culturally specific.

Gender queer
A person who redefines or plays with gender, or who refuses gender altogether. A label for people who bend/break the rules of gender and blur the boundaries.

Source: http://geneq.berkeley.edu/lgbt_resources_definiton_of_terms#gender_queer

Additionally, cissexual is a term used to identify someone who feels that their biological sex and gender identity align. Ex. If you have female body parts and identify as a female, you are cissexual.

 

[David54]

I am secure enough in my sexual orientation to watch "Dancing With the Stars" with no issues. .

 

[detectivepope]

How do you feel about your gender identity? Do you consider yourself genderqueer?

I'll set up a poll.

what the fuck is genderqueer?

 

[Soulful]

@detectivepope

I'll use this definition: "A person who redefines or plays with gender, or who refuses gender altogether. A label for people who bend/break the rules of gender and blur the boundaries."

Eta: Definitions added to the opening post.

 

[Soulful]

I am secure enough in my sexual orientation to watch "Dancing With the Stars" with no issues. .

lol, that's great. They have some fantastic dancers on there!
I added definitions to the first post to help.

 

[detectivepope]

@detectivepope

I'll use this definition: "A person who redefines or plays with gender, or who refuses gender altogether. A label for people who bend/break the rules of gender and blur the boundaries."

Eta: Definitions added to the opening post.

I suppose I do that but not sexually.

 

[Sensiko]

Additionally, cissexual is a term used to identify someone who feels that their biological sex and gender identity align. Ex. If you have female body parts and identify as a female, you are cissexual.

isn't that straight?! I have to admit that lesbians who look like hot teenage boys make me a little uncomfortable.

 

[Soulful]

I suppose I do that but not sexually.

Do you mean that you're straight?
That's okay. They're separate.

isn't that straight?! I have to admit that lesbians who look like hot teenage boys make me a little uncomfortable.

Cissexual is a term that emerged from non-transsexual. Sexual orientation (gay, straight, bi, pan, asexual, etc.) is something else altogether. Our society tends to conflate sex, gender, and sexual identity, though, so we tend to think of them as one. As a result, the end product, which tends to be most accepted/expected version, becomes these two: female body/female identity/straight (likes men) or male body/male identity/straight. This is slowly changing, though. =)

Hopefully that makes more sense.

 

[This]

My genitals, my identity and for the most part my "gender stereotype" all align with what society says they theoretically should.

 

[Peppermint]

Sort of. It's not something I think about a lot, in the sense that I'm purposefully trying to break the stereotypes. I guess I feel fairly androgynous mentally.

 

[detectivepope]

I'm not fond of this constant updating of boundaries.
I see things as what you do with physically and sexually the rest doesn't exist apart from in the mind in my opinion, as clothes, aesthetic and behaviour can't be proved as either masculine of feminine.

also can't we just be human instead of a multitude of divisions?

 

[Jabberwocky]

I'm technically genderqueer, although I must admit I seldom to never call myself that. I refer to myself as androgynous, and have since I found out that was a thing that existed. I've just never felt like a "man" or a "woman," stereotypical or otherwise.

 

[Sensiko]

I'm not fond of this constant updating of boundaries.
I see things as what you do with physically and sexually the rest doesn't exist apart from in the mind in my opinion, as clothes, aesthetic and behaviour can't be proved as either masculine of feminine.

also can't we just be human instead of a multitude of divisions?

^^^this
But what I do like is how the term genderqueer owns the term queer.

 

[whytiger]

Yes, I am. I believe the purpose of updating boundaries is to reflect what people have been discovering---that the gender binary that is so ingrained in our society and language is just a fiction. But on another level, some of us have a very deep identification with a particular gender that does not conform to our biology. For me, my gender has been a very strong voice inside me since at least starting puberty. It's an inner sense of identity that isn't under my control and is very hard to come to grips with when people automatically assume that I have a different identity. Striving for acceptance, it's easy to put oneself into a great deal of painful denial.

On the upside, it's nice when you get it sorted out .

 

[Faye]

The concept of genderqueer doesn't make sense if you don't accept the social construction of gender roles. What I mean by that is that I may do things that are typically considered feminine, but I don't see how those things are more 'masculine' or 'feminine' than anything else. The concept of genderqueer presupposes that we have a clearly delineated definition of masculinity and femininity, but to me that seems to be a myth. Our belief in gender roles is comparable to the belief of large numbers of people in Africa that everyone in this country is filthy rich. It is something we've constructed (with the help of mass media), but it is not something that we have necessarily empirically verified as reality. I say this because a large number of men act 'feminine' and a large number of women act 'masculine', even just out of people I know. People will say things like 'women are more emotional than men', but we don't have empirical data for that claim either. Men and women are emotionally differently- and the ways in which they manifest their emotionality is also socially constructed- but women do not appear to have a greater quantity of emotion (whatever it is) than men.

 

[Sriracha]

To many definitions, too little time.

 

[Soulful]

The concept of genderqueer doesn't make sense if you don't accept the social construction of gender roles. What I mean by that is that I may do things that are typically considered feminine, but I don't see how those things are more 'masculine' or 'feminine' than anything else. The concept of genderqueer presupposes that we have a clearly delineated definition of masculinity and femininity, but to me that seems to be a myth. Our belief in gender roles is comparable to the belief of large numbers of people in Africa that everyone in this country is filthy rich. It is something we've constructed (with the help of mass media), but it is not something that we have necessarily empirically verified as reality. I say this because a large number of men act 'feminine' and a large number of women act 'masculine', even just out of people I know. People will say things like 'women are more emotional than men', but we don't have empirical data for that claim either. Men and women are emotionally differently- and the ways in which they manifest their emotionality is also socially constructed- but women do not appear to have a greater quantity of emotion (whatever it is) than men.

I think this is well put and I agree with you.

One of the current theories around gender is the notion of gender performativity, which relies on the idea of gender as a social construct. I like this description: "'There is no gender identity behind the expressions of gender; ... identity is performatively constituted by the very "expressions" that are said to be its results.' (Gender Trouble, p. 25). In other words, gender is a performance; it's what you do at particular times, rather than a universal who you are." The notion of genderqueer or gender variant, then, is in some ways a recognition of this construction. While genderqueer can encompass behaviour and manner of dress, it's also a term through which to distinguish one's experience of feeling out of sorts with the rigid binaries society upholds regarding what it means to be a man and a woman, and who can be male/female and how. Imo, it's really rather senseless to say a person with x body parts does this, thinks that, feel so, or desires such, and even worse to police their adherence or deviance from said expectations. I think it's plausible to suggest there could be physiological differences between sexes that might account for differences in behaviour, thinking, emotions, etc. but I think we understand so little about any of this that we're nowhere near being able to assert anything definitively. What's more urgent, in my opinion, is that we stop policing and punishing behaviours/identities that fall outside of the established norms. Actually, that we take apart the norms.

I do sometimes pause and question whether all of these terms are excessive, but I wonder if perhaps I think so because I haven't been as inconvenienced by the notions they represent as some people are.

 

[barbad0s]

idk. do you ever feel like the hair you wear, the way you talk and act sometimes, the way you dress, is all a performance? i don't think my outsides can ever be a perfect manifestation of my insides.

a lot of people that chat with me one on one online think i am a boy until i talk about my boyfriends and stuff, and then they have to ask if i'm gay or female.

 

[This]

The thing is, it's not that one genital is likely to have a different influence on behavior/emotions/etc. it is more that certain hormones are more likely to effect those behaviors. a woman with high testosterone is more apt to act in the role of stereotypical masculinity just as a high estrogen man is apt to act in the role of stereotypical femininity.

 

[whytiger]

I think we need to be careful here. A high testosterone woman may still not be genderqueer. Although the manifestations of gender are social constructs, the sense of one's own gender has generally been shown to be genetic. For example, people who have, without their knowledge, been surgically converted to a different sex at birth still often know their gender despite having been raised in a different one. I.e. it is a social construct for men not to wear dresses or skirts, but it is genetic for a man with a male gender to "feel" male and identify with other males.