#it's like when you're body “presents” as male/female but you actually have the opposite chromosomes

[stressedbeetle]

very disturbed by the fact that when I googled "how many people have dsd?" the first site that popped up was a transphobic one. I didn't know it was transphobic at first but when I read more about it I realized it sounded just incredibly transphobic. So this is a warning guys

Stats for gender is run by "genspect" a transphobic and gender critcal organization that OFferS sUPorT tO pAReNts Of tRaNS ChILdReN

[nerdygaymormon]

Hey! I just wanted to ask for advice for coming out as genderfluid to very Mormon, very conservative parents. They didn't react very well when I came out as gay, and I'm frankly terrified to come out as a different gender to them. Also, I want you to know that I love your blog and you and that you're an amazing person! ❤️🧡💛💚💙💜

Thanks for the compliment!

If I’m understanding correctly, you’re not really asking for tips on how to come out, you’ve already been through that experience once before. You’re asking for how you can present the idea that you’re genderfluid in a way that your parents can understand and, hopefully, accept. 

Here’s some thoughts: 

1) Whether you’re going to speak to them in person, record a video or write a note, I think it’s important to include the idea that you love them and you want a close, honest, loving relationship with them. 

2) You’ll need to explain what it means to be “genderfluid.”

3) It would help if you could tie this into Church in a way that makes it not seem so outside their beliefs.

4) You could have some requests, like asking them to use your chosen name and pronouns. Be clear about with whom they can and cannot share this information about you.  

5) It probably would be helpful to provide some resources they can refer to. They will likely need some time to process all this, and hopefully the resources you provide will help them.

I’ll put some ways of saying these things below, but this is your coming out experience. Think about how you want to phrase things, how you want to describe the way you feel and the reality of your experience.

—————————     

One thing I keep learning is that God leads us down paths that we didn’t imagine, or expect, or even want. God leads us to paths so we can learn, grow, and move forward.

—————————   

Sex is the biology of your parts: physical anatomy, hormones, and chromosomes. All of these can be changed to the point a person can legally alter their sex from the one they were assigned at birth.

If sex is our biology, gender identity is how we perceive ourselves. Gender identity can align with our biological sex or can be in opposition to it. Most people are familiar with the binary system, meaning 2 distinct options: masculine/male/man or feminine/female/woman.

However, there are some identities that aren’t exclusively male or female. These individuals might identify themselves as “non-binary” because they feel a mix of both male & female, somewhere in between or something completely different. Some non-binary people feel that their gender isn’t fixed, that they shift between more than one gender. They might experience more “guy” days, “girl” days, “non-binary” days, “agender” days.

—————————   

None of us comes forth from the womb fully-formed—we are all grow, transform and become. Those of us who are non-binary get to do it in a unique way. I feel like God invites non-binary people to be co-creators, like the way God gives us wheat and we turn it into dough and then different sorts of bread.

—————————  

I have a few thoughts about the Family Proclamation. I like many of the ideas contained in that document. I like the idea that we’re each divine and are loved by Heavenly Parents, that loving family bonds will continue after mortality, children should be valued and loved and their physical and emotional needs cared for, and that spouses should help each other as equals. I like the importance of following the teachings of Jesus, including forgiveness, respect, love, compassion, and work.

The Family Proclamation is what our Church leaders think is the ideal family but it doesn’t mean there aren’t other types of realities. Elder Anderson pointed that out at last April’s General Conference.

“ALL HUMAN BEINGS—male and female—are created in the image of God… Gender is an essential characteristic” - it is interesting that these two statements are together. The first part seems to mean that God is both feminine and masculine. That actually fits the definition of nonbinary. And an essential characteristic of my gender is both that it’s nonbinary and it is fluid.

I like the statement that gender is eternal. My spirit’s gender and my body’s sex don’t align. Gender being eternal means we have gender and that can include the idea that it is not fixed and can change or progress.

“Disability, death, or other circumstances may necessitate individual adaptation.” - I suppose sexual orientation or gender identification would count as “other circumstances” and so I can adapt these principles to my individual situation.

Our Heavenly Parents don’t seem to fit into the roles that this document defines as what a male and what a female does. I feel like the Proclamation is focused on earthly cultural concerns.

—————————  

I don’t know what my relationship with the Church will be. Although it should be a place for all of God’s children, it doesn’t feel like it’s ready for someone like me. Both gay and genderfluid are challenges for the Church.

One thing is the Church’s handbook says is that undergoing “elective transsexual operation” “may be cause for formal church discipline.” That is the boundary of what the church thinks is unacceptable, that leaves a lot in bounds.

I could go by a different name. I can present myself in a masculine or feminine way. I can even choose non-surgical ways to alter myself, and it’s within the boundaries that the church provides.

One change the Church recently did that helps is we only split up by gender (for priesthood & relief society) every other week. Those weeks can be tough for someone who doesn’t feel like they belong in either group, but thankfully that’s not a weekly event anymore.

—————————  

I hope that you will accept & love me for who I am and not the version of a person that you wish I was.

I know that this is probably hard to understand. And I’m sure you have a lot of questions, or need some time to think about it.

Here’s some things you can read, and if you want to discuss them, I would like to talk with you again about this.

—————————  

And if you need to lighten the mood, here’s a joke that might help, “Gender was invented by bathroom companies to sell more bathrooms.”

—————————  

1. Top Ten Tips from Parents from the mormonandgay website. Even though it’s about having a gay child, many of the same principles apply.

2. The Family Acceptance Project’s pamphlet for LDS families is excellent

3. This is a Facebook group for parents of transgender children.

4. Transactive LDS is a private group for transgender individuals or family members. 

———————————————————————   

I’m wishing you all the best. I hope this goes well. I will pray that your parents hearts will be softened and they’ll listen and ponder the things you share. And that their love for you will help them adjust to the changes they need to make in their understanding and acceptance of you.

[snarktheater]

Wait... if gender's a social construct, then does that mean being trans is a choice? It sounds like you're saying that being trans is a performance. I can't see how one can be born trans without there being anything innate about the two genders.

“If gender is a social construct, being trans is a choice” makes about as much logical sense as saying “if money is a social construct, being poor is a choice”. Which, you know, money is a social construct. There is no inherent “value” to anything, regardless of when it was based on something tangible like gold or how it is today, based on…I don’t know, the trust of banks or something. I’m not an economist. Point is: monetary value is decided by us, so it’s a social construct, but just because it’s a social construct doesn’t mean it’s not real or doesn’t have real effects. It’s similar with gender: just because we define what it means as a society doesn’t mean it’s not real.

Also, being trans is not a performance. You’re confusing gender and gender presentation. The difference between the two is best exemplified in drag: people who are usually men (and usually even cis men) are presenting as women for the sake of a performance. Their gender remains male, only their gender presentation changes. I’m only saying this here because I’m probably going to use presentation later so I’d rather we be on the same page about what it is.

As for gender in particular, I have two three things to say. And just to be clear: I am a cis person, so I may make mistakes, although I think I have done enough research and listened to enough people to have a solid enough understanding to explain this, which is basically gender 101.

Also, have a cut because it’s a long post.

One: There are no “two genders”

The gender binary is also a social construct. There’s been plenty of explanations of that, and I don’t want to spend too long about this, because it’s not really the purpose of this blog (besides, biology is not my field of science). But the gist of the reasoning is this:

People who argue that there are only two genders tend to equate gender to sex.

Sex isn’t a binary itself, however. Sex is an ill-defined notion at best, too, but putting it on a binary is a bad idea whichever definition you go for, which tends to include:

Chromosomes. The good ol’ XX/XY is incomplete. Intersex people exist.

Gonads (sexual organs). Testicles and ovaries…but again, intersex people exist and some present organs that don’t fit neatly into one or the other, because both are grown from the same fetal tissue, so that tissue can go somewhere in-between.

Hormone levels, especially with testosterone, estrogen, and I think progesterone? Could be wrong about the latter. Regardless, this one doesn’t even work on anybody. There are cis perisex men with low testosterone/high estrogen, cis perisex women with the opposite, et cetera. Because hormones are complicated like that.

Ternary sexual characteristics (like pilosity, breasts, et cetera). That is actually the one we use to assume people’s sex and gender most often than not, since we can’t run a DNA sequencing, we can’t measure their hormone levels, and we can’t (usually) just ask to see their genitals. It’s also the most flawed of them. I mean, they’re controlled by hormones, so that’s a bad place to start for the reason I discussed above. Plus we can just work around them by altering gender presentation that I mentioned above. See also: binders, padding, make-up.

The sex binary was made by old scientists with incomplete data and a lot of confirmation bias. Any scientist worth their salt will tell you that if you have data that does not fit the current model, that model should be scrapped and replaced. I mean, without this (which is the very foundation of the scientific method), we wouldn’t have the theory of electromagnetism (which only all of the Internet relies on), or quantum mechanics, or relativistic physics. All of these replaced older models. Note that these old models, just like the sex binary, are still useful in specific situations! As long as you’re on Earth, Newtonian physics are fine and you can combine speeds additively instead of using the dreadful method of relativistic physics. As long as you’re talking about cis perisex people, the sex binary is useful to talk about a lot of their biological processes. But neither is useful outside of their hypotheses.

Back to gender. Gender is even more ill-defined than sex. I mean, without resorting to gender roles, it’s hard to even talk about what makes a man or a woman. So if it’s based on sex, and the sex binary, is outdated, why bother with a gender binary?

So…yeah. Gender today is understood to be on a multi-dimensional spectrum. As in, it’s not just “male, female, and stuff in between”. There are people who fall outside of the binary altogether, people with no gender, people wth multiple genders. Scientific observation tells us that, if this is their experience, our model that tells us there are only two genders is probably just plain wrong and we need a new one.

But back to that “it’s hard to define gender at all”. Put a pin on it. I’ll get back to it.

Two: The “born this way” narrative

That narrative. I understand how it came to be, and I understand its usefulness, but in the end, I loathe it.

See, the idea that you’re born this way (whether “this way” is referring to gender or sexuality) is mostly something to make the idea more palatable. And to make it less okay to, you know, oppress people based on it.

A lot of people relate to it. But ultimately, it is not a universal constant of the queer community, and if anything, it’s a little bit restrictive.

I mean, take sexuality. As a child, you may experience romantic attraction, but sexual attraction usually only occurs around or after puberty. So already it’s inaccurate to say that one is born gay/straight/bi/pan/poly/etc, because it’s something you only find out about yourself once you grow up and realize what those feelings are. And there may be external factors that delay that realization even further.

For instance, a lot of lesbians and queer women have reported that they only figured out their sexuality as adults, because before that, heteronormativity and misogyny made them assume that their lack of interest in boys was “normal”, that no girl really wanted sex or at the very least that they couldn’t like boys, because gender roles.

People who aren’t monosexual (whether because they’re attracted to multiple genders or somewhere on the asexual spectrum) similarly have a harder time realizing their sexuality because, usually, they’re not even taught that that exists. I was one of the lucky ones, knowing about bisexuality before I even had my own sexual awakening so I could place a name on it.

It’s the same thing with trans people. Some identify with their gender from as early as they’re able to, some take much longer, due to many reasons.

Plus, it speaks to a very weird societal mindset, to focus on being born a certain way as your “true” identity, as if people didn’t change and their identity was set in stone from the start. I think a much better narrative is that we’re born a genderless blob with no true identity of our own, and a combination of who we are and how our experiences influence us determines our identity, ergo our gender (as part of that identity). Then again, that’s just my philosophy of personal choice being at play here.

But really, the biggest issue I have with this idea is that it prevents people from questioning their gender and/or sexuality, when I think everyone, including cis and/or straight people, should do that. It is after all much more fulfilling to identify with anything because you’ve spent some time critically looking at the options and picking the one you like best rather than accepting what has been forced upon you.

Which leads us to…

Three: How do I know?

A.k.a. time to go back to that pin I told you to put on the idea that it’s hard to define gender.

While this isn’t a universally agreed-upon sentiment, I am of the school of thought that what defines one’s gender is what is referred to as gender euphoria. Now, I realize that “euphoria” might bring up the picture of some ecstatic feeling, but the term here is just used in opposition to dysphoria (the two being etymological opposites).

Gender dysphoria is one that people are usually more familiar with. It’s the idea that a person experiences discomfort with their assigned gender, and usually, with their body as per the expectations that gender places on your body. And “discomfort” is usually a euphemism, because it usually leads to disorders like depression or even to self-harm. It’s also what leads some trans people to need surgery or hormonal therapy, or just psychotherapy, as coping/healing mechanisms.

To some people, dysphoria is what defines transness, but as I said, I’m not of that school of thought, which goes back to my philosophy of choice. But also because it just seems odd to me to base a part of one’s identity around pain.

The theory around gender euphoria is that what defines one’s gender isn’t feeling bad about identifying with another gender, but feeling good about identifying with the “right” gender for you. Basically, if using the signifiers of one gender (such as, but not necessarily including all of, or limited to: pronouns, name, gender presentation and roles) feels better for you than whatever you’re using now, this is probably a better gender for you and you’re probably trans. 

This theory doesn’t remove the possibility for dysphoria for the wrong gender, but it explains it as a side-effect of not experience gender euphoria rather than the defining experience of transness. And, well, seeing as “you’re only trans if you have dysphoria” is usually used by people to exclude other people from trans communities, and I’ve already stated my views on exclusionism in general…you can probably guess why I take this stance.

Now you’ll note that I only helped explain how you can tell what a specific person’s gender is here, not how to define gender in the first place. This is where we get back to the basic idea that gender is a social construct. All we can effectively observe is the signifiers of gender, and how people interact with those (dysphoria, euphoria, or just nothing at all). So how do we define a gender? 

Well, that’s the social construct part—in other words, we can’t, not in a scientific way. Society (in other words, people) is what defines which pronouns or names are associated to what gender, or what we expect a person of a certain gender to be like.

Which is great! Because it means society is also open to more gender, or to redefine what those signifiers are. You’ve probably heard that the “pink is for girls, blue is for boys” idea is a fairly recent one and was in fact reversed less than a century ago, for instance. Or the fact that women couldn’t wear pants until fairly recently (in the scale of our society, anyway). That means we can introduce new signifiers for genders that are less represented (say, by making up new sets of pronouns), and we can also reject the signifiers that we feel are antiquated/oppressive (like…all of misogyny and toxic masculinity, basically). So we can have trans people while also not needing to cling to gender roles and sexism. It can be done!

I hope this admittedly long-winded explanation helps answer your question, anon.