Queer identities, some insights and questions

[AG31]

A few years ago I experienced a dramatic intensification of my appreciation for male physicality. (I'm female.) I had always enjoyed contemplating the differences between the sexes, e.g., how choral groups were so clearly divided, but, as I say, it intensified.

But around the same time that I had this experience, awareness of the wide variety of sexuality became much more of a thing in public conversation.

Being a good liberal (can I say that outside of the politics board?) I took note of the insistence on changing language. In situations where I would have referred to "men and women" I became uncertain, and uncharacteristically quiet. Then, in musing about how to create this post, it came to me that most of the people who are in newly more visible groups, are probably still comfortable with "men and women."

My experiences might be a little atypical because I live in a part of the country, and attend a church, where I bump into people who actually do want to be referred to as they/them. Do any of you AH members identify as they/them?

So my question to you all is, are the insights below well founded?

Gay men and lesbians are not "non-binary." They have an intense appreciation for the difference between the sexes.

Small specific question.... How does cross-dressing fit in this discussion?

Transgender people don't seek to be identified as transgender. They seek to be identified as the gender to which they transition. They have to highlight their transgender identity only to fight back against discrimination.

I'm guessing here that "non-binary" and "gender bending" and "gender fluid" should be carefully separated from the two groups I named above. They should not be allowed to qualify those groups.

What do you think?

 

[Britva415]

I'm guessing here that "non-binary" and "gender bending" and "gender fluid" should be carefully separated from the two groups I named above. They should not be allowed to qualify those groups

I know trans-non-binary people. "Trans" doesn't just have to mean that someone transitioned from one binary gender to the other binary gender. It can mean transitioning to another gender entirely, or to no gender, or to agender.

"Transitioning" can mean a medical, social, identity, and other kinds of transitions. Someone can have a trans identity without having completed all, some, or any of the other transitions - or even intending to complete them.

Not all trans people even agree what counts as trans and what doesn't, but that's OK. None of us should listen to gatekeepers, whether those gatekeepers identify as cis people, trans people, allies, opponents, or whoever.

Also: whether a person identifies as gay or lesbian or not doesn't have a lot to do with whether they're gender-binary and gender-conforming or not. I know genderqueer people who identify as gay, for reasons which don't have a lot to do with whether the people they're attracted to are the exact same gender as theirselves, or an "opposite" gender, or what. I also know genderqueer people who identify as straight, or as pansexual, or as some other sexual orientation.

In short, be real careful about the idea of "valid" gender identities and sexual orientations and combinations thereof, and of "valid" self-identification as any particular identity. It's very likely to result in invalidation of persons who are living it.

 

[ColtonWrites]

Well

I identity as transmasculine non binary.
I personally dont use they/them pronouns (I use he/him) because I spent 20 years fighting to be seen as a male and telling people to use they/them feels like giving that up, feels like giving people permission not to see me as a man. And if Im not a man, then in their eyes what am I except a woman? So I don't.
And as I frequently point out - I am nearly 40 years old. I work at a bank. They/them pronouns would be a fight and Im just not interested in having it.

Gay cis men and lesbian cis women are not Trans. They are only gender non-conforming if they present in a nonconforming way.

Cross dressers are in a little bubble all their own. A lot of cross dressers are cis straight men - the only time they cross dress is for sex. Cool! Great! Do that!
Many cross dressers are closeted trans women who don't know how to express their feelings. The difference in my mind is context - if you are home alone, watching a movie on your couch, no sexual context, no partner. What do you wear? If the answer is "boxers and a t-shirt" and you otherwise have no feelings about being a woman- youre probably a crossdresser. If the answer is silk pj's etc, or boxers and a t-shirt because thats what makes you feel feminine - you should explore your gender.

As for the rest of it-
I am nonbinary but I am also transmasculine. I get to have an opinion on trans male stuff because it does affect me.

Some trans people want to be perceived as cis forever. Some dont. Their opinions are equally valid.

 

[AG31]

I know trans-non-binary people. "Trans" doesn't just have to mean someone transitioned from one binary gender to the other binary gender. It can mean transitioning to another gender entirely, or to no gender, or to agender.

"Transitioning" can mean a medical, social, identity, and other kinds of transitions. Someone can have a trans identity without having completed all, some, or any of the other transitions - or even intending to complete them.

Not all trans people even agree what counts as trans and what doesn't, but that's OK. None of us should listen to gatekeepers, whether those gatekeepers identify as cis people, trans people, allies, opponents, or whoever.

Also: whether a person identifies as gay or lesbian or not doesn't have a lot to do with whether they're gender-binary and gender-conforming or not. I know genderqueer people who identify as gay, for reasons which don't have a lot to do with whether the people they're attracted to are the exact same gender as theirselves, or an "opposite" gender, or what. I also know genderqueer people who identify as straight, or as pansexual, or as some other sexual orientation.

In short, be real careful about the idea of "valid" gender identities and sexual orientations and combinations thereof, and of "valid" self-identification as any particular identity. It's very likely to result in invalidation of persons who are living it.

Do you take offense if cis people don't acknowledge your particular take on sexuality in their conversation? If so, what would you like to hear?

 

[AG31]

Well

I identity as transmasculine non binary.
I personally dont use they/them pronouns (I use he/him) because I spent 20 years fighting to be seen as a male and telling people to use they/them feels like giving that up, feels like giving people permission not to see me as a man. And if Im not a man, then in their eyes what am I except a woman? So I don't.
And as I frequently point out - I am nearly 40 years old. I work at a bank. They/them pronouns would be a fight and Im just not interested in having it.

Gay cis men and lesbian cis women are not Trans. They are only gender non-conforming if they present in a nonconforming way.

Cross dressers are in a little bubble all their own. A lot of cross dressers are cis straight men - the only time they cross dress is for sex. Cool! Great! Do that!
Many cross dressers are closeted trans women who don't know how to express their feelings. The difference in my mind is context - if you are home alone, watching a movie on your couch, no sexual context, no partner. What do you wear? If the answer is "boxers and a t-shirt" and you otherwise have no feelings about being a woman- youre probably a crossdresser. If the answer is silk pj's etc, or boxers and a t-shirt because thats what makes you feel feminine - you should explore your gender.

As for the rest of it-
I am nonbinary but I am also transmasculine. I get to have an opinion on trans male stuff because it does affect me.

Some trans people want to be perceived as cis forever. Some dont. Their opinions are equally valid.

Do you take offense if cis people don't acknowledge your particular take on sexuality in their conversation? If so, what would you like to hear?

 

[ColtonWrites]

Do you take offense if cis people don't acknowledge your particular take on sexuality in their conversation? If so, what would you like to hear?

Trans men are men. Trans women are women. Non binary people can be both/neither depending on context.

The rest is flexible.

 

[Britva415]

Do you take offense if cis people don't acknowledge your particular take on sexuality in their conversation? If so, what would you like to hear?

I take offense at cis people who try to define what queer identities other people are eligible for. I'm not saying you're doing it, if that's what you're asking.

Not sure what you mean by "acknowledge." There isn't really anything I need to hear, here. I thought you were asking for thoughts, so, I gave one, along with my personal familiarity with a variety of diverse and valid people.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

 

[stickygirl]

Well

I identity as transmasculine non binary.
I personally dont use they/them pronouns (I use he/him) because I spent 20 years fighting to be seen as a male and telling people to use they/them feels like giving that up, feels like giving people permission not to see me as a man. And if Im not a man, then in their eyes what am I except a woman? So I don't.
And as I frequently point out - I am nearly 40 years old. I work at a bank. They/them pronouns would be a fight and Im just not interested in having it.

Gay cis men and lesbian cis women are not Trans. They are only gender non-conforming if they present in a nonconforming way.

Cross dressers are in a little bubble all their own. A lot of cross dressers are cis straight men - the only time they cross dress is for sex. Cool! Great! Do that!
Many cross dressers are closeted trans women who don't know how to express their feelings. The difference in my mind is context - if you are home alone, watching a movie on your couch, no sexual context, no partner. What do you wear? If the answer is "boxers and a t-shirt" and you otherwise have no feelings about being a woman- youre probably a crossdresser. If the answer is silk pj's etc, or boxers and a t-shirt because thats what makes you feel feminine - you should explore your gender.

As for the rest of it-
I am nonbinary but I am also transmasculine. I get to have an opinion on trans male stuff because it does affect me.

Some trans people want to be perceived as cis forever. Some dont. Their opinions are equally valid.

Do you take offense if cis people don't acknowledge your particular take on sexuality in their conversation? If so, what would you like to hear?

There ya go, mixing sexuality and gender
You've pointed out you're a woman, but you didn't tell us your sexuality apart from something about 'dramatic intensification'... is that code for orgasm?

Anyhow, Colton's done all the heavy lifting for me. Cheers, buddy!!

As for taking offence - life's too short to stress if someone gets a pronoun wrong, though I'll admit it would have hurt when I was transitioning 15 years ago. The difference is when someone misgenders you intentionally and ( usually ) aggressively.

They/them asks us to break an engrained linguistic/grammar habit, but i'm not sure if that inconvenience is the intention. Ask Colton.
I can't speak for other LGBTQ+ people, but it's easy to be polite to strangers. That won't mean you'll recognise their NB gender because presentation and fashion is frequently ambiguous.

( sorry for the typo corrections )

 

[AG31]

View attachment 2585436

There ya go, mixing sexuality and gender

Sigh.... a good example of why talking has become a mine field.

You've pointed out you're a woman, but you didn't tell us your sexuality apart from something about 'dramatic intensification'... is that code for orgasm?

No. Read my bio. That wasn't meant to describe my sexuality. Just a historic event.
I should think it would have been clear that I'm cis. Female heterosexual.

Anyhow, Colton's done all the heavy lifting for me. Cheers, buddy!!

As for taking offence - life's too short to stress if someone gets a pronoun wrong, though I'll admit it would have hurt when I was transitioning 15 years ago. The difference is when someone misgenders you intentionally and ( usually ) aggressively.

They/them asks us to break an engrained linguistic/grammar habit, but i'm not sure if that inconvenience is the intention. Ask Colton.
I can't speak for other LGBTQ+ people, but it's easy to be polite to strangers. That won't mean you'll recognise their NB gender because presentation and fashion is frequently ambiguous.

Talking to an individual isn't the issue for me. Yes, it's easy to be polite. It's public discussions where it's not clear what language/assumptions are acceptable.

( sorry for the typo corrections )

 

[Bramblethorn]

My experiences might be a little atypical because I live in a part of the country, and attend a church, where I bump into people who actually do want to be referred to as they/them. Do any of you AH members identify as they/them?

I'll accept just about any pronouns, when used with respectful intent.

So my question to you all is, are the insights below well founded?

Gay men and lesbians are not "non-binary."

They could be non-binary, but being gay or lesbian doesn't imply it. "Non-binary" is about how one sees oneself; "gay"/"lesbian" is about one's attractions.

Concepts like "non-binary man" (gay or otherwise) might seem self-contradictory; they come up because people are complex and language is an imprecise tool. It's hard to come up with simple, coherent, consistent definitions of common biological concepts like "species" or "tree" or "fish", and describing psyches is messier than that.

A few decades back, stereotypes of homosexuality often did attempt to interpret homosexuality as some kind of non-binary phenomenon: some people could only imagine a lesbian's attraction to women by supposing her to be somehow part man, and a man attracted to other men must have been overly influenced by his mother or some such. But it's generally understood today that some very manly men are attracted to other men, etc. etc.

(There are further nuances here - not all cultures make quite the same distinction between gender and sexuality. But that's not 101 level stuff and I'm not up to talking through it right now.)

They have an intense appreciation for the difference between the sexes.

...or genders.

Some people are very much oriented towards physical attributes, e.g. some gay men who really like dicks.

Others are more oriented towards other stuff, e.g. women who are attracted to both cis and trans women, whether or not the latter have had bottom surgery.

Small specific question.... How does cross-dressing fit in this discussion?

Transgender people don't seek to be identified as transgender. They seek to be identified as the gender to which they transition. They have to highlight their transgender identity only to fight back against discrimination.

That's a reasonable first approximation. In a perfect world, I suspect there'd be more trans people comfortable with being identified as transgender - when relevant - but in the world we live in, it's often dangerous to be highlighted as trans. Rule of thumb, don't out somebody else as trans unless you know for a fact that they're okay with it, and even then don't focus on it when it's not relevant.

I'm guessing here that "non-binary" and "gender bending" and "gender fluid" should be carefully separated from the two groups I named above. They should not be allowed to qualify those groups.

I would say that there is considerable overlap between these groups.

 

[ShelbyDawn57]

This is such a hornets nest...
I hope the answers you are looking for are in this missive somewhere.
I've been fighting my dysphoria since I was five or six(that's a long time). I've always known something was different, that I didn't fit, but I grew up in a time and place when and where such concepts didn't exist, so I had to just deal with it.
After years of investigation and contemplation, I have found what works for me and it boils down to this:

1. While they both use the same male - female spectrum as a baseline, sexuality <> gender in any way shape or form.
2. The metric by which society measures gender is a binary. Male at one end and female at the other. This is just a baseline and does not take into account any outliers such as intersex people(I recently found out that a family friend's ex has fully functional uterus and ovaries behind her penis and testicles. She is potentially capable of getting pregnant post surgery.)
3. Phycological gender does not always match gender at birth. ( I live in this universe.)
4. There are degrees of dysphoria that require different levels of treatment/acceptance, etc.
5. There are biological markers that indicate this disconnect exists. Some are receptors in the brain that unfortunately can only be tested post mortem(85% negative correlation for transgender subjects.) Others are situational, post operative trans women do not exhibit ghost pain syndrome after surgery. Men with catastrophic loss of genitals experience it at a rate of 65-70%
   1. I have references for this. It will take me some time to find them again, but if you're that interested, DM me and I'll see what I can do.
6. We are <= 1% of the population and are grossly misunderstood and probably also greatly undercounted.
   1. You mentioned cross dressing. I've seen number as high as 12% - 15% of men cross dress to some degree. If there are eight men in the room with you, look for panty lines. Just saying. I would speculate that the same percentage of crossdressers are trans as the general population +/-...

My point is, we exist, we have for a long time. God made us just like he made everyone else, and if you believe a strict interpretation of the Bible, He doesn't make mistakes, so...

As for pronouns and stuff like that, I'm not a fan. First off, how does that work in a gendered language like Spanish? Second, it really smacks of narcissism to me, and third, they're third person. I'm not even in the conversation and frankly, your opinion of me is none of my business. Call me whatever you want. I challenge you to find something I haven't been called at least twice and you don't even have to be nice about it. Being trans, I have so many other issues to deal with every day that what you call me just doesn't make the cut.

It's my opinion that we, the trans community, have two huge issues facing us. First is that we are being politically marginalized to an egregious level. Our very existence is being denied even though science, as I've noted, validates our existence. Second, we are fighting the wrong fights, arguing about he/she, him/her, they/them and a few other made up pronouns, fracturing ourselves into so many subsets that we are losing our identity, and letting anybody that wants to claim a piece of that identity to the point that it's meaningless. To make it worse, we have people claiming to be trans for personal gain and to the detriment of others.

What to do? I wish I knew. I get up every day and pull on my big girl panties and try to do the best I can.

 

[stickygirl]

Do you take offense if cis people don't acknowledge your particular take on sexuality in their conversation? If so, what would you like to hear?

I apologise if I've got this wrong but there is a difference between sex and gender and I assume you appreciate the difference
Gender

• cis gender people who identify with the sex assigned at birth, like you
• trans gender or NB are people who do not conform to SAAB, like Colton and me.

Sexuality

• Heterosexual: conform to male to female attraction and vice versa
• Gay, Queer, homosexual attracted to same gender
• Bisexual: find both genders sexually attractive
• Pan sexual: similar to Bi but includes all gender expressions
• Others: whatever, so long as it's legal

If you do understand this then I'm puzzled by your question. Colton didn't mention his sexual attraction, so how could you assume people might take offence when we don't know what his sexuality is?
As a final thought, and again perhaps nuances of language are the problem, but I found your phrasing mildly offensive: 'your particular take on sexuality'

It's late and I'm off to bed.
Play nice everyone xx

 

[Britva415]

I found your phrasing mildly offensive: 'your particular take on

It's hard to know what @AG31 meant by that. It sure sounded like the kind of defensive push-back one might make as the result of taking a couple of informative posts as pointed criticism.

I didn't intend it that way, but I can understand how my own post, which also got that same reply, could be taken that way. What did I write:

be real careful about the idea of "valid" gender identities and sexual orientations and combinations thereof, and of "valid" self-identification as any particular identity. It's very likely to result in invalidation of persons who are living it.

Yes, that was a direct reaction to an idea which I saw expressed. It wasn't even the idea about mistaking sexuality, sex and gender. It was the idea of cis-splaining what gender nonconforming people should be allowed to identify as. That idea cannot fail to invalidate real life people who are gender non-conforming and who do in fact identify as one of the "banned" groups.

People make mistakes, and I genuinely believed that feedback would be welcome, given the request made in the first post. I didn't expect to be challenged over having a "particular take," as if these things were just a matter of opinion (they aren't) and expressing mine were somehow a challenge to theirs.

These are real people we're talking about. I'm not trans or gender non-conforming, myself, but for pete's sake I'd think about whether any such person was likely to be right here in the room before saying something, potentially right to their face, about how they're allowed to identify.

This isn't a consequence free environment in which to say uninformed things. Is it a "free speech" environment? To the extent allowed by the site operators, yes, sure. I'm not even trying to say "you can't say that." I'm genuinely not even offended. But I wasn't going to sit on my hands and pretend there wasn't a teachable moment here, and I trusted people to take it in the good faith of "if you see something, say something" instead of shutting up because cishets might think it's rude.

 

[stickygirl]

It's hard to know what @AG31 meant by that. It sure sounded like the kind of defensive push-back one might make as the result of taking a couple of informative posts as pointed criticism.

I didn't intend it that way, but I can understand how my own post, which also got that same reply, could be taken that way. What did I write:


Yes, that was a direct reaction to an idea which I saw expressed. It wasn't even the idea about mistaking sexuality, sex and gender. It was the idea of cis-splaining what gender nonconforming people should be allowed to identify as. That idea cannot fail to invalidate real life people who are gender non-conforming and who do in fact identify as one of the "banned" groups.

People make mistakes, and I genuinely believed that feedback would be welcome, given the request made in the first post. I didn't expect to be challenged over having a "particular take," as if these things were just a matter of opinion (they aren't) and expressing mine were somehow a challenge to theirs.

These are real people we're talking about. I'm not trans or gender non-conforming, myself, but for pete's sake I'd think about whether any such person was likely to be right here in the room before saying something, potentially right to their face, about how they're allowed to identify.

This isn't a consequence free environment in which to say uninformed things. Is it a "free speech" environment? To the extent allowed by the site operators, yes, sure. I'm not even trying to say "you can't say that." I'm genuinely not even offended. But I wasn't going to sit on my hands and pretend there wasn't a teachable moment here, and I trusted people to take it in the good faith of "if you see something, say something" instead of shutting up because cishets might think it's rude.

View attachment 2585495

Morning all.... Thanks Britva - and no problem with AG31 either . I hope my earlier response won't shut down the discussion, because my intention was to outline the facts and terminology to avoid confusion.

If we authors are writing erotica and thereby people's sexual activity and their body parts, then we are obliged to have some knowledge of the language we use to describe it. I can understand a politician confusing the terms sex and gender, but on an erotica site I find it frustrating. These are not new terms conjured in the last couple of years - they have been accepted since the 1950s.

And yes, of course we should be able to ask a question, because as the adage goes, there are only stupid answers. However, there are social conventions about how we ask the question, by using neutral wording and framing it respectfully.