Personally I feel that I am a genderless minded/thinking person. I don't like when people insinuate my own opinions, wants, needs, insight, ect on how I look (ie female) but being someone who looks like an innocent 15 year old girl its impossible for people to wrap their minds around I guess. I don't think minds are gendered to begin with, just that some (majority) of people believe that minds are so they make it real for themselves and believe in it whole heartedly. I would probably be different when it comes to social interaction if I were socialized as male, but nothing else about my personality or my beliefs would be different if I woke up tomorrow and decided I wanted to be called George and started taking testosterone or if I had been born with a penis really. Does anyone see gender this way?
I think i see what your saying. Is it a lack of understanding of the difference between genders excluding the obvious physical? It's hard yet easy to imagine being the opposite gender. Because when it comes down to it the only difference is our body. but our our minds different? i don't know. it's that line between body and mind. I don't know genders just seem like an idea given a name to describe two of the same creatures. it feels like semantics now but what can i say everything seems to come down to semantics with me.
This is like arguing a universal purpose to life. It's fun but sooner or later you got to take out the trash and pay the bills! Just accept you are a woman and move on. You can't think gender-less if you have genitals. Whether you like it or not you still follow a menstrual cycle and have a reproductive clock. All these experiences will definitely have a major roll how you think. Besides, your perspective of life is largely based on being a woman not a man. Although we're different genders, we're both hardwired differently and more prone to taking a direct action instead of being passive aggressive about something since we have more muscle! If you do not change your stance and accept the truth, you'll only be frustrated and maybe in the end die of old age alone. Quite sad.
Im like that I dont judge people on their gender or age cause ive met lots of cool people that you wouldnt expect to be cool..I think how you were raised and natural testosterone/estrogen levels have influences but all in all we're pretty much the same
There are more genders than just man or woman. There are intersex people and people outside of the gender binary. I don't need to "accept" anything. There are individuals who used to have periods and are now on hormones and no longer have one. The world isn't black and white, but it makes sense that people like to enforce that it is. Transgender people exist and if I wanted and felt the need, I could medically and legally change my gender. These options do exist, and don't reply with something along the lines of not being a "real" man, woman, x, y, z because that is all subjective.
If it's all subjective, then his opinion isn't wrong and you shouldn't be telling someone to not share their opinion when you're sharing yours.. Your personal opinion is just as right and/or wrong as anyone else's on a "subjective" matter.
He's not sharing his opinion, he's asserting his own opinion as fact by going about telling me I "needed to accept" having a period, yadda yadda stereotypical binary stuff. I was also referring to the concept of would make someone a "real" man, woman, ect. (example: being a man means chopping wood and being a woman means knitting scarves) because that is subjective. Someone is the gender they identify as.
If it relies on self identification, then anyone can be anything that please.. If someone who was born a man, talks like a man, looks like a man, still has a dick, and sleeps with women comes up to me and says "I am a woman", I am going to call bullshit. Just because you want to be something doesn't mean you automatically are, you need to work towards it. Same if I wanted to be a pro baseball player, I can't just say I am one and call it that.. I need to work for it. And you very well do need to accept things the way they are, but also accept that you want to change said things.. Just like someone who is fat, they won't not be fat until they accept they're fat and need to do something about it.
The problem is, I don't want to become a man. I'd like to be seen as a more androgynous person. I am effeminate and will (naturally) stay effeminate, but so what. There are femme men as there are masculine women. Also, there are lots of trans women who haven't had surgery on their genitals and are lesbians (still have sex with women). People transition the way they feel appropriate and some don't think it's important to mutilate their genitals, although some do.
Look, I am on board with the lack of use of labels.. All I was saying is that you're automatically telling someone that their opinion would be subjective while forgetting that yours is too, and that was only 2 posts in. It happens all the time and I dislike it.. It's like "here is my opinion, what are your thoughts? Oh they disagree with mine? That's cause it's all subjective.. semantics.." The only way you're going to be seen as androgynous to the public is if you announce it to them, and I doubt you're going to want to wear a shirt or name tag that says "Hi, I am androgynous". When you just accept yourself without worrying about a label and how others perceive you, life will come easier.. It's like me and atheism. I was an atheist before I even knew what atheism is.. I only use the label when someone asks or it's relevant to the situation, other than that, who gives a shit? I've accepted I am one and that all I need.
I am able to regard what is on point and what is not when it comes to my own gender. The guy who told me I needed to accept being seen as a woman, sure it was his opinion, but that isn't who I am as a person. I have many options besides "accepting" the current situation I am in and how I am perceived. People on these boards are probably annoyed by me since I express myself a lot and have many opinions, but my mind thinks differently than most and I have a lot to say. I like being able to express how I feel and how I see myself, and it never adds up to how people see me and I'm starting to get tired of being pegged as the traditional female role. It just isn't for me. Edit: I should have insisted from the beginning that I would like to hear the opinions of those who don't think in such binary roles, since that type of concept doesn't pertain to me.
There is a self within Man (an androgynous term) that can be a being of pure abstraction; a perspective, or will, from which Man can rationlize, and comprehend, life's cirumstances without the stipulations and inhibitions of relative factors such as sex, color, race, religion, size, etc.. Although, embodying such a will all of the time is a very difficult task and is in no way an easy feat, for, our nature is not to be vanquished but refined (one must chizzle the rough stone little by little with patience). "So he despairs. In contrast to the despair of self-assertion, his despair is despair in weakness, a suffering of the self; but with the aid of the relative reflection that he has, he attempts to sustain his self, and this constitutes another difference from the purely immediate man. He perceives that abandoning the self is a transaction, and thus he does not become apoplectic when the blow falls, as the immediate person does; reflection helps him to understand that there is much he can lose without losing the self. He makes concessions; he is able to do so – and why? Because to a certain degree he has separated his self from externalities, because he has a dim idea that there may even be something eternal in the self. Nevertheless, his struggles are in vain; the difficulty he has run up against requires a total break with immediacy, and he does not have the self-reflection or the ethical reflection for that. He has no consciousness of a self that is won by infinite abstraction from every externality, this naked abstract self, which, compared with immediacy's fully dressed self, is the first form of the infinite self and the advancing impetus in the whole process by which a self infinitely becomes responsible for its actual self with all of its difficulties and advantages." - Soren Kierkegaard
Of course you're the only one who is able to determine yourself, but you're on a public forum.. you're going to get opposition. In a world with 7 billion people, there are countless people who think exactly like you and countless people who think the complete opposite. If there is anything to come to terms with is that others' opinions will differ from yours and if they do, oh well.. it's only their personal opinion. To be real though, if you're a woman and look like a woman, you're going to need to accept that people will initially see you as that. I know when I am walking down the street, I am not thinking "there's a dude, there's a chick, chick, dude, dude, oh there's an androgynous chick". If I see a woman who feels more androgynous than woman, I am going to see them as a woman. Now if I interact and find out otherwise, then I will know.. but it still won't change their appearance. I personally prefer woman who aren't as feminine. You put me in a room with a lesbian and we'll probably be awesome friends.. but I'll still see them as a woman. Just accept how you feel and stop caring how others feel about you, things will fall into place. Not saying you don't, but if you're asking questions, it probably means you're still looking for something you can settle on.
I don't think my dysphoria or general irritation with people's assumptions of me (straight, superficial, overly feminine) but my body gets sexualized often by men and it's uncomfortable for me. A man working a construction site I had to cross over to do a task for work called me "baby" yesterday and shit like that grosses me out. I'm 20 years old. I shouldn't be called pet names at my place of work. People treat me as female and I think that my biggest discomfort comes from that.
If you don't want thing to bother you, learn how to let them go in one ear and out the other.. It's not easy and someone who is pro at it will still have times when something gets to them, but if you don't want to be bothered by the world, you can't let it bother you. I get called babe and hun a lot, and I don't like it but I just let it go. It seems like a rule that a waitress will call me hun and it makes me not want to give them a tip, but it's just them being them. Just like how I don't want someone to change me, I am not going to try to change them. Another thing you need to consider, if you naturally introverted, you're going to attract naturally extroverted people. That's why a lot of introverted people talk about how they draw in the crazies..
You're just having an identity crisis, quite possibly due to a dramatic event in your childhood life. It could have been triggered by something as simple as a divorce of your parents, a lack of attention or maybe something more serious like sexual abuse or a death in the family. If you fail to fit into a gender curve, how will you have children or maintain a functioning nuclear family or a relationship? After a while this gets old and you must realize the world doesn't revolve around you and no one cares about your problems outside of your network of family, friends, and professionals being paid. I'm not trying to be negative, instead trying to get you to snap out of it. Sooner or later you will need to identity yourself as a woman because you will get old, frail and the only people that will continue to care about you is your future family. Besides physiologically you're a woman, why be in denial?
That's delightful to know. I've definitely been on the receiving end of things that I would much rather not be a part of when it comes to interacting with a lot of guys and it's always been weird for me. I'm not saying that I haven't been trauamatized by anything in my life, but I am attracted to mostly women. I would like to end up with one for the rest of my life and can't see myself having a traditional, biological family. I like children, so I could adopt, but that's looking far too ahead in the future for me. And all of that stuff you're mentioning is defining a woman as someone who chooses to have kids and a family, and I'm sorry, there's nothing wrong with being a mother or being a wife, but I am a person before I am a role. I have interests and a life outside of getting married to someone and having children. Women are people before they are mothers and wives.
If it was up to me I would've liked to remain 17 again throughout life and play video games without a care in the world. But since I have a ticking time bomb to maintain responsibilities and have become an adult I cannot afford to stay disillusioned and complacent, I have to strip away parts of me just to survive and maintain meaningful relationships with people I hate. In the end we get old and unless we create a blood bond between the people in our lives, their not going to risk life and limb to make sure we stay afloat. I don't know how old you are, but the older you get the more you will understand what I mean because the less people will care about you (because you are old).
I mentioned being 20 in an earlier post. I don't think everyone has to have a kid in order to be happy or be satisfied with life. Oprah doesn't have kids and I'm sure she's pretty happy with herself.
I feel gender caps what society allows us to be capable of. Just another one of many labels (obviously there should be a label considering physical traits) but mentally I can see where you are coming from. The only way I see it could affect the way you think is if you conform to mainstream society's way of how a girl should think or act and by doing so limit your own self.