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Do you feel in between in terms of gender?

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mikeman7918
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03 Apr 2017, 3:08 am

Short version: yeah, but I don't really care.

Long version: if I woke up tomorrow as a female then I'd not care at all although given the choice to do that I wouldn't bother. Sometimes I'm glad to be male and sometimes I think I would rather be female but I never feel strongly about it. Doing something like changing pronouns seems like way more trouble then it's worth and that's even before considering how conservative everyone around me is. I am very interested in science which does tend to be statistically more common in males but that's about the most steriotipicly male thing I do.

I have actually come across a study which is rather interesting, apparently this kind of thing is very common, as in prevalent in probably over 50% of all humans. Another source called this "cis by default", where most people don't particularly care about their gender but play along anyway because they are the gender that they are. There are certainly a lot of people who strongly identify with their gender and a few people who strongly identify with the opposite gender but likely the majority if not a large percentage don't care. This is consistant with my experience too, one time while talking with my sister the topic of transgender people came up and she said that she doesn't particularly care about her gender, which did surprise me because she is almost as steriotipicly female as Midnightstar18.

Being the skeptic that I am my opinion on the whole more then two genders thing is evolving as new information comes along but at the moment I am inclined to believe that at least a significant amount of people who say they are non-binary are probably just overreacting to not strongly identifying with their assigned gender, however I am not nesesarily claiming that there is nobody who innately feels strongly enough about not wanting to be either gender to be justified in considering themselves non-binary in the same way that transgender people do.

I mean, we are a sexually dimorphic species so unless it causes serious morale problems like in the case of transgender people I think it would be best to just acknowledge which gender we are while at the same time not letting it really effect anything other then the reason our sexual dimorphism evolved in the first place: reproduction (which is not to say that I am opposed to homosexuality 'cause I'm not). There are a lot of gender stereotypes but we are under no obligation to follow them because a bunch of labels is not who we are.

That ended up being very long and ranty, but yeah, now you know my entire opinion on gender.


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Raleigh
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03 Apr 2017, 3:32 am

I feel like an "it" most of the time.


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Tripodologia
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03 Apr 2017, 3:41 am

mikeman7918 wrote:
Short version: yeah, but I don't really care.

Long version: if I woke up tomorrow as a female then I'd not care at all although given the choice to do that I wouldn't bother. Sometimes I'm glad to be male and sometimes I think I would rather be female but I never feel strongly about it. Doing something like changing pronouns seems like way more trouble then it's worth and that's even before considering how conservative everyone around me is. I am very interested in science which does tend to be statistically more common in males but that's about the most steriotipicly male thing I do.

I have actually come across a study which is rather interesting, apparently this kind of thing is very common, as in prevalent in probably over 50% of all humans. Another source called this "cis by default", where most people don't particularly care about their gender but play along anyway because they are the gender that they are. There are certainly a lot of people who strongly identify with their gender and a few people who strongly identify with the opposite gender but likely the majority if not a large percentage don't care. This is consistant with my experience too, one time while talking with my sister the topic of transgender people came up and she said that she doesn't particularly care about her gender, which did surprise me because she is almost as steriotipicly female as Midnightstar18.

Being the skeptic that I am my opinion on the whole more then two genders thing is evolving as new information comes along but at the moment I am inclined to believe that at least a significant amount of people who say they are non-binary are probably just overreacting to not strongly identifying with their assigned gender, however I am not nesesarily claiming that there is nobody who innately feels strongly enough about not wanting to be either gender to be justified in considering themselves non-binary in the same way that transgender people do.

I mean, we are a sexually dimorphic species so unless it causes serious morale problems like in the case of transgender people I think it would be best to just acknowledge which gender we are while at the same time not letting it really effect anything other then the reason our sexual dimorphism evolved in the first place: reproduction (which is not to say that I am opposed to homosexuality 'cause I'm not). There are a lot of gender stereotypes but we are under no obligation to follow them because a bunch of labels is not who we are.

That ended up being very long and ranty, but yeah, now you know my entire opinion on gender.

I think I feel similarly to how you feel. I feel pretty much gender neutral, but don't care about things like pronouns or actively using clothing to express that part of my persona. That being said, there are certain things that affect my life because of it, whether I want for it to be that way or not. For instance, the idea of being pregnant seems bizarre to me, and I most certainly don't want to go through that; it feels frustrating because if I'm in a relationship with a man, it's basically not a choice who of the two would carry babies, and I feel this is something that's been forced upon me because of being biologically female (and I have so far had a failed relationship because of this issue). I'd much rather prefer that anything and everything gender-related was a choice instead of being biologically or socially determined, but I'm fully aware that's not how it works. In turn, I end up feeling that gender neutrality is a core aspect of me as a person because it does impact my life, as opposed to those who find it easy to conform to their assigned gender, if that makes any sense at all.


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mikeman7918
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03 Apr 2017, 4:49 am

Tripodologia wrote:
I think I feel similarly to how you feel. I feel pretty much gender neutral, but don't care about things like pronouns or actively using clothing to express that part of my persona. That being said, there are certain things that affect my life because of it, whether I want for it to be that way or not. For instance, the idea of being pregnant seems bizarre to me, and I most certainly don't want to go through that; it feels frustrating because if I'm in a relationship with a man, it's basically not a choice who of the two would carry babies, and I feel this is something that's been forced upon me because of being biologically female (and I have so far had a failed relationship because of this issue). I'd much rather prefer that anything and everything gender-related was a choice instead of being biologically or socially determined, but I'm fully aware that's not how it works. In turn, I end up feeling that gender neutrality is a core aspect of me as a person because it does impact my life, as opposed to those who find it easy to conform to their assigned gender, if that makes any sense at all.

Would you say that it's more of a body dysphoria thing or a pregnancy seeming like a general pain in the a** thing? I for one plan on never becoming a father but it's because I don't want to have to deal with raising kids among other reasons such as not wanting to pass down my mental problems and on top of that being asexual. I don't know if the same thing applies to you though. I certainly can't speak for any women because I'm not one but from what I've heard it's pretty normal to hate being pregnant and to only want to do it for the desired outcome of becoming a parent. I'm willing to bet that most married women would gladly make their husbands take a turn if that were possible.


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Tripodologia
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03 Apr 2017, 5:07 am

mikeman7918 wrote:
Tripodologia wrote:
I think I feel similarly to how you feel. I feel pretty much gender neutral, but don't care about things like pronouns or actively using clothing to express that part of my persona. That being said, there are certain things that affect my life because of it, whether I want for it to be that way or not. For instance, the idea of being pregnant seems bizarre to me, and I most certainly don't want to go through that; it feels frustrating because if I'm in a relationship with a man, it's basically not a choice who of the two would carry babies, and I feel this is something that's been forced upon me because of being biologically female (and I have so far had a failed relationship because of this issue). I'd much rather prefer that anything and everything gender-related was a choice instead of being biologically or socially determined, but I'm fully aware that's not how it works. In turn, I end up feeling that gender neutrality is a core aspect of me as a person because it does impact my life, as opposed to those who find it easy to conform to their assigned gender, if that makes any sense at all.

Would you say that it's more of a body dysphoria thing or a pregnancy seeming like a general pain in the a** thing? I for one plan on never becoming a father but it's because I don't want to have to deal with raising kids among other reasons such as not wanting to pass down my mental problems and on top of that being asexual. I don't know if the same thing applies to you though. I certainly can't speak for any women because I'm not one but from what I've heard it's pretty normal to hate being pregnant and to only want to do it for the desired outcome of becoming a parent. I'm willing to bet that most married women would gladly make their husbands take a turn if that were possible.

I also don't really want to raise kids, and also don't want to perpetuate my genetic pool, so in that way I'm quite similar to you. I also however know many women that want to have the experience of being pregnant, even when being realistic about its downsides (being a pain in the a**); they tend to find the whole idea as something they really want to do - similar as someone who really wants to do a thriatlon, perhaps? It's a pain and a struggle but ultimately worth it when marvelling about what the body can do? - for me, it just feels wrong, as the idea of growing another being inside of me and then giving birth is really bizarre and not something I want to experience at all. If all biologically-female people were like me, it'd be the end of our species :roll:

Edit: forgot to answer about the body dysphoria - I also don't really think this is the issue, as I'm very comfortable with my body; I'm just not comfortable about what is socially or biologically expected of me because of how my body is shaped.


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mikeman7918
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03 Apr 2017, 10:08 pm

Tripodologia wrote:
I also don't really want to raise kids, and also don't want to perpetuate my genetic pool, so in that way I'm quite similar to you. I also however know many women that want to have the experience of being pregnant, even when being realistic about its downsides (being a pain in the a**); they tend to find the whole idea as something they really want to do - similar as someone who really wants to do a thriatlon, perhaps? It's a pain and a struggle but ultimately worth it when marvelling about what the body can do? - for me, it just feels wrong, as the idea of growing another being inside of me and then giving birth is really bizarre and not something I want to experience at all. If all biologically-female people were like me, it'd be the end of our species :roll:

Edit: forgot to answer about the body dysphoria - I also don't really think this is the issue, as I'm very comfortable with my body; I'm just not comfortable about what is socially or biologically expected of me because of how my body is shaped.

In that case I think I can safely say that you and I have similar things going on here, because I could definitely see how if I were female I would probably feel the exact same about that. I have looked through some scientific papers on Google Scholar to see if I could find anything on the topic of people who don't want children so I could at least get some percentages but unfortunately from the looks of things this is a topic that hasn't been very well researched. I'd bet my hat though that your aversion to pregnancy is linked to your disinterest in being a parent.


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In denial that it was a problem until early 2016.

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