@rabia_elizabeth @actuallyautistic thank you for linking that, it was a most interesting read!
it also jives with a thought i’ve been nurturing for a while now. i suspected that i am locating ‘identity’ at a different epistemological layer than neurotypicals: where it is common to see the self as one thing in a world of things, i always erred on the side of feeling the self as the point opposite the world of things, as the stage on which the phenomena describing the world happen. and the self-as-a-part-of-the-world only happens in the phenomena on that stage. they enter stage right, so to say, and speak of things, some of which affect me. and i do like some of those described things more than others (and am super duper into some of them!), but at the end of the day, my self is more the stage on which that happens rather than the play performed on it.
hence i always struggled a bit with gender as well – not in terms of understanding it as a varied spectrum, or which parts of that spectrum i find more likeable, but in terms of not getting the importance of putting my ‘me’ on a spot on that spectrum where it reads as ‘is like this’ and ‘is not like that’ – when what i feel to be my true self exists only as itself, and all those axes of differentiation can only happen within the play, between characters, but not on the stage. i have only me. and even saying ‘ah, i must be agender’ places me too much inside the play to describe my true, inner me-ness.
@gekitsu @rabia_elizabeth@mefi.social @actuallyautistic
My unsolicited two cents:
Gender roles, being artificial constructs, serve the purpose of restricting/limiting/controlling how we present ourselves to the world. Given that as a foundation, I have no respect for the idea of "gender presentation". I present me to the world. I may or may not fit neatly into a category they have in their head, but that has nothing to do with me - that's all them.
@ScottSoCal
You bring up an interesting point but I'm not sure I agree with your conclusion. Gender presentation as a concept doesn't have to imply a strict binary any more than gender does. I personally still find it a useful concept for both understanding myself and communicating things about myself. As a cis genderpunk I internally understand and outwardly describe to others my (typical) gender presentation as "nonconforming".
@mnemonicoverload @gekitsu @actuallyautistic @rabia_elizabeth@mefi.social
I can only filter this through my own technical and legalistic understanding of "nonconforming", which is "an item that fails to meet [contractual] requirements". To be nonconforming, there have to be requirements, and I reject the basis of gender requirements. Nonconforming can't exist, without requirements to which something doesn't conform.
@ScottSoCal @mnemonicoverload @gekitsu @rabia_elizabeth "conforming" means conforming to a standard or expectation, in terms of contracts that would be a standard established in the contract.
The standard doesn't have to be contractual or specific, it can instead just be community expectations.
@shiri
Societal / cultural gender norms still exist regardless of how you or I personally feel about them. As long as those norms exist, being able to understand and describe my gender presentation within the context of those norms continues to have utility.
@ScottSoCal oh yes, full agree on gender roles, i.e. all sorts of prescriptivism what is proper and improper for someone to do or wear or whatever. not much (if any) good comes from it, and there isn’t much sense in it either. lauding person A for doing something well when we would disparage person B for doing the very same thing? because we read one of them as female and the other as male? nah.
the aspect i’m struggling with is gender identity, or gender as identity. being male, female, nonbinary, as part of one’s self. because that has to happen in a way that relates the self to others in the world – if one feels to be very definitely male, one’s self is also ‘not-female’. it’s being this, not that. not just outwards presentation – being a trans man is different from being a ‘mannish’ or butch woman, after all.
but the point i look at when i consider my self isn’t at that level, it’s one before, epistemologically speaking. and hence, gender as a category of identity, doesn’t really make sense to me. (it very obviously does to many people, though, and it’s interesting.)