More like myself.

Someone wrote…

Reading the quotes here at Genderfork, I’ve realized how different everyone’s gender experience is… nothing like mine at all. It makes me feel very scared that I’m not doing the right thing. Though, maybe it makes me feel kind of more like myself.

What’s your experience?

And what are you thinking about gender right now?


Posted by on January 23rd, 2011 at 08:00 am

Category: your voice 17 comments »

17 Responses to “More like myself.”

  1. Cameron Joel

    You’re not doing anything wrong, simply because there isn’t a wrong way to do things. If you’re honest with yourself and reasonably content with your gender, you’re doing it right. It’s true, your experience is different than everyone else’s–and that’s what makes it yours. Diversity is a beautiful thing. :)

    [Reply]

    Jessica replied:

    “You’re not doing anything wrong, simply because there isn’t a wrong way to do things.” This is one of those human things that is so entirely true and also completely wrong. It should never matter which bathroom anyone uses, but it really matters if you choose the “wrong” one.

    [Reply]

  2. Lane

    I don’t think anybody’s gender is exactly like anybody else’s. :-) Though, it is nice to feel like other people share your experience. I remember I often felt the same as you until I figured out I want to transition. Maybe there’s some part of yourself you haven’t tapped into yet. Or maybe you’re still learning to be comfortable being unique. Either way you aren’t doing something wrong. You’re just still on a journey, which is awesome!

    [Reply]

  3. Samson

    For me, Genderfork is one of the few places I’ve found people with similar gender experiences (and a lot of people with very different experiences!). I usually feel like you do in a lot of other places in the trans* community. At times I’ve been really scared too, but I do a lot of reading and listening, and I take everything slowly, and that’s been comforting. My experience and perspective have changed a ton over the last five years or so, too.

    [Reply]

  4. Nazza

    I feel fear as well, because if I start to analyze my feelings towards my own gender, they sometimes seem so nonsensical or completely bizarre. On one level, I know what I feel and those validate me, but if I step outside myself, the confusion begins.

    But I recognize this is mostly because our understanding of gender is so poorly defined. If we redefined whatever it is “normal” is, gender wise, then things would be very different indeed.

    [Reply]

  5. Morgan

    For me at least the value of somewhere like Genderfork isn’t in seeing people whose experiences are similar to mine, but seeing how many different experiences there can be. There’s no such thing as normal, and no right or wrong way to do gender.

    [Reply]

  6. Poet

    I’ve really grown into my inter-gendered identity since I wrote this; but, I still remember the wave of relief when I read the first few entries on Genderfork and the subsequent wave of doubt that followed when people’s experiences seemed to differ so strongly from mine. I suppose that’s part of the initial confusion? Either way, I’m very grateful for everyone in this community, especially those strong enough to share their experiences. Just knowing that other people might have some idea of how I felt, even when their experiences seemed so different from mine, is really what gave me the courage to express my femininity in all it’s glory.

    [Reply]

    Sarah Dopp replied:

    This is so beautiful, Poet. Thank you.

    [Reply]

  7. :)

    Oh dear, you can’t do much wrong as long as you’re not lying to yourself… but even that is part of exploring yourself. We’re all human here and well, a 100 humans means a 100 different humans. :)

    [Reply]

  8. Thierry

    Maybe it’s out of place…

    but I tend to have a similar notion

    though its more in reflection of the many other communities I find myself associated with…

    The whole of my experiences are unique to being me, but it also makes me feel isolated in those various communities.

    In those communities, my isolation is a bit more relative to my gender experiences… and it’s obvious forefront awareness in my mind, in my reality… along with a few other boundary bending roles to the established identities in those groups.

    yet when I get overwhelmed, I come to places like these and its the sum of my other parts to which then feel isolated here.

    It’s a bit funny when I think about it.

    I can compartmentalize my experiences in those other communities… as being a part of those cultures…

    Yet inside of communities like these… my experiences relative to being here are closely tied to my connection to my other communities… the contrast is needed to be a part of this community.

    It’s quite a bit more vulnerable… there’s no clearly defined sub group to hide in or say I’m a part of.

    It’s an identity without an inherent culture of its own, although there is a flow of similarities… and some sub groups I know, but still all the similarities might just as well be viewed through a kaleidoscope.

    I would define it as feeling claustrophobic in a wide open space … I’m free to just be ‘whole’ but it still feels like I’m inside of a box and the walls are closing in.

    although some that feeling is more in trying to adequately provide a definition of what it all means.

    The word is a bit irrelevant, the definition is the scary part… and how to translate those experiences to another; perhaps even more than whether it’s truly about having a similarity or not.

    knowing I belong, but not knowing what my definition is.

    [Reply]

  9. Anonymous

    I’m kind of in a similar place to that mentioned in the OP, I think… I’m usually comfortable with being male, but sometimes I enjoy presenting/acting feminine, and I think most of the time I’m just somewhere in the middle. But I’m not entirely sure that I really know what that means, or what kind of experience that implies, and as I’ve started getting more in touch with the queer community (I’m a college freshman and I have the luck to be coming into a very accepting area) I’ve noticed that my experiences just don’t seem to match up with everyone else’s. The thing that really confuses me is that everyone I know seems to feel that their identity – sexual identity as well as gender identity – has been something they were aware of for a fairly long time. But that’s just not where I am… While I’ve enjoyed playing with androgyny for a while and I’ve been a bit on the feminine side of things for some time, I don’t recall actually *feeling* like a girl or being conscious of being somewhere else on the gender spectrum other than male until recently. And I’m not even sure if that’s actually what I’m feeling or if I’m just somehow trying to fit in with the queer community here. Maybe I’ve just never really been aware of anything other than the gender binary. Or maybe my gender identity’s just changing. Or maybe I’m kidding myself and I’m just a dude. I don’t know, I really don’t know and it’s kind of a scary place to be.

    [Reply]

    Poet replied:

    I know how you feel, I think. When I was very young there were signs that I was gender variant, but I didn’t realize the thing I was doing were abnormal. When I got a little older and learned that it was inappropriate for a young boy to do the things I was I quit, right out. Just stopped. I didn’t think about it again for more than a decade. Then the feelings went away when I didn’t know how to express them. But, then I took a sexuality and society course through my college and I stumbled on what is referred to as Gender identity disorder and the gender variant spectrum. The feelings came back, but with a new awareness of my difference. Then I struggled with that awareness, and still do. Sometimes, often actually, I think I’m just wrong about myself, that I’m actually just a normal guy. But, I feel like part of that feeling is the fear of doing something really big in your life, something that will change it forever. It’s like getting cold feet for gender. So I’ll plan to wear my appropriate clothes, my male clothes, the next day. But, then I wake up the next morning and I feel this disgust towards my male clothes. Not an outright, make me vomit disgust, just this mild irritation with having to wear them. So, I don’t, and put on a dress instead. It’s a cycle, and it involves guilt and shame sometimes. Often, people considered to have GID or people who are cross dressers will amass collections of gender opposite clothing only to rid themselves of the collection at a later date. Almost inevitably, the collection starts over; it is the binging and purging (it happens to be a cycle I’ve gone through twice in my life [23 years]).
    I want to tell you that the fear goes away, but I don’t know that it does yet. I do know that it is normal to feel that way, and, I don’t know, maybe we get used to it? Or maybe it’s just the trade-off. You get to look in the mirror and feel so gorgeous, and sexy, and comfortable but then you leave that and go to the real world where everything comes into question, and you can’t avoid it. You can’t avoid the weird looks you get when you go to pee or the questions from strangers and worse, from your friends. It’s just a battle to be courageous. Gender is a courageous thing to do.

    [Reply]

    Anonymous replied:

    You’re a brave man they tell me.
    I’m not.
    Courage has never been my quality.
    Only I thought it disproportionate
    so to degrade myself as others did.
    No foundations trembled. My voice
    no more than laughed at pompous falsity;
    I did no more than write, never denounced,
    I left out nothing I had thought about,
    defended who deserved it, put a brand
    on the untalented, the ersatz writers
    (doing what anyhow had to be done).
    And now they press to tell me that I’m brave.
    How sharply our children will be ashamed
    taking at last their vengeance for these horrors
    remembering how in so strange a time
    common integrity could look like courage.

    Yevgeny Yevtushenko

    [Reply]

    Jessica MacGilvray replied:

    One of my favorite poets. Other favorite poems of his are Lies and Colors.

    XylophoneGender replied:

    yes, courageous. here’s hoping for more moments of peace and self-love for you between the moments of purging, disgust, and looks from strangers.

    [Reply]

  10. GarcianSmith

    The only thing you can do wrong is somehow make yourself unhappy and deny who you want to be.

    Otherwise it’s your experience. It’s your life, do it your way!

    All of that sounds so cliche, but I’ll be damned if it isn’t the way to go.

    [Reply]

    Poet replied:

    Cliches are so for a reason.

    [Reply]


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