Non-cis people of hexbear, what does being your gender mean to you?

Inspired by this dorky exchange I had, thank u BountifulEggnog.

I want to know what your gender means to you, how you define it, what it means for you to "be" that gender and how you define it. Don't fuss about 'correct definitions' or anything, this is about your experience, I want to know what it means to you. How you relate to that gender, perceive it.

Genders have a social construction aspect and is very subjective, so I think people's subjective, personal views of their own are both important and interesting. Inquiring mind wants to know!

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I don't have a gender. I experience dysphoria at things that feel like attempts to gender me, though as i get older i have become more comfortable with dressing in ways that lead strangers to perceive me as a gender. though i don't think i would ever be comfortable with people who know me using gendered terms for me etc.
but yeah. no gender for me. i don't even really feel nonbinary, even though the term technically applies since i am not binary. you could say i'm a kitten instead of a man or a woman, though i don't consider kitten to be my gender either.
i am post-gender. i am just myself. someone forgot to install the gender software in my brain. also i'm intersex, and i feel like this has impacted how i responded to the gender roles society threw at me, because i just sort of assumed none of it applied to me. and my mother, while i was assigned a sex, was very opposed to raising kids differently based on gender so i never really got much of it from my family.
i've always been curious about what gender feels like to other people, so i've asked a lot of people, cis and trans, and what i find curious is that they all tell me different things. there is no one unifying thing that all women or all men will tell you makes them a woman or a man. and i think that is a good thing. gender is very personal, and we all resolve the trauma of gender being imposed on us very differently, and reclaim it in whatever way feels best.
i remember talking to a cis-lite friend of mine. she told me that she only identified as a woman because she was so often pushed into the roles of caring, cleaning etc, and so she identifies as a woman for the convenience of that.
- the trauma of gender being imposed on us
  this is my answer to the question. that's all it is to me. i was just telling someone how like, being always taken in by the women & being mocked by the guys kinda eventually led me to this situation where i'm owning all the vile garbage from my past, but also the affirmation of the ladyfolk. if you want a label, non-binary woman makes the most sense to me. i'm so over labels, though. just. Gender Chaotic.
  be confused, cissies; be afraid of the feelings you have perceiving me.
  
  something i have been feeling lately. us just, existing. in a public space, with our own bodies. often feels like gender warfare. people are going to perceive us, react to us, struggle with their own concepts of gender because we don't fit into them. and that can be dangerous, yeah. it's no fucking wonder we venture into the outside world so rarely. but just existing, and excercising control over our own bodies, is a fuck you to them. and i'm proud of that i guess.
  and that means far more to me than a label - though i don't begrudge anyone who finds labels comforting or useful.
- you could say i'm a kitten instead of a man or a woman, though i don't consider kitten to be my gender either.
- "Cis-lite"? but uh
  i've always been curious about what gender feels like to other people, so i've asked a lot of people, cis and trans, and what i find curious is that they all tell me different things. there is no one unifying thing that all women or all men will tell you makes them a woman or a man. and i think that is a good thing. gender is very personal, and we all resolve the trauma of gender being imposed on us very differently, and reclaim it in whatever way feels best.
  Yeah this is the spark that started this thread honestly, which is very cool thank you. There are many non-gender or post-gender people though also!
  
  cis lite as in, my friend is techhnically a cis woman but doesnt really feel like one but cant be bothered to change anything. she is cool with the term.
  post gender is a nice term for me, maybe. i think about gender less and less these days. i am privileged to live in a community of queer n trans people, and i dont go into the real world terribly often.
  i am kinda trans only by default. i take hormones etc, but im not trying to change anything. i am intersex and i prefer my appearance to be androgynous or neutral. so i just kinda try to balance the hormones to achieve that. i do feel quite different to a lot of trans people. but there are also people who feel a lot like i do, like the person who responded to my comment and plenty of others.
  anyway none of this is a complaint, just sorta rambling vaguely
  
  Cis lite, gender apathetic... Huh, fair enough.
  Yeah I like it too, cool term.
  i take hormones etc, but im not trying to change anything. i am intersex and i prefer my appearance to be androgynous or neutral.
  Ah I see!! I've only ever conceptualised taking hormones as being a huge fundamental change, but this makes sense, just hadn't thought about it. I'm also not surprised there are many others like you, my wife is intersex and expresses some similar stuff.
  Good rambling thank you
  
  oh its rlly cool ur wife is intersex. i get excited to hear about intersex ppl. we seem to be more common than people think though.
  i just wanted to add, that i could receive hormones from the state healthcare system and i have in the past. but it has treated me terribly when i have interacted with it both as a trans and intersex person. i self medicate, as an act of control over my body.
  
  There are dozens! The under-diagnosed aspect is absolutely no joke.
  Oh huh, sorry your experience was bad but sadly it's not surprising or uncommon. I will never not be an advocate for selfmed, fuck the state.
  
  absolutely. my partner is having a time with hormones and it doesnt seem to be explainable without her being intersex.
  i really want to write something, create something, about self med for these kinda of reasons. a lot of it is focused on self med because of gatekeeping and waiting lists, which is obviously a massive problem. but the other reasons people self med deserve attention.
  
  If you ever do you should post it on here, sounds rad =)
  
  thank you i helped someone run a survey on self med and a few people talked about stuff like this and it made me realise it was important to talk about and shift the perception away from simply, people are doing it because healthcare bad, but we would all medicalise ourselves given the opportunity.

110 comments