Help me settle a bet plz

  • MF_COOM [he/him]
    ·
    edit-2
    2 years ago

    There should be an option for I don't think about my personal gender alignment ever and when asked to there's nothing there

    • Changeling [it/its]
      hexagon
      ·
      2 years ago

      It’s hard to capture this properly. There’s a big difference between an agender person saying, “I don’t feel my gender ever” and a cis person saying it, which happens pretty often, but for different reasons. The difference is that cis people are more likely to have their gender passively affirmed by society, whereas an agender person experiences the dissonance resulting from being treating as if their gender exists when it doesn’t. It’s kinda the difference between not being conscious of your kidneys because they’re functioning normally and not being conscious of your kidneys because they’ve been removed.

      And then of course there are likely people with an agender experience who haven’t gone through that self discovery yet and consider themselves cis. Truth is the gender spectrum is a massive oversimplification.

      • MF_COOM [he/him]
        ·
        edit-2
        2 years ago

        Thank you for the effort-post, but I think you're missing my point maybe? Like I am aware of everything you wrote but that's not really what I'm getting at.

        My point is there's a difference between thinking "I feel like a man" and thinking "the category 'man' doesn't have any meaningful characteristics or boundaries to me, beyond the understanding that some people impose their expectations of their conception of 'manness' on other people."

        • Changeling [it/its]
          hexagon
          ·
          2 years ago

          I think I relate to what you’re saying. When I used to try and think of manhood without patriarchal toxicity, it was literally an empty category. This was distressing to me, though, because I considered myself a man at the time. I found a lot of value in reading the writing of trans men. The way that trans men construct masculinity put a lot into perspective for me, I guess. It’s not a fence, it’s a beacon.

      • MF_COOM [he/him]
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        2 years ago

        No, that's a perfect alignment with gender. I'm saying the concept has no valence for me personally at all.

          • MF_COOM [he/him]
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            2 years ago

            IDK I kind of feel like that describes an enby no?

              • Changeling [it/its]
                hexagon
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                2 years ago

                That’s kind of the point. Anyone scoring 5 or below would be perfectly welcome calling themselves trans. Anyone not scoring a 0 or a 6 would be welcome to call themselves non-binary. But many people who consider themselves cis aren’t strictly aligned with their birth gender, either.

            • Changeling [it/its]
              hexagon
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              2 years ago

              Anyone scoring from 1-5 is welcome to the label of non-binary if it makes them feel more like themselves :hexbear-non-binary:

              • MF_COOM [he/him]
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                2 years ago

                Aren't we all already welcome to whatever label we want?

                • Changeling [it/its]
                  hexagon
                  ·
                  2 years ago

                  Yes, anyone can call themselves anything. It would be odd for someone to call themselves non-binary if they feel they 100% align to a binary gender, but I don’t have a way to see into people’s heads to know that that’s the case and would never question someone like that. This is more a statement of encouragement for people who feel that they aren’t allowed to claim a label that would otherwise make them happy because they don’t see themselves as “non-binary enough”.