we’re now working with (arbitrary but useful) separate categories for sexuality, gender, and gender expression.
what may be missing is sexual expression. and maybe kink and poly should be framed as falling under sexual expression. like, these are ways of being SNC, maybe.
of the current three, gender expression is kind of given short shrift in the discourse; there are comprehensible reasons for that and yet it’s not a particularly satisfactory state of affairs. bigtime competing access needs, alas. and presumably the same sorts of issues would arise around how to deal discursively with sexual expression. so my bringing this up may just be doubling/mirroring the can of worms we already have to contend with on that front, i.e., maybe I’m not helping.
but if nothing else it might help some ppl wrap their heads around what these things are even doing in the conversation, why they keep coming up, why there need to be ways to talk about them. like, even if you end up at the conclusion that expression stuff needs to be deprioritized in favor of identity stuff, maybe just in certain contexts, having the lexicon with which to articulate why and acknowledge tradeoffs and so on is going to be useful and might help dial down some of the unthinking contempt.
I’ve been personally categorizing ‘sexual expression’ as a 4th category for a while. It seems like the obvious extrapolation of the general consensus on how to talk about gender vs sexuality. If gender expression is a thing, sexual expression has to be a thing, too. They’re related but can be conceptually separated, and sometimes that’s useful. Especially when you start getting into kinks that are all about presenting as one gender, but being treated as a second one during a scene, crossdressing, stuff like that. And poly, too, of course – including desiring sex with multiple partners at a time, and so forth… that’s all specific expressions of a person’s sexuality, that isn’t necessarily easily expressed by just talking about who you are or who you’re attracted to – it’s also about what you’re attracted to and desire.
If you don’t believe being asexual has any negative affect on people I was told by a psychiatrist that none of my relationships count because we didn’t have sex, and
I can’t say I’m gay since I don’t want to have sex with girls.
and I was taken off my antidepressants because they may be lowering the libido I never had in the first place (plus various other reasons, but still immediately, cold turkey, which should NEVER happen unless they’re switching you to something else)
But aphobia doesn’t exist and asexuals are privileged, right?
Sorry to add to this but I wanted to say since I’ve had bad experiences with mental health professionals and biphobia, I usually get asked “but are you sure you are sexually attracted to both sexes, are you sure it’s not just an emotional attraction?!” Like my dude don’t you think I can tell the difference between wanting to date someone and wanting to be friends? Also, due to be gray ace 90% of the time I am not even attracted to anyone but like sure, make me feel guilty that I can’t “prove” my bisexuality.
Sorry too but to add on, being aro isn’t much different. I told my therapist and she was immediately concerned that my meds were repressing “all my emotions” and wanted to take me off them. My insurance ran out and I went off them bc of no money before that happened. She also suggested dating someone anyway to “fix” the “issue” and expressed concern that my emotions (romantic feelings) weren’t present because “I’m suspicious and untrusting of everyone and don’t want to try hard enough.”
Having your orientation medicalized and invalidated is bad enough, but its fucking dangerous to have your meds taken away because you’re not performing relationships the way some doctor thinks you’re required to.
Aaaand this is why we need the bi/pan/ace/aro alliance.
this is why we need to recognize more queer experiences and identities than gay and lesbian, through increased awareness, information and representation.
Nah. You’re missing a whole piece of the trans experience, my friend.
There’s something called “gender euphoria” – it’s the exact opposite of gender dysphoria, and it can be a motivator for being trans! It’s not that you’re uncomfortable being cis. It’s that you’re more comfortable being trans. No discomfort involved – just greener grass on the other side of the fence.
For dysphoric folks I think that can get very hard to conceptualize, but…being trans isn’t a death sentence? Even if you are dysphoric, chances are you have experienced gender euphoria before – it’s the feeling when you see yourself wearing a binder for the first time, or when you wear a skirt for the first time, or the first time someone gets tongue-tied about whether to call you “sir” or “miss”.
It’s the first time you think “oh. So this is what it’s supposed to be like.” And you just can’t stop smiling for the rest of the day. It’s the feeling that anons are talking about when they submit good vibes.
The primary trans narrative is driven by gender dysphoria, which means they’re seeking something that feels less wrong. But gender euphoria – which is present in all of us, but is stronger and sometimes even dominant for some – is seeking something that feels more right. And both of those narratives are valid and deserving of support, and neither one of them cancels the other experience out.
fig. 1: the gender diamond, centered on two axes, at a jaunty angle because i wanted it to be
fig. 2: the gender prism, with the top and bottom binary faces and the four societal faces, and one more because it got messy
fig. 3: the gender dodecagon, which i think is a crime against graphic designers
fig. 4: we took some of your concerns into consideration and have reworked it into a fantasy map, because that is how the gender is, like the game of genders, haha
fig. 5: the gender rabbits, we heard your concerns again and we decided to go for more of a symbolic gestalt representation of the manifestations of gender
ah but how do you account for aggregate genders such as: i am extremely masc and smelly but mom is my spirit animal
one time while we were in the car andrew said “i basically think your gender is whatever robot body you would choose to have in a transhumanist future, but then again, that would make my gender a featureless floating orb” and i think about that a lot
At Target this lady told her son he couldn’t have a Wonder Woman doll because “that’s for girls” and then bought her daughter the same one. It got me thinking about how often I see people bar young boys from appreciating girls/women as protagonists and heroes, and my own experience with it as a kid.
my mom’s biggest and most bewildered objection to me being a trans man was that i grew up passionately enamored of disney princesses. but those ladies were vibrant badasses who wore beautiful dresses and had animal friends and cool adventures– of course tons of girls want to be them. what’s fucked up is that little boys are trained not to even give them a second look.
This is actually a form of institutional violence that trans people, largely trans women, face.
To copy-paste from a previous post I made on this matter:
Growing up, I had a few trans lady friends who were hyped about being openly/visibly butch and/or gnc trans women when they began transitioning.
Three of the bunch committed suicide after basically being blacklisted out of access to medical transition. Others were wealthy enough to be able to move to where they could have a second or third shot. A femme trans lady friend forgot to apply nail polish and makeup to one of her sessions with her doctor, and that led to him keeping her from medical resources for the next two years of care, and she, as well, ended up killing herself. I could keep listing story after story with similar narratives and endings, it’s really pretty common.
Gatekeeping, whether it’s within a medical context, or a social one, relies on heavily policing trans women to prescribe to normative gender expressions dialed up to 11. We don’t, and we tend to suffer. And I don’t think it’s at all fair to cast blame on trans women who follow those norms, not when our survival is paramount and we’re coerced into those conditions via potentially fatal consequences.
Like, I’m a sloppy/lazy femme in terms of my expression, often shifting towards the hoodie and jeans aesthetic because it’s just comfy, but every doctor’s appointment, every tribunal over my transition, best believe I was probably among the most stereotypically feminine presenting ladies those docs saw that day. Not a chance I’d risk it. Every job interview, every meeting when I was looking for housing, same deal. Survival wins over the microscopic impact I might have on the reproduction of gender norms in those instances, especially when my continued survival means I can live to fight those (and other) battles in other ways less tied to my survival.
So, to be blunt and concise, it’s not trans folks upholding harmful notions of gender. It’s cis folks…cis men and cis women, weaponizing society against us to uphold gender norms through us because we’re deemed as threats and as less legitimate, so our standards are often exponentially higher than our cis counterparts.
Like, I live in liberal Canada, and this gatekeeping shit still happens. I have sat down and taught so many trans people how to strategize and what language to use, what narratives will provide the path of least resistance, so that we can get what we need in the aggressively oppressive system we live in.
Like, as a young child, I played hockey, I liked micro-machines, I liked video games, I liked climbing trees, riding bikes, building forts, and track & field.
I told my therapist that in my third session when she asked about my childhood, just minutes after telling me she felt I was ready for hormones. I had to endure 23 more sessions with her, spread across the next year and a half, to get back to where I was mid-way through that third session, a long enough time for her to forget enough about those remarks on my childhood, before I could get access to hormones. When she asked about my childhood again in the 22nd or 23rd session, I told her I played with dolls, and that secretly, my favourite colour was pink as a child, and that I yearned to play house but no one would play with me, that I’d try on my mom’s shoes and some of her clothes, etc. etc. And after I tossed out enough cliche elements of the standard narrative (basically painting myself as a very heterosexual hyper-feminine 50′s housewife), I got access. I can’t say that if I ever got interviewed on public media that I’d stray from that safe narrative, because chances are, my doctors would/could see, and I could lose access to healthcare, employment, housing, etc.
Like I said, I’ve had friends who forgot to wear nail polish and were punished for it. I had a friend…in the dead of winter…who wore pants to an appointment and was suddenly told by the doctor that he had no confidence that she was a ‘real’ trans woman. A trans dude friend of mine got in a car wreck and had busted up ribs, and couldn’t wear his binder comfortably for a while, and his doctor refused to renew his prescription to T. He eventually had to find a new doctor, endure the waiting list, and get back on, which took like, 9 months.
So if we’re saying things like that, it’s almost always a self-defense mechanism. It’s very hard to tell who we can trust, and who has the power to derail our transitions, or kill our support networks, etc. And while I’m sure if all trans people revolted and told the truth, it might help disrupt that system of norms and standards and gatekeeping, but I could never ask others like me to take a stand on principle that would likely kill a great many of them. I know that without HRT, I wouldn’t survive more than maybe three months, it’s really that simple, and I know so many others in the same boat. It’d be like walking into a building burning from a three-alarm fire to try and activate the inactive sprinkler system, instead of calling the fire department to put it out. This isn’t our responsibility.
I think it’s important to remember that trans people who are coerced into expressing these narratives are a tiny demographic, so our ability to significantly ‘reproduce’ or ‘essentialize’ any gender norms is negligible at best. And that in the overwhelming majority of the world, trans folks have to comply with exaggerated gender norms for our gender simply for survival. And that survival must take precedence over worries of us reproducing harm that we’d only be reproducing because cis people can’t get their heads out of their asses over their need to police everything about our bodies and our lives.
Like, in case you’re not aware, the “born in the wrong body” language stemmed from trans patients decades and decades ago, who were being experimented on, sterilized, mutilated, and tortured. Eventually doctors listened to us and our pleas to just treat our dysphoria, but our language didn’t fit necessarily with their worldview. They couldn’t accept that pre-transition trans men and trans women were actually men/women. That we had men’s/women’s bodies. That we were male/female. So we were coerced into using their language for us, in order to get the treatment we needed, to get any shred of support we could get. The cis-dominated structures of science and medicine are to blame for that sexism, cissexism, essentialism, etc. as well.
We’re just trying to get the help we need in a world that does not want us to get that help, and will generally only provide it if we tell them everything they want to hear. Some of the greener, fresh out of the closet trans folks push that sort of language/narrative hard, because it’s what they’re exposed to, it’s what they’re taught keeps them safe, and it’s pretty wrong to be critical of someone for surviving and actively reducing harm against themselves from society at large.
So if you get the urge to criticize a trans person for bringing that sort of thing up, maybe instead criticize the structures that prevent us from saying anything else.
This is really interesting and a perspective I hadn’t ever considered.
Trans men and women are pressured into performing masculinity or femininity more than cis men and women.
I used to think that trans people tended to be that way, then I realized society pressures them into it.
Whilst I, as a cis woman, can get away with speaking in public in jeans and a button down shirt (I do like to femme out when I feel like it, mind), a trans woman has to wear a dress and heels.
I, as a cis woman, can follow motor sports and like Top Gear. A trans woman who likes those things has to hide them.
And not only is this oppressive, but the pushing of trans women into stereotypically feminine roles can deny society the talents they may possess in traditionally masculine areas. The expectation to perform extreme femininity is likely to push trans women out of STEM, for example.
Trans men, on the other hand, are pushed even more into toxic masculinity and “macho” values than cis men. I don’t think it’s as much of a gap because the extreme forcing of gender roles is actually worse for men than it is for women. I can wear a pantsuit. If my husband were to wear a skirt… (He wouldn’t, he’s not the type, but…)
The moment I announced my transition to the public, someone I worked with on a professional level asked, incredulously, when I was going to start “dressing like a woman.”
I was wearing Tripp pants, a tank top, with a bra, and sneakers. I asked him what a woman dresses like? His answer “Well, that opens a whole can of worms.”
Yeah, you see what happened right there? Women are not expected to dress a certain way. But if I want to be seen as a woman, I have to dress drastically different from what I did before. I have to “show I want it.”
On top of that, if I hadn’t told my psychologist about how when I was a child I didn’t feel comfortable playing with boys or sports, she wouldn’t have approved me for Estrogen. She told me that because I didn’t wear makeup and lipstick, it was hard to “justify transitioning.”
We don’t do this to force women into feminine roles, but we are punished, neglected, and killed if we don’t match up with “feminine” or “masculine” based on what other people expect. It’s terrifying.
I think cis women are pushed into feminine roles. I have failed to get jobs because I insisted on wearing flats or did not wear makeup.
But trans women get it worse, because they are constantly having to prove that they’re women. And ironically, some of the people who harass trans women the most are the same people who tell cis women they’re “supporting patriarchy” if they wear makeup. (I only wear makeup when I have an actual reason to, because dang it, that stuff is expensive and annoying!).
I’m a trans therapist and I advise my trans clients to straight up lie to their doctors and other psychologists/psychiatrists if it gets them hormones. I tell them to make up the whatever stereotyped, unrealistic “trans narratives” they need to if it will get them access to hormones and surgeries they need. The medical system is not set up to protect or help us, it’s set up to safeguard cis people from being like us.
This is why the entire idea of gatekeeping and everything relating to it needs to be burned to the ground. If anyone tells you gatekeeping is a good idea–no matter whether they are cis or trans–they are wrong and they are condemning trans people to death.
cis feminists KNOW that rigid gender roles profoundly damage the men and women who adhere to them. to expect trans women to perform ‘femininity’ to a standard that we KNOW fucks up cis women is just ridiculous. ditto trans men– i know i stop looking ‘like a guy’ when i pull out my embroidery or coo over beautiful clothes or anything else soft and sweet, and it’s already pissing me off only a couple months into my transition. sometimes i won’t have the luxury of gender ambiguity, much less open rebellion against a toxic patriarchy, but like. when i can, i’m gonna. it just sucks so hard so many people can’t at all.
Out of
curiosity, I recently googled “Am I lesbian quiz”. Half the “Are You a Lesbian” quizzes just asked outright, “Are you attracted to women?” as though that isn’t the
very answer a questioning lesbian is trying to figure out. The other
half marked me as heterosexual for things like owning more nail varnish than
dogs. I hope this list will give you more nuanced ideas to think about
as you explore your identity.
These experiences are all really common among – but not universal or exclusive to – people who later realize they’re lesbians and find a comfortable home in the lesbian label and community.
It’s mostly stuff that I and
other lesbians I know have wished we knew when we were first coming to
grips with our lesbian identities, because the fact is it takes a long
time to discover how common a lot of these experiences are among
lesbians, and not knowing what to look for when trying to figure out if
you’re a lesbian can be hard.
‘Attraction’ to men
Deciding which guys to be attracted to – not to date, but to be attracted to – based on how well they match a mental list of attractive qualities
Only developing attraction to a guy after a female friend expresses attraction to him
Getting
jealous of a specific female friend’s relationships with guys and
assuming you must be attracted to the guys she’s with (even if you never
really noticed them before she was interested in them)
Picking a guy at random to be attracted to
Choosing
to be attracted to a guy at all, not just choosing to act on it but
flipping your attraction on like a switch – that’s a common lesbian
thing
Having such high standards that literally no guy meets
them – and feeling no spark of attraction to any guy who doesn’t meet
them
Only/mostly being into guys who are gnc in some way
Only/mostly being attracted to unattainable, disinterested, or fictional guys or guys you never or rarely interact with
Being deeply uncomfortable and losing all interest in these unattainable guys if they ever indicate they might reciprocate
Reading your anxiety/discomfort/nervousness/combativeness around men as attraction to them
Reading a desire to be attractive to men as attraction to them
Having a lot of your ‘guy’ crushes later turn out to be trans women
Relationships with men
Dreading what feels like an inevitable domestic future with a man
Or looking forward to an idealized version of it that resembles literally no m/f relationship you’ve ever seen in your life, never being able to picture any man you’ve actually met in that image
Being
repulsed by the dynamics of most/all real life m/f relationships you’ve seen
and/or regularly feeling like “maybe it works for them but I never want my
relationship to be like that”
Thinking you’re commitmentphobic
because no relationship, no matter how great the guy, feels quite right
and you drag your feet when it comes time to escalate it
Going
along with escalation because it seems like the ‘appropriate time’ or bc
the guy wants it so bad, even if you personally aren’t quite ready to
say I love you or have labels or move in together etc.
Or jumping ahead and trying to rush to the ‘comfortably settled’ part of relationships with guys, trying to make a relationship a done deal without investing time into emotional closeness
Feeling
like you have to have relationships with guys and/or let them get
serious in order to prove something, maybe something nebulous you can’t
identify
Only having online relationships with guys; preferring not to look at
the guys you’re interacting with online; choosing not to meet up with a
guy even if you seem very into him and he reciprocates and meeting up is
totally realistic
Getting
a boyfriend mostly so other people know you have a boyfriend and not
really being interested in him romantically/sexually
Wishing your boyfriend was more like your female friends
Wishing your boyfriend was less interested in romance and/or sex with you and that you could just hang out as pals
Thinking you’re really in love with a guy but being
able to get over him in such record time that you pretend to be more
affected than you are so your friends don’t think you’re heartless
After a breakup, missing having a boyfriend more than you miss the specific guy you were with
Worrying that you’re broken inside and unable to really love anyone
Sex with men
Having sex not out of desire for the physical pleasure or emotional closeness but because you like feeling wanted
OR: preferring to ‘be a tease’ to feel wanted but feeling like following through is a chore
Only being comfortable with sex with men if there’s an extreme power imbalance and your desires aren’t centred
Using sex with men as a form of self-harm
Feeling
numb or dissociating or crying during/after sex with men (even if you
don’t understand that reaction and think you’re fine and crying etc for
no reason)
Being bored with sex with men/not understanding what the big deal is that makes other women want it
Doing it anyway out of obligation or a desire to be a good sport/do something nice for him
Never/rarely
having sexual fantasies about specific men, preferring to leave them as
undetailed as possible or not thinking about men at all while
fantasizing
Having to make a concerted effort to fantasize about the guy you’re “attracted” to
Early interest in women
Not recognizing past/current crushes on women until you’ve come to grips with your attraction to women
Being unusually competitive, shy, or eager to impress specific women when you’re not that way with anyone else
Wanting to kiss your female best friend on the mouth for literally any reason (”to practice for boys” included)
Getting butterflies or feeling like you can’t get close enough when cuddling with a close female friend
Looking at a close female friend and feeling something in your chest clench up and being overwhelmed with love for her – love you may read as platonic
Having
had strong and abiding feelings of admiration for a specific female
teacher, actor, etc., growing up that were deep and reverent
Having had an unusually close relationship with a female friend growing up that was different and special in a way you couldn’t articulate
Thinking
relationships would be simpler “if only I were attracted to women/my
best friend who would be perfect for me if she/I weren’t a girl”
When
a female friend is treated badly by a man, having your protective
thoughts turn in the direction of “if I was him/a man I’d never do that to her/my girlfriend”
Being utterly fascinated by any lesbians you know/see in media and thinking they’re all ultra cool people
Having
your favourite character in every show be that one gay-coded or butch-looking woman
(like Shego from Kim Possible or Starbuck from Battlestar Galactica)
Feeling weirdly guilty and uncomfortable in locker rooms etc., when your
female friends are less clothed than they normally would be around men
and being more careful not to look than they are
The ‘straight’ version of you
Thinking that all straight girls feel at least some attraction to women
Thinking
that your interest in seeing attractive women/scantily clad women/boobs
is an artificial reaction caused by the objectification of women in
media
Being really into how women look “aesthetically”/“just as artistic interest”
Thinking it’s objective and uncontested that almost all women are way more attractive than most men
Being a really intense LGBT+ “ally” and getting weirdly
emotional about homophobia but assuming you’re just a Really Good Ally
and v empathetic
Having like half your friend group from school turn out to be LGBT+
Getting emotional or having a strong reaction you don’t understand to f/f love stories etc.
Having had people think you were gay when you had no suspicion you were gay
Exploring attraction to women
Feeling like you could live with a woman in a romantic way, even if you can’t imagine doing anything sexual with a woman
Feeling like you could enjoy sexual interaction with a woman, even if you can’t imagine having romantic feelings for a woman
Thinking
you couldn’t be a lesbian because you’re not attractive enough, cool
enough, or otherwise in the same league as most of the women you know
Interacting
with het sex/romance in media by imagining yourself in the man’s
position or just never/rarely imagining yourself in the woman’s position
Really focusing on the women in het porn
Being really into the idea of kissing/being sexual with a woman ‘to turn guys on’
Being really annoyed when guys actually do express interest in watching or joining in when you do that
Only feeling/expressing attraction to or sexual interest in women when you’re inebriated or otherwise impaired
Gender Feelings
Having a lot of conflicting gender feelings that are only possible to resolve once you understand you are/can be a lesbian
Thinking
that being gnc and feeling a disconnect from traditional womanhood mean
that you can’t be a woman even if that’s what feels closest to right –
many lesbians are gnc and many lesbians feel disconnected from
traditional womanhood since it’s so bound up in heteropatriarchy
Knowing
you’re attracted to women and not being able to parse that (esp + any
gender nonconformance) as gay, taking a long time to figure out if
you’re a straight man or a lesbian
Being dysphoric about the
parts of you that make straight men think your body is owed to them,
having to figure out what that dysphoria means for/to you
Knowing
you’re attracted to women, but feeling weirdly guilty and uncomfortable
trying to interact with them as a straight man, and only later
realizing you’re actually a trans lesbian
Knowing you’re gay, but experiencing a lot of the symptoms of comp het
when you try to interact with men romantically/sexually, and only later
realizing you’re a trans lesbian and not a gay man
Being
nonbinary and taking a long time to sort through being able to
respect/understand your nonbinary identity and your lesbianness at the
same time
Considering lesbianism
Wanting to be a lesbian but feeling like if you don’t already know you are one you can’t be
Feeling
guilty about wanting to be a lesbian, feeling like you’re just
attention-seeking or trying to be trendy
Suppressing your lesbian
dreams because you think exploring that desire would mean you’re a
bad/homophobic person using lesbianness selfishly
Wishing you were a lesbian to escape the discomfort of dating men
Fantasizing
about how much fun it would be to be a lesbian and just be with women/a
specific woman, but thinking that can’t be for you
Worrying that some of your past attraction to men was actually real so you can’t be a lesbian
Worrying that bc you can’t be 100% sure you’re not attracted to men and can’t be 100% sure you won’t change your mind, you can’t be a lesbian
Worrying that you only want to be a lesbian because of trauma and that means your lesbianness would be Fake
Worrying that trauma-induced complications in how you experience sex (e.g., a habit of self-harming via sex w men or a fear of any sex at all) mean you’re not a Real Lesbian
Every item on this list is common among Real Lesbians. It’s all Normal Lesbian Stuff. If you’re worried that you can’t be a lesbian even though it’s the life you really want for yourself, I hope this gives you permission to explore that. You are allowed to be a lesbian.
And if you’re not sure yet – if you took the time to read this entire thing because you’re curious about your identity, if you identified with a bunch of items on this list – you may or may not be a lesbian, but friend, you almost certainly aren’t cishet. Welcome.
(I’d love to hear other things lesbians wish you’d known were A Thing when you were first exploring your identity!)
just moving along like everyone else 