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Hopefully, they won't inflict this indignity to more kings and Nazgul?

I mean, they're all about how they follow an 'alternate timeline' from canon, but there is AU and... badfic.

You know, you can tell it... British are all preparing a cheap energy source for the after Brexit with this game, right?

That's... incomparably stupid.

hS

And that makes me ashamed of using the opportunity to point out a month-old news about Shadows of War (beware of 'spoilers'). They're not even trying anymore.

Now that I've been exposed to more different kinds of people and learned more about the world, though, I definitely do.

I think about my gender when I have conversations about books with an older friend of mine who is so very female she finds it difficult to relate to male characters in male-authored books, who (she says) don't care about the things she cares about. That experience is totally alien to me, though I suspect it's fairly common, so it does make me question my female identity. I've always related to male characters just fine, my first best friend in preschool was a boy, and though my closest friends in elementary school were girls (one a tomboy and one even more introverted than me), from about middle school on, I've tended to get on with most men better than most women. I also write a ton more male characters than female ones, and even as a kid, I'd happily play male roles. In dreams, sometimes I'm a guy, too. It's not me, I don't think—I'm often not me in dreams—but still.

And yet I'm female, always have been, always will be. I find that pretty dang weird. ^_^; Like, with all that maleness in me, why am I not trans or agender? Because I know I'm not.

I tend to think it's because I was never treated as weird by my family? It was always okay to like who and what I liked, and be who I wanted to be, even if they didn't always entirely approve of my choices (like outfits consisting entirely of pink sweatclothes, yeesh, why was I allowed out the door).

Hence why I would sort of like it if the whole concept of gender would go defenestrate itself, because it's confusing and weird and often seems to hurt more than it helps? Except that it's actually important for lots of people.

~Neshomeh

I was waiting to see how long it took Scape to realise how banjaxed her HTML was. ^_~

Her post was supposed to be this:

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Have some stained glass of Chrysoplax!

Also, small question: did you enjoy the peculiar craft sodas I gave you at the Gathering?

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The location of the hidden part of my reply is left as an exercise to the reader. :D

hS

It doesn't appear for me.

I think I may just be to introverted to grasp, in any non-intellectual sense, the concept of 'belonging' that you're trying to convey. But having multiple perspectives is always helpful; it gives me new angles to see it from. So thanks.

hS

(PS: 'not much reason to put a lot of thought into it'?!?! Iximaz - this is the PPC! Putting too much thought into things is what we do! ^_~)

I think, in general, it's safe to say most cisgender people don't go "Hmm, what am I, yes I am male" or "yes I am female" because they don't need to question their identity. To them, their gender just is.

I identify as agender (most of the time; it tends to change) and while I was a kid, I never much thought about what I was. Whenever I told people I was a boy that day and was laughed off, I figured it was just me being weird and kind of suppressed that. And then puberty hit, and with it came the dysphoria and a sense that something wasn't quite right. Still, I kept on thinking maybe I was just a weird girl, because I knew I wasn't a boy (except when I was, oh god why is this so confusing what is happening to me is this normal?).

When you already know what you are and where you feel you belong, there's not much reason to put a lot of thought into it.

So that's my $.02, for what it's worth.

I have a mid-length (~7000 word) non-PPC Voyager story that could do with a third pair of eyes; I'm mostly concerned about the plot and dialogue, rather than just SPaG issues. Shouldn't stray above a T-rating. Does anyone have the time to help me out?

hS

Next time, I will bring sleepy/nervous Canterbury fudge. Next time... =]

I want to thank both you and Tomash for doing an excellent job of explaining a broad and complex field. And this is the third one >>> Thank you.

I have said it thrice;
What I tell you three times is true.

I'm curious about this concept you call 'gender identity' (in your second paragraph). As someone who has never looked at any group or individual - male, female, social, age, fandom, hobby, whatever - and gone 'yes, I belong in a group with this person', I'm interested to know how common it actually is. I am fully aware that I am odd. ^_~

hS

Though I can't escape the feeling it has too many legs... also a flame mustache. ^_^

We did! We spaced them out over about a month, tacking them onto meals that we felt deserved them. :) Thank you very much.

hS

As someone who has difficulty understanding all the stuff about gender and whatnot, I appreciate this whole clarifying, yet non-polarizing, discussion of what transgender, among other things, means.

I actually know someone who's mosaic 46-XX/XY: some of their cells are "normal" XX, and others are "normal" XY. They're cool people, and a big activist for intersex issues here at work.

It's also possible for people to be genetically "normal" and still intersex- there are lots of developmental conditions that can produce intersex bodies. And there's things like Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome, in which an apparently normal woman has a Y chromosome.

And we pretty much try to use sex for the scientific reason- although, for trans people whose transitions include chemical or physical changes, "biological sex" becomes an incredibly complicated concept. I'm at risk for breast cancer... and prostate cancer. Whoops?

And, yeah. My dysphoria was entirely rooted in the shape of my body and the unhappiness of a brain trying to run on testosterone. That would exist regardless of the society I did, or didn't, find myself in- even now, post-transition, I'm still just "one of the engineers"- which is basically indistinguishable from "one of the guys". (There's a whole 'nother rant here about the male-centric nature of the technology industry, but I'll spare you all.)

There are people who are otherwise! There are people whose dysphoria includes not being seen as who they are, and that's a very real form of dysphoria too. There are people who feel no physical discomfort, just social discomfort, and that's enough reason for them to change.

-Delta

There's one other thing to gender that's almost impossible to put into words- there's a sense, somewhere deep inside us, of what group we belong to. I can look at another woman and recognize- I might not look like her, we might have wildly different outfits or body shapes, but we recognize that we are the same group in a way that any guy- even my hypothetical cis-male twin, would not be.

And I think that's the missing part here- everything else probably shapes that underlying sense, and we're comfortable or uncomfortable with bodyshape, presentation, hormones, etc based off of the combination of it and social constructions. It's all approximately as circular as only psychology can be- but there is that deep group-sense that is usually called "gender identity". Everyone has it. Most (cis) people don't question it. But it's still there.

So! with that introduction- you've pretty much got it! Bodyshape is a thing that's very significant (I've even seen it alter my perceptions of myself- looking in a mirror and wait, where did those curves come from? Or where did they go? I could swear I wasn't shaped like this yesterday...), and for most people, falls into two (broad, mostly socially-defined) categories.

I believe that non-binary identities, as with trans identities, are just that- they come from, at root, internally-held gender identities. My sister, who habitually cuts her hair short, identifies as a woman- therefore, when she performs stereotypically un-womanly actions (cutting her hair short, wearing flannel, driving a pickup truck), she is a woman performing stereotypically un-womanly actions.

On the other hand, a non-binary person, whose gender identity is some combination of not-a-woman and not-a-man, is inherently non-binary. Everything that they do, both in life in general and to be comfortable with their body and presentation, is being done as a non-binary person. Cutting their hair short, discarding a normal image of femininity, brings great relief to some NB people who society wants to see as women.

And here it's important to note- while a lot of NB people aim for maximum androgyny- that's their ideal bodyshape, presentation, etc, there are many who do not. The things they do, the way they present and shape themselves, are reflections of their underlying gender identities rather than creating said gender identities.

And finally! Agender is a gender identity that pretty much boils down to, as you so wonderfully said, the sense of self-shape and gender giving up and going home. When I'm agender, I don't want to be seen, or see myself, as an entity that contains gender. We don't agonize over what gender a building is (except maybe in Spanish class), so why should we worry about mine? I just want to be seen as a person- gender identity has left the building, middle fingers upraised.

Obvious disclaimer: agender is definitely not the only non-binary identity, or even the only non-binary identity I visit. There are days where I relish being maximally androgynous, where I want to see people try, and fail, to put me into a binary box. Agender is... not like that. It's "why are we playing this stupid gender game, again?", it's "don't try to ma'am/sir me, just give me my damn coffee."

Scientifically, at least, sex is always used for an organism's biological characteristics—the gonads, chromosomes, and hormones. The stuff that's definitely not a choice or a social construct. Everybody is born with a sex, whether it's male, female, or intersex. (Side note: some people have interesting combinations of sex chromosomes such as XO, XXY, XYY, and more! These combinations tend to cause health and development problems, some obvious, some not.)

Gender, therefore, is all that other stuff we've been talking about: the internal mindstate, the Residual Self-Image, the social expectations, the chosen self-expression relating/contrary to one's biological sex.

So I guess my question is answered by the existence of the brain's map of the body, and transgenderism would still be a thing even in the absence of any social expectations relating to body shape. There would still be people with body dysphoria.

That's my take on all this, anyway.

~Neshomeh

I always find the best way to figure out if you've understood someone is to repeat it back to them in your own words. So here we go:

What you seem to be saying is that 'gender' means (to coin a hopefully neutral word) 'bodyshape': the physical makeup of your body, including primary and secondary sexual characteristics, hormonal balance, and things like hair length and such.

You're then saying that people have an innate sense of what their bodyshape/gender should be; you're not putting it quite as strongly as Tomash did, but I think the idea's there. Essentially the Residual Self-Image from the Matrix, but for real life.

You then note that bodyshape (ideal and current/actual) falls broadly into two categories, which are to an extent socially-defined - long hair was a mark of male youth in Renaissance Italy, for instance, but not so much today. Most people are comfortable in one of those two categories, which pegs them as cis/trans-male/female, in some combination.

Anything which falls outside those categories is non-binary. How far does that go? I'm guessing short hair doesn't make a woman non-binary; or does it, if the intent of cutting it short is to be un-feminine (without specifically/necessarily being masculine)?

And then you throw out the term 'agender', which I think means that on some days your innate sense of what your body should look like... what? Gives up and goes home? That seems to be what you're implying (or at least that you don't see it as important on those days), but I'm honestly not sure.

How did I do?

hS

(I really don't think you can call this 'little provocation. ^_~)