In my last post I rambled about a scale, of sorts, without judgement for position on the scale, and things that move me around on that scale that determines, pretty much from minute to minute, whether my gender presents as male or female.
That can be quite interesting to live, and I’ll try to talk more about that later, but what makes it actually happen? The honest truth is, to I think a large extent, I don’t know. But some things I do know.
For example, I watch The Magicians and Wynonna Earp. They both push hard towards female. Is it a coincidence that they are replete with strong female characters, in the case of Wynonna, basically all strong female characters? Probably not. I also enjoy watching rugby, and although I comment about it in a female persona, it pushes me in a male direction. Again, probably not a coincidence.
But then I have some that seem less intuitive. For various reasons I have quite a bit of reflective practice in my history. A lot of this is quite analytical: how did it go, what lessons can you learn to do it better next time? You might expect that to be a male-pushing thing, but for me it’s quite a female pushing thing, despite the fact the feedback on my reflective practise always criticises me for lacking emotional depth, something you might, stereotypically, expect to be stronger if it’s done from a female perspective.
I also do support work. How those affect me are really hard to predict. Some people I become blokey mates with, some I become more BFFs with. Some I retreat into analytical maleness with, others I become emotional support and sounding boards for. For many that shifts and changes throughout a session. Some of that change is normal and inevitable for a lot of 1:1 learning support but, for me, it’s accompanied by underlying shifts, not necessarily completely but certainly along the scale in my gender identity. I can’t be a blokey mate and be in a female identity, it’s hard (it might be impossible) for me to be a BFF and in a male identity. I don’t quite know why ultra-analytical goes with male, but for me it does. I certainly know highly analytical women, and I’m no doubt about their female gender identity either in most cases, so I’m really not saying anything beyond my personal experience here but, for me, when I retreat into my most analytical, I have so many male-nudges I also, always, move into a male gender identity.
Most of these nudges are bigger, slower, than the shifts that I experience. That’s why I’m sure I don’t know what most of the triggers are. It’s hard to be clear on what they are when it’s possible they don’t clearly register. I don’t think, for example, that lighting has an influence of my gender identity. I could be wrong. But lets say that seeing a particular shade of natural lighting moves me female by a step. As I’m looking out of the window at the moment it’s around noon and we’re building up to a rain storm, so there’s that odd pre-rain hue to the light as the sun is being occluded by the clouds. The tone of light is ever changing and if a certain hue and intensity has to be hit for a nudge, then it won’t happen every time it rains - if the rain sets in too early or too late then the sun won’t be in the right place and we won’t get the right light, if the season is wrong, the sun will be too bright or too dim and so on... So maybe one rain storm in 50 triggers a nudge and how do I pick that out?
I said in the previous post, I’d talk about this too, so I will. because my pronouns can change incredibly fast it is basically impossible for me to keep up. I don’t expect anyone else to. So, I pick a gendered pronoun that’s right for the place and stick to it. For example, I’m active on a Wynonna Earp fan chat. While they know I’m gender fluid, I use the she/her pronouns because it moves me that way and it seems the most appropriate. I have an RPG I play where they know me as male and I use he/him pronouns with them.
I know there are options like Xe and Hir. Perhaps it’s a function of my age - and I’d happily use those pronouns for other people, but those don’t sound right for me. I’m happy for people to use either She/Her or He/Him for me and be wrong sometimes. If I was less fluid, if I shifted slowly and dressed to express, I would hope people got it right in general. Most people, who know me well and have to address me, get around it by using me name. Instead of “She’s being a complete bitch!” “El’s being a complete bitch!” avoids the gender pronoun problem nicely.
Monday, November 4, 2019
Thursday, October 24, 2019
The gender “scale” - a quick and dirty model underlying how it sort of works for me
Before i get too deep into this, I need to say that this is sort of right for me, and that there are some important caveats.
When you talk about a scale in most things, you think “more” implies “better” - if you’re going on holiday, a place with more sunshine, higher temperatures, bigger beaches, longer walks etc. is, for most people, better than somewhere with less sunshine, lower temperatures, smaller beaches and shorter walks. The temperature thing might switched for a skiing holiday, and if you’re looking for the Northern Lights, you might want a shorter day, but generally we want more.
That applies in other areas - faster cars, more MPG from our cars, greener fridges and so on. I’m going to describe a rough scale of maleness and femaleness. However, I’m not saying that being more or less of either is better or worse. This is about how I am, how I feel, and I’m trying to externalise it in fairly accessible terms.
If I write something that labels you in a position you don’t like, I’m sorry. The important thing is that you’re happy in who you are. And please try to remember my position on a scale doesn’t come with a value judgement.
So, into the minefield... I think we all have, in our heads, in our lives, some idea of a scale of maleness and femaleness. We might have at one end the ultra-femme girly-girls: lipstick, perfect hair, dresses, heels, giggling together. We have a centre ground of femaleness, wears jeans and a t-shirt/jumper, but a nice hairdo or boots, will dress up for special, but will go shopping without dressing up. And we have the more butch end too. Although I’ve used physical descriptions and only three stopping points, we have behaviours that go with that as well.
For the men, we have the ultra-male, possibly with stubble, sculpted muscles and often with an aggressive demeanour. The middle ground actually looks, clothes-wise, like the middle-ground female, but has different accessories and behaviour. And then we verge to the more effeminate. Again, no judgement, we all know people like all of these, and they’re all valid. We hopefully know people who are happy in their in role too.
You might well think there are more stops along the way and you might well think that the stops cross over, the most masculine appearing/acting women and the most female appearing/acting men are more male/female than their opposites.
That’s the background on which I operate. Let’s say there’s a scale where ultra-male is -10 and ultra-femme is +10. I might wake up tomorrow and be at -4, feeling middling male. I’ll do something and it will have an influence, say +1 and I’ll go to -3. Something else has a -2 and I’m at -5. Something later has a +4 and I’m at -1. So far all male. Something later has a +3 and suddenly I’m up to +1 and into feeling female. Later on another +4 and I’m up to +5 middling femaleness. That carries through the night, so the next morning I start at +5 and so on. Now, my influences come thick and fast, I probably get 20-50 in most days, not 3-5 like I’ve shown in that example, but it serves its purpose. I can flick over from male to female, female to male and back many times in a day. I’ve done so three times writing this.
As you might have noticed not all the influences are the same size. Some were magnitude 1 (+1 or -1), there were a couple of magnitude 4. I don’t actually analytically score them quite like that, but 4 or 5 feels like the biggest shift I feel. On this scale, this number line, there should be a 0. I imagine, without evidence, that’s what being either agender or non-binary might feel like. I say without evidence because, to the best of my memory, I’ve never been on that balance point. Perhaps I have and it’s a saddle point - apparently stable but the slightest push and I tip one way or the other. The other points, the integers, are metastable for me, locally stable but with a push I can move out jump to another state. For most people though, they’re a ground state - it takes a lot of effort to move you, and you always tend to go back there.
This model is far from perfect. It doesn’t quite describe how it works in my head and my heart and while I don’t ascribe value to position - it’s hard for me to do that because I move between the positions - it certainly invites other people to ascribe value in a way that I don’t. Despite those issues, that sense of being in a position and then having an influence that jumps me one way or the other, and sometimes those influences being big, sometimes small is right. Those influences never leaving me balanced between male and female is also spot on, at least for me.
My next post is going to talk a bit about what some of those influences that I know about are, and what some of the ways I handle pronouns are.
That applies in other areas - faster cars, more MPG from our cars, greener fridges and so on. I’m going to describe a rough scale of maleness and femaleness. However, I’m not saying that being more or less of either is better or worse. This is about how I am, how I feel, and I’m trying to externalise it in fairly accessible terms.
If I write something that labels you in a position you don’t like, I’m sorry. The important thing is that you’re happy in who you are. And please try to remember my position on a scale doesn’t come with a value judgement.
So, into the minefield... I think we all have, in our heads, in our lives, some idea of a scale of maleness and femaleness. We might have at one end the ultra-femme girly-girls: lipstick, perfect hair, dresses, heels, giggling together. We have a centre ground of femaleness, wears jeans and a t-shirt/jumper, but a nice hairdo or boots, will dress up for special, but will go shopping without dressing up. And we have the more butch end too. Although I’ve used physical descriptions and only three stopping points, we have behaviours that go with that as well.
For the men, we have the ultra-male, possibly with stubble, sculpted muscles and often with an aggressive demeanour. The middle ground actually looks, clothes-wise, like the middle-ground female, but has different accessories and behaviour. And then we verge to the more effeminate. Again, no judgement, we all know people like all of these, and they’re all valid. We hopefully know people who are happy in their in role too.
You might well think there are more stops along the way and you might well think that the stops cross over, the most masculine appearing/acting women and the most female appearing/acting men are more male/female than their opposites.
That’s the background on which I operate. Let’s say there’s a scale where ultra-male is -10 and ultra-femme is +10. I might wake up tomorrow and be at -4, feeling middling male. I’ll do something and it will have an influence, say +1 and I’ll go to -3. Something else has a -2 and I’m at -5. Something later has a +4 and I’m at -1. So far all male. Something later has a +3 and suddenly I’m up to +1 and into feeling female. Later on another +4 and I’m up to +5 middling femaleness. That carries through the night, so the next morning I start at +5 and so on. Now, my influences come thick and fast, I probably get 20-50 in most days, not 3-5 like I’ve shown in that example, but it serves its purpose. I can flick over from male to female, female to male and back many times in a day. I’ve done so three times writing this.
As you might have noticed not all the influences are the same size. Some were magnitude 1 (+1 or -1), there were a couple of magnitude 4. I don’t actually analytically score them quite like that, but 4 or 5 feels like the biggest shift I feel. On this scale, this number line, there should be a 0. I imagine, without evidence, that’s what being either agender or non-binary might feel like. I say without evidence because, to the best of my memory, I’ve never been on that balance point. Perhaps I have and it’s a saddle point - apparently stable but the slightest push and I tip one way or the other. The other points, the integers, are metastable for me, locally stable but with a push I can move out jump to another state. For most people though, they’re a ground state - it takes a lot of effort to move you, and you always tend to go back there.
This model is far from perfect. It doesn’t quite describe how it works in my head and my heart and while I don’t ascribe value to position - it’s hard for me to do that because I move between the positions - it certainly invites other people to ascribe value in a way that I don’t. Despite those issues, that sense of being in a position and then having an influence that jumps me one way or the other, and sometimes those influences being big, sometimes small is right. Those influences never leaving me balanced between male and female is also spot on, at least for me.
My next post is going to talk a bit about what some of those influences that I know about are, and what some of the ways I handle pronouns are.
Thursday, October 17, 2019
Why?
In this brave new world, there are still reasons not to I guess but I thought the time had come to write about what it was like to be me.
That makes it sound like I'm so Generation Z but actually I'm old enough to be calling them precious snowflakes. Not that I would, even if I wasn't one of those precious snowflakes myself.
While I fit in to the world in some ways, I can kind of pass for normal enough to get along in polite society at least, at no point in my life, at least my adult life, has anyone ever called me normal. Except myself, in a kind of elf-deprecating but also self-protecting joke.
What this blog is going to do, as I very intermittently update it, is talk about how I'm gender fluid, how that affects me and my life, and what it means to me.
What this blog will not do is provide a "to do" manual or a description of how you should be gender fluid or treat every gender fluid person you meet.
For example, I heard someone who is gender fluid interviewed and basically each day they get up and assess whether today is a "male" day or a "female" day and dress accordingly. That's not me. I dress pretty agender every day and my gender identity changes quite a bit more quickly than that - sometimes almost minute by minute. Because of that, I'm also not all that precious about my pronouns - the way I feel can shift within a conversation which can be hard for even me to keep up with, so I find it hard to blame you if you can't!
I don't know how long this will last but while the ride is ongoing, I hope you have fun.
That makes it sound like I'm so Generation Z but actually I'm old enough to be calling them precious snowflakes. Not that I would, even if I wasn't one of those precious snowflakes myself.
While I fit in to the world in some ways, I can kind of pass for normal enough to get along in polite society at least, at no point in my life, at least my adult life, has anyone ever called me normal. Except myself, in a kind of elf-deprecating but also self-protecting joke.
What this blog is going to do, as I very intermittently update it, is talk about how I'm gender fluid, how that affects me and my life, and what it means to me.
What this blog will not do is provide a "to do" manual or a description of how you should be gender fluid or treat every gender fluid person you meet.
For example, I heard someone who is gender fluid interviewed and basically each day they get up and assess whether today is a "male" day or a "female" day and dress accordingly. That's not me. I dress pretty agender every day and my gender identity changes quite a bit more quickly than that - sometimes almost minute by minute. Because of that, I'm also not all that precious about my pronouns - the way I feel can shift within a conversation which can be hard for even me to keep up with, so I find it hard to blame you if you can't!
I don't know how long this will last but while the ride is ongoing, I hope you have fun.
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