I am not male. I am not female. I am genderqueer.
You would think that wouldn’t be so difficult for so-called trans-positive people to understand.
Oh, sure, they don’t look at my tits and my vulva and assume I’m a woman. Instead, they look at them and assume I’m a dude! Yaaaaay! Do you want a cookie for being a Super Awesome Trans Ally? Shall I throw you a parade?
Not male! Not female! Neither! None! None of the above! Why is this so difficult for some people to understand?
Calling me male (oh, sorry, male-identified) is misgendering me. It’s not somehow not misgendering me because it’s a different kind of misgendering me than most people do.
(…Also wtf “male-identified.” First, that’s fucking redundant, if you’re in a trans-positive space everyone knows “male” means “identifies as male,” you don’t need the extra word. Second, fuck you, I don’t identify as male. I have never identified as male. The word “identified” is a paper-thin figleaf over your binarist bullshit.)
Now, you might say, my social position is male. After all, no one is read as genderqueer; we have to go through a rather long and annoying process of explaining what we are, and even then half the people will slot you in as “basically a lady” or “basically a dude.” So maybe I’m treated like a man most of the time!
Except you’re still wrong there.
Like a lot of (most?) genderqueer people, my gendered social position is complicated. I am usually initially read as a teenage boy, possibly queer, except inexplicably in geek-heavy spaces where I’m always read as female. When I open my mouth, I’m read as a gender-non-conforming woman. For school, work, and family purposes, I present as a cis woman. All my current romantic/sexual relationships are with straight cis men. Online, “genderqueer” seems to round to “male,” which means no one calls me ugly anymore. (Sadface.) My friends consider me genderqueer (thanks, guys, you’re awesome).
You might notice a couple words getting repeated there like “woman” and “female.” Juuuuust saying.
I don’t want to say that I have never received male privilege– of course I have. The freedom from sexual harassment is particularly nice. And I cannot overestimate how much easier my life is because I’m not a recipient of transmisogyny. But I don’t see how any of that justifies calling me male-identified! Because, you know, I don’t identify as male. So fuck off.
queenshulamit said:
If I catch you calling Ozy male-identified I will pee on your things.
(also I don’t like Jesus.)
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Bugmaster said:
Is there some Jesus/peeing connection here that I’m not seeing ? *confused*
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osberend said:
queenshulamit is contractually obligated to mention that she doesn’t like Jesus in every [smudged word that might plausibly be either “comment” or “thread”]. Usually, she finds a way to link it to the rest of what she’s saying. Sometimes, she doesn’t.
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nancylebovitz said:
Are people with a background in meditation better at accepting the fact that some people are genderqueer? It seems like meditation would help people be less attached to stereotypes, but I’m guessing.
If meditation doesn’t help people be less attached stereotypes (I’m not just talking about what people say, I’m talking about gut-level reactions), does meditation need to be improved?
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queenshulamit said:
I think this specific post was not about aliefs but about people explicitly saying “Ozy Frantz is male-identified” and if memory serves me correctly these people were doing it on purpose to discredit Ozy.
However, fixing aliefs is good! Does anyone have any data at all on whether this works.
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sh said:
I’d be interested in reading about what your specific case of genderqueerness looks/feels like, from the inside. I skimmed the wikipedia article, and it sounds like an extremely broad term – any gender identity that significantly diverges from both male and female. This specific post didn’t nail it down much further. I don’t have any experiences with it, and am curious what specific instances might look like.
If you’ve written about it before, I’d appreciate links; I’m not familiar with your non-recent publications.
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Drake. said:
i keep meaning to write a long screed on gender identity, but i can never find the time. in the meantime: is there any particular reason that this post isn’t tagged “not feminism go away”?
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JME said:
Sorry if someone misgendered you lately.
I’m confused about something that you wrote in this post, but given the rather raw tone here, I don’t want give the impression of nitpicking a venty post. So, I have a question below in ROT13, and please ignore it if you don’t want to deal with that shit right now.
“Nyy zl pheerag ebznagvp/frkhny eryngvbafuvcf ner jvgu fgenvtug pvf zra.”
V’z n yvggyr phevbhf nobhg ubj fgenvtug zra jbhyq unir n eryngvbafuvc jvgu fbzrbar jub vf abg n jbzna. Qb gurl frr vg nf “abeznyyl V’z vagb jbzra, fb V VQ nf fgenvtug, ohg V thrff V svaq ng yrnfg bar traqredhrre crefba (Bml) nggenpgvir gbb, ohg gung’f qbrfa’g znxr zr shaqnzragnyyl aba-fgenvtug?” Qb gurl frr orvat fgenvtug nf rapbzcnffvat nggenpgvba gb traqredhrre crbcyr? (Bayl SNNO traqredhrre crbcyr, be nyy xvaqf?)
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intrigue said:
This is such a considerate and nerdy comment. Lovely.
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shemtealeaf said:
Abg bar bs Bml’f oblsevraqf, ohg V gubhtug V’q gnxr n fgno ng nafjrevat lbhe dhrfgvba:
V pbafvqre zlfrys gb or n fgenvtug pvf znyr, naq V jbhyq unir ab vffhr qngvat n traqredhrre crefba jub nccrnerq ‘srznyr’ (nf va, cbffrffvat fgrerbglcvpnyyl srznyr snpvny naq obql srngherf). Npghnyyl, V jbhyq cebonoyl or BX jvgu qngvat n zna jub unq gubfr fnzr srngherf (V thrff gung jbhyq cebonoyl or na NSNO genaf thl jub unq abg genafvgvbarq ng nyy?) Ubjrire, V’z abg fher gung fhpu n crefba jbhyq jnag gb qngr zr, fvapr V’z cebonoyl zvftraqrevat gurz ng fbzr yriry.
Zl ‘fgenvtug’ frkhny bevragngvba ernyyl qbrfa’g unir zhpu gb qb jvgu traqre; V’z whfg nggenpgrq gb crbcyr jub ybbx ‘srznyr’. Gur birejuryzvat znwbevgl bs gubfr crbcyr nyfb vqragvsl nf srznyr, fb V qba’g glcvpnyyl unir nal ernfba gb vqragvsl nf nalguvat bgure guna fgenvtug.
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jossedley said:
That’s a very thoughtful comment, and I apologize for going off topic, but holy crud, I had never realized how much Rot 13 looks like Lovecraftian rantings. I assume someone has written a story somewhere about someone who carelessly posts rot 13, then . . .
(True story: I was planning to post this in Rot 13, but after typing the above, I became too frightened to click the Rot 13 button.)
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shemtealeaf said:
An excellent observation! I’ve always been vaguely creeped out by rot 13, and that’s probably why.
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Bugmaster said:
Cu’atyhv ztyj’ansu Pguhyuh E’ylru jtnu’anty sugnta
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Anonymous Coward said:
An alternate Lovecraftian text generator/converter: http://www.marlborotech.com/Zalgo.html
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ozymandias said:
They’re attracted to people with some number of typically-female primary and secondary sexual characteristics, which I have, because I haven’t medically transitioned yet.
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Bugmaster said:
Sorry if this is a stupid and/or offensive question, but how does one medically transition into a genderqueer/genderfluid role — given our current level of technology ?
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ozymandias said:
I am planning on getting top surgery. Other people might take hormones (a low dose, a normal dose and then stop when they’ve had enough changes, or just a normal dose), get facial feminization surgery or bottom surgery, or some combination of the above.
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JME said:
Thanks.
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queenshulamit said:
Just adding (because I got a worried facebook message about this) Ozy and I have not broken up, this is a rerun post from, before we were dating, I am still dating Ozy and I am still a cis bi girl. 🙂
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stillnotking said:
I will venture a wild guess that the people misgendering you are big believers in structural oppression theory. If so, their reaction is entirely rational given their premises, much like shooting kulaks is rational given the premises of Bolshevism.
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ozymandias said:
Principle of Charity fail.
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stillnotking said:
Okay, the Bolshevik comparison was a bit over the top, but to a structural oppression theorist, you do seem to be trying to game the system, no?
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intrigue said:
This makes me sad, because you seem good-hearted and I hate to think someone said something rude enough to make you angry. I hope they didn’t mean it, and if they did I hope this post has caused them to rethink their decisions.
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Alex Godofsky said:
… color me surprised. Coming from a geek-heavy space my initial reaction was exactly as you described, and I am not sure I understand where the non-geeks are coming from.
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Lesley said:
So sorry someone was horrible enough to do that to you 😦 From what I’ve seen, calling a person “male-identified” is usually a way of trying to shut them down for having the “wrong” beliefs on some (I imagine gender-based) issue. I’ve seen it done with race too, if a POC has the “wrong” opinion they will first be told they’re white, then if they prove they are actually a POC, that gets changed to “white-identifying”.
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Alexander Stanislaw said:
Do you mean to say that trans-positive people mis-gendered you and then continued to cisgender you after you corrected them? If so color me surprised, it’s usually an honest mistake, (and surely an understandable one given how very very rare genderqueer people are?)
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Alexander Stanislaw said:
cisgender => misgender
I’m guessing that edit button isn’t on its way?
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ozymandias said:
Yes.
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Ashley Yakeley said:
Isn’t this a circular definition? I mean, when someone in a trans-positive space says “I’m male”, what do they mean by “male”?
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GR said:
An honest question: Is there a term for the *racial* equivalent of “misgendering” and the *racial* equivalent of “genderqueer”? (and if not, why not?)
It seems really odd that with regard to gender we are (correctly!) obligated to accept (without regard to external appearance) whatever gender somebody subjectively perceives themselves as – including “none” or “fluid” – but with regard to race we base classification entirely on the way people look and what society-at-large might choose to call folks based on their external appearance
If somebody who looks “white” says “I don’t think of myself as white” shouldn’t that be just as definitively the final word on the subject – they’re not “white” – as it is when somebody who looks “male” says “I don’t think of myself as male”?
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