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traaaaaaannnnnnnnnns @hexbear.net
ashinadash [she/her] @hexbear.net

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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110 comments

  • I'm nonbinary AMAB leaning masc but I'm very much gender-agnostic on a personal level, which I think is quite common for autistic people.

    I tend to prefer spending time with women and enbies but I think that's because I live in a pretty patriarchal society and there's a lot of weird proscriptive masculinity that's applied to people who present as men here and I'm not interested in all that and I don't vibe with it, so a lot of men don't take kindly to me being a weird little guy who doesn't care for whatever gendered rules I'm supposed to be adhering to. Some women here are also rigid in their expectations of people who present as men but generally they exist in circles I don't move within so it's much less of a thing in my experience.

    I haven't really had a chance to sit down and hash out my gender identity seriously because of other more pressing concerns so I just settle on being on the enby spectrum somewhere. I think that also speaks to my attitude of gender agnosticism - for other people gender is a very important or pressing issue and I 100% respect and support this but for me, I have never addressed the higher priority stuff to get down to my own experience of gender.

    • Aw hell yeah. Goes without saying that being a weird little guy is cool, we support that around here. The point you bring up about (cisnormative-ass) women's expectations of anyone who presents "male" fascinates me too...

      Hopefully someday the pressing concerns will be less pressing and you can get down to your own experience, generally speaking though it seems to me like autistic people are either not very into gender or really really into gender. I adore how being neurodiverse broadly interacts with gender!

      • The point you bring up about (cisnormative-ass) women's expectations of anyone who presents "male" fascinates me too...

        It's really interesting because most women are genuinely cool with me being a queer oddball but there's a particular type of cisnormative women who are really judgy and averse to me being me. I'm not bothered; I'm the type of person who is better suited to a refined palate and I get that I'm more of an acquired taste (lol) so I'm not gonna lose any sleep over it.

        But yeah, I'm just doing my thing and a fair few men find it off putting but occasionally some women do too. I don't need their approval though.

        I think in some respects I must feel "more" transgressive to people with traditional gender norms because I pass as a man pretty well, especially if you don't know me, because I'm not really out there and camp or loud or performative about being enby so I think it lulls some people into a false sense of complacency but then I will effortlessly transgress gender norms as it suits me and I think more conservative-minded people get a bit of whiplash from it because I'm "supposed" to be a man or because they put me in the box labeled Man but sometimes I do things outside of that because I don't have any regard for that stuff, whereas for example if I was a really camp gay dude then people would sorta anticipate more transgressive behaviour with regards to gender and stuff so those transgressions are seen as less of an affront comparatively (if that makes sense).

        Hopefully someday the pressing concerns will be less pressing and you can get down to your own experience

        Thanks, I really appreciate it!

        I'm not sure if it's just such a non-issue for me that it's never going to be a priority at all because I'm actually agender deep down or whether making sense of my gender will make it to the top of my to-do list some day. Either way, it doesn't feel like a burning issue for me and that is its own privilege so I tend to keep quiet about contributing to spaces like these since I'm not even really an expert in my own gender so I don't have much to contribute and I also don't really need anything from this space on a personal level (e.g. support or guidance). That probably sounds a bit weird but it's not internalised queerphobia afaik - I am definitely part of the community, I identify with it, and I'm fine with that, but I don't need much and I don't have much to provide either so I mostly stick to the sidelines.

        • but there's a particular type of cisnormative women who are really judgy and averse to me being me.

          I, however, am bothered by her! She is upholding the cisnormative social order!!!

          You're goddamn right about not needing that approval.

          You are subverting their expectations on the sly, nice. I like it, annoying that people make these assumptions to begin with however.

          Either way it ends up being, I appreciate your contribution, thank you

          But yeah, in a way you are lucky to be able to just have gender be a non-issue and also not need tons of support from this comm or its people, so I suppose congrats lol.

          • Either way it ends up being, I appreciate your contribution, thank you

            Thanks for the opportunity to contribute and for your responses.

            But yeah, in a way you are lucky to be able to just have gender be a non-issue and also not need tons of support from this comm or its people, so I suppose congrats lol.

            Yeah, I'm super lucky because I have only ever experienced very mild gender dysphoria mostly when I was younger and I was trying hard to be the man that I was expected to be. It wasn't like crawling-out-of-my-skin dysphoria or like crushing dissociative dysphoria but more just "this isn't a good fit for me, I'd prefer to be something else". I also haven't really had to face the prospect of losing friends or family over transitioning since I pass as a man and I'm just very indifferent about how my gender is perceived or represented - you can see me as a man and I'd be like "Yeah, I have a beard. That makes sense." but if you see me as a they or a she I am equally fine with it since... meh. Which means I'm immune to misgendering and people who try to consciously inflict gender dysphoria in me.

            (Actually, at one point I was a spectre haunting R*ddit's far right and because I occasionally dipped my toe in trans meme spaces to better understand the experience and discourse of trans men and trans women [not implying as an enby I'm not under the trans umbrella but I think there's a qualitative difference for trans women and men who transition compared to my enby transition, which was more like detatching from socialisation and norms than it was crossing from one side of the gender aisle to the other], there was this narrative that the far right goofs started forming that I was a trans woman. They started doing their best to insult me and to push me to ending things because they had this false concept of me and trans-ness in their minds. At first it was a little bit irritating because it wasn't nice to be exposed to all that transphobia but then when I realised that every insult they slung at me and every attempt to goad me into SH was a completely wasted effort on their behalf, that each time they tried to harass me represented one less opportunity for a trans woman or man to be harassed by them, I actively embraced this and leaned into it. It was kinda neat to soak up that negativity knowing that it was going to make life a little bit easier for some trans folk who might be having a really difficult time and who would otherwise be targeted by them because I was effectively immune to that harm they were trying to inflict. At the risk of being indulgent and self-aggrandizing here, I've never felt like a superhero in my life but when I realised that all this stuff was bouncing off of me and it was shielding someone else who could genuinely be wounded by it, I felt a little taste of what it must feel like to be one.)

            The upshot of all this is that I've never experienced gender euphoria and I don't think I ever will but, then again, those who do not climb the mountain do not get to experience the exhilarating view from the peak - personally I don't feel any urge to hike but I have nothing but admiration for the people who do.

            • Sorry if this is a faux pas to comment on an older thread, but I somehow missed this and @ReadFanon@hexbear.net's comments really hit close to home for me and I really appreciated hearing them and just wanted to show some gratitude. I'm a spectrum-y enby too, but am more on the dysphoric trans femme side of it, but everything you had to say about gender agnosticism and discomfort with patriarchal gender norms rang extremely true to my own experience.

              I've always been a queer lil' weirdo since I was a kid before I really had a conception of what that meant, but being AMAB and being pressured away from "feminine" friendships with girls and being pressured to act more masculine than I am or wanted to be or could convincingly fake was really distressing for me. Being kinda slow to grasp social norms and cues, the slow and awkward divergence of my friend groups as a kid into "boys" and "girls" around the start of middle school age was really alienating as someone who didn't really get what "normal" kids were feeling starting puberty and discovering their orientations and getting crushes and starting to want to go on dates and stuff.

              Realizing in my early teens that the frostiness towards me I felt from some of my girl friends that I didn't understand was because I was now being perceived as "a guy" instead of "another kid that I'm friends with" because girls of that age have to sort of develop a form of hypervigilance about (perceived) boys because of how manipulative and duplicitous straight cis teen boys can get to try seduce girls. It took me awhile to figure it out, but looking back, that social dissonance I felt from being basically softly excommunicated from "kid (feminine)" to "teen (gendered male, possible threat to teen girls)" was so jarring that it really ended up solidifying my internal concept of gender down the road.

              By broad standards, I've always been kinda non-binary in terms of affect and interests growing up, but that really clarified how gender works for "normal people" to a degree where I went from "I mean, I'm a boy, right? That's what I'm supposed to be like according to everyone I guess even though I feel like I kinda suck at boy-ness compared to the other boys" to "okay yeah, idk wtf I actually am or if there's a term for whatever I am or if there's other people like me out there, but I'm damn well sure I'm Not A Guy™️."

              Exploring my own feelings about that helped me alleviate some of my hangups about gender and made me understand and be more comfortable with my own gender identity and understand now that part of that discomfort I couldn't place or nail down growing up was dysphoria, but what you described about your own experiences really opened up a lot of shit I'd kinda buried mentally. In a post-gendernorm society, I'd probably be comfortable being a trans femme enby that's like, 7/10ths femme, 3/10ths masc in a kinda fruity way, but in the world we live in now, the most salient point of my gender identity is Not A Guy™️ and being clear to cis men and women, and people that aren't cishet men understanding that I'm in their camp.

      • autistic people are either not very into gender or really really into gender.

        I feel like both at the same time

110 comments