Explaining Terminology

Okay, the title's boring. You know it's boring. I know it's boring. We all know the title is just really boring. But the title is less important than the actual content of this post.

Now, to me, the difference between AGAB, sex, gender, gender expression, sexual orientation, and romantic orientation is obvious (especially because I'm queer myself, and started picking it all up after I began getting involved in queer communities and feminism). But not until after a conversation with my cousin Abby a few weeks ago did it really hit me that even many queers are struggling to understand it.

So I'm going to explain.

AGAB stands for assigned gender at birth. When you were born, did the doctor or midwife or nurse look at you and say 'it's a girl'? Than you were assigned female at birth, or AFAB. If the doctor said 'it's a boy'? Than you were AMAB.

But your AGAB doesn't necessarily match your sex or your gender.

It doesn't always match your sex because intersex people exist. You know that I in LGBTQIA? That's what the I is for.

Much of our culture gets really, really uncomfortable when people don't fit into heteronormative boxes and has a bizarre, sickening fixation with genitalia - those things are the root of a lot of queerphobia, actually. So when a baby is born with ambiguous genitals, doctors and parents alike will flip a shit. 

I'm not intersex myself (probably) and will of course defer to intersex people on their own experiences, but here's what I've heard: when your biological sex isn't male or female, you are often told that your body is something shameful, freakish, and ugly. Other people's squeamish discomfort and petty wants are considered more important than your needs and autonomy. As a baby or small child, you might even be subjected to a surgery, one that you can't consent to and might grow up to wish had never happened, that mutilates your genitals so they look more 'normal' - sometimes at the cost of your sexual health.

And because dyadic people feel really uncomfortable when you don't fit into their silly boxes, you aren't assigned 'intersex' at birth - if it even is apparent at birth that you were intersex. You're assigned male or female. That's your AGAB.

Now that we've discussed sex and AGAB, let's talk gender.

Your gender is totally independent of both your sex and your AGAB. Your gender is a lot less physical and a lot more mental - though it CAN be based partly on physical factors. That's where sex dysphoria - or the lack thereof - comes from (as well as the way trans people are taught to see our bodies as gendered).

Your gender can be male, female, both, neither, neutral, in-between, nonexistant, or so complicated that you can't even figure it out! You can be a single person with multiple genders. Like mine, your gender can be fluid - you can be male on some days, female on others, in-between on others, and neither on the rest.

If you are AFAB and your gender is female and EXCLUSIVELY female, you are a cisgender, or cis, woman or girl. If you are AMAB and your gender is male and EXCLUSIVELY male, you are a cis man or boy. If those things don't describe you, you are transgender, or trans.

Cis women, you KNOW you're women. That knowledge wouldn't change for you, even if you spontaneously grew a penis. Inside, no matter what, you'd still be a woman. It's that way for trans women, too. The only difference is, they didn't spontaneously grow a penis. They've just always had one. Some of them want it gone. Some don't. Some don't really care. No matter what, they're still women.

 But unlike them, you have the privilege of always being seen as and treated as the gender you know you are. People just take your word for it when you say you're a woman. Trans women don't have that privilege.

And cis men, take what I just said about trans women and replace 'women' with 'men' and 'penis' with 'vagina' or 'boobs'. Unlike trans men, you have the privilege of always being seen and treated as a man, the gender you know you are. People just take your word for it when you say you're a man.

That's called cis privilege. It doesn't mean you're a bad person or that we hate you. But it's not fair that you have this privilege over trans people. You were born into a culture that oppresses trans people, even though that oppression can backfire on you, and were taught to go along with it. So we're - and by we I mean feminists and trans rights activists -  trying to make that stop. Makes sense?

Now, onto gender expression.

Think about the things your culture associates with men or women. I live in the United States, so my culture associates these things with women, girls, and femininity...

• Dresses
• Dolls
• Pink
• Lace
• Silk
• Skirts
• Flowers
• Being nurturing and gentle
• Being emotional
• High heels
• Pastel colors
• Satin
• Hair bows
• Dancing
• Long hair
• Makeup
• Butterflies
• Jewelry
• Being artistic
• Unicorns
• Being demure and coy
• Princesses

And here are the things my culture associates with men, boys, and masculinity...

• Sports, especially contact sports like football and hockey
• Superheroes
• Hunting
• Fishing
• Being stoic
• Short hair
• Body hair, especially on legs and armpits
• Dark colors (think about how "men's products" are usually sold in black or dark blue packages)
• Being rugged
• Facial hair
• Large animals like bears or tigers
• Dinosaurs
• Suits
• Ties and bowties
• The outdoors
• Metal
• Rock music
• T-shirts and jeans
• Blue
• Being protective
• Being aggressive
• Dragons
• Geek culture (even though women, young women and teenage girls especially, basically INVENTED geekiness...)
• Being bold and outspoken
• Knights

Now, do the things on the 'woman' list describe all women? Do the things on the 'man' list describe all men? No! These are just the things that contemporary American culture arbitrarily deems 'womanly' or 'manly', even though women can be masculine and men can be feminine and nonbinary people can have any combination of traits. And it's ridiculous and sexist and cissexist. It's not good for anyone.

 Why can't we just like what we like?

But I can rant about heteronormative gender roles another time. The point of this is to say that, in my culture, if the 'femininity' list describes you most closely, your gender expression is probably feminine. If the 'masculinity' list describes you most closely, your gender expression is probably masculine. If, like me, you fall somewhere in-between the two, your gender expression is probably fluid, neutral, or androgynous.

And if you are a man who is androgynous or feminine, or a woman who is androgynous or masculine, you might choose not to label yourself at all. But if you want to, here are some things you could call yourself: femme, butch, gender-nonconforming, gender variant, boi, gender creative, tomboy, ladyboy, sissy, or AG. Or you could make up a label on your own! (But be warned: because gender nonconformity is so sexualized, some of these terms have very sexual connotations. Also, some of them, such as femme and butch, are exclusive to the LGBTQIA community. Be careful about which one, if any, you pick.)

This post is getting really long. Also my blood sugar is low and I'm really hungry. So I'm going to end this post and explain sexual and romantic orientation next time around. I hope this cleared up some lingering questions some of you had.

FINALLY, Another Random Poem!

Unselfish Love

I've been told that queer relationships are 'selfish'

That our love is inferior, is sinful, isn't even real

But when I fell in love with a girl,

My affection couldn't ever be described as disgusting

Is love when you just want to be

With the object of your desire?

When you can talk with her,

About anything in the world?

When her laugh is the sweetest sound,

When you are continually amazed by her?

When you can imagine spending the rest of

Your life with her?

When she makes you laugh when you know

You're about to cry?

I've been told queer relationships are 'selfish'

That our love is inferior, is sinful, isn't even real

But when I fell in love with a girl,

My affection couldn't be described as disgusting

Love isn't disgusting

Whether it is romantic or platonic.

Not everyone among us,

Those you deem freaks and sinners,

Less than human,

Unworthy of respect,

experiences that strange desire for romance...

But why is platonic love lesser?

Why is romance so centered?

I fall between romantic and aromantic,

And my love is partly platonic

But it is not inferior

It is not lesser

Because our bared bodies look so similar.

Because I am both man and woman

I've been told queer relationships are 'selfish'.

Selfish? For wanting to be with her?

Selfish? For demanding bodily autonomy,

Not just for myself but for my queer siblings?

Selfish? For calling you out on your hypocrisy,

Your refusal to follow the First Amendment

That you have used to condemn me?

No. I am not selfish.

You are, because freedom of religion

Is not just freedom of Christianity.

Because what I do with my body

Is no one's business but my own

Because I demand agency,

But your discomfort is apparently

More important than my autonomy.

I love God. I respect Jesus

And his legacy of love

But you,

You have destroyed that

With the theocracy,

And the murders,

And the 'reparative' therapy

That you would call democracy.

Fuck your religion

Because you have taken that loving legacy

And you have used it to shed the blood

Of anyone who isn't your cookie cutter clone

I don't buy this 'love the sinner, hate the sin' crap

Because no matter what you pretend,

You still have blood on your hands.

Demanding To Be Respected Is Not Rude (TW: cissexism, invalidation)

Like a lot of other transgender teens, I've dealt with a lot of shit from a lot of well-meaning cis people - usually adults - who have decided they know me better than I do because of what my body looks like. And like a lot of transgender teens, I've been silenced when I tell them they're wrong.

Ugh, it would just be really awesome if people could comprehend that genitalia=/=gender. BODIES DO NOT HAVE INHERENT GENDERS. People do (usually, that is; there are people who don't have any gender at all). I'm genderfluid. My body is genderfluid. Nobody gets to dictate what my gender is but me, and I do have the right to demand that other people respect that.

I've been harassed online by transphobes, called a 'special snowflake', gawked at like I was a circus freak, and laughed off or yelled at when I got upset about being misgendered.

One of the most frequent examples consists of my mother calling me 'Miss Girl', me telling her not to call me that, her yelling that I have attitude, me yelling back not to call me Miss Girl, her pouting, her or my stepdad deciding to call me by my horribly feminine legal name, me telling them not to call me that, and them saying that it 'is my legal name.'

I'm not explicitly out to either of them as genderfluid. That doesn't matter. What does matter is that:
1. I have asked to not be called...that name, or any other bullshit feminine 'term of affection' that she or anyone else can possibly think of (bullshit because I don't believe you can have affection for someone if you don't respect them, which she clearly doesn't if she can't do this one small thing to honor my wishes).
2. My mother assumes and has assumed for my entire life that I'm a girl and only a girl, based solely on my genitalia, and her ignorance is not my fault.
3. She is the one who decided to name me...that...when I was a baby and too small and helpless to tell her that I would have preferred something more androgynous, too young and ignorant to even know what transgender meant. She decided, not based on anything I said but on the perception of someone who barely knew me, that I was her daughter. Never once considering that maybe I was her son, or just her child*. Therefore, I don't consider that name valid for anything but legal purposes, and I hope to make it invalid even in legal purposes when I'm financially independent.

For these reasons, I have every right to be angry when my mother or anyone else uses gendered language for me that I have asked them not to use, regardless of whether or not they know I'm genderfluid. When I am angry or when I correct them...yet again...they may not, however, say that I'm being rude or that I have attitude or anything like that. They are the ones being rude. They are making assumptions about me based on what my body looks like, and my body is no one's business and no one's to judge but my own. No one, not even my doctor, has deference over me when it comes to that.

*Whether I prefer to be called son or daughter or child, niece or nephew or nex (the gender-neutral term I created as a substitute for niece/nephew because there wasn't an existing one to the best of my knowledge), granddaughter or grandson or grandchild (I don't need to worry about brother/sister/sibling or aunt/uncle/xantle) depends on whether I feel more male, more female, both, or neither that day. Sometimes you can tell based on my clothing which one it is, but really the best thing to do is to just ask me. Or, if you're introducing me to someone, let me speak for myself so I can tell the person you're introducing me to how I know you without making implications about my own gender (e.g. Fran is my grandma, Jennifer is my aunt, etc).

Names

Like most trans* (the asterick indicates the entire transgender spectrum) people, questions are complicated for me. Questions like "Are you a boy or a girl?" (unfortunately, I haven't been able to make myself look that androgynous since I was about eleven, but I still have to deal with annoying cissexist forms with their stupid little gender boxes) and "What kind of clothing do you like?" are easy for most cis people, but when you're genderfluid, the answers to those questions aren't so clean-cut.

Another question with an answer that isn't so clean-cut is "What is your name?"

If it's a formal setting, like a college interview, I will say Elizabeth. The annoyingly feminine name I'd always hated, handed down from my great-grandmother, when I was little because I thought it sounded like a little old lady at a tea party. When I was eleven, I got my first period and started overeating because the changes were supposed to be happening to a girl and that's not who I was. And after that, as I grew bigger and bigger, hiding behind too-big shirts and hating my body, hating the fat that was simply part of the wholeness that was me. It was me, and it was part of my identity. It spoke of the emotional scars of body hate, of looking down at my chest and hating what I saw because I knew what other people saw. As if other people have any right to dictate who I am, to teach me to hate myself. In those years, I hated Elizabeth because it was feminine, It was lace and silk and femininity, and I was hoodies and jeans and cotton, looking again and again down at my chest and wishing desperately that I was flat before the word binder even entered my vocabulary. I looked down at my chest and hated what I saw.

I need to work on that. Because while I still want a binder, while I'm still learning to love my body with all its monthly bloody cramping glory and D-cup breasts, preparing me for a child that I will likely never give birth to, there are times when I look down at my body, with its softness and curves and fatness and hate it even though it is mine. I'm learning to get past that, but I need to work on loving my body. I probably always will. That's part of being transgender, but I still wouldn't trade any part of my queerness for anything because like my body, my queerness is a part of my identity that I hated and denied myself for so long. But like my body, I'm learning to love my queerness because it's part of me. And it is a part that I need to love, everyone else's opinion of it be damned.

I'm learning to love myself, and with that self-love I can look people in the eye and say with the boldness, the determination, the courage of someone who is loved and loving and has the braveness of love inside of them, "You do not need to be in my life." And if they can't respect me for who I am, they won't be in my life.

Body love rant aside, let's continue with the post.

When I was fourteen, I frantically started making people call me Bess. It was the most androgynous short form of Elizabeth that I could think of, though at the time this wasn't a conscious factor in the decision-making process. At the time, I hadn't discovered words like genderqueer and genderfluid. It wouldn't be until I was sixteen that I discovered the words that described my life story. It wouldn't be until I was seventeen - last month - that I wrote a paper on nonbinary issues and basically came out to the teacher by mentioning my own experiences as a genderqueer person.

And it was also only a few months ago that I realized that the androgynous name I'd loved so much was actually pretty feminine...even if the femininity was only a social construct. So much about gender roles, especially in America, with its queerphobia and its white-normative, western-normative social conventions (I once read a book set in Indonesia where the men wore clothes that most Americans would call 'dresses' and had flowers in their hair. It was awesome.), is a social construct.

I told myself this and it was true, but that didn't change the fact that I still didn't feel completely comfortable in my own skin and my name was partly why. Experimenting with androgynous names, I finally found one that fit: Ari.

That doesn't mean I'm going to straight-up stop going by Bess, but it would be really great if people could call me Ari sometimes. Just to acknowledge that they respect my transgender identity and acknowledge that having breasts and bleeding from my crotch once a month and being able to give birth - pretty much the only good things, to me, about being afab (assigned female at birth) are that a) masculinity is more socially acceptable in afabs than femininity is in amabs because fuck logic and fuck this misogynistic culture we live in and b) the knowledge that my body is totally badass - don't necessarily make me female. Not only female, anyway.

I've started using the name Ari on various social networking sites. Not Facebook (yet, at least) because too many people would be confused. But my profile on NaNoWriMo says 'My name is Ari and I'm okay with female, male, or neutral pronouns' and my profile on Trevorspace lists my name as 'Bess or Ari.' And my fanfiction.net account says 'Ari' under the name section.

I have a friend who is also genderqueer - she doesn't really like labels, but she prefers 'masculine' or androgynous presentation pretty consistently, doesn't have any traditionally feminine interests, and got really upset when telling me her mom was talking about making her shop only in the section marketed to women - and people call her by masculine names (they alternate between masculine names and her birth name) because of this. So I'm hoping it works.

Time to Set the Record Again

As some of you may know, it's Nonbinary Awareness Month.

As some of you may have figured out from my previous posts, I'm genderfluid. But I'm guessing most of you don't know what that means.

Let's start with the definition of transgender, shall we? Ask the average cis (non-trans) person, and they will tell you it means 'a man who wants to be a woman' or 'a woman who wants to be a man.'

No. Just no. That definition is so wrong it's not even funny. A trans woman is a woman, regardless of what it says on her birth certificate or what is between her legs. Same goes for trans men. They - or should I say, we - are not trannies. We are transgender. We are not freak shows. We are not anyone's entertainment. We are people. We deserve the same respect accorded to any cis person. And obviously, I am including myself in that statement. Because here's the thing: I'm transgender. I've already come out as bisexual and as pagan. Why not as another part of my identity: trans?

Now, let me clarify. On my birth certificate, it says 'female.' I have all the same parts as a cis woman - and, unfortunately for me, a little more than the average cis woman when it comes to cleavage.

I do not identify as male, despite the fact that when I was five years old, I cheerfully informed my parents that I was their son and have often preferred masculine clothing from the moment I was old enough to dress myself (though there was this one awkward phase during which I tried to force myself to be feminine because I thought I was a butch lesbian and that absolutely horrified me because I had this completely ignorant image of what people with boobs and a vagina are 'supposed' to be). I occasionally wear dresses and jewelry and makeup - though these really shouldn't be considered exclusive to women; it's rather imbecilic that they are. I don't mind female pronouns, though I also want to use male or neutral ones. Because, while I am female, that's not all I am.

There are days when I feel so uncomfortable with the feminine shape of my face and the shape of my body that I just want to hide in a corner, days when I can't stand the thought of wearing a dress and my identity feels between the two binary genders. On those days, I'm androgynous. There are days when I don't mind wearing somewhat feminine clothing (but still no makeup or skirts), but still hate being gendered as female because on those days, I don't have a gender. On those days, I'm agender. And there are days when I do feel like a typical girly girl and want to wear makeup and dresses and pretty things. On those days, I'm female. And some other days, I'm somewhere in-between all of this.

In other words, my gender is fluid. Therefore, I identify as genderfluid.

Are we all clear on this? Good. For a more articulate explanation of what it's like to be genderqueer (an umbrella that encompasses all gender-nonconforming people who do not identify as the gender opposite of the one they were assigned at birth), check out this awesome video.

If you have any more questions, post them in the comments. Or ask me in person if you know me in real life.