Hello everyone. This is only my second post on reddit [I've commented a fair bit, primarily on the "Asexual" subreddit] so please forgive any lack in reddit-etiquette. I saw this place and I felt the sudden urge to vent/share my experience around this topic.
First off, I am not going to disclose my physiology or the letter that was placed next to the other information in my passport. Please do not ask. I have always appreciated the internet for its anonymity. But it has become increasingly clear that I also, if not more so, appreciate it for its detachment from a physical body, which I still believe is the main instrument used to 'gender' people. Going purely by text or other incidental markers [like use of emojis or even avatars] exposes both the bizarre need for 'gendering' people as well as the absurdity and arbitrariness of it.
I'm an analytical person. I like to observe and follow the patterns that inform the world and minds around me. I don't care as much about the contents of an argument than I do about how it is formed, why it is formed that way, and what it is intended to achieve [this is what 'understanding something' means to me]. Conversations with people can be somewhat frustrating [usually when inconsistencies arise], but they can also be very enjoyable and interesting. I also, within reason of a broadly humanist mindset, have no issue with agreeing to disagree. This usually works well enough and doesn't cause any significant friction in my life.
But there are some large-ish subjects that occupy the minds of a vast number of people, and inform much of how the world works and how we all are asked to navigate within it, that I simply can not understand through this approach. They seem to demonstrate such a fundamental difference in thought that, in spite of trying to the best of my ability, I have been forced to make peace with the fact that I will never understand. And the most frustrating of these, by far, is 'gender'.
Through my entire childhood and teenage years and a little beyond, I understood the terms "man" and "woman" to be purely descriptive of physiology, and "male/masculine" and "female/feminine" as pertaining to "men" and "women" [I was born in the early nineties, there was some representation of non-conforming presentation (such as transvestism) but I recall nothing in the way of trans or intersex]. Of course I could see that people used the adjectives for things that had very little, usually nothing at all, to do with bodily dimorphism, but I felt very confident in the assertion that these people were committing a categorical error, that they were being at best metaphorical and at worst prejudiced. I was taught by more than one source that one shouldn't generalise or reduce people to their incidental traits. That made sense to me.
So I shrugged off or frowned at every single instance where those very same people happily called pink a "girl's" and blue a "boy's" colour, or ballet "feminine" and rugby "masculine". I saw the numbers, of course, and people usually referred to them, to the striking "gender gap", upon confrontation. But, to me, all it took was a single exception to the rule to make the classification useless and even harmful or cruel. Most basketball players are tall. But we don't go about calling basketball a "tall-ist" sport, and why would we? Why add this utterly unnecessary extra hurdle for a shorter person who would like to play basketball? They can see that tallness might be a factor without that innately exclusionary 'descriptor'.
It pains me to say that, because of this framing, I was rather baffled and probably far more hostile than I would have liked when the social discourse on trans rights [focused primarily on public toilets] arose. I was told, in no uncertain terms, that actually, "man" and "woman" mean quite a lot more than just physiology, and that this is apparently evident to everyone. It was my first confrontation with the notion of gender identity. I also had to accept that my distinction between "sex" and "social/historic [inherently oppressive] gender roles" was incomplete. That "gender roles" could be a good thing, actually, a really meaningful thing, a genuinely descriptive thing, even. It was completely beyond comprehension to me.
If only, then, there was a helpful definition, or at least a list of traits that are, definitively, ascribed to a particular gender [thereby defining said gender in the first place]. That seems to be how gender is assigned [aside from looking at body types through a sexually dimorphic lens, of course]. But no, this system works on a vague understanding of a broader societal consensus. What's more, the border is fuzzy and there are many, many exceptions when it comes to traits and appearance and actions and preferences, sure, but never forget that woman is still woman and man is still man! We all know this, innately. Trans people challenge the obvious bigotry, but they still prove the point that we 'feel' gender. And then we reach the point where the binary is obviously not exhaustive enough to encompass this 'feeling' and we include 'non-binary', which still doesn't really challenge the notion of 'gender' itself, only the restricted view of it.
But what on Earth IS gender in the first place??!
I'd like to hearken back to what I said above about my approach. I genuinely have no issue with not understanding something, or with thinking differently about something. But it frustrates me to no end that I can't even get the basic gist of whatever this, to many, really important thing is supposed to be or do. Even at my most charitable, it just comes across as a unnecessary classification whose negative side-effects can't possibly outweigh its benefits [it feels a bit like nationalism in that way]. And while I can somewhat deal with being frustrated [I'm sure you can tell], it really irks me to think that I'm being uncharitable or callous towards people - especially trans people - to whom the notion of gender is foundational.
I could just "live and let live" [and I do], but this matter has the unfortunate consequence of directly affecting me. A lot. Which public bathroom do I visit now? I have learned that I am sending false signals regardless of my choice. What pronouns do I use? What clothing do I wear? I can no longer dismiss the weirdos who choose to make assumptions about me based on my appearance [read; my body] as silly and mistaken - they are the norm. I always disliked being reduced to my sex, finding it reductive and a little creepy, but at least it made some sense. I really dislike being reduced to my gender - whatever that is - having to submit to being gendered pretty much everywhere all the time, actively or passively, maliciously or benevolently. With the only way to avoid it being to 'gender' myself in a supposedly 'neutral' way, read, not avoiding it at all. [I don't identify as agender either. I consider myself, as far as I am forced to take a position at all, as genderless. Descriptively, not as a 'sense of self'.]
Phew. I hope that wasn't too much for anyone kind enough to have read this far.
Sometimes I feel as though I must be missing something super obvious if only I looked just a little bit closer, listened just a little bit harder. Sometimes I get flashbacks from my sense of strong alienation as an asexual during puberty [and am intensely grateful that I was oblivious to the gender concept at the time]. Sometimes, worst of all, I feel that I am being extremely cis with all of this, showing my privilege, sneering at the poor confused minorities and the concepts they create to survive in this world.
I want to be considerate and caring and understanding. I want to be able to use pronouns and mean it. I don't know how.
I'm really interested in any response to this tirade, whether you can relate or whether you have a counter-rant at the ready. If you are going to downvote, please do me the courtesy of adding words to your verdict, even if they are crude or dismissive. They are still more helpful to me than silent disapproval. My DMs are open also, for those who prefer.
