What's your opinion on "Genderfluids"?

[AustinB]

I don't care what you call yourself. I don't agree with it, but whatever. As long as you're not hurting anyone or acting like a complete cunt about it (like, where you have to constantly correct people about them "misgendering" you) (or insulting "cis" people for oppressing you). I think most of them probably have gender disphoria. But as long as you're happy with yourself, go ahead and be yourself. I could care less about what gender you identify as. Don't be obnoxious about it though.

 

[Fallowfox]

There are people who are born physically intersex, possessing a mosaic of male and female characteristics. Expecting those people to adhere to a gender binary is silly, because their existence shows that intermediate states of physical sex are real, so I don't think it's a massive leap to reason that people's self-conception of gender may not always be binary either.
Expecting intersex people to adhere to a gender binary may even be harmful in some contexts, because pressure may exist to force intersex people to have surgery they don't really need or want, to 'fix' something that wasn't actually a problem for them.

 

[BittiBones]

raises hand
Hey there, I'm one of the mythical creatures referred to as intersex. Despite having had had surgery to 'fix' me, (though it was for medical reasons I'd rather not delve into), I grew up not really having a single clue on what I was for the most part, and I'm still unsure of what I am. I have moments where I feel strongly enough attached to the pink collared things to refer to myself as feminine pronouns, and then other times blue collar enough to refer to myself using masculine pronouns. It's more or less a jumbled mess of not really caring what others refer to me as, and just swapping in and out of pronouns constantly when referring to myself. So, naturally, my opinion on gender fluidity is simply that it's perfectly fine as long as they don't expect everyone else to be able to keep up with how their emotions shift. There's no real 'misgendering' when it comes to gender fluidity, really, and anyone who takes off as though there is kind of ruins the point of what being gender fluid truly is. Hopefully this helps shed a little light on the situation for some involving the whole gender fluidity thing, and also builds on what @Fallowfox said.

 

[Deleted member 82554]

I actually agree with how anal some seem to get about their pronouns, they're the equilvent of a firey red-head at a feminist pride rally sometimes (probably triggered someone saying that). If some poor soul makes the mistake of not labeling you properly, just tell them, don't treat those people as if they're worse than Hitler.

 

[BlueWorrior]

I knew a dude who was "non-binary". he was a dude, but he said he wanted boobs but keep his genitals and said that he could be either a guy or a girl. it was all in his head, made up for his own sake. It's pretty dumb and doesn't serve much purpose other than to attract attention which this guy very much did constantly. I don't care enough to call anyone out on it myself, but if you go around asserting your ridiculous gender politics in people's faces, don't expect people to care or be immediately accepting of it. I feel like as if many of these people do it for nothing but the attention and to feel special in some way and to those people, I say "I couldn't give a shit even if I tried, so please can you stop?"
So yeah, I guess you could say I'm neutral on the subject, so as long as the ydon't make a big song-and-dance about it :L

 

[Jarren]

I personally feel like it reinforces gender stereotypes. Why assign certain aspects of your personality to the expression of one gender or another based on how you feel aligned that day/week/month etc? Doesn't that just foist the actions you are performing onto that particular gender and show you believe they traditionally ought to be doing those things, rather than doing away with gendered performance altogether and treating everyone equally, as most LGBTQ+/other social activists and advocates claim to want? I don't know... Why not just be "you" rather than a label? That said, do what you want as long as it doesn't interfere with being a productive member of society. I really don't care what you think/feel/believe/"know" you are, and it's not my business to.

My two cents.

 

[quoting_mungo]

Your perception of your own gender is something intimately your own, and I think allowing people to use whatever label they feel best describes that experience, for them, makes a lot more sense than telling them, essentially, that their perception is invalid. If Sidney feels more male some days and more female others, or depending on social context or time of day or whatever, telling zir that "no, you can't be genderfluid or bigender, you have to choose one!" is nothing but putting your own comfort when being around Sidney (presumably only a relatively small portion of the day) over Sidney's comfort with zir own identity (which zie has to deal with 24/7). Which to me feels pretty shitty.

That said, expecting people to keep up with varying pronoun differences without clear visual cues is not reasonable. And not something any nonbinary individuals I know actually do. I'm happy to try to accomodate you if corrected, as long as you're prepared to be polite in correcting me if I use the pronoun of whatever physical sex you best pass for when first meeting you. (That said, gender is a huge non-issue to me; it's something I give at best cursory attention to for my own part.)

 

[Yakamaru]

Genderfluids? Your genitals are liquid?

Your genitals don't change the moment you FEEL you are something else. Your sex organs define which sex/gender you are. Whatever you FEEL you are, aka, gender identity, I give zero fucks about, but don't go mixing that shit up with actual physical aspects.

 

[Jarren]

Your perception of your own gender is something intimately your own, and I think allowing people to use whatever label they feel best describes that experience, for them, makes a lot more sense than telling them, essentially, that their perception is invalid. If Sidney feels more male some days and more female others, or depending on social context or time of day or whatever, telling zir that "no, you can't be genderfluid or bigender, you have to choose one!" is nothing but putting your own comfort when being around Sidney (presumably only a relatively small portion of the day) over Sidney's comfort with zir own identity (which zie has to deal with 24/7). Which to me feels pretty shitty.

That said, expecting people to keep up with varying pronoun differences without clear visual cues is not reasonable. And not something any nonbinary individuals I know actually do. I'm happy to try to accomodate you if corrected, as long as you're prepared to be polite in correcting me if I use the pronoun of whatever physical sex you best pass for when first meeting you. (That said, gender is a huge non-issue to me; it's something I give at best cursory attention to for my own part.)

This is the first time I've ever actually seen the z pronouns used unironically.

 

[Fallowfox]

So I'll address these claims because I see them brought up very frequently, even though they are irrelevant.

'Your genitals determine which gender you are'.

They don't always; when somebody's gender identity does not match their genitals they are usually described as 'transgender' and an extensive body of research exists on transgender people, showing that their predicament has biological causes, such as ambiguous brain structure, perhaps generated by foetal hormonal imbalances: Causes of transsexuality - Wikipedia

Even if somebody's gender identity always did conform to their genitals, some people are born with genitals that are neither fully male or female.
Intersex - Wikipedia

Hence the existence of people who have ambiguous gender identities, that do not conform to the prevailing binary, is completely expected.

I personally feel like it reinforces gender stereotypes. Why assign certain aspects of your personality to the expression of one gender or another based on how you feel aligned that day/week/month etc? Doesn't that just foist the actions you are performing onto that particular gender and show you believe they traditionally ought to be doing those things, rather than doing away with gendered performance altogether and treating everyone equally, as most LGBTQ+/other social activists and advocates claim to want? I don't know... Why not just be "you" rather than a label? That said, do what you want as long as it doesn't interfere with being a productive member of society. I really don't care what you think/feel/believe/"know" you are, and it's not my business to.

My two cents.

I think this is the wrong end of the stick, so I'll use an example of a sex-ambiguous behaviour observed in homosexuals to clarify it.

It has been widely observed that children who turn out to be homosexual routinely prefer to play with toys associated with the opposite sex: Childhood gender nonconformity - Wikipedia

This observation does not mean that homosexuals support gender stereotypes, and obviously gender roles that apply to children- such as 'boys prefer to play with cars and girls with doll houses' are still socially constructed, by virtue of the fact that cars and houses are literally human constructs- cars and doll houses only exist because we construct them.

What this actually shows is that humans are probably predisposed to produce social constructs of conceptions of gender, and that humans are innately predisposed to take interest in the activities that are designated to their gender role. (the designations are themselves arbitrary- we could imagine a world in which all women wore trousers and all men wore skirts, for example, and then men who wore trousers would be perceived as cross dressers)

Some humans don't fit into this designation, and this can manifest as an innate affiliation with activities and rolls which are normally designated to the opposite gender.

 

[BittiBones]

@Jarren

Gender roles, blue collar/pink collar, are extremely comforting for some. It's alright for others to not mess with them, and let things be fluid all over the board on what's considered blue/pink, though for others it's a matter of a sense of belonging-- feeling that you're proper, feeling that yes, you know who you are and you make it clear. I hope that that makes some sort of sense? No matter how blended society will end up making stuff, there'll always be things that're inherently feminine and masculine, at least in the form of aged traditions. As long as no one's getting hurt, it's alright if someone wants to conform to one or another. At least, that's my two cents on it.

Just basically; yes. It does reinforce some gender stereotypes. But that's alright as long as they don't butt into anyone else's business with trying to shove their perceptions of what's what upon others. It's a personal thing. Though, of course there's some who make it not a complete personal thing and those folks are out of hand minority that make a bad name for the rest.

@Yakamaru

Gender no longer appeals to purely being a term of sex. However, I will agree on when someone claims that they're male when they have female genitalia, they're unfortunately improperly using terms. Only pronouns can be applied, not labels to physical aspects, when announcing oneself as trans or genderfluid of any kind. While as we might disagree for the most part, I'll note that it's kind of ridiculous for someone to demand the labels given to those who attain the physical aspects of a sex they're not. On the other hand, when it comes to simply blue collar/pink collar gender role stuff, they're labels to be freely used.

 

[Jarren]

Gender roles, blue collar/pink collar, are extremely comforting for some. It's alright for others to not mess with them, and let things be fluid all over the board on what's considered blue/pink, though for others it's a matter of a sense of belonging-- feeling that you're proper, feeling that yes, you know who you are and you make it clear. I hope that that makes some sort of sense? No matter how blended society will end up making stuff, there'll always be things that're inherently feminine and masculine, at least in the form of aged traditions. As long as no one's getting hurt, it's alright if someone wants to conform to one or another. At least, that's my two cents on it.

Just basically; yes. It does reinforce some gender stereotypes. But that's alright as long as they don't butt into anyone else's business with trying to shove their perceptions of what's what upon others. It's a personal thing. Though, of course there's some who make it not a complete personal thing and those folks are out of hand minority that make a bad name for the rest.

That makes a fair bit of sense. Thanks for the insight. And like I said, I'm fine with people doing what they want, how the want, if it helps them without causing issues for others, and this falls well into that category of acceptable stuff (not that I'm an arbiter of acceptability).

 

[ItsBrou]

I don't participate in that game, but that doesn't mean I dislike them. People are free to live the life the way they want, which is what makes the free world so great, but the world and people outside a person's mind and body does not have to play along with which of the 5345379025389 x 10^17 internet genders exist. They'll surely find like-minded people who are willing to play the game, and good for them.

 

[Yakamaru]

@Yakamaru

Gender no longer appeals to purely being a term of sex. However, I will agree on when someone claims that they're male when they have female genitalia, they're unfortunately improperly using terms. Only pronouns can be applied, not labels to physical aspects, when announcing oneself as trans or genderfluid of any kind. While as we might disagree for the most part, I'll note that it's kind of ridiculous for someone to demand the labels given to those who attain the physical aspects of a sex they're not. On the other hand, when it comes to simply blue collar/pink collar gender role stuff, they're labels to be freely used.

Gender/sex have been used interchangably for millennia. It's only recently in the past decade that people suddenly wanted to seperate them. It's in essence, being either male(masculine) or female(feminine). Your Chromosomes are the number 1 factor in deciding your sex/gender. No matter how you feel on the subject, it won't change the facts, nor reality. My mother tongue doesn't seperate sex/gender, and rightly so: They are one and the same.

What you feel you are, aka gender identity, and the gender/sex you are, are two different things.

 

[Fallowfox]

At the start of his comment Yakamaru argues that Gender and Sex are interchangeable.
By the end of his comment he says that gender identity and sex are two different things.
If you think that they are two different things, then obviously they aren't interchangeable.

Also, in the interest of actually having an informative discussion about biology, some people with XY chromosomes are born with female genitals:
Androgen insensitivity syndrome - Wikipedia
So this notion that biology is strictly dichotomous isn't really right; it is probably more accurate to say that the biological systems responsible for producing the physical sex binary sometimes do not function as normal and that this can result in humans who do not fit into the usual binary.

Personally I think that it is obvious that nature sometimes produced organisms that don't fit into their species' usual sex binary, because nature can even produce organisms that are literally half male half female:

 

[BittiBones]

@Yakamaru
Then on that notion, take it as people tend to shorten gender identity as simply gender nowadays. English is a constantly fluid, changing language that borrows from others, and is frankly lazy.

@Fallowfox
To some, there is a difference between gender and gender identity. I'll admit, the full term in the end is more applicable, but nowadays more and more people within the mainstream are using the shorter term of simply gender in the end. So they aren't inherently incorrect or hypocritical with what they said there.

 

[quoting_mungo]

Gender/sex have been used interchangably for millennia. It's only recently in the past decade that people suddenly wanted to seperate them. It's in essence, being either male(masculine) or female(feminine). Your Chromosomes are the number 1 factor in deciding your sex/gender. No matter how you feel on the subject, it won't change the facts, nor reality. My mother tongue doesn't seperate sex/gender, and rightly so: They are one and the same.

Not strictly true; it may only be in the last few decades that the word "gender" has been claimed for the purpose of referring to gender identity on a large scale, but the concepts have existed independently of one another for far, far longer. Not having a word for something doesn't mean that thing is not real; if a language from an equatorial region doesn't have a word for "snow", does that make snow any less real? No. But it might make snow something either wondrous or terrifying to someone who sees it for the first time and doesn't have a name for it.

(That the word ended up being "gender" makes a lot of sense if you look at linguistics and grammar, where a lot of languages inherently genders words for objects that absolutely, definitely, do not have a physical/biological sex. Or are you telling me that rocks have genitals and chromosomes?)

Giving something a name destigmatizes and demystifies it, but doesn't ultimately change the reality of it. Swedish doesn't have a short/concise word for gender as opposed to sex, either, but that doesn't mean we have an inherent right to tell someone they're not entitled to their own identity.

This is the first time I've ever actually seen the z pronouns used unironically.

What pronouns you see used will depend on what company you keep, honestly. I tend to use they/zie/he, in that order, as gender neutral pronouns. Which I use in a given context will usually depend on small variations in intended meaning as well as how fast I'm speaking and what/who exactly is being referred to. (Inanimate objects are most likely to end up as "he" - I am really bad about that and regularly end up confusing people without meaning to.)

 

[Jarren]

What pronouns you see used will depend on what company you keep, honestly. I tend to use they/zie/he, in that order, as gender neutral pronouns. Which I use in a given context will usually depend on small variations in intended meaning as well as how fast I'm speaking and what/who exactly is being referred to.

I shared an office for several years with many members of the school LGBTQ+ club, I've met people of most conceivable persuasions, and had just never heard any of them use/request those terms or even write them.

 

[BittiBones]

I shared an office for several years with many members of the school LGBTQ+ club, I've met people of most conceivable persuasions, and had just never heard any of them use/request those terms or even write them.

It's most popularly used around intersex communities than the LGBTQA+ community in general, honestly.

 

[Yakamaru]

Not strictly true; it may only be in the last few decades that the word "gender" has been claimed for the purpose of referring to gender identity on a large scale, but the concepts have existed independently of one another for far, far longer. Not having a word for something doesn't mean that thing is not real; if a language from an equatorial region doesn't have a word for "snow", does that make snow any less real? No. But it might make snow something either wondrous or terrifying to someone who sees it for the first time and doesn't have a name for it.

(That the word ended up being "gender" makes a lot of sense if you look at linguistics and grammar, where a lot of languages inherently genders words for objects that absolutely, definitely, do not have a physical/biological sex. Or are you telling me that rocks have genitals and chromosomes?)

Giving something a name destigmatizes and demystifies it, but doesn't ultimately change the reality of it. Swedish doesn't have a short/concise word for gender as opposed to sex, either, but that doesn't mean we have an inherent right to tell someone they're not entitled to their own identity.

I seperate gender and gender identity as they are of two different worlds: One is about the physical aspects, the other is about mental/emotional aspects. One is a physical state, the other an emotional/mental state, aka, what you feel you are, as opposed to what you physically are. Only in English particularly are the words gender and sex used seperately. A lot of other languages, such as in Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, etc, you don't seperate sex/gender.

As for the word for gender identity: Just use gender identity. It's easy to use, easy to understand, a decent definition, and won't confuse people with the definition of gender itself. It is to seperate sex/gender and gender identity, two completely worlds, from confusing people.

 

[Fallowfox]

English speakers use a different definition to Norwegian speakers.

The English use of the words 'gender' and 'sex' already achieves the distinction that you want 'gender' and 'gender identity' to convey, so there's no reason to complain about it.
...I mean, we're getting to the point that people are complaining that not all languages use words the same way, which is pretty silly.

@Yakamaru
Then on that notion, take it as people tend to shorten gender identity as simply gender nowadays. English is a constantly fluid, changing language that borrows from others, and is frankly lazy.

@Fallowfox
To some, there is a difference between gender and gender identity. I'll admit, the full term in the end is more applicable, but nowadays more and more people within the mainstream are using the shorter term of simply gender in the end. So they aren't inherently incorrect or hypocritical with what they said there.

Yes, I see your point. I think it's simpler for the word 'gender' to assume the meaning conveyed by 'gender identity'.

After all, the people who want 'gender' to have its own meaning already admit that the word 'sex' does that job.

 

[Kellan Meig'h]

Ya know what? If you want to be "Gender Fluid", expect me to call you dOOd. I'm not going to waste my time guessing whether you're male or female that day, I have better things to do. If this gets you attention from your friends, so be it.

Many Native American tribes had those who identified with the other gender but they weren't Gender Fluid. My take on it? Just a way to call out for attention.

Sorry if I'm terse but that's the view of an old, gray-muzzle former soldier.

 

[Orla]

As I do not identify as genderfluid, I therefore am not in a place to have an outspoken opinion on it. Hearing people debate whether or not your own identify is valid to people who don't even understand it must be awful, and for any genderfluid people seeing this thread, I'm sorry you can't get away from this b.s..

 

[BittiBones]

Ya know what? If you want to be "Gender Fluid", expect me to call you dOOd. I'm not going to waste my time guessing whether you're male or female that day, I have better things to do. If this gets you attention from your friends, so be it.

Many Native American tribes had those who identified with the other gender but they weren't Gender Fluid. My take on it? Just a way to call out for attention.

Sorry if I'm terse but that's the view of an old, gray-muzzle former soldier.

As previously mentioned, at least from someone who's gender fluid such as myself, most who're legitimately gender fluid and aren't doing it for attention don't mind if someone doesn't use whatever pronouns they prefer within that moment. It's simply a personal thing. Such as I'll refer to myself as whatever I feel like the most, though I don't care what others refer to me as, as long as it's not 'it'.

As I do not identify as genderfluid, I therefore am not in a place to have an outspoken opinion on it. Hearing people debate whether or not your own identify is valid to people who don't even understand it must be awful, and for any genderfluid people seeing this thread, I'm sorry you can't get away from this b.s..

Folks can comment on it even without an understanding of it, honestly. It's something most I've known, including myself, are used to. Which is why it's not commonly brought up that someone's legitimately gender fluid-- not the tumblrina kind-- when they are, unless to friends.

 

[Orla]

Yeah, they "can", but I find it pretty crass to have debates over a person's identity, or orientation, etc. To me, there is nothing to debate. Someone says they're genderfluid? They're genderfluid. It's not my place to figure out if it's a "real thing" or not, and it honestly doesn't affect me. If someone is being bullied for being fluid or trans or gay or whatever, I'll stand up for them. If someone asks me to refer to them by a pronoun that doesn't make immediate sense in my brain, I still use that pronoun. I don't get why people want to deny basic humanity to others, and discuss their reasoning for acting like jerks.