Theme
3:46pm May 9, 2014

➸ Some more personal history wrt genderlessness and the trans community.

feliscorvus:

youneedacat:

As usual — my terminology is sometimes outdated because my trans-related language was cemented in my brain over ten years ago. Saying certain words doesn’t mean I hold to certain ideologies. Thanks for understanding.

My first exposure to the trans community was something over ten years ago. I…

Semi-tangential here, but in my case…I definitely started having issues with gender expectations at a very young age. By third grade there were rumors at school about me being “the girl who wants a sex change”. I didn’t even know what a “sex change” WAS, and when I asked, I was told “it means you want an operation to get a penis”. And I was like “oh, well, I don’t really care about that”.

But puberty fucked with me big-time and I was horrified to develop breasts and start getting periods and such. At this point in my life I am okay with how my body is shaped because I’m used to it, but I don’t like…feel attached to secondary sex characteristics in any sort of gendery way. I also use and prefer female pronouns these days simply because (again) I’m used to them and there’s no easy neutral alternative. But I don’t think that means I’m a cis woman in denial, I think it means I care so little about gender that it’s not worth my energy to insist on any particular pronoun set.

And when I choose my clothing (or wear earrings, etc.) I approach this like I would painting a picture: I like aesthetic coordination and have particular tastes, but if I wear a skirt it’s not a deliberate expression of femininity. 

Honestly, while I know gender is important to some people and I wouldn’t want the concept to go away for their sake, I deeply wish it was *optional*, and that there was no pressure to Be A Gender™ at all. Because my entire experience WITH gender, given I apparently wasn’t born with any innate sense of one, has been that of constantly failing to meet expectations and constantly being blindsided by the fact that certain expectations even exist.

Notes:
  1. dirklite reblogged this from withasmoothroundstone
  2. happinessisnotalwaysfun reblogged this from withasmoothroundstone
  3. ozymandias271 reblogged this from withasmoothroundstone
  4. soilrockslove reblogged this from feliscorvus and added:
    Yes! I tried to write about some similar things In this post I’m trans. By the time I became aware of the trans...
  5. astrakiseki reblogged this from withasmoothroundstone
  6. withasmoothroundstone reblogged this from feliscorvus
  7. slashmarks reblogged this from withasmoothroundstone and added:
    My experience has been… really, really similar to yours, except that I’m a lot younger so I was aware of the existence...
  8. dendriforming reblogged this from withasmoothroundstone and added:
    Thank you so much for writing this. I don’t remember my earliest thoughts about gender. But I remember running across a...
  9. feliscorvus reblogged this from withasmoothroundstone and added:
    Semi-tangential here, but in my case…I definitely started having issues with gender expectations at a very young age. By...
  10. fullyarticulatedgoldskeleton reblogged this from withasmoothroundstone
  11. autistichellspawn reblogged this from withasmoothroundstone and added:
    OMG yes. I could have written this. I am not sure how non binary identities became politicised in this manner, maybe...