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justmenoworries · 3 years

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Not Up For Interpretation - An Essay On Nonbinary - Erasure

(Trigger Warning: Misgendering, Transphobia, Nonbinary-phobia)

If you’ve been following me for a while, you probably know this was a long time coming. I’ve made several posts about my frustrations concerning this topic and how much it hurt me just how socially accepted erasing an entire identity still is. While representation marches on and things have become better for nonbinary people as a whole, we still battle with a lot of prejudice - both intentional and unintentional.

In this essay, I want to discuss just how our identities are being erased almost daily, why that is harmful and hurtful and what we all can do to change that.

Chapters:

What does Non-binary mean?

Nonbinary- representation in media

So what’s the problem?

How do we fix it?

1. What Does Non-binary Mean?

Non-binary is actually an umbrella term. It includes pretty much every gender-identity that’s neither one or the other so to speak, for example, agender.

Agender means feeling detachment from the gender spectrum in general. If you’re agender, you most likely feel a distance to the concept of gender as a whole, that it doesn’t define you as a person.

There are many identities that classify under non-binary: There’s gender-fluid (you feel you have a gender, but it’s not one gender specifically and can change), demi-gender (identifying as a gender partially, but not completely) and many others.

Sometimes, multiple non-binary identities can mix and match.

Most non-binary people use they/them pronouns, but like with so many things, it varies.

Some nonbinary-people (like me) go by two pairs of pronouns. I go by both she/her and they/them, because it’s what feels most comfortable at the moment. But who knows, maybe in the future I’ll switch to they/them exclusively or expand to he/him.

There is no one defining non-binary experience. Nb-people are just as varied and different as binary people, who go by one specific gender.

There are non-binary people who choose to go solely by she/her or he/him and that’s okay too. It doesn’t make them any more or less non-binary and their identity is still valid.

If your head’s buzzing a bit by now: That’s okay. It’s a complicated topic and no one expects you to understand all of it in one chapter of one essay.

Just know this: If a person identifies as non-binary, you should respect their decision and use the pronouns they go with.

It’s extremely hurtful to refer to someone who already told you that they use they/them pronouns with she/her or he/him, or use they/them to refer to a person who uses she/her.

Think about it like using a trans-person’s deadname: It’s rude, it’s harmful and it shows complete disrespect for the person.

Non-binary people have existed for a very long time. The concept isn’t new. The idea that there are only two genders, with every other identity being an aberration to the norm, is largely a western idea, spread through colonialism.

The Native American people use “Two-Spirit” to describe someone who identifies neither as a man nor a woman. The term itself is relatively new, but the concept of a third gender is deeply rooted in many Native American cultures.

(Author’s Note: If you are not Native American, please do not use it. That’s cultural appropriation.)

In India, the existence of a third gender has always been acknowledged and there are many terms specifically for people who don’t identify with the gender that was assigned to them at birth.

If you’re interested in learning more about non-binary history and non-binary identities around the world, I’d recommend visiting these websites:

https://nonbinary.wiki/wiki/History_of_nonbinary_gender

https://nonbinary.wiki/wiki/Gender-variant_identities_worldwide

https://thetempest.co/2020/02/01/history/the-history-of-nonbinary-genders-is-longer-than-you-think/

https://www.teenvogue.com/story/gender-variance-around-the-world

Also, maybe consider giving this book a try:

Nonbinary Gender Identities: History, Culture, Resources by Charlie Mcnabb

2. Non-binary Representation In Media

The representation of non-binary people in mainstream media hasn’t been... great, to put it mildly.

Representation, as we all know, is important.

Not only does it give minorities a chance to see themselves in media and feel heard and acknowledged. It also normalizes them.

For example, seeing a black Disney-princess was a huge deal for many black little girls, because they could finally say there was someone there who looked like them. They could see that being white wasn’t a necessity to be a Disney princess.

Seeing a canonically LGBT+ character in a children’s show teaches kids that love is love, no matter what gender you’re attracted to. At the same time, older LGBT+ viewers will see themselves validated and heard in a movie that features on-screen LGBT+ heroes.

There’s been some huge steps in the right direction in the last few years representation-wise.

Not only do we have more LGBT+ protagonists and characters in general, we’ve also begun to question and call out harmful or bigoted portrayals of the community in media, such as “Bury Your Gays” or the “Depraved Homosexual”.

With that being said: Let’s take a look at how Non-binary representation holds up in comparison, shall we?

This is Double Trouble, from the children’s show “She-Ra And The Princesses Of Power”.

They identify as non-binary and use they/them pronouns. They’re also a slimy, duplicitous lizard-person who can change their shape at will.

Um, yeah.

Thanks, but no thanks.

Did I mention they’re also the only non-binary character in the entire show? And that they’re working with a genocidal dictator in most of the episodes they’re in?

Yikes.

Let’s look at another example.

These three (in order of appearance) are Stevonnie, Smoky Quartz and Shep. Three characters appearing in the kid’s show “Steven Universe” and it’s epilogue series “Steven Universe: Future”.

All of them identify as non-binary and use they/them as pronouns.

Stevonnie and Smoky Quartz are the result of a boy and a girl being fused together through weird alien magic.

Shep is a regular human, but they only appeared in one episode. In an epilogue series that only hardcore fans actually watched.

Well, I mean...

One out of three isn’t that bad, right?

Maybe we should pick an example from a series for older viewers.

Say hello to Doppelganger, a non-binary superhuman who goes by they/them, from the Amazon-series “The Boys”.

They’re working for a corrupt superhero-agency and use their power of shape-shifting to trick people who pose a threat to said agency into having sex with them. And then blackmail those people with footage of said sex.

....

Do I even need to say it?

If you’ve paid attention during the listing of these examples, you might have noticed a theme.

Namely that characters canonically identifying as non-binary are either

supernatural in some way, shape or form,

barely have a presence in the piece of media they’re in,

both.

Blink-and-you-miss-it-manner of representation aside, the majority of these characters fall squarely under what we call “Othering”.

“Othering” describes the practice of portraying minorities as supernatural creatures or otherwise inhuman. Or to say it bluntly: As “The Other”.

“Othering” is a pretty heinous method. Not only does it portray minorities as inherently abnormal and “different in a bad way”. It also goes directly against what representation is actually for: Normalizing.

As a general rule of thumb: If your piece of media has humans in it, but the only representation of non-white, non-straight people are explicitly inhuman... yeah, that’s bad.

So is there absolutely no positive representation for us out there?

Not quite.

As rare as human non-binary characters in media are to find, they do exist.

Here we have Bloodhound! A non-binary human hunter who uses they/them pronouns, from the game “Apex Legends”.

It’s been confirmed by the devs and the voice actress that they’re non-binary.

Nice!

These are Frisk (bottom) and Chara (top) from the game “Undertale”. While their exact gender identity hasn’t been disclosed, they both canonically use they/them pronouns, so it’s somewhere on the non-binary spectrum.

Two human children who act as the protagonist (Frisk) and antagonist (Chara), depending on how you play the game. (Interpretations vary on the antagonist/protagonist-thing, to say the least.)

Cool!

......

And, yep, that’s it.

As my little demonstration here showed, non-binary representation in media is rare. Good non-binary representation is even rarer.

Which is why those small examples of genuinely good representation are so important to the Non-binary community!

It’s hard enough to have to prove you exist. It’s even harder to prove your existence is not abnormal or unnatural.

If you’d like to further educate yourself on representation, it’s impact on society and why it matters, perhaps take a second to read through these articles:

https://www.criticalhit.net/opinion/representation-media-matters/

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/arts/why-on-screen-representation-matters-according-to-these-teens

https://jperkel.github.io/sciwridiversity2020/

https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2019/05/22/why-is-equal-representation-in-media-important/?sh=25f2ccc92a84

https://www.theodysseyonline.com/why-representation-the-media-matters

3. So What’s The Problem?

The problem, as is the case with so many things in the world, is prejudice.

Actually, that’s not true.

There’s not a problem, there are multiple problems. And their names are prejudice, ignorance and bigotry.

Remember how I said human non-binary representation is rare?

Yeah, very often media-fans don’t help.

Let’s take for example, the aforementioned Frisk and Chara from “Undertale”.

Despite the game explicitly using they/them to refer to both characters multiple times, the majority of players somehow got it into their heads that Frisk’s and Chara’s gender was “up for interpretation”.

There is a huge amount of fan art straight-up misgendering both characters and portraying them as binary and using only he/him or she/her pronouns.

The most egregious examples are two massively popular fan-animated web shows: “Glitchtale”, by Camila Cuevas and “Underverse” by Jael Peñaloza.

Both series are very beloved by the Undertale-fanbase and even outside of it. Meaning for many people, those two shows might be their first introduction to “Undertale” and it’s two non-binary human characters.

Take a wild guess what both Camila and Jael did with Frisk and Chara.

Underverse, X-Tale IV:

(Transcript: “Frisk lied to me in the worst possible way... I... I will never forgive him.”)

Underverse, X-Tale V:

(Transcript: “I-It’s Chara... and it’s a BOY.”)

Glitchtale, My Promise:

(Transcript: (Referring to Frisk) “I’m not scared of an angry boy anymore.”)

Glitchtale, Game Over Part 1:

(Transcript: (Referring to Chara) “It’s ok little boy.”)

This... this isn’t okay.

Not only do both of these pieces of fan-art misgender two non-binary characters, the creators knew beforehand that Frisk and Chara use they/them-pronouns, but made the conscious choice to ignore that.

To be fair, in a video discussing “Underverse”, Jael said that only X-Tale Frisk and Chara, the characters you see in the Underverse-examples above, are male, while the characters Frisk and Chara from the main game remained non-binary and used they/them (time-stamp 10:34).

Still, that doesn’t erase the fact that Jael made up alternate versions of two non-binary characters specifically to turn them male. Or that, while addressing the issue, Jael was incredibly dismissive and even mocked the people who felt hurt by her turning two non-binary characters male. Jael also went on to make a fairly non-binary-phobic joke in the video, in which she equated gender identities beyond male and female to identifying as an object.

Jael (translated): “I don’t care if people say the original Frisk and Chara are male, female, helicopters, chairs, dogs or cats, buildings, clouds...”

That’s actually a very common joke among transphobes, if not to say the transphobe-joke:

“Oh, you identify as X? Well then I identify as an attack helicopter!”

If you’re trans, chances are you’ve heard this one, or a variation of it, a million times before.

I certainly have.

I didn’t laugh then and I’m not laughing now.

(Author’s note: I might be angry at both of them for what they did, but I do not, under any circumstances, support the harassment of creators. If you’re thinking about sending either Jael or Camila hate-mail - don’t. It won’t help.)

Jael’s reaction is sadly common in the Undertale fandom. Anyone speaking up against Chara’s and Frisk’s identity being erased is immediately bludgeoned with the “up for interpretation”-argument, despite that not once being the case in the game.

And even with people who do it right and portray Frisk and Chara as they/them, you’ll have dozens of commenters swarming the work with sentences among the lines of “Oh but I think Frisk is a boy/girl! And Chara is a girl/boy!”

By the way, this kind of thing only happens to Frisk and Chara.

Every other character in “Undertale” is referred to and portrayed with their proper pronouns of she/her or he/him.

But not the characters who go by they/them.

Their gender is “up for interpretation”.

Because obviously, their identity couldn’t possibly be canonically non-binary.

Sadly, Frisk and Chara are not alone in this.

Remember Bloodhound?

And how I said they’d been confirmed as non-binary and using they/them pronouns by both the creators and the voice actress?

It seems for many players, that too translated to “up for interpretation”.

(Transcript: “does it matter what they call him? He, her, it, they toaster oven, it doesn’t matter”)

(Transcript: “I’m like 90 % sure Bloodhound is a dude because he could just sound like a girl and by their age that I’m assuming looks around 10-12 because I’ve known many males who have sounded like a female when they were younger”)

(Transcript: “I don’t care it will always be a He. F*ck that non-binary bullsh*t.”)

(Transcript: “Bloodhound is clearly female.”)

(Transcript: “I’m not calling a video game character they/them”)

(Transcript: “exactly. The face was never fully shown neither was the gender so I’d say it means that the player is Bloodhound. So it’s your gender and you refer to “him” as yourself. It’s like a self insertion in my eyes.”)

So, let me get this straight:

If a character, even a player character, uses she/her or he/him, you can accept it, no questions asked.

But when a character uses they/them, suddenly their identity and gender are “up for interpretation”?

This attitude is also widely prevalent in real life.

Many languages only include pronouns for men and women, with no third option available. Non-binary people are often forced to make up their own terms, because their language doesn’t provide one.

Non-binary people often don’t fit within other people’s ideas of gender, so they get excluded altogether. Worse, non-binary people are often the victims of misgendering, denial of their identity or even straight-up violence when coming out.

People will often tell us that we look like a certain gender, so we should only use one set of gendered pronouns. Never mind that that’s not what we want. Never mind that that’s not who we are.

Non-binary people are also largely omitted from legal documentation and studies. We cannot identify as non-binary at our workplace, because using they/them pronouns is considered “unprofessional”. We don’t have our own bathrooms like men and women do. Our gender is seen as less valid than male and female, so even that basic thing is denied to us. I’ve had to use the women’s restroom my entire life, because if I go into a male restroom, I’ll be yelled at or made fun off or simply get told I took the wrong door. It’s extremely uncomfortable for me and I wish I didn’t have to do it.

And since non-binary people aren’t seen as “real transgender-people”, we often don’t receive the medical care we need. This often renders us unable to feel good within our bodies, because the treatment and help we get is wildly inadequate.

It’s especially horrible for intersex people (people who are born with sex characteristics that don’t fit solely into the male/female category) who are often forced to change their bodies to fit within the male/female gender binary.

And you better believe each of those problems is increased ten-fold for non-binary people of color.

We are ignored and dismissed as “confused”, because of who we are.

Representation is a way for Non-binary people to show the world they exist, that they’re here and that they too have stories to tell.

But how can we, when every character that represents us is either othered, barely there or gets taken away from us?

We are not “up for interpretation”.

Neither are the characters in media who share our identity.

And it’s time to stop pretending we ever were.

For more information about Non-Binary Erasure and how harmful it is, you can check out these articles:

https://everydayfeminism.com/2015/08/common-non-binary-erasure/

https://www.dailydot.com/irl/nonbinary-people-racism/

https://nonbinary.wiki/wiki/Nonbinary_erasure

https://traj.openlibhums.org/articles/10.16995/traj.422/

https://medium.com/an-injustice/everyday-acts-of-non-binary-erasure-49ee970654fb

https://medium.com/national-center-for-institutional-diversity/the-invisible-labor-of-liberating-non-binary-identities-in-higher-education-3f75315870ec

https://musingsofanacademicasexual.wordpress.com/2015/05/11/dear-sirmadam-a-commentary-on-non-binary-erasure/

4. How Do We Fix It?

Well, first things first: Stop acting like we don’t exist.

And kindly stop other people from doing it too.

We are a part of the LGBT+ community and we deserve to be acknowledged, no matter what our pronouns are.

Address non-binary people with the right pronouns. Don’t argue with them about their identity, don’t comment on how much you think they look like a boy or a girl. Just accept them and be respectful.

If a non-binary person tells you they have two sets of pronouns, for example he/him and they/them, don’t just use one set of pronouns. That can come off as disingenuous. Alternate between the pronouns, don’t leave one or the other out. It’ll probably be hard at first, but if you keep it up, you’ll get used to it pretty quickly.

If you’re witnessing someone harass a non-binary person over their identity, step in and help them.

And please, don’t partake in non-binary erasure in media fandoms.

Don’t misgender non-binary characters, don’t “speculate” on what you think their gender might be. You already know their gender and it’s non-binary. It costs exactly 0 $ to be a decent human being and accept that.

Support Non-Binary people by educating yourself about them and helping to normalize and integrate their identity.

In fact, here’s a list of petitions, organizations and articles who will help you do just that:

https://www.change.org/p/collegeboard-let-students-use-their-preferred-name-on-collegeboard-9abad81a-0fdf-435c-8fca-fe24a5df6cc7?source_location=topic_page

6 Ways to Support Your Non-Binary Child

7 Non-Negotiables for Supporting Trans & Non-Binary Students in Your Classroom

If Your Partner Just Came Out As Non-Binary, Here’s How To Support Them

How to Support Your Non-Binary Employees, Colleagues and Friends

Ko-fi page for the Nonbinary Wiki

The Sylvia Rivera Project, an organization who aims to give low-income and non-white transgender, intersex and non-binary people a voice

The Anti Violence Project “empowers lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and HIV-affected communities and allies to end all forms of violence through organizing and education, and supports survivors through counseling and advocacy."

The Trans Lifeline, a hotline for transgender people by transgender people

Tl:DR: Non-Binary representation is important. Non-Binary people still suffer from society at large not acknowledging our existence and forcing us to conform. Don’t be part of that problem by taking away what little representation we have. Educate yourself and do better instead. We deserve to be seen and heard.

#non-binary #agender #demigender #gender identity #essay #erasure #lgbt representation #misgendering #undertale #she ra spop #apex bloodhound #doppelganger #steven universe

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cybernexus · 3 years

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Pick five tropes for your character.

1. Determinator

A character — good or evil, regardless of gender, young or old — who never gives up. Ever. No matter what.

There is no stopping the Determinator. They do not understand tact. They do not Know When to Fold 'Em, and it's a waste of time to tell them the odds. No one can reason with them. They'll do whatever they have to without question. No price is too great to pay for success, up to and including their own life. Do not expect them to realize they might be better off letting it go, even if they can barely stand. If you're ever kidnapped or lost with no hope of rescue, they'll be the one who will find you. Their adversaries will shout, in exasperated rage, "Why Won't You Die?!". For them, there is no line between "perseverance" and "insanity."

// This got long so I’m stuffing the rest under a cut!

2. Entropy and Chaos Magic

Magic and powers with a "chaotic" theme. Often referred to as "chaos magic", "wild magic" (not to be confused with the Wild Magic trope) or, more fancifully, "entropic magic" or variants on that name. Sometimes appears in settings with an Order Versus Chaos cosmology, but can pop up anywhere.

It can function in many different ways, but frequent traits include: high randomness and uncontrollability, probability manipulation, and inducing accelerated decay and destruction, depending on how the writers interpret the concept of chaos and entropy.

In real life, "entropy" is a physical concept, roughly defined as a measure of disorder and chaos of a given system.note Per the second law of thermodynamics, the entropy of an isolated system can only grow, never decrease; the only way to decrease the entropy is for some external force to do work on it.note Since the universe itself (as far as we know) is an isolated system with no external forces that can affect it, this suggests that eventually it will succumb to "heat death of the universe": eventually all organized systems will break apart.note Hence why chaos-based entities tend to have an Omnicidal Maniac vibe to them. Hence why Aihren is the foil to that, because they're trying to absorb the energy and save the universe by preventing (or at least prolonging) the heat death. If you find yourself asking “but wait, who was the foil of Aihren? You just mentioned Omnicidal Villain...”

All I have to say is ... Soon(TM)

3. Past-Life Memories -

Past-life memories are memories that a reincarnated character gains from previous incarnations of their soul.

When Reincarnation and past-life memories are presented as being real within the context of a story, it often works in a way similar to Genetic Memory, by giving the character knowledge and skills that they would otherwise be unlikely to gain for themselves. Past-life memories often manifest as Dreaming of Times Gone By.

In most works with Reincarnation, the majority of characters do not gain past-life memories, so having them is often a sign of being a particularly important soul, perhaps even The Chosen One.

4. Utility Magic - In many works, magic is something to blast things with and generally make stuff explode.

But not in this universe. In this universe, Mundane Utility isn't a secondary effect of all those awesome spells, but the primary one. The magic essentially has to do with things on the more mundane scale of the Inverse Law of Utility and Lethality, like Cleaning Magic, or Gardening Magic, or Paper-Filing Magic. Why modify that fireball spell to cook your hotdog, when you can just have a spell that does exactly that in the first place, and to your perfect specifications?

5. Gender Ambiguity Kind of like some other muns I saw, I didn't really like most of the definitions I saw on the site because they seem to be written from a very ... "there's only 2 genders" kind of view. Which is dumb in the year 2021. Anyways:

Aihren is androgynous. So androgynous in fact that they can "put on" a beard (via shapeshifting) and instantly have people think that they're AMAB. Aihren's assigned sex at birth is nobody's business, not even their lovers. It's something that to them, doesn't really matter. Aihren comes out different every reincarnation and then just shape-shifts themself into how they want to look anyway (they prefer to have no sex characteristics unless they plan on using them).

Their face just naturally is very sort of in between the lines of what society has arbitrarily decided is "male" or "female" (I shouldn’t have to clarify but just to touch on it anyway, there is nothing wrong with identifying with the binary). Even Aihren’s body has been described as androgynous. They regularly flip between having breasts or a flat chest, and they're quite curvy in the waist and hips, but also very square and athletic in the shoulders and legs.

Almost everyone seems to find them hot so that's pretty neat, lol. At the end of the day, androgyny is their personal gender goal. Being nonbinary is very personal to one's self and every individual defines it differently. Androgyny is not the goal of all nonbinary people so always remember to ask for people's pronouns and respect identities when people don't want you to call them something like "dude"! (As an example)

Tagged by: @magioffire Tagging: i’m heccin lazy if you see this and wanna do it tag me so i can read them!

#file | ooc #file | dash games #// this was super fun; i've always been a fan of tropes lol #// i've found a lot of these are written from a kinda cynical point of view which was interesting #// when i was younger i liked these a lot more

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scriptlgbt · 4 years

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(1/3) In my fantasy world, I have humans, elves, and dwarves. I’m trying to give them all a wide variety of races and cultures, though we only meet a few of them. They all have pretty different approaches to gender. The humans in the area I’m focusing on have I guess pretty Western conceptions of gender, but I have multiple trans characters, including some nonbinary ones later one (one of the main characters is a human trans man).

(2/3) The dwarf cultures we encounter have pretty set gender roles but they don’t care who fulfills them/their ideas of gender aren’t tied to biology like humans’ often are, so there’s a really large percentage of trans dwarves. The elves don’t really have gender at all. They don’t have gendered pronouns. They can also change their appearance at will, and obviously sex and gender are different and also both socially constructed, but the elves as a whole don’t really think about either one.

A lot of elves do prefer a certain presentation, but the only ones who ever really gender themselves are the ones who live among humans or dwarves and have to choose pronouns in those languages. Some of them choose pronouns that “match” their presentation, some deliberately don’t, and some ask that people just change it up, the way that a lot of humans also do. Is there anything I should avoid or anything I need to think through better in all of this?

(I submitted that before saying so but the elf pronouns ask was 3/3)

Honestly, I have never come across an ask about fantasy gender stuff that was more evidently thought through or knowledgeable about gender and gender systems. You seem to have really gone through the work to make this a diverse and beautiful world. I think you’re doing great, but here’s some things I’m thinking.

I would keep in mind that the term ‘trans’ doesn’t necessarily translate across cultures. Using a different word or label doesn’t make it any less representation. It’s more in the portrayal and the way of getting across how different people relate to their own gender identity. Dwarves might be free to ID as trans in a translation, or maybe they have a similar or identical term but it just means something different. If there aren’t gender assignments the same way as in the cultures our contemporary definition of trans* had in mind, it might feel like a compromise for a dwarf who has grown up their entire life free of the same constraints to feel like trans (in our definition) is an accurate label. Or maybe not, or maybe it depends on the individual or the place they grew up or who they grew up around or their own specific culture.

In cases where terms/labels change, the key to making it actual representation is to focus on concepts of relatability. There’s no one way to be trans of course, but there are some things that I see in other cultures that I relate to because of my relationship with my gender.

Another idea on something you could use to add more depth - gender is seldom just gender. For some people, their gender identity is tied in with their sense of kinship. Like, someone might really love being a mother, and that’s a large part of how that particular person relates to their gender identity. There are also a lot of cultures (including most of western-colonial gender systems as perceived through most of written history) (subcultures can have this too) where things like orientation might be a big part of how someone relates to their gender identity. For example, I know a lot of people who identify their gender as lesbian. These kinds of things exist in pretty much every culture (that I know of). I think more people feel this way too than most of us really think about - we have our gender identity label in its simplified form and then we have other terms and ideas associated that we relate to; ways of interpreting our relationship with other ideas and feelings and social and societal ties. Or whatever else.

I would also think a bit about the third culture folks and how nomadic people may develop identities. (Nomadic cultures exist on nearly every continent in our world. Some of these cultures did the whole ethnogenesis thing within the past 300 years, though most of the nomadic peoples I am familiar with go back at least a thousand. Some nomadic people aren’t part of nomadic ethnic groups but may have a subculture, like military families and carnies. I’m mainly thinking about how the subculture folks would develop identities and what that would be influenced by because otherwise folks just have their own regular cultures.)

I’d also think about maybe making up pronouns that are meant to refer to someone with a dwarf or elf etc gender identity. I know some folks who want the pronouns they use in their ancestral or native languages to be the ones used in English as well. Maybe instead of choosing an English (or Common, idk your world) pronoun, some folks opt to just keep using the same pronouns as always, regardless of the language they are using.

All in all, most of my advice and tips are just, “here’s how you can get even more creative with it if you want to, and add more depth.” There’s a lot to read on these topics but it can be hard to research because people don’t typically get to this level of depth. (I definitely don’t mean to knock at anybody - there is not a soul out there who is not learning and growing in some way.)- mod nat* The definition of trans I’m referencing here is identifying differently (either wholly or in part) with a gender (or lack thereof) than what was assigned to you at birth. That kind of hinges on the idea of birth assignments being a thing. I do have a feeling this definition will change a bit once people stop gendering infants based on genitalia shape. But y’know, that’s something to think about. Maybe have a lore-based definition. Maybe it varies in different cultures. I dunno - go with the flow! Get creative with it.

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d3athwish · 4 years

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very long gender talk under the cut

thinking about how when I was in the 7th grade I was like ah I am nonbinary my pronouns are they/she and I said that with confidence on my instagram bandom/aes account without a care in the world. and then i left bandom and i was like ah i am not going to think about gender please nobody perceive me and that includes myself. if i think about gender for even a second then i will die. and then i rejoined bandom and i am again confidently saying i am nonbinary my pronouns r they/them (with exceptions). and my point is that it’s beautiful what seeing some dudes in makeup can do for your self acceptance❤️ no im kidding that is not the point. but actually it kind of is!

when i was 12 i didn't read into mcr lyrics and connect them to transness at all, because i was 12 and wasn’t yet intelligent enough to do so. but i saw gerard, along with other musicians, being gnc and i really connected with them, with their rebellion of the gender binary regardless of if they were cis or not. i saw gerard and ryan ross flaunting their makeup and cute little outfits around on stage and i thought to myself huh, if they can do that then i can reject the restrictions put on me by the gender binary as well! and when you’re so young, these think pieces we all spout out now don’t really matter, because you see people who you connect with regardless of if they are actually what you are or not and at the time it’s enough, the think pieces can come later in life. so part of my point is that trans people are allowed to connect with figures like this regardless of whether or not those figures themselves are trans as well, because nobody should be able to say “no that person isn't trans you can't relate to them or find self acceptance through their personal presentation.” like why does that matter so much to some people? why do people feel the need to police what trans people do and dont connect with? I think if a trans person finds some meaning and parts of themselves in the media, even if that thing isn't trans, then the meaning is still just as valuable to them.

So this was my view of everything when I was really young- obviously there is hardly any nuance to it and I dont identify as what I did back then (I used to id as genderfluid specifically, but now I just id as nb), but that’s fine. I was a kid, and kids often don’t look into things the same way older teenagers and up do. and older teenagers dont look at things the same way as middle aged people and so on and so forth but that's not the point. the point is when you’re so young, sometimes all you know (or all I knew, at least) is that you dont like the gender everyone perceives you as and you relate to these people who break their own barriers, and it’s ENOUGH. it’s enough to help you and even if that person isn't trans, your connection to them isn't any less valid. and this obviously applies to older people as well, and it also applies to anytime in your ~gender journey~ but I'm just speaking from my own experience here.

and when I left bandom and mainly focused on mainstream media, the height of breaking the gender binary was, like, millionaire white gays putting on glam makeup. and saying that out loud makes it sound exactly like what the musicians I looked up to were doing, but I think the difference is that beauty gurus put on makeup to be beautiful and I could not connect to that or relate to that because wanting to be beautiful was the exact thing I was trying to escape from. it wasn't like fucking up your face with some red eyeshadow to look cool and evil, it was putting on 50 dollar highlighter to conform to capitalist standards of beauty. so because there wasn't any gnc representation I was looking to, I slowly began to hide from myself and became incredibly uncomfortable thinking about gender at all, and I stopped identifying as anything, never said I was cis but never said I wasn't, you know how it goes. and these years of my life really shine a light on how important finding things you can connect with and attach to as a trans/gnc/nb person is- again, even if those things aren't actually directly trans themselves. especially because we are lacking so much to cling to already, but also just because these connections of ours are personal and can help us for a plethora of reasons.

then I came back to bandom and the gerard way gender discussions came in my life at full speed and very quickly I began to reconnect with gerard specifically and I dunno, seeing all of that was so incredibly healing, I suppose. I spent a lot of time with a lot of anxiety about my gender because I had nothing to cling to or find meaning in, and even though I listened to mychem throughout those years I didn't analyze things like that, so really I owe a lot of the resurgence of my self acceptance to all of yalls gerard way gender think pieces lol. there are other figures I still connect with regarding this, but gerard specifically not only because of his directly expressed experiences with gender but also because of the analyses of lyrics and symbols brought to light to me by mcr tumblr. so my other point is that when a community of trans/nb/gnc people connect with someone, that connection absolutely should not be policed by others in any way, shape, or form. it just so happens that in the case of gerard, they have explicitly expressed their own gender experiences that do not align with being cis (and if you think that they do then you need to genuinely reevaluate your perception of gnc/nb people). but even if they hadn't, even if gerard arthur way was like I Am Cisgender I Have Never Questioned My Gender In My Life then guess what? trans people would still be allowed to connect with them. because it isn’t up to anybody what others find themselves in.

Anyways. I think this post was all over the place and I dont expect anyone to have read it but I just think people need to just fuckingjejbfakjnfjab stop being so scared of nb people. a lot of other ppl have said this stuff better and there's a lot more I could have elaborated on but u get the gist! the gist being: cis people shut the fuck up

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queer-buccaneers · 5 years

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let’s talk about rebinarization

i've noticed that people often (subconsciously) end up putting nonbinary identities back into the binary.

the biggest example of this is how so many genders that get coined come with ‘can be used as x-boy or x-girl’. why do people do this? because by doing this, you're reinforcing the idea that all gender experiences must relate back to the binary to be valid. even if you don't mean it! when every post you see has the word ‘feminine’ or ‘masculine’ (or even ‘same' or ‘opposite’) in it somewhere, that's the idea it's putting across.

and i have proof that this idea does actually exist and does actually affect people's discourse. think about how people jumped on the solarian/lunarian system as a way to categorize things like ‘who belongs in women’s spaces' and ‘who can use the word lesbian/sapphic/wlw'. they completely ignored that people can have pretty much any reason for ‘aligning’ themselves with masculinity or femininity. they reduced these terms to women-as-a-political-class and men-as-a-political-class. they implied that no one can ever exist outside of (or in both of!) these categories because they are always mutually exclusive.

⚠️ that’s TERF logic! ⚠️ and that's bad! but i want you to think about and understand why it's bad. not because it's associated with a nebulous group of problematic people, but because of the ways it actually hurts people. it's bad because it suggests that:

only two categories of people exist and it's easy to sort out which is which (in this case, people who experience misogyny/oppression and people who don’t)

there is only one way to express being in one of these groups and it's easy to sort out which is which (in this case, by being woman-aligned or man-aligned)

you know, like a binary. a binary based on gender. a gender binary.

but it's also not great on an individual level! it limits personal expression and personal understanding. i think there are a lot of people being held back by the idea that all their gender feelings need to relate back to their experience of the binary. even if they don't realize it! the vast majority of people who list all their microlabels will have like 70% of them ending in -boy or -girl. what does that imply? do all these aspects of your gender only exist through this binary lens?

and what about the fact that a lot of these -gender terms, when they provide specific flags for their -boy and -girl versions, also often provide one for -nonbinary. what’s x-nonbinary? isn’t x-gender already nonbinary? or are they just binary-with-a-quirky-aesthetic? because that’s sure what this separation of terms implies!

and consider the existence of words like ‘nontrinary’, which is almost certainly a reaction to these kinds of terms. people have internalized the idea that nonbinary identities still always imply a relation to the binary so hard that they're coining words like this to escape that. and then ‘nonquaternary’ exists too, for similar reasons. that’s kinda silly! and the pressure isn't coming from outside here, because mogai tumblr is an incredibly self-contained and insular community. nonbinary people are forcing ourselves out of our own spaces and words because of internalized rebinarization.

and like..... i acknowledge that We Live In A Society and it's impossible to have a gender experience that's totally free from binary influence. but that doesn't mean that the binary is inherent to your gender itself. that doesn't mean that every aspect of someone's gender has to be modified with -boy or -girl or wrapped up in a tidy alignment package. you shouldn't hold yourself to that standard and you definitely shouldn't hold other people to that standard!

so how do we not do this any more? 🤔

im gonna introduce this idea, in the hopes that it might help you separate out your inherent gender experience from the parts influenced by the binary: i call it the working gender.

my working gender is butch. i identify as butch because while i feel masculine, take T and am seeking top surgery (❗ this does not automatically make me male-aligned, and i don't identify this way ❗), i still feel a social affiliation with the fact i was raised as a girl (❗ this does not automatically make me woman-aligned, and i don't identify this way ❗). my working gender is what i've come to by reconciling who i am with the binary i've been forcibly exposed to. my ‘true’ gender is none of that. my ‘true’ gender is longcoats and the ocean and cat ears and satanism and fuschia and purple and ✨☠️🧡🌺. my ‘true’ gender can't be expressed with words. my ‘true’ gender doesn't look very much like what most people consider ‘gender’ to be at all. my ‘true’ gender is what's left when you scrape as much of the binary away as you possibly can.

these are both ‘real’ identities, these are both useful identities, these are both me. it's just helpful, sometimes, to understand which parts of me come from internal feelings, and which are shaped by outside influence. also, this system is not meant to apply to everyone. some people do sincerely have genders that completely relate to the binary in all their aspects. but not everyone does. and that's the point of this post, and those are the people i'm trying to reach with this post.

whether or not you're one of those people, though, the best thing you can do to combat your own subconcious rebinarization is to just..... think!

why you need a masculine/feminine equivalent to this feminine/masculine term ❓

why you need this term to ‘relate to' femininity/masculinity, or have feminine/masculine ‘energies’ ❓

why do you need to describe this presentation term as masculine or feminine ❓

why do you need to make sure your terms ‘can be used as x-boy or x-girl’ ❓

remember that i'm not saying these are universally bad. i just want you to think about these things. try to interrupt your brain taking the mental shortcut to including the binary 100% of the time.

and when you're thinking about your own gender, really give yourself permission to imagine what it would feel like if the gender binary didn't exist. understand that nonbinary can be more than binary-aligned-with-a-quirky-aesthetic. it's allowed to be non-binary. experiment with describing your identity without using references to femininity or masculinity at all. now try with your presentation - or even your orientations! see what it feels like ✨

when references to the binary inevitably do come up, do your best to find out why, and what causes them, and where they come from. understand that your identity is equally shaped by external ideas and internal feelings - but the first step to smashing the gender binary is to smash the one inside your head 🤯

#nonbinary #transgender #mogai #lgbtqia #gender alignment #mogai meta #rebinarization #working gender #mod vonnie #with input and editing from kitty and mangle <3

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b0x · 4 years

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😔 some Thoughts on the Trans Experience under the cut that i wanna vent out bc of some posts ive seen around that just kinda didnt sit right with me i guess

every time someone on here is like “trans men cannot experience eldest/only daughter trauma bc they are men and are therefore experiencing transphobic trauma” it’s like... man, gender is way too complex to be so cut & dry about a topic like this. many trans men grew up experiencing the traumas of being a daughter And being a trans man daughter, both pre-transition and post. saying that isn’t saying “trans men are actually women because they experienced this women’s trauma” it’s just recognising that many traumas overlap, regardless of gender. i know it comes from a supportive place, validating us as real men, but that should include validating our unique experiences too.

i hope this makes sense, but a trans-man-daughter is still 100% a man, still 100% a son, but is very different to and does not have the same experience as a trans-man-son. and a trans-man-daughter doesn’t mean “a trans man raised as a daughter because they didn’t know they were trans at the time”, or “a trans man raised as a daughter by a homophobic parent even after coming out and already knowing they are trans”. no, a trans-man-daughter can still also be a trans man raised as a son with 100% support, because a parent’s trauma can still pass on regardless of the circumstance, because a trans person’s relationship with themselves and their own gender and body and mind is so unique and one-of-a-kind that we were practically designed to overlap the many gendered concepts that so many gatekeep as a sense of empowerment.

and it sucks making our own posts/experience sometimes, because they never feel like “our own”? because they all come from traumas and bigotry that have already been boxed and labelled and sorted into sections, and to be someone who has bits and pieces from all those different boxes/sections? a trans person can, for example, experience misogyny one year and then transmisogyny the next and that doesnt make the misogyny the prior year “actually transmisogyny”, it was still misogyny that was experienced, even if it’s later relabeled as “transmisogyny”. if anything that just makes it TWO kinds of misogyny experienced instead of just one. it’s terribly confusing. and trust me, for every cis person confused by a trans concept, i can almost guarantee you it’s just as confusing for the trans person themselves. and this isn’t also me saying that ohh trans people have it worse because we experience Double the bigotry and trauma - no absolutely not. i just think it’s important for people to realise that there are people who will experience both misogyny And transmisogyny and that in itself creates its own new kind of bigotry/trauma experienced, if that makes sense?

of course, i don’t speak for every single trans man, but it’s a very specific kind of transphobia a lot of us experience that ties in directly with eldest/only daughter trauma, and why we relate to and connect with posts like that, even when they’re aimed specifically at those who identify primarily as women.

and on top of all that, i see quite a few of the same trans man “supporters” who say “trans men can’t experience daughter’s traumas because they’re men” do complete 180s and say that trans women can’t experience eldest/only daughter trauma bc their transphobia doesn’t correlate with “womanhood” at the source, because trauma that sons/men/male at birth experience is different to the trauma that daughters/women/female at birth experience, which is.. horrifically and bewilderingly transmisogynistic, transphobic, alienating, and just.. Shocking. shocking that these two points can be somehow made in the same breath together without any of them realising what they’re saying.

it’s like.. this weird group of people who are somehow both the opposite of and exactly the same as terfs? theyre more like... tirfs - trans Inclusionary radical feminists - the people who treat trans men like a substitute for the “effeminate cis gay best friend”, the one’s who will validate your masculinity but not entirely consider you a 100% guy, latching onto that “biological fact” of trans men being “female at birth” and therefore considering you more of a “sister” than a “brother”, regardless of them knowing and understanding that you are a man. i guess its kind of very similar to the transphobes who make awful comments that nonbinary people are just closeted lesbians/gays?

anyway, yes, many traumas are gendered due to binaries designated by society and a misogynistic and men-restricting patriarchy (and many other factors that all play parts in this whole big system such as religion and the upper class), but traumas are traumas, and honestly shouldn’t be gendered, because they all overlap regardless, and can be experienced by anyone if the exact circumstances are met. that and every single trans experience is so unique and so so complex because gender in itself is an extremely unique and complex concept that it just cannot in any way be monitored or labelled into strict rules and laws and binaries.

every time i see a post on here about womanhood and daughter traumas and cis women’s misogynistic experiences and hell even a lot of lesbian traumas/experiences, i find myself completely and entirely relating to many of them every single time even though i am 100% a trans guy, and half grew up as a son. and i guess it’s just kind of weird but not so weird because sure while some days it just feels like im not calling myself a true trans guy, most days its just me validating and relating to an experience that i had that was unique to me and doesnt necessarily mean that im a woman because of it

because womanhood and manhood are temperaments, traits we are either born with or without, traits that are ever-changing and developing as we evolve generation by generation. anyone can pick up or be born with parts of womanhood and/or manhood. like that’s what makes all of us so unique, not a single one of us are alike in any way shape or form because of that. the combinations are always unlimited. so it’s just dumb seeing stuff like that gatekeeped. you cant Own an Experience like thats... what the hell is going on. every time its always the same thing, everyone’s always tryna play god in some way, be it mastering themselves, their own emotions and life, or controlling others, dictating what they think how certain things should be etc

it’s like that one post that’s like everything would be so much simpler if everyone was bi and nothing was gendered ghadjgdkgj

idk.. just.. to gender conceptual things like gender and traits and personalities and traumas is just so... unhelpful and unopen to change and not fluid whatsoever as theyre supposed to be. i dont wanna be all “nothing is real” abt it all but labels and binaries and decided systems and set laws are literally the reason, since the beginning of time, for wars and bigotry and oppression and poverty and the whole shebang. bc Someone decided one day that being a woman means this this and that, and being trans means that and this and that, and those meanings will be the basis we will rewrite occasionally and maybe add to, instead of completely scrapping our whole outdated initial ideas about it bla bla bla.

im just tired gender is weird and stupid why are we arguing why are we so protective like just have a convo man rule with curiosity not adamancy and you’ll be sooo much happier trust me

#feel free to reblog or chat abt idk

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andersfels · 5 years

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the hard dichotomy of butch/femme exists, even if you don't position them on opposite sides of a scale. this is undeniable, otherwise they wouldn't be very functional. they aren't opposites, but they have a clear distinction.

some lesbians identify with them, and others feel like they do not fit within these identities.

the problem is....there is another category.

there are people who identify with both. "oh doesn't that negate?" "doesn't that just mean you're neither?" "that's pointless!"

yes and no.

the problem with that dichotomy, and leaving it as the only distinct categories, is that they emerged as ways for lesbians to both express themselves through loving women, and deal with gender issues that come with being lesbian for many.

but now that we've got a firmer grasp on gender concepts, particularly nonbinary, that model doesn't exactly feel comfortable for some. not it existing, but the idea that certain things align you to one identity, and that your only option is one or the other, or none.

and that leaves a lot of people without language. a lot of people who approach their relationships towards women in relation to their gender in ways that are not strictly butch or femme, but are not just "nothing."

in example, gender fluidity. there are lesbians (myself included,) who have sharp turns in how we feel about our gender, which can be tied to our relationships with women and attraction to them.

i can switch between feeling an all out rejection of performative femininity, paired with the desire to project a kind of masculinity for the sake of showing how i can be strong and protect myself, as well as those in my community. I've always had something in me that positions myself more masculine when I'm thinking about my relationship with women.

and then there are times when i feel a passion for looking the best i can for other women, in dressing myself up for their eyes as an almost fuck you towards men and their expectations of that presentation being for them. i never felt comfortable dressing feminine until i shut off the possibility for men, and then i really wanted it.

and then it goes back.

and there is a ringing hollowness to saying "well i don't identify as either."

because there is something in me that cries out in solidarity when i hear butches talk about their experiences and emotions, their choices of presentation, and their descriptions of how they want to fill a role for other women.

and there is something in me that see sisters in other femmes, that rings so solidly in sameness in the desire to be seen by other women in a certain way, that desires to be seen as a paired set with gorgeous butch.

and to say i don't identify with either of these communuties feels like shutting important connections off, people who could nurture me and speak to my experiences, help me shape myself and find my place, things that lesbians who confidently say "neither" do not quite understand and cannot speak to.

sometimes i feel like there is a masculinity to myself on the inside that i soften on the outside, or even express in my own way via traditionally feminine looks, and ways that i embrace my ties to womanhood specifically with masculine identified presentations.

and i do not fit a clear dichotomy of femme or butch. but i also don't fit in a category clearly outside of them, worldless and without a community that clearly understands the kind of struggles with gender in relation to loving women.

so honestly? fuck you if you think "futch" is a useless denotation. no, it's not part of the original model. maybe it doesn't really have anything to do with it.

but it fills a blank space, and gives some terminology to people struggling to deal with their relationship to womanhood and presentation due to being a lesbian. it's a space that certain nonbinary lesbians can exist, acknowledging the ways we experience things similarly to butches and femmes, rather than definitely writing off any identification with them.

that's why it hurts when you say "just say neither." that's why it hurts when you say it's pointless. we have experiences that need language, and you simply refuse to acknowledge or understand them.

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locke-writes · 7 years

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How To Write For [???]

As a fic writer on tumblr it has come to my attention that fanfic is a very gendered art form. The majority of fanfic writers here and on other sites happen to be female and they happen to write female readers/OCs because of this. You write for what you know and you draw from your own experience. However this means that male reader, trans readers, non binary readers, etc. have a tendency to feel left out. I know that some fanfic writers try and go about writing gender neutral fic but there’s often problems in that which lead to the reader/OC being gendered unintentionally. The following is a list of tips on what to do when you want to write for various readers.

How to write a gender neutral fan fiction?

First off you’re writing a gender neutral fanfic for a vast audience. Not writing a gender neutral reader. This means that instead of specifying things like “character x female!reader”, you’re going to specify “character x reader”. Leave the gender identity of said reader up to the one who is actually reading it.

Avoid character descriptions. Difficult I know but you’re only avoiding physical description or if you don’t want to avoid all physical description keep it fairly vague and use non-gendered language. It is out there, all you have to do is look.

Pronouns aren’t important. Well they are but in a fanfic for a mixed audience you want to keep it vague. She/Her or He/Him pronouns become very alienating depending on who is reading. If in dialogue one character is referring to your OC or your reader then you might want to use their name or Y/N (Your Name) to give the reader the option of naming the character instead.

If it’s gender neutral but you’re character has a name then maybe don’t write 2nd person you and write in third person. This might be just a personal thing but if you’ve basically created an OC you can keep them your own creation and people will still be invested. Not all fanfic has to be reader insert.

Gender neutral fanfic happens to be the same as every other type of fanfic, the only difference is you’re letting your reader be themselves instead of them being the character you’ve created.

How to write for a male reader? (Cis male to be specific)

First off when putting ratings and warnings and descriptions, specify that it is a male!reader so that it’s easier for those seeking it out to find.

Make note of who you’re writing and don’t mix up anatomy

He/Him pronouns if you must use any

Not every guy is the 6'4 muscular athlete, so try writing for various types of men.

Do your research when writing anything specific that might be geared towards cis men. If you don’t know how something would work or the mindset a guy might go through when experiencing something you can research or ask. You want to be accurate.

Vary the type of male!reader fic you write. Fanfic with male!readers is usually the same thing but your reader could be bi, they don’t always have to be gay. Write for different body types, different races and ethnicities, just make sure you don’t fall into the stereotype whenever you’re writing.

How to write for a trans!reader (this goes for all trans people but as I’m a trans man myself my examples here will be geared towards that. If any trans women would like to add on to this please feel free to do so)

Specify if you’re referring to a trans man or a trans women in your description. Just makes it easier to find for those seeking it out

Most stories surrounding fictional trans characters end up with them coming out or in unsupportive homes or struggling while in the closet. While these stories are important to tell don’t let them be the only stories you write.

Every trans person is different and every persons experience shapes them in different ways so you can choose how your reader has been affected but again don’t fall into the stereotype. Trans people can be accepted when they return to school for the first time since coming out, trans people can be happy and they don’t have to be bullied. The experiences written are often the negative ones so maybe make it varied.

You don’t have to include them being misgendered. They can be gendered and present correctly.

Trans Men Can Be Feminine and Trans Women Can Be Masculine. This does not make them any less trans and it does mean you can write them as feminine or masculine

Trans people can have normal lives too. They can be happy. So let them be happy.

If you do want to write about issues concerning trans people and you aren’t trans yourself. Find someone who is and ask if they’d be willing to answer your questions or read your writing to make sure that you aren’t coming at the issue in the wrong light.

There are trans people who don’t change their name or pronouns so not all your trans characters have to either. Just depends.

You don’t have to say they’re trans straight away. You don’t even have to actually say it. You can have them joke about deadnames or anything else trans related and it be obvious

How to write a non binary reader?

First let’s address pronouns. If your reader is non binary then they’re outside of the gender binary as we’ve been raised to think of it. (male and female). Now this doesn’t mean that non binary people can’t use masculine or feminine pronouns but a lot of non binary people use they/them pronouns. So that might be your best bet although some non binary people use gendered pronouns or use two sets of pronouns. Just depends.

Not every non binary person wants to present androgynous. If yours does then that’s fine but they’re are feminine and masculine non binary people out there.

Nonbinary people can be happy. Not every story has to be one about them being unhappy because their identity isn’t accepted.

Not every story has to be a coming out story. A lot of the times any reader/OC that isn’t cis has a coming out chapter/fic but they aren’t needed. You can jump right in and not explain that they’re non binary

If you want to focus on issues that non binary people face, do your research or ask a person who identifies as non binary what their experience has been or if they’d be willing to help you out with what you’re writing

This isn’t a complete list of issues that come with writing for other gender identities or gender neutral fics but these are some of the big ones. However if there are any things I missed feel free to add and if there’s another gender identity you’d like some tips on how to write correctly you can always stop by and ask or find someone who identifies as whatever it is you wanna write (agender, genderfluid, bigender, genderflux, etc).

#go ahead and reblog #add on anything else you think I've missed #ask me questions #if needed #hope this helps

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condensed-theorem-shop · 7 years

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April Fools Confession

(In the grand tradition.)

Like many of you, I am not from here.

I miss my home. I’ve written about it in the past, though not so explicitly; sometimes, I hope to return. At other times, I’m glad of the things that are different here. Most often, I wonder how it is that people live here at all without going mad.

Here, people go on constantly (constantly!) about gender: gender identification, gender roles, gendered behaviors or appearances or items. People are expected to announce their gender every time they use the bathroom, introduce themselves, or get dressed in the morning. Even the people who dislike this system feel the need to announce their gender constantly to all and sundry: nonbinary, agender, genderfluid. Even (I still cringe a little to write it) children are supposed to go around sharing their gender with total strangers.

Thinking rationally about it, I can acknowledge that there’s no real harm in doing it this way. I can even understand how a civilization could manage to develop with the norm of waving genders around constantly in public. And I can see that some people here enjoy that. (Some people did at home, too. But they had the decency to indulge those tendencies “in public” in designated spaces among consenting adults, not out on street corners.) And I could even manage to grow comfortable with this kind of display, given enough time reminding myself that here it’s normal and people don’t mean anything by it; but I don’t think I’ll ever be comfortable with the demands to know people’s genders. It’s as if no one here has the notions of privacy and consent.

At home, no one would have dreamed of thinking about children in a gendered way. Of course, it’s age-appropriate for small children to occasionally experiment with gender behind closed doors, playing pretend or whispering with their little friends; but when their parents find out, they redirect them, explain that some things are private, and encourage them to keep any experimentation to themselves. Certainly anyone who dressed up their child in a deliberately, explicitly gendered way and paraded them around in public would have comments from concerned neighbors at the very least.

Many adults, there as here, have genders; but these are shared with your closest friends and your partners, and that only if you choose. Plenty of people just don’t prefer to talk about it at all. Asking someone’s gender is -- not even rude; closer to being absurd. It’s too far outside the range of what’s socially permissible to even qualify as a violation. It would be like walking up to someone and asking them to describe the shape and color of their nipples. And in the same way, no one would think of dividing spaces or groups or clubs by gender, any more than people here would think of having a special support group for People With Large Nipples In The Sciences. It would be silly and intrusive and pointless and irrelevant.

Of course, that doesn’t stop us dividing people into categories. But at least ours are chosen, and at least they have meaning. As far as I can tell, learning that someone is male or female tells you precisely nothing about them; on the other hand, learning that they are a Provider or a Caretaker gives you useful information about what they’re like and how they tend to behave.

People usually start to identify as a Provider or a Caretaker sometime around adolescence, though there’s a lot of variation in that range; some people don’t figure it out until much later in life, and occasionally people will switch between them. In that respect, it’s closer to figuring out if you’re a scientist or an artist than it is to identifying with a gender. You don’t have words for them, of course, so I’ve chosen unwieldy terms which I hope at least convey some of the meaning.

A Provider is someone who wants to take on the task of providing for their family. With any luck, they don’t just have a job, they have a career, or a vocation: something that inspires passion in them, something they’re willing to make sacrifices for. “Find a job you love, and you’ll never work a day in your life” is a very Provider saying. Providers typically have close relationships with coworkers and mentors.

A Caretaker is someone who, instead, does the work of caring for their family. The equivalent here would be a stay-at-home parent or housespouse. Caretakers almost never work outside the home; they’re supported by the Providers in the family, and in return they handle most of what needs to be done within the domestic sphere. This includes childcare, household chores, teaching children, looking after sick people, and helping elderly family members; it also often includes hobbies such as gardening, cooking, art and music -- things which make the household happier and more beautiful. Caretakers typically have close relationships with their neighbors, and host domestic get-togethers attended by Caretakers and Providers from other families.

Both Caretakers and Providers are expected to pursue a serious education up through high school (this typically covers rather more than an American high school education would -- something between that and a solid bachelor’s degree in liberal arts). Most Providers carry on to a college degree at least; most Caretakers do not; but of course there are some Providers who are going to go on to work as tradesmen, or Caretakers with a keen interest in poetry, who choose to go the other way around. Both marry soon after their education is complete, so most Providers live away from home for a short time before marrying, while most Caretakers never do.

Marriage is nearly always between a Provider and a Caretaker. (Some places permit a marriage, or some form of civil union, between two Providers or two Caretakers; this is widely frowned on.) The main function of a marriage is to change what nuclear family someone belongs to: where possible, the Provider will leave home and move in with the Caretaker’s family, though in some cases that is of course not possible and the two will instead start a small family on their own or move in with friends, extended relatives, or the Provider’s family.

Companionship is a secondary function of the marriage: of course you should marry someone with whom you get along well, but you’re going to have other relationships in your life, neighbors or coworkers and other family members and children. Sex is decidedly tertiary: it’s a polite fiction that no one has sex with people other than their spouse, but in reality it’s very common.

The important thing is that everyone is clear on what family children belong to; thus, it’s a very strong social convention that children born into a marriage belong to that family, no matter who their biological parents may be. Refusing to treat a child as yours because you don’t believe that it’s biologically related to you is behavior only seen from the very worst sort of people, who will promptly find themselves socially ostracized. Having a child outside of marriage is heavily frowned upon; during the few years between being of a decent age to have sex and getting married, decent people refrain from engaging in the specific and narrow set of behaviors which can result in children.

Similarly, while divorce exists, no-fault divorce does not; divorcing someone is equivalent to disowning half your family, and treated with corresponding seriousness. People resort to divorce essentially only in cases of abuse; for mere personal friction, you and your spouse get bedrooms on opposite sides of the house, avoid each other for a couple of months while you get over the worst of it, and then settle down to living comfortably as housemates. Of course no one blinks at you having close romantic and/or sexual relationships with other people, under those circumstances; but those outside liaisons aren’t family, they aren’t the parents of your children.

Nuclear families, back in my homeworld, are larger than they are here: they usually consist of an elderly couple, their Caretaker children and the corresponding Provider spouses, and those couples’ children. Of course you have a special relationship with your spouse, ideally, but you are also expected to be very close to the rest of your family: siblings, in-laws, parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles and cousins and niblings.

Depending on the number of people involved, households range from a single large house to a sort of miniature gated community or apartment building. The important thing is that certain areas -- cooking and dining, communal, and recreational -- are held in common, while others -- bedrooms, chiefly -- are private; children typically flow freely between all of these, while maintaining a particularly close relationship with their parents.

With so many people in the household, Caretakers can comfortably specialize: someone who particularly likes baking can make fresh bread in the mornings for the entire household, while the night owl sleeps in late but will be up in the wee hours walking other people’s fussy babies. Elderly people have their Caretaker children and grandchildren to look after them, while young adult Caretakers not yet married don’t have to try to take on a low-level industry job, instead helping out around the house while relying on the household Providers to support them. Children are generally taught in the home until college: there’s enough people around that someone can usually teach each subject, and if necessary outside tutors can be hired.

As a result of all this, courtship for a Provider is as much about choosing a new family as about choosing a spouse. A family with young single Caretakers of a marriageable age will host social events (beginning with the classic “coming-out party”), to which many eligible young Providers are invited. Providers (who have generally just moved into the area because it’s where the best career prospects are) attend lots of these events; there’s no sense of “going steady” until very late in the process. The young people at these events socialize in groups or occasionally retreat into corners to talk one-on-one, eat meals with each other and the family, play outdoor games, or just sit and read together.

Gradually, the young Caretakers start hinting to their family about who they’d particularly like to see invited to future parties, and young Providers start accepting invitations from particular families more and more often. It’s very common, when a family has several eligible Caretakers, for a Provider to be sure of the family before they’re sure of which Caretaker they prefer; there are rarely hard feelings over this, and the Provider often maintains close relationships with all of the Caretakers after they marry one of them. The wedding is attended by both families, of course, and family members who haven’t had a chance to meet before take the opportunity to strike up friendships.

With these large nuclear families, your family is expected to make up the closest relationships in your life. As such, it can be very painful for Providers to leave their family and go join their spouse’s. This is something which is widely acknowledged and talked about as a sacrifice; the corresponding sacrifice Caretakers make is giving up the opportunity to pursue a passion as a career. Certainly you don’t go leaving your family before marriage just because you’ve turned eighteen; in modern times, with the advent of near-universal college for Providers, a lot of attention is paid to the difficulty of young Providers living without a family while in college, and foster families, support groups, and “dorm Caretakers” are near-universal at colleges.

The family structure, I’ll admit, is one of the things I miss most about my homeworld. I find myself thinking about this often, as I get ready to leave my family in this world and live on my own for the first time. If I’d had a chance to make that transition in my homeworld, before being transported here, I would have been surrounded by both congratulations and sympathies; it would have been absolutely the expected thing that I be heartbroken over moving away from my siblings. My job would have offered me frequent leave to go visit my family. I’d have been getting ready to move in with a foster family, or at least with a group of housemates and an adult Caretaker, not to live alone or at most with roommates. And I’d be getting ready to go on the dating scene, attending soirees hosted by local families in the hopes of meeting a nice local Caretaker, with the promise of a new family that would welcome me in once I was done with my education.

How are people here not constantly, desperately lonely?

People at home engage in much more tactile affection than people here, though I can’t guess if that’s due to an actual difference in desire or just to social convention. Certainly the normal amount here leaves me feeling deprived; do the rest of you go around feeling like this all the time, or is this actually enough for you? Even without a decently-sized family to provide it?

At home, anyone you knew well enough to call by their first name (not to mention mentors and other older people whom you wouldn’t) you’d hug hello and goodbye, just as a matter of course. Two friends sitting and chatting would cuddle up; close friends would at the same time be braiding each other’s hair or tracing designs on each other’s skin or giving each other backrubs. Friends walking together would hold hands. We didn’t maintain this kind of careful social distance all the time.

We had access to a particular sort of brief touch as a social convention, which I can best describe as a quick “everything-good” check: as you’re walking past someone you’re close to, you reach over and tug their braid, or kiss the top of their head, or pet them or give them half a hug; they respond with a smile or a “hey” or squeezing your hand back. People did this constantly, without consciously processing it, checking in on family members as they walked through a room or getting up between chapters of a book to stretch and get a drink of water and wander through the house checking on people. It was a way of reinforcing social bonds and making sure that all your relationships were in a healthy state; you’d pick up on it quickly if someone was upset with you, or needed comfort, or had something they wanted to talk about. Maybe it was more necessary for us in those big households; maybe you do all right without it here.

Children got more touch than anyone else, of course (is that “of course” to you? I can’t guess with any kind of accuracy). Babies were held almost constantly until the age when they learned to crawl: with so many Caretakers in a household, and Caretakers feeling the way they tended to about babies, there was nearly always someone who wanted them. Older children were still scooped up and held frequently by their family members until they were too big for their aunts and uncles to be physically able to. Cousins rough-housed and wrestled in the common areas; grandparents cuddled children as they read to them.

People slept together a lot more, too -- and I mean literally slept together. Babies coslept, of course, at minimum until weaned, and people didn’t tend to wean their babies until the age of two or so; it wasn’t actually uncommon for older children to sleep with their parents, either, at least on occasion. (It’s a common media trope for a thunderstorm to result in the entire family sleeping in an enormous cuddlepile in the common area.) Children don’t always want to go back to their bedrooms in the evenings if they’ve been playing with their cousins, so they’d play until their eyes wouldn’t stay open any longer and then flop down in bed with their cousins and sleep there. Teenagers and young adults were the most likely to sleep alone, but even there it was entirely normal to sleep in a bed with other young people of the same role as you; certainly on trips, for example, teenagers were expected to go double or triple to a bed with school friends or teammates.

At home, people consider touch deprivation to be a thing -- not on the level of physical illness, sure, but it’s taken a touch more seriously than most mental illness is here. We have studies showing that it leads to all sorts of detrimental effects, and correlates with more. The risk is mostly only to people without families available: college students, armed forces, homeless people, incarcerated people, the severely ill, very elderly people without children or surviving siblings. There are all sorts of programs to address this: cuddle clubs for college students, Hug A Soldier initiatives, homeless shelters which offer massages, cuddle therapy in prisons, child scouts visiting nursing homes to give out hugs, nurses trained in safely offering touch to burn victims or the immunosuppressed. Whenever I talked to a therapist about depression, at home, the first few questions included “are you sleeping enough” and “are you taking any drugs” and “are you getting enough touch.”

Another thing I can’t get over is the way you use names here.

At home, everyone had a given name and a family name (plus a second family name in the case of Providers, once they married). These names weren’t gendered, of course, so there was no need for people whose gender didn’t correspond to their reproductive organs to change theirs. (Transgender people weren’t exactly a thing in the same way there as here; children weren’t (ugh) assigned a gender at birth, so there wasn’t the same kind of transition.) Occasionally someone would really loathe theirs and get it legally changed, but for the most part you’d just deal with that by picking a nickname and asking all your friends to call you by that.

Because all names, at home, had several different nicknames available. Think of Elizabeth, here: Eliza, Liza, Lizzy, Beth, Ellie, Liz, Betsy, Betty, Elspeth, Lisbet... That would be pretty standard, at home. You’d be named to a full name, of course, and it would go on your birth certificate that way, but your parents would have a nickname for you from day one -- usually one of the cuter, more childish options. Other family members might use the same one or pick other nicknames (or affectionate pet names -- “kiddo,” “sweet potato,” “freckles.”)

You’d learn your full name the same way you learned your family name and address, once you were a little older, and you’d introduce yourself to people that way from then on. Often you’d introduce yourself with a nickname, too: “I’m Elizabeth, but you can call me Liza.” What nickname you introduced yourself with often shifted over time, as you started not wanting your friends to call you by your baby nickname.

You wouldn’t necessarily offer everyone your nickname, either. The ranger at the national park would just call you “Elizabeth” when he explained how to tell different kinds of hawks apart. Maybe you’d introduce yourself to all your tutors as “Elizabeth,” but after a couple of weeks you’d ask all but the one you disliked to “please, call me Liza.” That would become an important social moment, as you got older: asking people to call you by a nickname was a way of saying that you’d like to be closer friends.

Anyone who already called you by your first name might start calling you by a nickname, too, without being asked; they might use the usual one, or pick a different one. It was an affectionate thing, and no one minded it, unless you really disliked the person; it was perfectly appropriate for the gentleman at the corner store you visited every afternoon to start calling you “Bessie” when he got you “the usual,” and it would make you smile and feel fond. Someone having a special nickname for you was a sign of them caring about you in some small way.

Once you were in your mid- to late teens, people wouldn’t universally call you by your first name anymore; you’d introduce yourself as “Mx. Familyname” to people you had a more formal relationship with, and then asking them to call you by your first name was a way of indicating that you’d like to have a friendly as well as professional relationship with them. (They would of course often reciprocate.) Small children in your family who weren’t your siblings might start addressing you by the affectionate-title for which there is no equivalent here; the closest is maybe “Auntie,” or “Miss” used with a first name, though besides being gendered neither of those hit quite the right mark.

Then as you got older you’d gradually acquire more titles, and people would address you with those in order to indicate their relationship to you. There were of course professional titles like “Prof.” or “Dr.”; there was a “Teacher” title to which you here have no equivalent, and a universal “spiritual leader” title which covered “Father” and “Minister” and “Rabbi” and so forth. There was a title of respect for elderly members of the community, the way some cultures here use “Grandmother” or “Grandfather.” There were of course many family-titles, “Parent” and “Aunt/Uncle” and “Grandparent” and “Older Cousin” and “Older Sibling” and so forth.

Using a title wasn’t considered any sort of coldness. In fact, it was often a form of particular affection: my younger siblings would call me “Older Sibling” in moments of warmth, even though they called me by my given name most of the time. I called all my tutors by the teacher-title, but said it particularly affectionately to my favorite one. And so forth.

Once you became friends with your peers, you’d invite them to call you by your first name, in order to indicate a friendly relationship, and they’d reciprocate; but a teacher wouldn’t do the same for a student, because while their relationship might be quite close, it wasn’t a friendly one, it was a teacher-student relationship. Instead, they’d invite them to call them by the teacher-title and their first name, in order to indicate closeness while keeping the kind of relationship strictly segregated. People would have winced at the custom many teachers have here of asking their students to call them by just their first name; they’d see that as two steps from having sex with a student. It was considered particularly important in relationships with any kind of power dynamic that titles be used, in order to remind the person with more power to be careful of how they wielded it.

Other things were different at home, as well, though most of them less far-reaching than what I’ve described above.

Pets weren’t common there in the same way they are here; people had them, certainly, but they were a niche interest. I still find myself startling at the ubiquity of living animals roaming people’s houses and being treated as family members. No one adopted an animal unless they’d conducted extensive research into its habits and behavior and become something of a lay expert on the topic.

Punishment of children was much less common as a concept; certainly corporal punishment was unheard of. A child who misbehaved was corrected, scolded, or temporarily excluded from the conversation until they could behave civilly. Occasionally privileges were lost -- and I mean real privileges, a trip to the waterpark or a special dessert or choosing what book a Caretaker would read aloud, not things like privacy or seeing their friends or going outside. More often, either the parent and child would sit down and calmly discuss the issue, or (if it wasn’t really about the issue) the parent would address the core problem by feeding the child or putting them to bed or sending them to run around outside.

Fostering of teenagers was very common. Teenagers, that is, were often sent to live with another household, for a period of time from a month to a year or more. This could be a way of dealing with behavioral issues (though never a form of punishment): often a misbehaving teenager was turned out to just need some breathing space, acted perfectly reasonable in the household of a family friend, and had a much better relationship with their own family when they returned a few months later. Other times, it was a sort of prelude to a courtship: if the other family had a Caretaker child of similar age who seemed like they would make a particularly good match, a teenage Provider might (without having that mentioned to them) be sent to go live with them for a time, to see if they would strike up a close friendship. Often, also, it could be a sort of apprenticeship, in which a precocious teenager whose family found themselves unable to provide tutor in their subject area of choice might send them to live temporarily with an expert on the subject and receive close guidance there.

Certainly there are things about this world which I like. I enjoy television shows (television shows! what a marvelous invention); at home, we had movies, which occasionally came in trilogies, but no such thing as serial television. I found the frequent characterization of mental illness as being of demonic origins much more tolerable than I suspect most people here would (it’s not as if anyone was blamed for being possessed by a demon), but your way of characterizing it is still rather superior. And I applaud the amount of money that is given to foreign charities, here.

But I still miss my homeworld.

#april fools #worldbuilding

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wyrmwynd · 7 years

Text

just me rambling under the cut, don’t mind me.

While I understand that a singular “LGBT” community sounds nice in practice, and that a lot of the times, the multiple identities included in the acronym work towards similar goals. However I really don’t think there is a singular “LGBT” community. I am saying this as a nonbinary bi/panromantic asexual. I was born a girl and have loved girls all my life. I’m typically viewed as a girl, and therefore, for the sake of simplicity, will refer to my own attraction to girls as “gay,” considering the common use of the word “gay” has become a non-offensive and non-medicalized way to say “attracted to the same/silimar gender to the self” and/or “qu*er”.

I will start with the most obvious division: the rift between the LGB and the T. Cis gay people tend to be incredibly transphobic - not as much as cis heterosexuals, but it is still incredibly obvious. Most of the transgender people I know do not feel entirely comfortable in a room of cis gay people without another transgender person being there. I feel like this rift may be more recent; in history, I feel that, perhaps, the acronym for a “LGBT community” may have been correct. Perhaps at one point, cis gay people and transgender people really worked together, and cis gay people respected transgender people. However I feel that, as LGB identities have become more accepted by mainstream heterosexual society, people who are cis and L/G/B have made attempts to distance themselves from the further marginalized transgender people. I feel that, as the public has become more disdainful of transgender people, cis gay people are setting themselves further apart as a sort of “defense” as if to say, “see, at least we are like them.” Of course, nobody really says this. However the actions that cis gay people take have been slowly transitioning to becoming more aligned with this statement.

I feel that, at this point in time, there is very distinctly a cis LGB community and a transgender community and that, while they may intersect, they seem to be rather distinct. The only way I feel this is not true is in the treatment of cis LGB people by straight transgender people. I have seen straight transgender people bend over backwards to help LGB causes, however I just do not see quite the same commitment from LGB people towards transgender people of any orientation.

And that is simply in the original acronym.

With the additions of extra words and the hellish plus sign, the “LGBTQIA+” “community” is even more fractured. Even though many identities will overlap, and many experiences will be shared, I truly do not believe that there is an all-encompassing community for all of these identities.

You see this pop up a lot recently; are ace/aro people lgbt? are intersex people lgbt? is qu*er even an acceptable identitfier anymore? What about split attraction models? Identities that may be born of trauma? Do you belong if you like many genders, but not the same as yourself? And then we get even further into people like Huffpost trying to convince people that heterosexual kink is part of LGBT. I’ve seen p*dophiles and kinksters and sapiosexuals and furries try to wriggle their way into qu*er and LGBTQIA+ “communities” as if these are even equitable identities that are in any way shape or form discriminated against.

And so the question arises very often: What defines someone as being part of the LGBT community?

People will wax poetic about the history of LGBT, going back to events such as Stonewall wherein gay people and transgender people fought together for our rights, yet will also say that intersex people should not be included in the community and that qu*er is nothing but a slur and an invalid identity, although intersex people have loooong been part of the community, and although qu*er as an identifier has a history of being reclaimed and used in a liberating fashion to denote the lack of a specific “identity” but to feel explicitly qu*er.

Some will say it’s about the oppression faced, although the oppression of cis gays and transgender straights have some distinctly different forms of oppression, and that intersex people experience very different oppression. This method of explaining LGBTQIA+ identities is rife with misconstrument. This is where kinksters and p*dophiles and furries try to wriggle their way in, although they, without a doubt, do not experience real oppression nor are they in any way an orientation or gender identity.

Another idea is that if the identity was/is classified as a mental illness, then it is LGBT. However many people who believe this do not think that asexuals/aromantics or split attraction models or identities born of trauma are truly LGBTQIA+.

The idea of a cohesive LGBTQIA+ “community” is just such a bad concept for so many reasons. It’s so vague, it’s so easy to infiltrate with filthy people like p*dophiles, and there is so much fighting and discontent between the communities. Hell, even bisexual people get shit on often by LG people, and their experiences are extremely intertwined.

I dunno. I’m just so sick of the fighting of who is and isn’t lgbt. I have seen people proclaim that intersex people are not LGBTQIA+, yet kinksters are. Where is the line? How can there be an LGBT “community” if the people in the community cannot even agree on what defines the community?

What is the point?

My point is that I believe it is fruitless to argue about who is and isn’t allowed in the lgbt community. Legitimate identities that have multiple reasons to be included (such as intersex people) are often forgotten or left out purposefully of these conversations. The “Are ace/aro people part of LGBT?” questions have been going on for years with no end in sight.

So I suppose, the question is, why is it that people want to even be part of a community that is so loosely defined, so carelessly handled, so easily misconstrued, in the first place? Why is the idea of a catch-all community for all gender identities and romantic/sexual orientations even an idea? Of course, everyone simply wants to fit in someplace. The question of asexuals comes to mind easily; many ace/aro people feel they belong in the community. Many feel they don’t. Outside of ace/aro people, the opinion is still split. This continuing debate, I believe, is part of the idea that ace/aro people are looking for someplace to fit in. The ace/aro community has been plagued with white supremacy and homophobia for a very long time. Of course, I’m talking about AVEN. AVEN was a complete and utter cesspool. It was the only attempt at a community for ace/aro people that ever took off even remotely, and it filled with horrible bigots. Since then, more sensible ace/aro people have tried to claw themselves a space in LGBT communities. It makes sense; they are a type of orientation. However the backlash is huge and, historically, ace/aro identities have not had a name, and therefore no space in a community. Many ace people try desperately to gain the approval of the “LGBT community” but I think it’s important to realize that even transgender people do not have the approval of the LGB community. Transgender spaces and lgb spaces are very different. And basically, what I am getting at, is that I think it is silly for people to beg to be part of the LGBT community, when the community itself is already torn within its own acronym. I think that the lgbt community is a fake idea that is comforting at first, but can get very nasty very quickly. I think that separate communities would be the best course of action for each identity with, of course, some overlap, as that is inevitable. Gay transgender people exist, and gay intersex people exist, and gay transgender intersex people exist. These identities aren’t exclusive of one another by any means. I just feel that, as far as a community feeling goes, I do not think it is productive to try and piece together some metaphorical quilt of identities. I think it harms many people and that grouping these identities together only obscures them further, especially if the identity is not explicitly those of cis gay people.

I don’t know. I’ve been thinking about this for a really long time and I feel like it’s just time to let go of the idea of an lgbt community so that identities can focus on building communities for their own identities, instead of constantly doing emotional and mental labor for other identities with, often, nothing in return.

#mycelias shit #feel free to tell me im wrong but. idk dude.#ive been thinking about this for years and mentally gathering evidence for years #and i just....... idk.

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understandingpoli-blog · 4 years

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culminating paper

As a maturing teenager, I was always the type to be very adventurous and I tend to explore everything before establishing what I like and what fits me and all that. This exploring nature may be because I am still trying to search for myself and am still trying to discover who I actually am. I was never completely comfortable with how I present myself because I haven’t fully grasped it yet. Taking this course, Understanding the Self, has helped me dive deeper into the understanding of my own self, as the name itself suggests.

INTRODUCTORY TOPICS

Bioecological Theory

As these were the first few topics discussed in the course, I was very confused as to why everything was so complicated. I expected a simple course that will help me discover myself by discussing my hobbies and whatnot, but turns out it’s full of technicalities; the self is more complicated than I expected. Bronfenbrenner’s Bioecological Theory introduced me to the subsystems that I interact with dynamically and the self produced within different contexts. The PPCT Model was also able to summarize the model; it’s meaning being Process-Person-Context-Time.

I was able to apply the proximal process of my interactions with others to the identification of myself. Take for example my High School friends who I’ve interacted with regularly for an extended period of time; they were able to help shape who I am today. I was also able to see how others may perceive me and my personality because of the Demand, Resource, and Force characteristics I have. My most prominent demand characteristic would probably be that I am a Filipina. I could place myself in different contexts now as well and see that there is a bigger picture as to the behavior of the people around me and its effects on me, like in the exosystem and macrosystem. The culture I was bred in resulted in me using slang such as ‘deins’ and ‘pare’, and it was interesting to know that some of the things my close loved ones experience may also affect me. Time, though, was very easy to understand knowing time really is an important aspect in the growth of a person.

The Self in the Globalizing World

The Hybrid Identities activity helped me understand myself with regards to this topic. I was able to visualize and differentiate the different global and local characteristics that make up Sophie Policarpio. Though she is a pure Filipino, she is highly influenced by external entities. It really is hard to pinpoint one exact identity, and I was also flustered to see that who I thought I was was actually a hybrid of many, but in the end I accepted that it is a product of my development and the conditions I was raised in. The fact that I am writing this essay in English already gives me a hybrid identity.

MODULE 1

The Thinking Self

The existence of a System 1 and System 2 working in my brain during my thought process was a new concept to me. Their dynamic of how one works faster than the other is fascinating and I guess one is more important than the other depending on the context. One is fast and automatic while one is slow and deliberate. Meanwhile, the cognitive biases are the ones I find very accurate. Now that I think about it, I am actually more victim to the Anchoring and Adjusting one. For example, I am thinking about eating this last bag of chips that was reserved for my sister, but then I get a reference point and say, "Oh it's okay, minsan lang naman eh," when in fact the actual deed is not right at all and I only tried to justify it.

The Feeling Self

I was so glad to know that what I learned in the children's movie Inside Out would actually be helpful in class. The discussion of basic emotions was easy because of this. My biggest takeaway from this, though, would have to be that your emotional condition does not only affect your head, but the entire body as well. This is why I feel too incompetent and too indulgent at times, because I tend to accommodate my lazy and greedy needs as a result of the hormones that are released depending on my mood. Another takeaway would be discovering how we react to a stimulus and identifying what to feel because of it. The emotional experience was presented as a process to understand this with having an ABC acronym: A for activating event which is the stimuli, B for beliefs which is what affects our assessments, and C for consequence of an emotion felt as a result of the evaluation.

MODULE 2

Psychodynamic Theory

Freud’s Psychosexual Theory of Development was the hardest for me to take in, since I personally am disturbed by the fact that this is a theory we are required to study. It does not apply to me at all, especially the oedipus complex and things like electra complex. I am sure about not being attracted to my parents at all, and I have never felt inferior to the male genitalia. I still am not sure as to why and how Freud has come up with this concept, but what I do understand is presence of the Id, Ego, and Superego. I do have internal conflicts and discussions in my head, and I know that this happens when these components are conflicting in my head whenever I try to make decisions. I also find myself relating to the fixations and defense mechanisms as mentioned in this theory. I smoke now and stress eat as well, which is a fixation that may have been fostered ever since the very early oral stage. As for my defense mechanisms, I relate most to sublimation in the form of music and compensation to try and distract myself from my problems. I rely on music and start writing songs to express myself and I always try to look for things to do or keep myself busy so I can avoid my problems.

Psychosocial Theory

Erikson's Psychosocial Theory, on the other hand, is what I feel is the most realistic. Furthermore, this covers all the stages in life until old age. I was really able to analyze my past and present experiences to each stage that I have already gone through. To cite an example, I consider myself very ambitious so I was able to relate to the Industry vs Inferiority Stage and looking for a sense of accomplishment under the pressures of the industry. I believe my being ambitious has helped me grow into the abilities and hobbies I hone now. I believe, too, that as I grow up, I will be able to look back on these stages and apply them to myself in the future.

MODULE 3

Family

I’ve always had issues with my parents that until today have never been resolved. This is why I relate so much to the Individuation aspect of this topic, specifically the separation and self-assertion components. I do try the mutuality and permeability components and try to understand them but the issue is that they don’t try to understand my side. They always force their ideals on me, then I saw that this behavior falls under psychological control and I never felt so validated. I have always been invalidated for going against my parents but it turns out I was just fighting against their psychological control. I understand that they are the ones who raised me and they have put me where I am today and I am so privileged, but this aspect discussed in class has really given attention to my repressed feelings about them.

Peers

Now that I am in college, I noticed that I tend to spend more time with friends and I find myself trying to create a bigger network of friends; I have met my boyfriend through this as well. I believe that since I spend so much more time with my friends I tend to adapt their mannerisms and this becomes a part of my identity. This is when I am able to apply the crowds as caricature, channel, context. I am now able to identify with others crowds, and one of them would be the musicians. I am always around the AMP Bench with my orgmates, and I am more than happy to be called a musician like them. Although being around crowds also implies not only good influences, but bad ones as well. I turn to vices now at times because of their influence. My Twitter biography says conformity is losing but I guess I lost since I conformed to what was “cool”.

Sex and Gender

I currently have a transgender (female-to-male) boyfriend, and my relationship with him has helped me understand more about the SOGIE community. Being his girlfriend, I would have to be the one to study about the community to understand him more and so I would know how to treat him with respect, so this topic was nothing new to me; even sparked up a debate with Sir Galvez about transgenders being straight or gay… I eventually understood his point though. I, myself, am a pansexual cisgendered woman, and my sexuality is often accused of regarding the transgenders as a third gender, thus the need to differentiate pansexuals from bisexuals. To rebut this misconception, we do consider transgenders as part of the binary; transmen are men and transwomen are women. The need to call ourselves pansexual as differentiated from bisexual is because we are also attracted to the genderfluid and nonbinary people, who do not consider themselves part of the binary: male or female.

It was fun to discuss this topic in class because I did not expect for Ateneo to be "woke" enough to consider actually including this in the lesson plans in a required course. This topic hits close to home and I felt as if I was in a safe space because I knew we wouldn't be oppressed in this type of environment. The discussion of this topic, if it hasn’t already, will eventually open up discussions between those who are LGBT and those who are not.

MODULE 4

Habitus

Since habitus is inculcated, structured, durable, and generative and transposable, then my habitus must be something I acquired in childhood that reflects the society I acquired it from, and I must have accumulated a number of practices that have stayed with me until now. To name a few, my habitus would probably be how I pray before eating, how I turn on the aircon every night before I sleep, how I always have a water jug or bottle around me, etc.

Discovering my habitus by way of identifying my capital and field, has enabled me to place my self in the structures of society as well. I know that how I turn on my aircon every night is something not everyone can do. This is because I have the capital of money that can buy me an aircon and afford to pay for it being turned on every night. This is done inside my house, the field wherein my father is at the top of the hierarchy as he is the one who provides the capital as well. This leads me to recognize my privilege, and connect this topic to the next one—inequality.

Inequality

In this world of injustice, the Five Tenets of Social Inequality is very much prevalent in our governments and work places. This makes the upper class so exclusive and so privileged and if these tenets exists, the richer will only get richer, and the poorer would be even poorer. The oppressed will only remain oppressed because these tenets promote these bad mentalities as something necessary and normal, when in fact humans are capable of understanding and humans can choose not to go down that path of inequality. To attain true social justice, we all must be equally participating as a citizen of society.

Intersectionality

Intersectionalities exist as a product of being a part of multiple social groups. I would be part of the Asian race who are women, both of which being a minority group. I am also a part of the middle working class which is at the border of the matrix of oppression. This helps me understand myself within the context of societal structures. Though these characteristics do not define me, I am still enlightened by knowing my place in society because the way others treat me may depend on this intersectionality that I have.

All in all I know that each and every topic has impacted my way of thinking, and I am now at a much better place in my journey to finding myself. I can now paint a bigger picture of my place in society and I can see how my place in society affects not only myself but others as well. The multiple influences that shape who I am today are easily pinpointed now, too. There are so many things to consider before I can actually identify myself, but I can tell that this course has helped me grow as an individual because of how the topics were actually applicable in everyday life. I am thankful to see how comfortable I am now knowing about myself. The journey is far from done, but I can confidently say that I have moved forward, and these topics, I know, I can and will use for further improvement of myself.

#byesocsci11 #thankyousirgalvez #culminatingpaper

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