what else could a (gender) want?
lot's of nebulous thoughts after reading this article noura linked and also this excerpt on tumblr from ‘A Trans Body’s Path in Eight Folds’ from Pass with Care: Memoirs by Cooper Lee Bombardier (2020):
medical transition is something that i've always seen as something for future-me to worry about, which goes hand in hand with GAD and MDD telling me i should only be focusing on the very immediate future and thus willingly blinding myself to everything bad that could happen to me next week. the truth is i'm not especially keen or interested in taking testosterone, due in large part to the changes it wreaks being fully out of my control, and it brings with it this idea of maleness, or even masculinity, which isn't what i'm aiming for. any desire i do have to start taking hormones is fully out of the legitimacy it would grant me amongst trans and/or nb peers. top surgery, which is an idea that lingers in the back of my head and i'm much more interested in than hormones, but it's difficult to ascertain whether i'm motivated by dysphoria or dysmorphia.
ultimately i'm not interested in nonbinaryness or being non gender conforming but existing in an agendered state. there is no true androgynous body or way of presentation, so any attempt at transition kind of loses meaning. i think it means i want to live somewhere where gender isn't considered a part of identity, or where it's so irrelevant it's something you keep to yourself, and other people need not know. which neccessitates a social change, not for the individual to physically change things about themselves.
slightly related to this post (this point was also brought up in the transmasculinity article) "non-binary identity is more of an ideological position than a social category and i feel like we should embrace that because refusing to participate in the oppressive structure of gender is, however idealistic/immaterial, radical in one way or another imo.. and yet some non-binary identified people betray their own ideology by crying out for “inclusion” in patriarchy, behaving as if non-binary identity is parallel to manhood or womanhood.. when really it’s antithetical to the process of creating categories in the first place. so we end up with variant gender options on facebook and okcupid instead of like. cultural change".
i've also recently been debating ditching the lesbian moniker entirely just because of gender troubles and a lot of popular theory in online lesbian circles being closer to "lesbianism is both womanhood and transness because of the inherent noncomformity of being a woman attracted to woman". that's not what i mean when i say i'm a nonbinary lesbian, i mean "you look at me and think i'm a woman, i am attracted to woman, but any "girlness" you perceive me having is something you're assigning me, not something i possess or identify with." i ultimately have opted to just do nothing because despite my fondness for labelling and categorization, saying i'm not a lesbian is something only a very small circle of people will respect or even be able to conceptualize.
in addition going from probably the most left, queer, creative minded space in canada (the plateau, my old neighbourhood, is considered to have the most dense population of artists in the world lol, which comes with gay people and trans people) to the suburbs of the greater toronto area is.. not great. it's not like, ridiculously homophobic or anything, but as far as i can tell, the large majority of gay people just decide (like me) it's easier to be gay elsewhere, so everyone stays in the closet until they can move away. no one is going to shun you for being gay, but there is no such thing as a gay community. and also as suburbs are notoriously family focused, mine in particular, that comes with stronger heteropatriarchal norms, and means even though this is a ~liberal city, the predominant centrist views lean towards right wing if anything.
my mom's bullshit "i support gay people!" outward expression while shaming my brothers with homophobic and transmisogynistic rhetoric growing up + absolute embarrassment with me every time i do things that are noticeably not-straight aside-- i find myself slipping into bad habits here. wearing more makeup than i have in ages, partly out of a need to be impressive in case anyone from high school recognizes me (look how successful i am! i dropped out of university but i might be prettier than you) and just. casually misogynistic habits of seeing myself as in competition with women. i don't think it's in a competing for male attention sort of way, more just out of self defence, but i really don't like it. i don't like being dependant on makeup and i don't like moving backwards in how i express gender.
it doesn't help that i'm scarily aware of how i am perceived in public (going to blame this on GAD and also my birth chart because why not both) and because of that i'm only willing to draw attention to myself when i'm confident in the message i'm promoting. this is a huge contributing factor to not coming out in high school, and why i will probably never mention transness and pronouns with my family/and friends i eventually make here, despite just the casual comfort of being out and using only they/them pronouns irl in montreal being incredibly gratifying.
ok i can't ramble anymore and i don't want to reread this and have to delete all the adverbs i pepper into my sentences. BORN TO DIE / WORLD IS A FUCK / Kill Em All 1999 / I am trash (gender) / 410,757,864,530 DEAD COPS
medical transition is something that i've always seen as something for future-me to worry about, which goes hand in hand with GAD and MDD telling me i should only be focusing on the very immediate future and thus willingly blinding myself to everything bad that could happen to me next week. the truth is i'm not especially keen or interested in taking testosterone, due in large part to the changes it wreaks being fully out of my control, and it brings with it this idea of maleness, or even masculinity, which isn't what i'm aiming for. any desire i do have to start taking hormones is fully out of the legitimacy it would grant me amongst trans and/or nb peers. top surgery, which is an idea that lingers in the back of my head and i'm much more interested in than hormones, but it's difficult to ascertain whether i'm motivated by dysphoria or dysmorphia.
ultimately i'm not interested in nonbinaryness or being non gender conforming but existing in an agendered state. there is no true androgynous body or way of presentation, so any attempt at transition kind of loses meaning. i think it means i want to live somewhere where gender isn't considered a part of identity, or where it's so irrelevant it's something you keep to yourself, and other people need not know. which neccessitates a social change, not for the individual to physically change things about themselves.
slightly related to this post (this point was also brought up in the transmasculinity article) "non-binary identity is more of an ideological position than a social category and i feel like we should embrace that because refusing to participate in the oppressive structure of gender is, however idealistic/immaterial, radical in one way or another imo.. and yet some non-binary identified people betray their own ideology by crying out for “inclusion” in patriarchy, behaving as if non-binary identity is parallel to manhood or womanhood.. when really it’s antithetical to the process of creating categories in the first place. so we end up with variant gender options on facebook and okcupid instead of like. cultural change".
i've also recently been debating ditching the lesbian moniker entirely just because of gender troubles and a lot of popular theory in online lesbian circles being closer to "lesbianism is both womanhood and transness because of the inherent noncomformity of being a woman attracted to woman". that's not what i mean when i say i'm a nonbinary lesbian, i mean "you look at me and think i'm a woman, i am attracted to woman, but any "girlness" you perceive me having is something you're assigning me, not something i possess or identify with." i ultimately have opted to just do nothing because despite my fondness for labelling and categorization, saying i'm not a lesbian is something only a very small circle of people will respect or even be able to conceptualize.
in addition going from probably the most left, queer, creative minded space in canada (the plateau, my old neighbourhood, is considered to have the most dense population of artists in the world lol, which comes with gay people and trans people) to the suburbs of the greater toronto area is.. not great. it's not like, ridiculously homophobic or anything, but as far as i can tell, the large majority of gay people just decide (like me) it's easier to be gay elsewhere, so everyone stays in the closet until they can move away. no one is going to shun you for being gay, but there is no such thing as a gay community. and also as suburbs are notoriously family focused, mine in particular, that comes with stronger heteropatriarchal norms, and means even though this is a ~liberal city, the predominant centrist views lean towards right wing if anything.
my mom's bullshit "i support gay people!" outward expression while shaming my brothers with homophobic and transmisogynistic rhetoric growing up + absolute embarrassment with me every time i do things that are noticeably not-straight aside-- i find myself slipping into bad habits here. wearing more makeup than i have in ages, partly out of a need to be impressive in case anyone from high school recognizes me (look how successful i am! i dropped out of university but i might be prettier than you) and just. casually misogynistic habits of seeing myself as in competition with women. i don't think it's in a competing for male attention sort of way, more just out of self defence, but i really don't like it. i don't like being dependant on makeup and i don't like moving backwards in how i express gender.
it doesn't help that i'm scarily aware of how i am perceived in public (going to blame this on GAD and also my birth chart because why not both) and because of that i'm only willing to draw attention to myself when i'm confident in the message i'm promoting. this is a huge contributing factor to not coming out in high school, and why i will probably never mention transness and pronouns with my family/and friends i eventually make here, despite just the casual comfort of being out and using only they/them pronouns irl in montreal being incredibly gratifying.
ok i can't ramble anymore and i don't want to reread this and have to delete all the adverbs i pepper into my sentences. BORN TO DIE / WORLD IS A FUCK / Kill Em All 1999 / I am trash (gender) / 410,757,864,530 DEAD COPS
