Wiscon, another note

[redbird]

I wound up mentioning two different people I know on LJ during Wiscon programming, on two different panels. For our panel on disappearing the body, I mentioned knowing someone who makes a point of not revealing their gender online. And in the panel on transforming sexuality, one of the panelists asserted, when transgendered people came up, that there might well be people who would want to be phenotypically both male and female, but not people who would want to be neither. So I pointed out that, in fact, I know someone whose preferred gender would be neuter, and that the doctors he had consulted had asserted that his preferred gender didn't exist, and that if it did nobody would want to be it. (You'd think his consulting them would have led them to question at least the latter, but most theories can stand up to a few inconvenient facts.)

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Comments

Re: Wiscon, another note

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

datapoint: the older i get, the more i want to be neither. i don't think that has anything to do with age, as more with having had more time to really think about the "me" freed of much baggage and assumptions i've been carrying around.

[calimac.livejournal.com]

My experiences of being told that I cannot have what I want, because nobody wants it, have been at the hands of the manufacturers and retailers of commercial products.

[liv]

Oh, I'd be neuter if it were easily possible. (Assuming neuter here means not gendered rather than asexual.) In terms of making my appearance and the way I'm perceived match the way I see myself, sure.

My main response to this reported comment is to be reminded of historical cultures that didn't believe that women would ever want to be sexually involved with other women, or that anyone would ever want to have any gender other than that dictated by their birth sex, &c. *shrug* Among six billion people there's probably someone who wants just about anything you can imagine and plenty of things you can't.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

If there were a number of ungendered, sexual people, I think it would become another gender.

[liv]

Depressingly, I think you're probably right. When I made my comment I was rather thinking that such a situation would require significant social as well as medical progress. I just want to opt out of the whole gender thing altogether, me. Not strongly, not such that I'm miserable because I can't, but ideally that's what I'd like, if it were possible.

[redbird]

What might be useful would be the ability to take gender off/put it on at will: to spend time ungendered, and some as whatever gender I wanted at the time.

[liv]

That would be useful indeed. I think in such a magic scenario I'd be curious what it would be like to find out what it would be like to be intensely feminine, to feel that being female was a really important part of who I am. (Obviously this leads to silly paradoxes, but I'm ignoring them.)

Actually, thinking about it more, if everybody could mess around with gender at will, being female would be less of a deal than it is. I'd probably experiment, being a naturally curious creature, but I'd probably be content to default to female in the end. In this scenario it would be a lot less likely to be regarded as some deeply fundamental fact about who I am.

Ah well, it's nice to dream.

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

one of the panelists asserted . . . that there might well be people who would want to be phenotypically both male and female, but not people who would want to be neither.

I have a deep, deep distrust of anyone who purports to know something about "all people" or (the same thing, just looked at from the other end) "no people."

[patashoqua.livejournal.com]

I agree. It's a very handy BS flag.

[dglenn.livejournal.com]

For examples of people who've undergone physical mods to be neither, search for "nullo" or "nullification" and bodymod ... I think some identify as sort of "blank" versions of their original gender, and others identify as ungendered and/or neuter. Some have removed their nipples as well as genitalia.

There have been times when I've wanted that, when the whole cluster of issues regarding sex, gender, and sexuality have just seemed too frustrating.

[jiawen]

Generally speaking, the accepted term for people who don't want to be gendered at all, or who want to be in a permanent state of flux, or to otherwise mess around with gender systems, is Genderqueer. I'm not genderqueer myself, but through my small involvement in the Twin Cities' TG and GQ communities, I've met a lot of folks who use genderqueer for themselves but feel like "transgender" too often means moving in a single gender direction, then stopping only near the ends of the spectrum. I don't think this is really a correct use of "transgender" (it doesn't really include crossdressers, for example), but if they want to use a different term, more power to 'em.