Since this is a new bit of the forum and looks a bit empty, I thought I'd ask a question. (Also I'm curious and actually want to know!)

How do you 'know' when you're androgyne/genderqueer etc? Is it like an epiphany, one moment where it suddenly strikes you that this is 'home', this is the label and community you feel comfortable with? Or is it more a gradual process of trying to understand your own identity?

The reason I ask is that a lot of LGB people will talk about a 'moment' when they realised they were L,G or B or something that happened to trigger this realisation. Personally I feel this is a little simplistic. Similarly it seems though a lot of Trans people always felt different and so on, again there is a moment of realisation, perhaps when encountering another trans person or reading about trans issues or seeing it on TV. I'm just wondering how these experiences compare with discovering (deciding?) that you are genderqueer.

Anyway that's enough rambling from me who knows nothing about the subject. Over to you.

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I have the same question, I guess, kinda...
cause, recently, I don't know, everything kinda seems a little bit confused, like... I'm much happier living as a girl than a guy and I'd never want to go back, and it's not like I repress any part of my personality to conform to how people want me to behave as part of those genders, but at the same time, the desire to physically match the sex I identify with isn't really there.... I don't know if it's gone, or with my situation changing, or whether it's just the fact that the hormonal changes are enough to satisfy me, or even if it's just that since I present myself (partially) in the way I'd like to be seen has just lessened that desire, but I'd still be happier with surgery... it just feels unimportant? But also that leads me to question if I do identify as a female, like whether the fact that it's who I identify as has become second nature, and so there's no need for it to be so burning anymore....

gods, I don't know.

i guess for me it was a process

i always knew that i wasn't a man, but that i wasn't a woman. its hard to explain how, i just did.

neither fitted for me. when i was trying to be a man a felt like i was acting - badly. and whilst there were aspects of being a woman that felt right to me, the whole didn't

i guess the epiphany moment was when i learnt the language to describe how i felt. before it had been a rather amorphous part of me which i had difficulty explaining even to myself

then i was surfing the net one day and came across a site called the angels dictionary (i think this has long since disappeared -shame really) which talked about androgynes, and as i read it pieces just fell into place in my head. for the first time i felt that this stuff made sense

so i guess the epiphany moment for me was when i gained the language to describe what i am

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I had the epiphany when I was four, playing with a girlfriend. I was taken away to play with her older brother when he came home from school and thought it very strange... Then it hit me. Like a bolt from the blue. I had that feeling you get when you only just miss the school bus and they're all waving at you from the back of the bus, going "HaHa, you're not coming with us" and indeed I wasn't...

I tried to do the boy thing, then the man thing, but always felt on the outside... everything required acting. The man thing was much worse: I always felt like a kid... so I decided to throw the switch. I then found I wasn't exactly one of the girls. Of course I'd known this before, but there are a few natal women with whom I identify: they have a tomboyish spirit and so do I.

I've refined my self-perception by meeting with other transwomen. I'm happy with my balance of masculinity and femininity. I'm still bent on surgery. It feels wrong down there and there are times when it drives me mad, like this morning...

That and some electrolysis should see Reenie the Inbetweenie sorted.

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yeah great analogy Reenie x

as it conjures up issues of abandonment and loss and also isolation and a grim foreboding

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Man [...] must count no one but himself; that he is alone, abandoned on earth in the midst of his infinite responsibilities, without help, with no other aim than the one he sets himself, with no other destiny than the one he forges for himself on this earth." (Jean Paul Sartre, 1943)

For me, i guess...

I realised that I was not a woman.

Tried to live as neither man nor woman.

Didn't work.

Tried to live as a guy.

Realised what I wanted was a male body, but that I most certainly wasn't 'one of the guys' - and i didnt wan't to be.

Heard the term 'psychological hermaphrodite' used by Kate bornstein in an interview and went 'WOW! Thats me!'

So, for me, it was realising I wasn't a woman, and then I wasn't able to identify as a man. A lot of transguys don't identify as typical men, because they have been raised as girls, and understand and value a lot of what they learnt during this raising. But I just didn't want to identify as a man, period.

Ironically its only been with people calling me a 'man' that I began to develop a 'genderqueer' identity LOL I guess I tried out both sides of the fence, then decided to burn the fence and then move to a different neighbourhood

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My trans research has just been published, see it under 't' in the Tzone library: http://www.transgenderzone.com/library/st.htm
(filename begins with 'Transgender People's Identity Development').

Learning how to generate inner and outer peace in the universe and myself.

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Moderator

Ok question two. After reading in the other thread about how to express your genderqueer or androgynous identity, I wondered what sort of reaction that gets from people. How do they respond to someone presenting as an androgyne?

I believe myself to be an open minded person who is knowledgable about all manner of trans issues - but I still find it hard to get my head around the idea that you can be something other than male or female... I mean in theory, yes great. But in practice, I have to be honest Kellineil and say that I think of you more as female, because I originally knew you as Kelli and when we met that's what category my brain deemed most appropriate. I do remind myself on a regular basis that that isn't how you identify yourself. It's just so hard to get away from the whole binary thing. I can only imagine how baffled your regular straight folks would be by it all.

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i get all manner of reactions. a lot of people just look plain confused and sometimes slightly scared - although when i see that reaction it always seems to me that what they're actually scared about is the way it reflects on aspects of their own identity which they haven't considered.

a lot of people just assume that i'll 'decide' at some point in the future whether i want to be a man or a woman - i find this attitude incredibly patronising and will often call people on it. Often these are the people who'll say something like:

"You're just confused about your gender"

the thing is, I'm not at all confused about my gender, and they in all honesty know this. What they actually mean is:

"I'm confused about your gender"

but they can't bring themselves to say it.

Other people don't understand either, but have are honest enough to themselves and to me that this is the case. They'll normally spend hours questioning me about it. Although I appreciate their interest and attempt to understand, it can be tiring explaining this. I often find one of the easiest (and best) ways of satisfying them them is as follows: (imagine the conversation is to a cisgendered man)

man: "I really don't understand how you can identify as something other than a man or a woman, how can you say you feel like this and leave it at that"

(normally the convesations been going at least 1/2 hour at this point)

me: "ok, look at it this way, you don't need to understand how it feels to be androgyne, you just need to accept that we exist"

man: "i still don't get it, how can I accept you exist if I don't understand how it feels to be androgyne?"

me: "Do you understand how it feels to be a woman?"

man: (usually laughs)"no!"

me: "but you accept they exist and treat them as people?"

man: "of course"

me: "well then, do the same with androgynes, accept we exist and treat us like people. you dont need to understand how it feels to be androgyne, if you're not androgyne I dont think you can understand how it feels, all you need do is accept we exist and treat us as people"

man: "oh, that makes sense..."

I have had any number of conversations like this. it actually satisfies people because it's a simple explanation that allows them to expand their mental map of the world without feeling like the rugs been pulled from under their feet.

other people mentally assign me one gender or another and then have to mentally prod themselves to remind them that this isnt true - i dont mind this, especially if people are honest about it.

the biggest problems are from people who dont know me. i do get asked on occasion (normally by small children actually) whether im a man or a woman. often when its a small child asking, and their parents are there with them, their parents look horrified that their children asked the question but curious to see what the answer is. how i answer the question depends on the situation. often i just smile and dont say a thing. sometimes i say both or neither. it all depends

getting away from the binary model is incredibly difficult. we've all been brought up with it. vene i find myself slipping back into assuming it occasionally.

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i admit i don't understand the concept of being neither gender and tend to mentally see a genderqueer person as either male or female. i know its not true, i just can't seem to get my head around it

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(Sorry this is such a long rant. I didn't mean to go on for so long)

For me there are no such things as transgender as there is no such thing as men and woman. There are just people. I mean, if all the F or M meant on your passport was to show what parts you had down there between your legs there would be no need for any gender labels as everyone would be the same. I know I am not a guy but neither do I conform to being a typical woman, though because society generally only recognises two sexes/genders I want to be the recognised as the one closer the way I feel about myself. Female. But that doesn't mean I have to give up same guy things and neither does it mean I have to accept and adopt all girl things.

I guess what I am trying to say is there I don't believe in men and woman, straight and gay. Just as I don't believe it is possible to be a man or a woman I don't think it is possible to be straight or gay. I mean you can set up two ends of a spectrum and have everyone pile in between these two points according to whatever is being measured: gender, sex, sexuality.... etc. but to do that you have to define the points.

How do you define the points? To do that you need to look at society.

So really we go around and around on a merry-go-round spouting out labels and definitions.

People are afraid of transsexuals, intersex and androgens because we undermine the basic binary system, which was created by man, not by nature. Nature loves diversity and lil exceptions and tricks. Man (by which I mean humans) hate it. Man has an obsession with classifying everything and documenting everything.

I often ask people to tell me their gender and their sex. Let's just say the answer: I am a female. I ask them how do they know? Why are they female? At which point they get all defensive. What makes a person a man or a woman? Is it the hair or the clothes, the voice, the DNA, the chromosomes, the genitals, the birth-cert, the ability to or not to give birth, the physical secondary sex characteristics? Because there have been many cases of men with conformed to the idea of a typical woman in either of these things and vice versa. At which point the either hate me and go away screaming and shouting or they walk away extremely confused about themselves. People don't like to feel confused. It makes life much harder.

Further on sexuality, does a straight man going out with a woman who becomes a man become a homosexual? A point, which often causes a great amount of confusion, is society's misunderstanding of gender vs. sex vs. sexuality and when a cigendered person dates a transsexual the situation gets oh so complicated.

My wish is that (as it is completely hopeless) one day the world, society and scientists would stop for once to look at the world and see its diversity and not constantly try and classify and 'correct' everything that is 'abnormal'. Norms are set by the majority and democracy is dictatorship by a majority so what is abnormal is just different from the normal, not weird or strange or sick or perverted.

I am whom I am and I am not going to apologise for it. Constant labelling and putting people into boxes actually leads to intense sadness and suffering and pain and confusion for people who feels they don’t fix in a particular box and spend their lives moving from box to box feeling unhappy. Don't try and fit the definition, burst out and be who you are.

I am (a) Saibh. Pleased to meet you.

I think labels have their advantages because they help us understand the world and find people we can relate to. But where it falls down is when people feel limited by their labels or where it creates an opportunity for some people to claim superiority. I think I can be happy in my box as long as the box isn't too rigidly defined and I allow it to overlap with other boxes from time to time.

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