RANT: Gender

Gender is actually something I have been wanting to talk about for a very long time, but haven’t been able to since I didn’t know enough about a lot of things and I just kind of putting off talking about something that is so complex.  To me gender is a lot like sexuality since there is such a grey area in there, no simple black and white thing is going on.  It’s not just woman and man.  So now I will go into a little further depth.

Sex and gender are different on so many levels.  Sex is basically the physical traits that a person is born with (and sometimes switches to) that makes them female or female (I guess there are people born as neither [and people who get surgery to be neither] but I really don’t know much about that, and most people that are born that way are changed by their parents or the doctors and then raised to be said gender).  Gender however is mostly based off of society.  For a lot of people gender and sex are normally pretty much lined up but for some it is not.  The gender is normally based off of how the person is dictated to act, such as gender roles.  It is more in the mind and actions than in the pants.

So the basic genders that everyone knows about are woman and man.  For the most part when people identify as a woman or man (unless they are transsexual) they mean that they are cisgender.

Everything else falls under what is now typically called the “Transgender Umbrella”, yes, everything.

And this is just one version of the umbrella, originally I found the umbrella on a really cool site (click here [it has a really awesome free e-book and I used it a bunch for my personal learning on this subject]) that had different terms for these things, but I will go over that later.

As it says transgender is the, for lack of a better word, umbrella term for any one who does not fit into the gender binary.  This term is what inspired my whole look into gender so I am really grateful for it’s pride flag which is said to represent the different genders.  “The light blue is the traditional color for baby boys, pink is for girls, and the white in the middle is for those who are transitioning, those who feel they have a neutral gender or no gender, and those who are intersexed. The pattern is such that no matter which way you fly it, it will always be correct. This symbolizes us trying to find correctness in our own lives,” was what RainbowDespot.com told me.  I really like this flag actually.

The first thing on the left of the umbrella is masculine women, so that is where I will start there, along with feminine men because they are very similar.  As far as I know these genders have more to do with the sex than most under the transgender umbrella.  From what I know they are identifying with their birth sex and recognizing that they also show traits (either physically or mentally) of the other sex.  However, my lack of knowledge (and the lack of information) is really limiting so I really cannot go into details.

Similar to that is androgyny.  Now, the first time I heard that word was in the Joan Jett cover of the Replacements song Androgynous which is currently at the top of my list of favorite songs, even though I don’t like the original as much.  (Click here to listen to Androgynous by Joan Jett.  I am so sorry that I couldn’t put it right in the post, that is so irritating for me as well!)  Anyway, the main difference between masculine women/feminine women and androgynous persons is that while feminine men/masculine women typically identify with their gender androgyny has nothing to do with sex.  It is a totally different thing completely going away from sex, and people typically say that it is an almost equal blend between the sex roles assigned to the sexes, though it rarely has anything to do with physical sexes.  However, sometimes an androgynous person may look to be both genders, so it can be physical.  In the song Dick wears a skirt and Jane and him have the same haircut and look quite alike.

Hijra is the Indian term for transgender, typically MtF.  This may be wrong because according to Dictionary.com (my lovely friend) it is a person in India who adopts no gender role.  One of the two.  Correct me, please.

The next thing I actually know too much to talk about in this rant, so maybe I will make a different rant later on for this topic, however I will still go over transsexuality.  Transsexuals are typically either FtM or MtF.  FtM is female to male and MtF is male to female.  This is actually a pretty easy concept to understand if you have a lot of time on your hands and know some really good sources (not here).  Basically, it’s like they were born in the wrong body.  Typically they don’t know what gender they are at this super early age like, however some do and that is just as good.  FtMs do normally grow up as tomboys and I don’t know the word for it but MtFs normally as a girly-guy(?), however that is not so much as by force but by comfort and identity.  Some of them do get surgery to feel like they are in the right body and some don’t.  I will have to go into greater detail later, but this gender is really easy to find information on.

Two spirit kind of has me confused.  From what I feel like I know I can pretty confidently say that it is basically a term from, like, Native Americans that said that those who dressed as men and women were two spirited.  If you know more than me about this then please comment.

This next one is a “condition” (I don’t like that word cause it makes it seem like a negative and bad thing to be) in which the sexual organs does not quite line up with the norm.  This may be apparent at birth or way later, or not until after death.  It could be the actual sexual organs or the chromosomes that make them up.  This is all called intersex, and I am not the best person to talk about it.

Crossing back into androgyny we have bigender.  It’s actually very similar.  People who identify as bigender often feel that they are a member of both sexes.  Sometimes they even switch between the sexes involuntarily.  If they do switch they often find that it’s not only between girl and boy but also between having both genders, being somewhere on the spectrum of genders and having no gender.  There is actually another thing like this but we will go over that later.

Although biology usually determines genetically whether a human’s biological sex is male or female (though intersex people are also born), the state of personally identifying as, or being identified by society as, belonging to neither the male or female genders is considered in relation to the individual’s gender role in society, gender identity, sexual orientation or any other characteristic. While some western scholars have sought to understand the term ‘third gender’ in terms of ‘sexual orientation,’ several other scholars, especially the native non-western scholars, consider this as a misrepresentation of ‘third genders.’  To different cultures or individuals, a third gender may represent an intermediate state between man and woman, a state of being both (such as “the spirit of a man in the body of a woman”), the state of being neither (neuter), the ability to cross or swap genders, another category altogether independent of men and women. This last definition is favored by those who argue for a strict interpretation of the “third gender” concept. In any case, all of these characterizations are defining gender and not the sex that biology gives to living beings.

(quick thank you to Wikipedia for having people who know about this)

That paragraph was on third gender, which I now know more about.

According to Webster, a eunuch is man or boy deprived of his testes or external organs.  Um, that seems rather harsh.  Wikipedia told me that there were some cases that this was a choice but most were not.  Something from the bible said that some were born that way and some were made that way by man.  There was something about slavery, and that was when I realized that this is a very complex gender that I honestly couldn’t learn about in a short enough time to make this post by my deadline, so I leave it to you guys to comment if you know anything and research if you are interested.

Now we are going to talk about drag!  So, if you are aware of the LOGO channel on TV then you may have seen this word.  It is a wonderful thing to watch on that channel and I honestly recommend it.  Basically drag kings and queens are people that put on the clothes of the opposite sex to educate and entertain an audience.  And oh my gosh, it is spectacular.  They create identities and stuff to make the performance really amazing.  It is an art form and that is really cool if you ask me.  They normally do not really consider themselves part of the opposite sex, at least I think.  I would love for you guys to teach me more about this!

Have you ever seen the Rocky Mountain Horror Picture Show?  That is the film where I first heard the term transvestite.  Now, if you actually do some research you will find that while this term does go to cross dressers most don’t prefer this word (though I am sure that some do).  Or at least the male-heterosexuals don’t.

A cross dresser is a person who wears the clothing often reserved for the opposite sex.  Many prefer this term to transvestite.

Intergender is similar to bigender in the sense that those who identify it don’t see themselves as women or men.  However, from what I have read they don’t change.  They think of themselves as having no gender or being on the gender spectrum between man and woman.

Like the term transgender there is the term genderqueer.  For whatever reason it is under the Transgender Umbrella, though I have no clue why.  It is just another blanket word.  Queer means different.  So genderqueer references a gender different than cisgender.  If anything it seems to encompass everything, perhaps better than transgender, however I won’t argue this.

At the very right of this umbrella there is agender.  It is the lack of gender.  That is all.  I could very well go into specifics but it is different for everyone and I suck at explaining things.

If you are cheering and shouting “hoorah!” thinking that you have got to the end, think again.  This umbrella was just one of many.  I have another copy (though I can’t find a picture of it) that has even more terms that I need to go over before this can end.

Pangender people are those who do not wish to be labeled as female or male in gender, as they feel that they do not fit into binary genders because they feel they are all genders. The term has a great deal of overlap with genderqueer and is used by those in the LGBT community meaning “all genders.”

(thanks to Wikipedia)

So basically pangender can me a lot of things, just like all of these genders.

The term “FtMtF” means different things to different people who have recently claimed it as an identity. Literally, FtMtF can mean “female-to-male-to-female,” which is what others often assume the acronym stands for. But for many of us, the last “F” means femme…or feminine…or fluid. Many of us are feminine men, though that phrase leaves much, much out of the picture.

So, what is FtMtF? It is far from a rigid or concrete idea. It is sometimes used in reference to de- or re- transition, and often used to communicate an ongoing journey of one’s identity. It is a term we are using until we find a better one. It is a word for a specific spectrum of people. It is anything but a fancy term for cis women. FtMtF encompasses those who may also identify as trans women, trans men, drag queens, etc. It does not necessarily indicate one’s sex assignment at birth.

(big thanks to http://ftmtf.tumblr.com/about )

I really used the quotes because I don’t have a good understanding.  I assume that MtFtM is about the same…

While looking for a good way to describe and explain ambigender I found out there there really wasn’t a way.  I could refer you to a pretty unhelpful site or two or maybe give you a dictionary definition.  Except there is none.  So I did find one but I really don’t know how reliable this is: Ambigender: undefined gender. Such people feel neither male or female but are some combination of genders.  After finding this I looked in my personal dictionary and found nothing.  However there is the similar word ambiguous.  Words that have similar looks and sounds and prefixes often mean similar things.  Ambiguous means: 1) having two or more meanings 2) unclear, vague.  So you can see how these are about the same, except for how when it is ambigender is directly relates to gender.

There is another term, midlings.  I couldn’t find anything on it.  Thought maybe it was middling.  I really don’t know.  I assume it means something like androgynous or bigender.

Another word I have found is gender variant.  Gender variance, or gender nonconformity, is behaviour or gender expression that does not conform to dominant gender norms of male and female. People who exhibit gender variance may be called gender variant, gender non-conforming, or gender atypical.  Ir doesn’t really have anything to do with sex at birth.

A Transgenderist is a person who lives as a member of the opposite sex either fulltime or partime. Their original genitals are very important to them. Like a Transsexual, they may obtain electrolysis, (FFS) Facial Feminization, breast implants and take cross-sex hormones. Unlike a transsexual of course they will not “usually” obtain (GRS) Gender Reassignment surgery. “Shemales” are an example of Transgenderists but is usually a porn industry term and not respectful. Thai or Asian “Lady Boys” are also Transgenderists. There are (MTF) Male to Female and a very few (FTM) Female to Male Transgenderists.

(written by Lauren Amato, at Lauren’s Playground)

Transgenderist seem to be a whole other type of transsexual.

And finally we get to genderfluid.  If you remember my sexuality rant then you know that a lot of things are fluid.  And this includes gender.  This is similar to bigender.  I think it is pretty self explanatory  however if you need clarification email me at kenzi.blog.contact@gmail.com or comment below!

As always I need to go over opinions in these rants at all.  Learning and stating facts is simply not enough for me.

How did I learn that there were other genders?  How did I get interested in them?

When I was looking for pride flags quite some time ago for the sexuality rant I came across the transgender flag.  I thought it was pretty cool but couldn’t include it in that post because it’s not a sexuality.  So I left it behind.  Later I started looking for other sexualities.  I was planning on doing a part two.  Of course I went to a bunch of LGBT websites and stuff, that was when I realized that I wanted to look into the T.  However I didn’t.  A few weeks later someone called me a boy and I was totally okay with it and I laugh about it.  So I then looked at the words for all these genders and that is when it hit me that I HAD to do something and learn all about it.

Why is it so hard to learn about these genders?

It is hard and that is because in school they don’t want to talk about these things.  They don’t talk about homosexuals or asexuals, bisexuals or anything because there is a lot of hatred around those topics.  People don’t want their kids to learn about those things in fear that they won’t turn out normal if they do.  Of course it is actually damaging to a lot of people that they don’t.  People grow up very confused and can be scarred for life by not knowing that it is normal.  Same thing for genders.  They teach the ‘she/he’ but never the ‘ze’, and that is hurtful to a lot of minds.  Luckily there is the internet.

“Ze?”

Yes.  I took this table of pronouns from Gender Neutral Pronoun Blog.

	Nominative (subject)	Objective (object)	Possessive determiner	Possessive Pronoun	Reflexive
Traditional pronouns
He	He laughed	I called him	His eyes gleam	That is his	He likeshimself
She	She laughed	I called her	Her eyes gleam	That is hers	She likesherself
It	It laughed	I called it	Its eyes gleam	That is its	It likes itself
They	They laughed	I called them	Their eyes gleam	That is theirs	They likethemselves
Invented pronouns
Ne	Ne laughed	I called nem	Nir eyes gleam	That is nirs	Ne likes nemself
Ve	Ve laughed	I called ver	Vis eyes gleam	That is vis	Ve likes verself
Spivak	Ey laughed	I called em	Eir eyes gleam	That is eirs	Ey likes emself
Ze (or zie) and hir	Ze laughed	I called hir	Hir eyes gleam	That is hirs	Ze likes hirself
Ze (or zie) and zir	Ze laughed	I called zir	Zir eyes gleam	That is zirs	Ze likes zirself
Xe	Xe laughed	I called xem	Xyr eyes gleam	That is xyrs	Xe likes xemself

It’s extremely cool and the use of gender neutral pronouns should be more widely used.

Anything else?

It’s important to keep up with the fact that not everything is black and white and grey areas are constantly there.  If you want to know more it’s okay to comment or email me to find out more.  Researching is awesome and frequently fun.  If you guys know something comment or email me.  Send me a link.  I always want to know more.

Thanks for reading.

-Kenny (yep, I found a new nickname I like)