assorted Gender Things

[bookhobbit]

Hi everybody I am being a terrible correspondent right now because the semester started this week, but what's up?

I did get an appointment about HRT and I will....very probably be on T before the end of the month. And my insurance has changed policies this year to cover all trans-related health care, although the doctor I spoke to said even if they didn't, the prescription from the university health center wouldn't be more than $50 a month at the absolute highest (it would be lower as I'm not likely to be starting off on the maximum dose). I have to go get some other appointments and stuff but it's unlikely there will be any issues. Also, they now pay for top surgery, and the health center can do me the letters required, and there are multiple surgeons in the metro area, so....I might have top surgery over with before I leave grad school.

Weirdly, I spent most of today crying, dissociating, and depressed seemingly as a direct consequence of this news, even though it's really good news. I don't know. Bowman thinks it's just that going from "I'm not going to be able to transition at all until I'm done with grad school" to "actually you could be done with the most major aspects in the space of the next two years with luck and a following wind" is emotionally major and my brain punches down the sad button when major changes happen.

Anyway...the real point of this post is actually Gender Theoretics.

I think a lot about the fact that there is no real historical precedent for being agender. That is, probably there have been agender people in history, but we have no way of distinguishing them from other people. We can't even pick binary trans people out reliably, because "transgender" is an internal identity, like most queer identities, which means it's impossible to know how any given historical figure would identify. So when I look back in history, there are no people who certainly had my gender experience. This is difficult, and is something which I have no doubt many nonbinary people deal with. Maybe not all of them care, but I am probably not the only person who finds it alienating.

What it comes down to, I think, what bothers me, is....stories are gendered, or genders are stories, or maybe most accurately both. I think that humans create stories around a lot of experiences, in order to understand them and to give them meaning, and there are a lot of gender-stories. Ummm, so like, archetypes. Archetypes are heavily gendered. They shouldn't be, but they are. And we construct our Selves through the use of stories and archetypes.

I'm...struggling to put words on this. 

Um...most narratives have some aspect of gender to them. They have characters who are gendered, and that matters to the people in the story and outside of the story. It matters a very great deal. There are some stories and archetypes that are not gendered, but not very many.

But, I do not have a gender. Gender-neutral narratives can apply to me, but they can't describe me because they are general. There are no expressly agender narratives involving actual human beings. Not on what you might call a large scale. There are no archetypes about being agender, and no stories people tell themselves about what makes you agender. These stories can be limiting as much as they can be helpful, but they are a huge part of how society talks about personhood.

And therefore, I often feel like I lack a foothold on humanity, because I do not have a story to call my own. I cannot look back in history and see myself, I cannot look around me and see myself, I can only look forward, or at aliens, or at robots, or, whatever. It's less that there are no stories with agender characters -- although there aren't very many, obviously -- and more that there is no prevailing cultural idea of agenderness, and therefore I have no ideas to help shape myself around, which I struggle with because my identity is already difficult for other reasons.

I think this is probably the case for many nonbinary people generally. I think it is most difficult to subvert if you do not have a connection to a binary gender, because those are the genders that we have cultural narratives about. 

I guess all this sounds like "representation matters" and it does matter, but I don't really just mean it in the sense of "I need to see myself on screen" (that's important but not really all of what I'm thinking about), more......I don't know...it's tough to just not have a part of your identity that society at large considers a fundamental part of the human experience, to the point where about 40% of languages make you specify which one you are at some point during pronoun use. Not to be Sapir-Whorfian about this, it's just when it's that basic a category for most people it's hard to feel like you are allowed to exist. So many of the stories people tell themselves involve gender, and I don't have one, so I don't feel I belong in them. Or something.

I don't know if I've actually made my point or if any of this is actually making sense and I don't really know what to do about it.

Comments

[brideoffrankenstein]

I do wish I vould fix it for you, my love, but that aside this is very insightful theoretics

[bookhobbit]

<3

[shadaras]

!!!

I'm so happy for you about getting on T! That's really awesome, and I'm glad that your insurance is even gonna be nice about it!

Yeah, I suspect Bowman's right about it just being A Lot and your brain reacting to A Lot more than any specific emotional marker. And that's okay.

I love the phrase 'genders are stories'. It sounds very True, even though it's frustrating for you.

Grammatical gender sucks? Because that's where some of the stories come from, too -- from the categorization of certain words as male or female. Maybe it's not as bad in languages that gender things in more ways than that binary, or that take animate/inanimate distinctions instead, but when the female/male divide is the biggest then which do you pick? (I have no idea how I'd deal with grammatical gender if I spoke a language that uses it fully, and I am glad English isn't very gendered, but even in English it's still unpleasant to need to correct people to be sure that they see you Properly in their speech.)

And like... I personally hate the framing of 'connected to a gender' for (my own) nonbinary-ness, but also butch as I use it is a specific queer gender-framing about afab masculinity and the fuzzy lines there. So. It's not that I can't claim connection, it's just that I hate people claiming it for me? Which is different from what you're talking about, but still related?

I don't think I have a conclusion to thoughts about this either. I wish language allowed framing of thoughts about nongendered people better. I wish that it were easier for you to find spaces and stories to identify with.

I think your words are interesting and thought-provoking and I am glad you shared them.

<3

[bookhobbit]

Thank you! Hopefully it passes quickly because it's very distracting and I have a lot of work to do, sigh.

Grammatical gender sucks so much! I still don't know how to refer to myself in Arabic, for instance. Formally speaking even plurals are gendered although practically most people don't bother with distinguishing gender in the plural pronoun. I guess one could switch between the two genders at random but that does sound potentially mentally taxing. So I imagine it's a lot more stressful if it's your native language and you're used to using one set but it makes you feel dysphoric.

I absolutely know what you mean about hating other people claiming it for you. Sometimes I'm okay with playing with existing terms like that, but someone else trying to assign them to me makes me break out in mental hives, ugh.

[shadaras]

I barely have the brainspace to manage rotating pronouns for people when I speak English; I feel like that'd be even harder in another language, especially one I'm not fully fluent in.

Context is also huge for having gender put on me. I care less in elementary school spaces because there are just so few men there, and so female/she is the unmarked state. I care less when I'm out with my girlfriend, because so long as people read us as in a relationship I am queered by their gaze; either they see a lesbian couple or they see a straight one, and either way they're wrong but I am not fully erased by either of those. But it's nicer to be Seen, regardless.

[bookhobbit]

It's really interesting what you say about it with relationships! I also tend not to mind non-intimates assuming I'm a wlw, because it's a queer positioning (especially assuming I'm a lesbian because that correctly gets across to men who see me as a woman that I have no interest in them whatsoever). And I wouldn't be bothered being assumed to be an mlm either, which may start happening when I'm on T and Bowman starts dressing masc. But I would probably not feel comfortable being assumed to be a man with a girlfriend (whereas Bowman doesn't mind that at all, but isn't as comfortable being read as a wlw). It's all very contextual, as you say, and complicated. I think it's interesting how sometimes even people with similarish gender experiences can have strongly different preferences in that dimension.

[flowersforgraves]

I'm glad you have heard good news about transition! I'm sorry everything feels overwhelming right now, but I think Bowman's probably right about your brain defaulting "sad" for major changes. Sending love and support <#

the "gender as story" thing makes sense. I think that's a really insightful way of looking at it, esp through a historical lens. it really sucks that it's so omnipresent and isolating -- and the potential reduction of it to "representation matters" is so exhausting, since that phrase really doesn't encompass the whole thing.

as a binary trans man I don't experience the same isolation, but I think to an extent a lot of trans people might have similar experiences -- the narrative of "man" doesn't represent my experiences so strongly as the narrative of "man who appears to be a woman for a significant portion of his life."

I don't have a neat summary or closing thought but please imagine me nodding along and giving you a thumbs up as you write about gender.

[bookhobbit]

Thank you, I appreciate it! <3

Yeah, I definitely think this is a complication that trans people share generally in different ways and to different extents. Being trans is about having to fit yourself into a story that you were not given free access to from birth, or that was not designed with you in mind, and that's something most cis people (especially gender-conforming cis people) don't have to worry about in the gender realm. I think. Something like that.

[hebethen]

That is fabulous news! And no, you are making sense and I 100% agree. It's so different to speak -- to think -- without the weight of thousands of years of accreted history and culture standing behind you and adding all those overtones and resonances. There's just so much less to bounce off of, so much less to be in direct dialogue with.

[bookhobbit]

Yes, all that, exactly. I guess in some ways it could be free but it is also sometimes lonely.

[rugessnome]

I think I can understand emotionally why you would feel sad and overwhelmed; I am pretty closeted and not sure what transition could look like for me (between the fact that it only feels a little real, in a way, with you and someone else I met online doing it, and the intersection with ...fatphobia and leftover "modesty" issues from childhood). Right now as I've been keeping up with your updates, my brain has latched on to "don't really want to go through voice change for singing, though..." :/ as my latest feeling about the prospect of T but even aside from that I'm still in the "feels distant" (and unreal) camp. (...especially with my life entwined as it is with my mom, who is...sort of understanding, possibly, but not, I would think, overtly supportive)

I don't really have relevant feedback about the gender theory; I think it ought to interest me, seeing as I consider myself agender too, but as I read it, my brain can't seem to absorb and reflect on it properly today, only keeps whirling around and around on my perennial somewhat related quandary of whether identifying with so many male characters says more about my possible relationship to masculinity or more about sexism/inclusion bias in media, and its mirror universe unfortunately radfem-ish counterpart: do I dysphori-ize when e.g. women talk about femme-ing up STEM because I've learned misogyny or more because I'm not a woman but have been expected to be one?

(I also must say that what I'm pretty sure it's Bowman who keeps going on about, on gender and sexuality being linked in earlier times, is quite relatable here, where for me aroace-ness also creates distance from a lot of relationship narratives which are connected to gender. I think you've mentioned a link too, though)

A further point, one irritating to me: even so many robots/aliens are gendered male[-as-neutral]! XP
C3PO, Data (ANDroid), Odo, the EMH, most Transformers... even kids' shows about anthropomorphized vehicles and machinery tend to make them male :/

...good luck, though <3

[bookhobbit]

Ah, parents are exceedingly difficult. I've got no idea what I'll be telling my mom, either. I hope you can find a path that works for you.

Well, I'll say, we are predisposed as trans people not to trust our gender feelings and to explain them away as something else. I would say if you're having a feeling that may or may not be related to being nonbinary, it's good to default to the assumption that it is, giving yourself the benefit of the doubt, until proven otherwise.

Yeah, that's Bowman but I did talk about it a long while ago re aro aceness and I definitely feel the same. Orientation and relationships are very heavily gendered in our society, that's for sure.

The automatic male gendering of beings who probably shouldn't have a gender is a source of great annoyance to me also. JUST LET THEM NOT HAVE A GENDER.

[starshipfox]

I tend too cry when things are going well for me too. It sometimes just feels Too Much. I think also having good things happen can be very overwhelming.

I think we all seek narratives in which to explain ourselves to ourselves. I know I felt intense relief when I discovered that I was autistic, because finally I could find narratives that helped me to make sense of my experiences. I don't know if that's exactly what you experience, but I think stories help us to make sense of ourselves, and if those stories just aren't there, that's very hard.

[bookhobbit]

Yeah, that makes sense. I guess a brain can only take so much feeling without needing to shed some of it.

I definitely had the exact same experience finding out I was autistic too. And I think it's a very similar feeling, so I believe your connection drawing is very appropriate.