the number of nonstandard gendered/sexuality people here and on tvtropes

DonZabu

Reminds me of the whole "fapping to genderbend makes you gay" thing.

glennmagusharvey

I once created an IJBM thread with a very densely-worded post about how I didn't believe that gender concepts existed besides of one's personality and biological dangly-bits, and ideas of gender identity are artifacts of gender roles/stereotypes/expectations of society.

I drew that last bit of my conclusion from the fact that people seemed to define gender through things like passiveness-versus-aggressiveness, choice of clothing, how people went about presenting themselves physically to others in meatspace, and other stereotypically male- and female-associated tropes.

This really bugged those people who insisted that "gender" existed independent of such societally-defined expectations, when I asked, say, what it meant to be female, and people basically seemed to be postulating a gender identity, when not counting relations to societal expectations.

That thread resulted in some arguing, along with the eventual realization that those people who do make a big deal about gender identity are not using the term "gender" to mean the same thing as I use it for.  It turned out that I simply lump into "personality" (my term for identity definition) any sense of gender associations, where as for these people, this gender-association-related subset of personality is a very important thing to them and a major defining characteristic of their sense of self and identity.

I have it saved if you want to read it.

ClockworkUniverse

Disagreement about definitions is a big problem in pretty much any debate.

randomtropeloser

It sounds like a good read, so sure.

DonZabu

What I never got about gender was that, whenever I had heard of "gender roles" in the past, it was usually in the context of "gender roles are restrictive and arbitrary", so I was confused as to why people would voluntary define themselves by their gender identity.

glennmagusharvey

That's highly related to my take on gender identity.  To me, gender identity doesn't really matter, because biologically it's determined by my dangly-bits and apart from that it's all just a case of societal expectations.  Which is why I didn't get why some trans-people are so greatly offended by the wrong set of pronouns--the most it is, to me, is just a part of my personality, and maybe sometimes I'll feel more stereotypically male or stereotypically female, but the important thing to me is who I am, as a person, rather than as a male or as a female.

glennmagusharvey

Additionally, I always prefer to see people as individuals, rather than as males or females--i.e. I don't like using gender as a tinted lens for viewing people.  Which annoys me when it feels like people are "forcing" me to think about gender when thinking of them.

Gelzo

GMH speaks much wisdom. Or at least mostly expresses my take on the matter, which equates to wisdom since I'm always right.

glennmagusharvey

@ Funnyguts: As I am confused, may I ask if that that post was intended to express agreement with EI or meant to make folly of his viewpoint?

Because I'm well aware this is a potentially very sensitive issue.

glennmagusharvey

Oh.

Okay.

Well, suffice it to say that, before that discussion, which was partly spawned by drama between me and EI, I had trouble understanding why people took it so seriously, since it did not matter to me.  And not in a hetero-cisgender-normative way, either--it's just a non-issue to me personally, since I don't like thinking in gender terms anyway.

That said, I don't remember if there are any biological females identifying as male.  The trans-g people I can think of (you, EI, Cyg, Mii, and to some extent CA) are all biological males identifying as female.  I've been wondering about the lop-sidedness, but haven't come up with a conclusion yet.

Central Avenue

Jace and Sir Psycho Sexy are FTM, IIRC.

Still, that is quite lopsided.

Miya

Aondeug is all over the place.

Gelzo

I don't think very highly of EI. Jace seems a bit too touchy, as well.

Gelzo

You're free to say you don't think highly of me.

Gelzo

Would you feel better if I sent them PMs describing what I view as their failings? Or should I even things out by criticizing people here?

I guess that's not being entirely fair. It's just that I don't think it's all that important to be diplomatic when there isn't any goal that drama will distract from and if the people won't be overly distraught by what you'd say. If force of habit keeps you from expressing what's on your mind when it's relevant to the conversation and would only have negligible negative consequences, that's a little silly.

randomtropeloser

Meh, people are free to tell me whatever they think of me.  If I'm doing something wrong, I'll try and change it.

glennmagusharvey

I don't know Jace well enough to make any conclusions.

I don't think EI likes me much anyway, in part due to our run-ins over gender issues.  However, I also dislike EI's repeated tendency to throw cold water on any thread that I made to either praise what Obama or the 111th Congress accomplished or to ridicule the Republicans; EI's supposed to be on our side, so why was EI constantly torpedoing these threads with pessimism?  That said, this isn't at all related to gender issues.

Now, for some reason, I have little problem identifying any trans tropers by their preferred gender pronoun set, except for EI.  This is not due to disliking EI; in fact I haven't yet conclusively figured out why.  However, someone else once commented that EI previously identified as male, which, along with EI's tendency to glare at me (as much as is possible over a forum) whenever I refer to EI using a male pronoun (rather than just ignoring the event), probably explain this reluctance.  So most likely it is due to the power of first impressions, plus a few other factors.

As you may have noticed here, I'm now just trying to avoid using pronouns altogether for EI, because the Fridge Logic is just too strong for me to refer to EI using female pronouns, but EI doesn't want to be referred to using male pronouns.

Which, I admit, is also somewhat annoying to me and disrespectful to EI since my talking about EI will read/sound stilted.  So I simply try to avoid talking about EI.

glennmagusharvey

Come to think of it, I've been tempted to call even CA by female pronouns.

Must be the power of first impressions at work.

^ Okay, I tried to make my above post less flame-baity.  Did that help?

Central Avenue

^ IIRC, you thought I was (biologically) female up until the "demands of gender-variant..." thread.

Though the fact that I don't have much of a preference regarding pronouns and I try not to make a big deal out of it may have something to do with it, as well.

glennmagusharvey

^ I admit to being disappointed that you were yet another male person using pretty female characters as avatars.  Then again, hellooooo hypocrisy.

Tnophelia

I force pronouns on people, and English Ivy was always a guy. If he wants me to think otherwise, he can stop calling me an idiot every time I make a thread that has the minute possibility of exploding.

Glenn has Glenn in his name, making it impossible to think of him as a girl.

moreso, he's a pretty boy with makeup and long hair that I want to snuggle wuggle with.

snowbull

I'll just go with everybody on the internet is a man, regardless of what they claim. :P

Central Avenue

I confess that sometimes I get a little annoyed that most people are ok with referring to, say, Cygan Angel as "she", but that I'm stuck as a "he". Then I imagine it's because Cygan introduced herself as transgender, where as I introduced myself as a "he" long time ago and only recently became more open with my gender issues.

But really, it's no great loss, because most of those who think of me as male either think of me as an effeminate anyway, or they know me well enough that the use of pronouns doesn't change anything either way (e.g., the Trash Heap "regulars").

(Also, every time I refer to Cygan Angel, I have to resist the urge to call her "CA". I'm far too easily amused.)

ClockworkUniverse

^I honestly didn't know you preferred "she." I refer to people as what they want me to refer to them as, if I remember.

Central Avenue

That's the thing: I don't usually care.

But then every once in a while I get this whiny voice in my head: I wanna be a 'she'! But I don't feel comfortable trying to force it on anyone, because I'd contradict the 99 other times I said I don't care.

Moral of the story: Call me what you're comfortable with, I'll learn to suck it up.

ClockworkUniverse

Ah... Well, still, I'm fine with calling you "she" if you slightly prefer that, unless I forget.

DYRE

I think I usually think of you as a girl, CA, although I'm not sure which pronouns I usually use for you, if any.

DonZabu

I'm not sure how you could talk to somebody in their preferred gender, since there's no gendered way of saying "you".

Trash_Vortex

Aye, it's best not to talk to someone with gender defining how you speak.

Central Avenue

I'm not sure how you could talk to somebody in their preferred gender, since there's no gendered way of saying "you".

DZ makes a good point.