So! I like your definitions- I would extend gender to also include a lot of self-image and body-shape stuff, though. The world at large believes that women have long hair, hips, a waistline, breasts, etc, therefore that image is part of that gender.

We trans people don't really talk about "transitioning sex" much- even the term "sex reassignment surgery" is falling out of favor for "gender reassignment" or "gender confirmation". The point of my journey has been entirely about my relationship to my gender- both how the world sees me and how I see myself. The most biologically heavy part of it is that testosterone was making me all kinds of depressed, and getting off that stuff gave me huge dividends.

Gender is all about self-chosen identity. It's frequently conveniently in line with how our bodies are shaped, which is the state we call being cisgender. Ultimately, though, it's a choice we make- how are we shaped? How do we want to be shaped? What hormones are we comfortable with? Where aren't we comfortable with our bodies? Basically all the answers to these questions fall into the arena of gender.

The words we use are really just trying to describe the very squishy answers to those questions- they're not hard categories, they're definitely not easy to be specific with, and all of them are mostly used to try to talk about our feelings and experiences. I won't go into the dictionary 101 here, but it's important to note- "trans" is a huge umbrella, and "non-binary" is usually included in it. Non-binary itself is a big umbrella, there are tons of experiences contained in it. As you would figure, given that it's literally "outside these two well-known options."

Some non-binary people find a lot of help in hormone therapies, and other pieces of the stereotypical binary-to-binary transition process. Others don't- it varies by person. I'm even technically non-binary- while my transition looks very stereotypically b-2-b, I'm genderfluid- there are days where I'm a woman and it's important to me to be perceived as such by myself and others, and there are also days where I'm agender- "do I have to engage with social constructs of gender today? Really?"

So! On to the McZamples!

Alex is indeed a cis man.

Bobbie is an interesting case. If she wanted to be flat-chested, flat-hipped, etc, and was taking hormones to deliberately produce that expression, non-binary would make sense as a label. On the other hand, if it's just how she was, I'd be wondering if she was intersex- that's the usual term for when someone's primary and secondary sex characteristics, hormone balances, and chromosomes didn't fit a normal model. Intersex people can identify as trans, and some find a lot of self-understanding in non-binary identities, but some don't.

Charlie is probably a trans man- once again, if they chose to take that identity.

Drew is adorable, and deserves pets.

El is also complicated. There are cis men who enjoy wearing dresses- Eddie Izzard, for example. There are also cis men who perform drag, putting on an entire feminine identity for a while. They also could be non-binary, expressing a feminine side- you specified that they were comfortable with a masculine/testosterone-oriented body, so the only option there that's really off the table is being a trans woman. (I have a friend who's the sweetest guy you'll ever meet, definitely a guy, and looks absolutely smashing in a miniskirt and heels.)

Frankie is probably non-binary- their ideal body shape is compatible with neither binary option.

George is probably a cis woman with tomboy or butch tendencies- I'm assuming that they're fine with she/her pronouns, and generally being "that girl who plays football"?

Harper is a cis woman, also with tomboy or butch tendencies- as you've noted, they're now in the mystical land of butch women. Please send me the address and nearest airport code...

Id could take a few different identities- they could be a very femme trans-man, although mainstream western society doesn't really have a role for that. They could also be non-binary, if they wanted to acknowledge and claim a feminine side to their identity.

-Delta Juliette
(Or, She Who Writes Many Words About Gender With Little Provocation McZample)

Yesterday, October 1st, Germany's new same-sex marriage legislation came into effect. From now on, a marriage can be entered by "two persons of the same or different sex/gender". Still, there is a lot of cleaning up in other legal texts that still refer to "man" and "woman" necessary, as well as clarification on wether intersex people, who can opt to have the space for sex/gender to be left empty on official documents and IDs, can marry.

Still, it's a big step in the right direction.

~Ak, throwing rainbow confetti

(Well, Cake Days, going by Thoth's comment.)

Tomash has successfully articulated an interpretation that I could correctly create eight examples from. Which is great! ... so long as it's right. So (and I'm taking your commenting on this thread as implying an interest in saying something; feel free to ignore me if I'm wrong) are you at least able to say whether you agree with his explanation? Which comes down to 'everyone has a body image, if it disagrees with your actual body then you're some degree of trans'.

(Alternately/also, if you think any of the McZamples are wrong, that could be a good way to try and explain things.)

(Or you can just not, if you prefer.)

(But I'd rather be confused than wrong. ^_^)

hS

And it feels like whenever I try I just end up making people more confused than before.

Is that just because you don't know how to articulate it, or are you saying you're offended/upset that I'm asking?

hS

Words are hard, and trying to put words to this is harder.

with the potential caveat that Bobbie could have a gender identity that doesn't match their physical body, and so therefore be rather unhappy about the state of affairs they've found themselves in.

- Tomash

I defined/asked how I was using the terms 'sex' and 'gender' here.

It seems like you are saying that everything except 'gender expression' is tied directly to your body-image: external sexual characteristics, primary and secondary, plus(?) things like chromosomes and hormones which can't be perceived externally, but might affect various aspects of your development. Perhaps an example might help?

Alex McZample exhibits masculine body traits, including sex organs, and doesn't feel any issues with this. Alex is therefore cis-male.

Bobbie McZample has female sex organs, but (due to, oh, probably hormones) is flat-chested, flat-hipped, and grows significant body hair. Bobbie is... non-binary?

Charlie McZample has female characteristics, but feels that they should look more like Bobbie and Alex do. Charlie is therefore trans-male, possibly with male gender expression?

Drew McZample is the cat. The McZamples are a fairly odd couple.

El McZample has male body traits and sex organs, and is fine with that, but prefers to wear dresses. El is... cis-male with female gender expression?

Frankie McZample has female body traits and sex organs, but feels like they should have male sex organs (while retaining the same body shape). Frankie is... non-binary?

Georgie McZample is biologically female (and is fine with that), but wears their hair short and plays football. Georgie is... cis-female with male gender expression?

Harper McZample is Georgie's identical twin, and acts just like them, but has moved to a country where that is the expected way for a female to behave. Harper is therefore cis-female with female gender expression.

Id McZample is biologically female, feels like they should have male sex organs and characteristics, but still wants to wear dresses and makeup. Id is... trans-male with female gender expression?

Of the eight McZample children, how many have I got right? And - other people - how much of Tomash's understanding matches yours?

hS

First off, to clear up my confusion, what are you thinking of when you say "sex" and "gender"? (For the record, I spent that last post staying away from "gender" because I'm not entirely sure what I mean by that word.)

From what I know, if you take a look at humans as a species, you'll notice several sex characteristics, such as chromosomal sex, reproductive-organ sex, hormonal sex, and probably a few other ones. Sex characteristics aren't binary things, but they tend to fall into two groups that tend to be correlated with each other.

One such characteristic is what I could in this context call mental sex[1], which is called "gender identity" (or maybe just "gender", I'm not sure on that).

"Cisgender" is having a gender identity that accurately matches your other sex characteristics[2]. "Transgender" is all the other cases, broadly speaking.

Gender identity, like the rest of these often-correlated things, is not a binary thing. Having a gender identity (what you expect your body to be like) that doesn't fit into the two major categories of physical layout makes you "non-binary". So I think your second paragraph is somewhat off, in that non-binary is defined by what a culture considers a male body and a female body to be, social roles aside.

Now, we as a species have formed cultures that tend to take the two most visible groups of correlated sex characteristics and label them "male" and "female" (recognition of other categories seems to vary by culture). Then, there are generally social roles or expectations associated with being in (or being regarded as being in) each of these categories. Which of these expectations you follow gives you your "gender expression".

[1]: I made this term up while composing this post, and it's possibly misleading or otherwise unsuitable for general use
[2]: More specifically, I think having matching personally-observable sex characteristics is sufficient

- Tomash

... your understanding is that 'transgender' is actually about sex, not gender? Or is that only part of what you're including under 'physical characteristics'?

Meanwhile, your 'condition b' is about fitting in with the culturally-defined male/female binary. That seems to suggest that if someone moved to a different culture with radically different gender roles, they would automatically become non-binary (in that culture), regardless of whether they they elected to fit in by following the roles ('gender expression', as you say). Is that right?

hS

Where did you graduate from, and what are your plans from here?

I can't believe nobody has made that joke yet. So, let me be the first.

It's also Lore's birthday, Ypsi's brother's birthday, and Delta's birthday. YAY!

It's also 4chan's birthday. Many of us may have complicated feeling about that. I know I do!

That's right, mine! Just thought I'd let y'all know.

I forgot to fill in the author part.

Some fandom news.

Sword Art Online: Alicization has recently been annouced. I've been waiting for this ever since Ordinal Scale teased its release.

Some bad news.

Apparently, Hollywood thought it was a good idea to adapt yet another anime into live action. This time, they have chosen to adapt "Kimi o na wa" or "Your Name". They just never learn, do they? Given their track record, I can only hope that it is at least better than Dragonball Evolution and Netflix Death Note.

...your answer was CORRECT! :D

Both #1 and #3 were right on the money, respectively featuring Ash becoming an alicorn (yes, really) and Harry being an animagus who could turn into the Spinosaurus from JP3 (yes, really). Both of them also involved inserting the crossover elements into one of the continua featured in their respective stories, with Alicorn!Ash being shoehorned into the episodes of MLP Season 3, and Spino!Harry actually BEING the JP3 Spino. Yeah, I cringed so much at both and I'm considering adding the one with Spino!Harry to the Unclaimed list if I get the time.

The "excerpt" with vampire!Violet and Wilbur was painful for me to write, but the first two things that came to mind when I thought about what to pull out of my butt were the Willet crossover ship and the fact that the Twilight saga used to be one of the most widely known and polarizing continua back in the day. Violet being a vampire is an AU I've seen on some thankfully rare few occasions while perusing DeviantArt, and my original intent was for her to be frightened by her being a vampire due to a recent transformation but her being a vamp from the get-go sounded weirder for my taste.

Also, how dare you accuse me of actually WANTING to write crossovers as weird and twisted as what I presented, lol. I doubt even I would consider it... especially not after the LAST time I tried it. X'D

. . . so #3 is my creation, and #4 is a real story. I didn't think I was being such a tricksy hobbit when I first posted!

—there's a reason doctorlit doesn't typically post in the badfic games

http://www.seventhsanctum.com/generate.php?Genname=color

This is a generator that generates colors with magical properties like in Fallen London. I was curious about the game and looked it up. As such, I know about Fallen London. Sort of. I also posted this because I kinda wanted to show you the generator itself, as you, someone who has heard of the game, would probably enjoy the generator.

Have fun with the generator.

-Twistey

Did anyone know that Iron Sky has a website? Some of you probably did, but I only recently discovered it, and am very excited to begin exploring once I get over my chicken-ness and start. All I know is it's got a Flash thing on the main page, so it's probably interactive to some degree. Probably also was made to promote the upcoming second movie (which will ironically enough be released in 2018, and if you remember the Friday Forum segment hS did on it, will involve Hitler riding a T-rex. Yep. It's that weird.)

Ironsky.net is the address. Type it in if you dare, because apparently it doesn't turn into a link.

Now, some of you may be asking, why am I suddenly so knowledgeable about this movie that hS told us about one random day? The answer is: I got curious, especially since 2018 (when the space Nazis land in the movie) is the second calendar year in this school year, and I started speculating about what some of my friends would do if some of the spacefaring fascists took a wrong turn and landed near their location. Upon reading the plot of the movie on Wikipedia, I learned exactly how hilariously weird the movie was (and also concluded that were this to happen IRL, I'd probably get some blonde hair dye thrown at my face. And I would absolutely hate it.) I decided I liked it, and then continued researching it further. And then I found the website and bookmarked it. So yeah.

Thank you for reading my weird piece of Not News. You may now continue with life.

-Twistey

(And because this was posted mainly for hS, I shall accompany it with a piece of obligatory googly-eyed Walfas art.

http://www.makemegoogly.com/67XB7

There you go.)

(aka, I'm attempting to pass on, with some degree of accuracy, things I read on the Internet that appeared to be backed by evidence, but people should feel free to straighten me out)

One thing that seems to exist, from what little we can tell about neurobiology, is a brain-internal map-of-the-self, which gives you a general sense of what your body should consist of. One thing included in that is which sex-linked physical characteristics you expect to have. As I understand it, that mentally-expected layout is your gender identity. This gender identity often both a) matches what is physically present and b) falls into categories we (as a culture) have created called "male" and "female".

Not meeting condition a (gender identity != physical characteristics) makes you transgender (although I believe it's a matter of personal preference and/or fierce debate whether that description persists after transitioning, that is, fixing your physical characteristics so they better match your gender identity, is concluded). Not meeting condition b (gender identity doesn't fall into the male/female buckets) makes you non-binary.

Complicating everything is gender expression, which is how you fit in to the cultural stuff about how a "man" or "woman" should look, act, talk, etc.. That seems to be a related but somewhat separate axis from identity and physical sex stuff. I'll leave that to someone who could say intelligent things about it, except to remark that being regarded as/referred to as/... the gender you identify as is a very big deal, since it's, roughly speaking, a significant component of who you are.

- Tomash

1 is the fake. I actually had Phobos come up with it so it wouldn't seem like something I'd think of, but then I tweaked it to add more detail, trying to make it feel more like something someone put all their feelings into, like the other ones, and apparently that was a mistake.

But yeah, two and three are fun. They're from Quotev, and are respectively "Love in the Dark" and "The Second Potter." I haven't read much of "The Second Potter," but "Love in the Dark" features one Mikaela Snape and is pretty dang funny. The fic seems to be mainly a retelling of the books, only with her shoehorned into half the canon events. Meanwhile, she can't make up her mind whether she wants to be a good guy or not. Half the time she's being nice to Harry and friends, the other half she's helping Draco torture Neville and then going out and spending loads of money on fancy rings for her BFF and future love interest. Because eleven-year-old Draco is all about fancy rings and not, say, racing brooms. And also Snape calls her Flower. *snort*

I might claim that one. The fic has a soundtrack I can use to torture Derik. Could be fun.

~Neshomeh