Trans, nb, queer and intersex folks - welcome!

[Freida]

@Ronin uhmmm....thanks!? Yep - clear as mud -- but I think I get it. :):)

 

[Muttly]

@Freida Yes, it makes life very complicated at times. :P It's why we have mostly been single and avoid dating. It's just too damn confusing.

 

[Muttly]

Hmm... I didn't see you replied again @Freida. Ok, nonbinary. So, there are people who don't identify in the categories of male or female. They are somewhere outside of that binary. A lot of indigenous cultures recognize more than 2 genders, but western cultures don't. So a non-binary person could be someone who fluctuates between male and female; someone who feels they are both male and female, who feels they aren't either and so on.

 

[Freida]

@Muttly I cant decide if that would be more freeing or more restrictive......

. It's just too damn confusing.

yea .....^^^this makes me feel better knowing y'all are confused too!

 

[DharmaGirl]

Sometimes I feel like that maybe, rather than asexual. I was very sexual in my youth, have a son to prove it, but I think trauma might have messed that up.

 

[Swift]

Yeah everyone's right about the non-binary thing :)

The way I understand things is there's your "gender" identity and then your sexual orientation.
People of any gender can be gay, straight, bi, demi, ace, attracted to bridges sexually or whatever.
For example, I'm a cisgender woman, and I'm homosexual.
(The other terms I hear a lot these days are AFAB and AMAB - Assigned Female At Birth and Assigned Male At Birth. It's way more polite than "female-bodied or "male-bodied" in my circles, and certainly way more polite than asking what's in someone's pants.)
So, I'm cisgender because I was assigned female at birth, AFAB, and I still identify as a woman.
I've got mates who are trans guys - meaning they were AFAB and now they identify as male. Trans women are AMAB and now identify as women.

Gender is... more of a spectrum than a choice between "male" or "female". People who are intersex are born with characteristics of both sexes - there's something like 28 variations on the XY chromosome you can have.
People who are non-binary often don't identify within the binary. One of my NB friends calls it the Gender House. There's a pink room and a blue room in the house. Some people (genderfluid) switch between being in the middle of the pink room to being in the middle of the blue room.
Some people (trans men) grow up in the pink room and then move to the blue room, or vice versa for trans women.
Some people (non-binary) are on the border between the pink and the blue room, or chilling on the roof or in the garden. You don't have to be smack-bang in the middle to be non-binary.

And... some people aren't at the house at all, and have no interest in coming to the house (nongender, agender people.)

 

[littleoc]

there's something like 28 variations on the XY chromosome you can have.

If you have any info on that, I'd love to read anything you can find/say!

I did a gigantic paper on gender through history. It has never been as strict as it is until the 1700s, and more accurately the 1800s. People believed that gender was a spectrum, with men being the most perfect but women being a perfect version of imperfection -- yet no man was perfect in his image either.

In fact, European-Medieval/-Early-Modern Heaven was interesting because not-white skin color, female, too feminine (for men), too masculine (for women), having both genitalia (the focus of my research project), missing limbs, or anything else that made you farther from the "true image of God" had to be corrected in Heaven. :P

I won't rant on all that here, but it's definitely dangerous to put more modern "two gender" lenses on history. It was very rarely that strict. Especially in Rome, where being a man was a status symbol, not what was in your pants. (Though women probably didn't succeeded in being men that much, but lots of men were viewed as not-men.)

 

[bellbird]

there's something like 28 variations on the XY chromosome you can have

I've been following your thread (great idea) and would love to read about this also!
(I hope you don't mind my quick chime in as I am 'just' an ally, though a proud one at that :happy:)

 

[littleoc]

'just' an ally

(straight people brought me into this world! presumably!)

(edit to add: I may have budded off of a frog though, I don't have any pictures to prove otherwise, and frogs are pretty gay)

 

[Freida]

@Swift that was a fabulous explanation! Thank you...

I may have budded off of a frog though,

Ribbit...ribbit --- love ya anyway!:D:hug::hug:

 

[littleoc]

@Swift that was a fabulous explanation! Thank you...

Ribbit...ribbit --- love ya an...

21 Pictures Of Cutest Happy Animals Guaranteed to Make You Smile - Mojly

scroll down until you see my reaction :D

@Swift I hadn't heard of the terms AFAB or AMAB, but they do seem better. I always end up having to ask so maybe it I'm not talking to someone who doesn't get it, I could use those? They might work in the States?

 

[Skywatcher]

What is a person born with girl parts that lives as a boy and likes boys called?