@limnaia asked on the other thread: 

Seriously, though, have you considered perhaps you’re non-binary gendered and just want a body that reflects that?

I think it probably does net out to nonbinary. But “nonbinary” doesn’t seem to pull much problem-solving weight semantically or practically. Then what? Do solutions follow?

I know how this plays out. I’m bi/pan, and in my actual life that has washed up mostly as “not entitled to claim to be gay so living a superficially straight life while feeling bad and stuck and angry and bitter about it but also still alienated from queerness so whatever,” and I can already feel this going the same way but I don’t know what to do differently. Trans stuff in 2017 is about where sexuality stuff was in 1987 and there’s a reason that that went the way it did for me. And it feels higher-stakes to act on anything or claim a label wrt gender than sexuality, and we’ve established that I am a wuss. 

And again, what’s the prize? There are no super great solutions out there to go claim. Hip reduction surgery doesn’t exist, T is a goddamn injectable because FDA said no to pills and all the effects I want are reversible, late, require major effort to support etc and all the effects that are permanent and reasonably quick are the ones I’m meh or wary of, and I probably couldn’t even get it on a nonbinary basis, IDK. (I talked to someone on here who has T gel and also E and an endocrinologist sympathetic to hormonal experimentation and was like, ooooh, but that’s a rough fucking goal to target, like, Endocrinologist Georg is an outlier adn should not have been sought)

This resonates with me very strongly. Particularly the “I think I would not fit in in exactly the opposite way if I lived as a man” part.

I feel like if I lived in a society that had a “female masculine” gender, like some cultures do, I would uncomplicatedly consider myself that gender. I’d probably at least try hormones IF the society would still recognize me as that gender.

I do not think I want to be seen as a guy. I think I want to try masculinizing my body to see if it brings my body more in line with my internal map, because I think it might.

I know that in my current culture I have the option of calling myself nonbinary, and I did for a while. But my mind associates nonbinary with a particular kind of cultural/social role (and most especially a role tied to a youth culture that I don’t identify with) that doesn’t match what I think I am very well.

I’m relating very much to this conversation. My relationship to sex and gender is also totally incompatible with a lot of the more popular queer theory (albeit for slightly different reasons to the above posters). 

Like, the Right Thing to do these days in young queer circles is to minimise the relevance of biological sex (to the point of saying it doesn’t exist and that bodies can’t be gendered), and augment gender as this important aspect of your self that has nothing to do with your body, and that you sort of feel your way to. 

… But my self-concept of gender is tied entirely to my body. know I’m a woman because I am biologically female and don’t (with a possible slight exception*) experience gender dysphoria. However, I’ve never had any real desire to feel ‘girly’, ‘feminine’, or ‘womanly’, gendered social treatment is something that I wish would get away from me forever, and I couldn’t even begin to guess how I’d respond in one of those hypothetical scenarios involving waking up in a male body. So, if “birth sex is irrelevant, gender is important and all about feels” becomes the status quo, then, well,… good luck navigating that, me. 

Of course, I understand that the “birth sex irrelevant, gender important, bodies aren’t gendered” construct exists because its helpful to some people. I’m increasingly seeing all this as a competing access needs issue, not between cis and trans people (as many are prone to construe it), but between people who have a strong internal sense of gender which is separate to their body, and those whose sense of gender is very tied to their body. Group A needs “bodies aren’t gendered, your breasts and vagina are male if you want them to be”, and group B needs “Your gender= your birth sex + presence or absence of dysphoria”. And I’d imagine there are also a lot of people who’d prefer something in between the two, or an entirely different metric. 

*This exception is muscle strength (or lack of it). This can’t be fixed on it’s own, and I don’t think identifying as a different gender would make me feel any more comfortable about it (it may even make me feel worse). It’s also the only sex characteristic I’m uncomfortable with, so I feel the cause is more likely to be related to my discomfort with feeling weak, or with gender roles/expectations, than discomfort with my sex. 

This makes a lot of sense to me. I’ve never disputed whether I’m female. I’m not entirely sure what doing that would even mean.

I have and do wonder if I am happiest in an unmodified body, and I also know the connection between my unmodified body and “femininity” is part of the problem for me.

It seems very easy for the queer theory kids to say gender, expression, and bodies don’t link. But I still can’t seem to UNLINK mine.

I don’t think demanding that others deny the physical realities of our bodies is a legitimate access need.

I’m… I don’t know.

Like, I really really have trouble with “biology is cissexist,” when the reason “male” and “female” exist as classifications is not JUST to talk about social constructs but also to talk about reproductive capability. I can’t get past that.

But I also don’t have a problem with someone who isn’t saying “any body is male or female if you just say so” and is saying something more like “well my body is not the paradigmatic male body, but hormones and surgery have altered it enough that I feel comfortable calling it good.”

I don’t want to take that second thing away from people. But the first thing baffles me.