nerdflighter | asking for advice

One of the things I do on my discourse blog is talk about the nature of binaries and how they erase a lot of grey areas. And recently, I was talking about how it's possible for cis people to be dysphoric, and how cis people can benefit from having access to the narrative around dysphoria.
And I got this message, in the form of a submission.

wanted to i guess vent about my personal experience w/ feeling dysphoria (maybe?) without being trans. you don’t have to post this; it might be better if you don’t since it would be weird to have people debating my Validity:tm: but idk it might be good as food for thought for your theories or you could just not read it. your posts just made me Think and i wanted to get the feelings out. sorry if any of this is weird or bad to read haha…
so personally i don’t consider myself trans in any way but i do experience something that at least to me seems like really really mild gender dysphoria. i might just be wrong about what dysphoria is so i’m gonna try to explain the exact feelings, where i think they’re coming from, and why i don’t think i am trans. for reference i am afab and don’t have any other brain stuff going on as far as i know (never been to a doctor for that kind of thing) aside from getting panic attacks sometimes.
so firstly i experience what is, as far as i know, social dysphoria. i don’t like being called “she” (when i was younger i used to dislike being called “he” too but i think that was mostly because i was offended by male being the default - so for logical reasons instead of emotional ones.) i don’t like being treated as female or the expectations associated with being viewed as female, although admittedly i think most women don’t regardless of if they’re cis or trans because of like misogyny and stuff. you know how it be… society. anyway in general being thought of as a woman makes me uncomfortable in most contexts including ones that are obstensibly positive. i also experience like… physical or sex dysphoria (not sure what the right term is.) i’m gonna avoid being graphic but in general i dislike my genitalia and wish i had a penis and usually imagine myself with one in sexual fantasies. i don’t have the same feelings towards my breasts though but i don’t especially… like them or anything.
so in my opinion the reason i feel like this despite not being trans is that i was (and am) really physically unattractive and socially inept and got bullied for it a lot as a kid. but even when i wasn’t being directly bullied i was still treated differently from female peers with more acceptable appearances and behaviors. when i would wear feminine clothes or makeup i was treated badly for it, because i was not a “real girl” to my peers. obviously this isn’t at all the same as what trans people experience but it created a disconnect for me between my technically assigned sex and how i was gendered by others. since i wasn’t seen as or treated as a girl but as some degendered/desexed other (and also i am still treated that way irl most of the time) so being treated as one pretty much solely online feels disorienting and upsetting and i feel some level of compulsion not to have the physical attributes that make me afab.
i have no desire to transition through surgery or hormone treatment so i think i’m not trans. it’s not for practical reasons either i just don’t think it would fix my dysphoria in any way. i don’t think socially transitioning would help either.
again i realize this isn’t the same as what trans people experience and it’s extremely mild but idk what to call it except dysphoria. not sure if i am cis or maybe some kind of non-trans nb?
whew long wall of text… anyway have a great day. you are cool!

this person reads as trans to me, and yet? they never would have come forward if I hadn't talked about cis dysphoria. and I can't justify labeling them as something they don't identify as, but at the same time I don't know how to weigh that out against their distress and the possible comfort they would find in a *trans label.
I don't know what I'm doing, basically, and I'd like to know what y'all think.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Realizations about bigotry or identity or trauma or similar things always have to come from within the person having the realization. And by that I mean that much in the same way as you can't tell somebody they're being abused if they don't see it and you can't tell somebody they're being racist if they don't see it, you can't tell somebody they're trans/not cis if they don't believe it.

Honestly, this person does not read as trans to me in a traditional sense. If this were like 2013, there would be much better options available to them for grey-area language like trans* or genderqueer or genderfucked... but nowadays, genderqueer is trans and trans* is unnecessary, and genderfucked... just isn't a thing anymore? For some reason? But nowadays in internet discourse, the trans/cis binary is way more black-and-white than it was not too long ago, when it was acceptable to be non-binary or otherwise a big gender-y question mark without being cis or trans.

In terms of practical things to say to such a person, just encourage the adoption and exploration of whatever language. A really low pressure opinion is okay ("this sounds similar to trans narratives" or "this doesn't strike me as how cis people usually feel"), but nothing too definitive (no "I think you're trans"). Definitely offer up some suggestions that maybe they didn't think about:

"there are plenty of ways to be cis, trans, or non-binary, which can be any combination of cis, trans, or neither"

"there have been plenty of ways questionable genders have been described before which do not have to fall under specific umbrellas, for example gendermeh, wtfgender, genderfucked, gendervague, genderqueer, xenogenders, etc"

"you don't have to personally link [these experiences which are normatively associated with gender] with gender

"you can absolutely conceptualize yourself as a gender non-conforming (in identity, not necessarily expression) cis person (or other category) and that's totally okay and entirely your own business... or just go label-less, because the same premise applies that it's no one else's business, no matter what tumblr discoursers say"

Honestly, these kind of ethereal introspective crises of gender go way deeper than this and like... words are meaningless and nonsensical and way too contingent upon specific contexts and assumptions to actually be worth the effort. Do what fulfills you and let it sort itself out in its own time. And</em, most importantly, don't be afraid of being wrong.

Heck, anyone can feel uncomfortable with their body or appearance. Concepts like "personal style" are fundamentally about changing your outside to bring it more in line with how you want to look. It sounds like the anon has been bullied a lot and struggles with anxiety over just existing in public. During the time where most people are figuring out who they are and what they want to look like, she had to deal with people treating her like shit for no good reason. So it makes sense that now, she hasn't had the opportunity to do that work to figure out how to express herself, and might need to circle back around to it.

Honestly, this person does not read as trans to me in a traditional sense. If this were like 2013, there would be much better options available to them for grey-area language like trans* or genderqueer or genderfucked... but nowadays, genderqueer is trans and trans* is unnecessary, and genderfucked... just isn't a thing anymore? For some reason? But nowadays in internet discourse, the trans/cis binary is way more black-and-white than it was not too long ago

!!!! Is this a thing you've generally/casually observed, or are there specific more broad collections of data, or does it just fit into the more general thrust of the internet towards strict binaries of identity? Either ways I have some Big Feelings about it

It's just a casual observation based on my experiences within online queer spaces (primarily tumblr), also informed by the similar observations that I've seen from other people in similar spaces re: the decline of trans* (vs trans with no asterisk), genderqueer, etc. Although I'm sure it would be possible to dig up informal internet climate surveys from across time and try to map trends in terminology, and I think that might actually be a really interesting undertaking *thinking emoji*

I'm 100000% supportive of that undertaking but very afraid it would balloon into three PhD theses quite quickly. But i'd read at least a thesis and a half, so...you know.

I wish I had a more cogent response for this intellectual angle you gave me! I feel like there's some lesson about inclusion and exclusion and the constant give and take in community building, maybe? this precise language issue has also been deeply relevant in my own year and I wouldn't have thought to look, uh, longitudinally at word development within my own queer experience like you have here.

edit: I think what this is also reminding me of is the labeling of historical figures with modern terms, and uhhh the way there is a confusing plurality of identities. Same theme, different timescale, I think.

Edited 2019-01-27 22:53 (UTC)

I've been known to do occasionally angry hand waving about the fact that people nowadays don't like to recognize the fact that queer vocabulary is constantly shifting and non-standardized. I see lots of people go on online rants about somebody innocuously using the word "transgendered" instead of "transgender" or "trans" and it frustrates me because literally less than a decade ago, "transgendered" was considered more polite and more proper than "transgender" by big advocacy organizations. And considering that it's frequently older queer folks, non-internet-savvy closeted folks with few resources, or those who can't spend copious amounts of time online who are disporportionately more likely to call themselves by/use the "wrong" words like "transsexual," are we even doing any favors for the queer community as a whole when we start thinking any rules at all are hard-and-fast when it comes to identity terminology?

I love technology and our interconnected world and this age of information, but culture spreads and develops incredibly quickly now, and it's pretty common for those who were born into this kind of world to forget that not all experiences are actually standardized, and not all people are willing to shed skins they've had their whole lives, just because they're not abiding by the most popular definition anymore. And I say that as a young person who absolutely grew up extremely comfortable with rapidly developing technology--being mindful that history is living, as embodied by real living people who have lived through it, is a learned skill. My rule of thumb for terminology is to keep in mind how the oldest possible living people who have encountered it might understand it, based on its previous usages; after all, a lot of "common knowledge" words and concepts were really only coined in the past decade or two, and it's not unreasonable to account for the existence of somebody who has been out of touch enough for that long to not know about them.

asking for advice

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Re: my horribly postmodern take (cw: nihilism)

Re: my horribly postmodern take (cw: nihilism)