Sexuality

Let’s Talk Gender S2E6: Complexities of Nonbinary Identities

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Hi everyone. Welcome back to Let’s Talk Gender.

This episode is about some of the more complex aspects of being nonbinary such as genderfluid identities, how physical and social aspects of gender can feel at odds with each other, and how nonbinary genders interact with sexual orientation.

GENDERFLUID IDENTITIES

Let’s start with a deeper look at genderfluid identities. I’m going to break this into three different categories for ease of explanation. These categories are arbitrary but I have found them useful in making sense of various gender experiences and the vast number of nonbinary identities.

The first category is multi-genders. This includes bi-gender, tri-gender, co-gender, etc. People with these gender experiences have more than one gender and fluctuate between them. They can experience one at a time or a combination of all their genders. They may shift between them on a fairly regular schedule, completely randomly, or depending on the situation they’re in. They may experience one gender more often than the others or all their genders equally. It may be an hour, a day, a week, or even longer between shifts.

They may have a different name, pronoun, and presentation for each gender or they may consistently be comfortable with one name or pronoun. When beginning an interaction, they may use a short hand of ‘I’m Meaghan and I use she/her pronouns today’ or ‘I’m Ray and I use he/him pronouns today’. People they are out to who they interact with regularly will get used to these shifts and may not even need this explicit identifier but I have learned that it is a good habit to get into for my own sense of confidence, authenticity, and visibility.

The second category is single, fluctuating genders. People with these genders only have one experience of gender but that gender moves around various parts of the gender spectrum. It can move over a large variety of genders or a very narrow range of genders. It can consistently cover the same parts of the spectrum or suddenly feel like a completely different gender than it has before. And similar to multi-genders, it can fluctuate in a predictable way based on time or situation or in a random way.

People with this experience may have a variety of names and pronouns they use or pick a name and pronoun that feels comfortable for the majority of the time and stick with that. It’s always a good strategy to ask them how they identify or want to be referred to at each interaction.

The third category is a gender expansive experience. People with this type of gender have one gender but it encompases a wide range on the gender spectrum. They may choose to present one aspect of their gender at a time or embody a variety of components at once. They may appear to have a genderfluid identity when in actuality their gender is stable but expansive. People in this category may choose a gender neutral name and pronoun that feels right no matter which part of their identity they wish to express, they may be comfortable with their birth name and gender marker, or they may have an ‘alter ego’ that they use when they want to present differently from their typical day to day expression.

If you are genderfluid and your experience differs from all of these, please let me know! I’d love to hear your experience. You can send me an email at letstalkgenderpodcast@gmail.com or leave a comment below.

Explaining your experience of gender as a genderfluid person can be challenging. Not only does it include much of the basics that cis people often don’t understand about nonbinary identities that we talked about in Episode 5, but you then have to explain your overall experience of your gender as well as your current experience of your gender.

You often need to develop a code to flag to people how your gender feels and how you want to be referred to each time you see them. This can be a verbal code such as simply stating the name and pronoun you wish them to use at that time. It can be a tag of some sort such as a name badge, pin, or dog tag that states your current name and pronoun. Or it can be more subtle such as a piece of jewelry or combination of presentation aspects that signal one name and pronoun combination over another. The more subtle the signal, the easier it is for you but the more practice it takes for the people around you. So if you opt for a more subtle approach, be prepared to correct people if needed and to resort to a more overt approach for people that you interact with less often or who don’t know you as well.

PHYSICAL AND SOCIAL ASPECTS OF GENDER

Shifting gears, I’d like to talk about physical and social aspects of gender, how these don’t always line up, and what I do in those situations.

If you’ve listened to previous episodes or read parts of my blog, you know that I have both male and female components to my gender and that they overlap in the neutral area. The balance between these two sides shifts at times such that my day to day sense of my gender moves around between about 25% male to 50% female. I use my innate sense of my gender, various types of dysphoria, and various experiences of euphoria to determine where my gender is on that scale at any given time.

This is where it gets interesting. Dysphoria and euphoria can both be broken down into physical and social components. Anything to do with my body that I experience with no outside influence whatsoever I consider to be physical. Anything to do with interacting with others including how they gender me based on my body I consider to be social. When I was tracking my gender to see how much it fluctuated, I tracked physical and social aspects separately and discovered that they actually fluctuated differently.

I often have very little physical dysphoria and have an innate feeling that my body is female or, on a different day, that my body is neutral. But at the same time I will be very uncomfortable being identified as female by others and will prefer to go by Ray and use they/them pronouns if I can. It is more rare to be the other way around but does occasionally happen.

So what do I do in these circumstances? I tried to come up with dysphoria management strategies and euphoria heightening strategies that targeted either the physical components or the social components. For me, some of the physical strategies were wearing more masculine clothing and jewelry, wearing a binder, or wearing a packer. My social strategies included not responding to feminine language, ‘forgetting’ to wear my name tag, and spending less time with cis het folks I wasn’t out to and more time with queer friends and allies.

The times when I feel physically male and socially female are easier because I can wear a binder and masculine clothes and people will barely notice and I don’t feel uncomfortable hearing my name, she/her pronouns, or female language. The times when I feel physically female and socially male are much harder. I don’t personally have the need to change my appearance and would feel comfortable wearing my more feminine clothes but if I do, I will have even more social dysphoria about feminine language and she/her pronouns. So I often have to employ some of the physical strategies just to feel like I am having some influence on the social interactions or at least that I did what I could to flag how I wanted to be identified and if the other person didn’t pick up on it that’s their problem.

Managing this balance can seem complicated and some days it definitely feels exhausting. But I’ve found that the more I can be aware of my own gender and whether it is physical or social aspects that are bothering me most, the better I am at using appropriate strategies to manage it.

GENDER AND SEXUAL ORIENTATION

Another area where being nonbinary can feel unnecessarily complicated is how it relates to sexual orientation. Gender and sexual orientation are two completely separate concepts and yet not only do many people tend to mix them up but when we are exploring our gender it often makes us feel unsure about our sexual orientation as well.

I think this is partly a language thing. Many sexual orientation labels define who we are attracted to in relation to what our own gender is so when our gender or the way we define it changes, often those labels feel like they no longer apply even if who we are attracted to hasn’t changed. The easiest solution to this is to find a new label for your orientation that doesn’t relate it to your gender.

However, sometimes when we are exploring our gender, it changes how we relate to others and can directly influence our sexual orientation. For example, before doing any of my own gender exploration, I identified as gay. I was female presenting though always more of a tom boy, female identified, and often was labeled as a lesbian. This term never felt right to me and I never used it for myself, which I now think was likely due to my yet undiscovered gender identity. When my husband transitioned I felt no less gay and no less attracted to him. This wasn’t specifically what made me question my own gender identity but once I started to I realized that I had always used the term ‘gay’ to mean ‘attracted to people like myself’. As my awareness of my gender shifted towards the neutral part of the spectrum, so too did my orientation.

I know of lots of people who’s sexual orientation has remained stable throughout their gender exploration and transition. They have remained attracted to the same types of people they were prior to any gender questioning. I know other people who’s sexual orientation remained stable in relation to their own gender and shifted with their gender through the exploration and transition process, more like mine has. And I know people who’s sexual orientation expanded significantly as they explored their gender because they learned how to see bodies and people as separate from gender.

Having your sexual orientation questioned when you come out as nonbinary can be frustrating and confusing. If you have an easy answer, feel free to use it. If not, try reflecting their question back to them and see if they can question their own assumptions about how your gender and sexuality interact. Sometimes they are informed and know of all these different experiences I talked about and just want to know which one applies to you. But more often than not, they are making an assumption based on the labels you have used in the past and the way they categorize both gender and sexuality as binary, all-or-nothing, or as static. If you can get them to recognize their own assumptions rather than having to do all the education we talked about in Episode 5, go for it.

REACH OUT!

If you are working through some of these more complex aspects of identifying as nonbinary and want to reach out, please email me at letstalkgenderpodcast@gmail.com. You are not alone.

That’s it for Episode 6 of Season 2 of Let’s Talk Gender.

The music for this podcast is by Jamie Price. You can find them at Must Be Tuesday or on iTunes.

Coming up in Episode 7 I will be talking about living in the world as a nonbinary person including navigating public bathrooms, going to the gym, and what ‘passing’ means for nonbinary people.

Talk to you soon.

RELATED POSTS

Processing…

Success! You're on the list.

Whoops! There was an error and we couldn't process your subscription. Please reload the page and try again.

Let’s Talk Gender S2E5: Coming Out as Nonbinary

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Hi everyone. Welcome back to Let’s Talk Gender.

This episode is about coming out as nonbinary, why it is so darn hard, how to figure out whether it’s the right time and place to do it (again), and how to respond to inappropriate questions and ignorance.

TO COME OUT OR NOT TO COME OUT…

I look at coming out as an equation between pros and cons. On the pro side, I have need and benefit. How much do I need to come out? This often comes down to how much I’m struggling with not being out. As someone who is somewhat genderfluid and about 50% of the time is comfortable being identified as female, most of the time my need to come out is pretty low. If I’ve been experiencing a lot of dysphoria or been through a triggering situation, the need definitely goes up.

How much will coming out benefit me? And how likely am I to receive those benefits? The benefit to me of everyone I come out to accepting me 100% as a nonbinary person is very high but the likelihood of that happening is very low, much lower than for binary trans people. This is simply due to society’s reliance on the gender binary and the lack of understanding of nonbinary identities.

On the con side, there’s cost and risk. What is the emotional cost required to receive the benefit? I.e. how much emotional labour will I have to do to get someone to the point where they understand my identity or at least understand how to be supportive and are consistently following through on that? This varies but is generally on the high end. Also included in cost is the emotional cost of being misgendered. In mine and my husband’s experience, being misgendered by someone you have come out to hurts a lot more than being misgendered by someone you haven’t come out to yet. And if it’s going to be a struggle for people to understand my identity and gender me correctly, I am likely to get misgendered more often than correctly gendered. So this definitely puts the cost at the high end.

I think of risk as what I might lose by coming out. Is there a risk to my physical wellbeing either due to safety or stability (job, housing, etc) by coming out? In my case, I have a lot of privilege and support in this area and have very low risk to my safety and security.

So if the need and benefit of coming out are both low and the cost is high, why have I come out to anyone? Well, certain things can shift this equation in favour of coming out. As I said, the need goes up when I’m having a particularly difficult day, a longer period of more intense dysphoria, or experience a triggering situation. The cost can also go down significantly if I am talking to someone who is queer, someone who openly expresses awareness of trans issues or, even better, nonbinary identities and pronouns, or if I am in a position of power in relation to the person or people I am coming out to.

The longer I have identified as nonbinary and the more times I’ve come out to people, the better I get at recognizing these low cost situations and capitalizing on them or the higher need situations and making sure I get the support I need without traumatizing myself further by having a high cost conversation with someone just based on proximity.

COMING OUT CONSIDERATIONS

So what are some of the things you should think about when you’re deciding to come out to someone?

The first thing should be safety. This includes both emotional and physical safety. What views has the person expressed? How much risk is there to your wellbeing if the conversation isn’t received well? Coming out is always a scary process. I don’t think I have ever come out as nonbinary to someone without at least a small amount of fear. So it definitely can be a challenge to figure out if this fear is your natural anxiety about doing something big or if there is a legitimate risk to your safety. Take precautions, have a back up plan in case it doesn’t go well, find outside sources of support and stability as much as possible, and trust your gut.

The next thing to do is figure out what your expectations are. What outcome are you expecting from this particular coming out conversation? How much might you lose? How hard to you think the conversation (or conversations) will be? This will help you figure out if it’s worth the cost.

And lastly, consider the context. Who are you coming out to? If they are someone that is very close to you and has a high impact on your safety and stability, the emotional cost and risk will be higher, but also so will the need and benefit. Are they likely to talk to anyone else, either because they tend to spread news or because they will need to have someone to discuss it with in order to process? Are you ok with that or is this something you want to explicitly discuss during the conversation? Who else is around you at the time you are having this conversation? Are there others that might overhear who you don’t want to be coming out to, or who you would like to overhear so they know without you having to explicitly tell them? What medium are you using to come out? Up until now I have discussed it as though it is a face to face conversation but this doesn’t have to be the case. Both my husband and I have found a written format, usually via email, to be the easiest. But that only works for the planned, thought about in advance type of coming out conversations, not the ones where you capitalize on a low cost or high need situation. And lastly, consider your ability to care for yourself in that context. Will you have time alone soon after? Will you have access to your most effective self-care tools or support networks? How can you adjust the context so you do have access to those things?

This can seem like a lot of questions to ask yourself in a split second between someone calling you by a binary term and you deciding to correct them or not. But some of these questions will be more important to you than others. Some of them are make or break. Those are the ones you want to focus on.

EXPLAINING YOUR IDENTITY TO CIS PEOPLE

So let’s say the equation tips in favour of coming out. Coming out as nonbinary, or any queer identity for that matter, requires using language that is not necessarily understood in the same way or understood at all by the person you are coming out to. When we find labels that work for us, they help us understand ourselves and often help us connect with others who share our experiences. But when we are going to use them as a communication tool such as in the coming out process, we have to remember that words are used to represent abstract concepts and not everyone has the same understanding of those concepts as we do.

There are lots of aspects of queer identity and culture that are not understood, or misunderstood, by mainstream culture. This is because the majority of exposure to queer culture is via the media which is notorious for picking stories that are sensational, that are the most shocking or the most palatable to the mainstream, and that are the most visible or common. This leaves many queer experiences misinterpreted or not represented at all. So when we use language that connects to concepts built by the media, it can take a lot of energy to counteract those concepts in order for the person we are trying to come out to to accurately understand our experience and identity.

This knowledge gap can be very frustrating and can often take you by surprise. What do you mean you’ve never heard the term nonbinary? What do you mean you’ve never heard of anyone using they/them pronouns? When we have been so immersed in this world and information as we try to figure ourselves out, it can be a shock to realize how far behind everyone else is.

When you are coming out, you can ignore this knowledge gap and expect people to look up the terms you used that they don’t understand (and even provide them resources) but what if they don’t even understand that it is important enough an issue that they need to do this work? If you can find a key person or two in each group of people you are coming out to (family, co-workers, friends) and spend the time and energy to bring them up to speed, they can hopefully then help bring others along or at least be a good example of how to refer to you.

The first step to bringing someone up to speed is noticing when there is a knowledge gap and identifying how big it is. If they have looks of confusion or ask vague awkward questions like ‘So when did this start’ or ‘Why are you telling me all this’ or even ‘What, what do you mean, nonbinary,’ these are good indicators that they do not have the background knowledge required to understand what you are telling them.

The next step is to connect the dots. I tend to use a working backwards approach. If they’re confused about nonbinary, I suggest that gender isn’t just male and female. If they relate my gender to my body, I talk about gender and sex being separate concepts. If they want to know my life history and make everything about gender or are looking for some kind of trigger, I talk about identity as an ever evolving thing that was there from the start even if I didn’t have the words to understand or express it. If they have a strong, especially negative, reaction to a label I use, I ask them what comes to mind when they hear that label. If it’s a new label to them, they might just not like the feeling of being confused. Or, they may have a bad or incorrect association with it from media representation that I would then have to correct or find a different label to use (which is why I like knowing a few different ones that work for me). From there, I work my way back up to the understanding of my identity that I wanted them to have in the first place.

The last step is to leave them with a clear takeaway message. For me, this is usually a combination of ‘You don’t have to fully understand my identity in order to support me’ and ‘I would like you to avoid female gendered language and use these terms and they/them pronouns instead’ or whatever my expectations are for that individual or group. Check out the post on bridging the gap between mainstream and queer and trans culture for more tips and useful phrases.

EXPLAINING DYSPHORIA TO CIS PEOPLE

Another aspect of coming out is often having to explain why you don’t feel like the gender you were assigned at birth. Typically this includes a description of the types of dysphoria you feel. Most cis people don’t know about the concept of dysphoria let alone understand what it feels like. So I find it helpful to relate it to something they might have experienced. Some of the phrases I’ve used include wearing an ill fitting piece of clothing that you can’t take off, having pins and needles that range from annoying to distracting to painful that you can’t do anything about, or not recognizing yourself when you look in the mirror.

Even more important than explaining what dysphoria feels like is explaining what the impact is on you. For this, I describe how exhausting it can be to have part of your mental and emotional space taken up by the effort to ignore those sensations of pins and needles, or how it feels like being pinched every time you’re misgendered by someone who doesn’t know any better (someone you’re not out to) and punched when you’re misgendered by someone you are out to, or how you feel like the parts of you that feel comfortable are invisible and the parts everyone can see are the ones that feel wrong.

I hope you find these phrases helpful in your coming out process.

THEY/THEM PRONOUNS

If you are someone who uses they/them or neopronouns and will be asking people you come out to to adopt these pronouns, these conversations are all about shifting the other person’s mental image of you. This takes practice and most people have never had to do this until someone they know comes out as trans. So naturally, the more clarity you can give them on who you are, why your old identity doesn’t fit, and why the identity you are telling them about feels authentic and important to you, the easier time they will have in adopting the pronouns and name you are asking them to use. Take a listen to Season 2 Episode 4 for more ideas on names, pronouns, and other gendered language.

EXPLAINING FLUID GENDER IDENTITIES

If you are someone who has a fluid gender identity, coming out often requires an explanation of your total gender experience and a shorter version of how you feel in the moment and how you want to be referred to that you would repeat at each interaction or when your gender has shifted. I’ll talk more about this in Episode 6.

KNOWING YOUR BOUNDARIES

As you will have noticed from what I’ve talked about so far, and likely experienced yourself, coming out involves a lot of educating others. Often, especially at the beginning of this process (that goes on for the rest of our lives), we engage in conversations that are more exhausting than they are worth or reveal more personal information than was necessary for that individual or situation. In short, we cross our personal boundaries before we realize.

People will ask invasive and inappropriate questions without knowing that’s what they’re doing. And sometimes, you will answer them without realizing that you don’t owe them that information. This can make you feel exposed, defensive, or antagonistic either in response to the question or at the next encounter with this person. This has definitely happened to me and is never a good place to be. The other person may be surprised when your demeanor suddenly changes or may become antagonistic themself. The relationship that you valued enough to want to come out can become a source of pain or even a safety risk.

So how do you figure out where your boundaries are before you or someone else crosses them by accident? Here are a few questions you can ask yourself that might help.

With regards to general information, are you comfortable…

Disclosing your birth name?
Explaining why you prefer the pronouns you use?
Talking about your experiences of dysphoria?
Talking about specific strategies you use to change your appearance or presentation (binding, packing, tucking, padding, etc)?
Talking about how supportive your family, significant other, or other people in your life are?
Talking about what support groups you attend/are a part of?
Talking about wait times, difficulties finding a trans friendly family doctor, and other systemic barriers?

With regards to medical and legal information, are you comfortable…

Talking about medication you are on related to transitioning?
Talking about changes you are experiencing as a result of these medications?
Disclosing what surgeries/surgery you are interested in having/have had?
Talking about legal documentation changes?
Discussing transphobic policies and politics?

Answering yes or no to each of these questions is a good start. You may want to do this a few times based on who you are talking to or what context you are in. For example, you may answer differently if you are talking to a co-worker, a close family member, a trans person, or your medical doctor.

So what if someone asks about one of those things that you aren’t comfortable disclosing that information but you don’t want to discourage them or shut down the conversation completely? Here are a few different options.

Try explaining why that’s not something that is appropriate to ask or why this is not an appropriate context to ask it in. This response still provides education and helps them be better informed and a better ally and keeps a positive relationship and rapport between you but without crossing your personal boundaries.

Have resources ready to recommend so they can look up general information on the topic they are asking about. Usually acquaintances, co-workers, or friends are asking you specifically because you are the first trans or nonbinary person they have been exposed to and you happen to be there when the question occurs to them. They don’t necessarily want to know your specific story even if that’s how they phrase the question.

Challenge them based on the phrasing of the question. If they ask ‘Are you having the surgery?’ you can respond ‘What surgery?’ If they can’t answer with a more specific informed question, they don’t deserve your personal response.

Provide a general response instead of a personal one regardless of how they ask the question. For example ‘I’m not comfortable answering that for myself but from what I’ve heard from other trans people, some do [example A for these reasons] and some do [example B for these reasons]’.

Remember, hindsight is 20/20. There will definitely be times when you disclose more than you meant to or realize later that there was no reason why you had to answer their question. This can lead to a lot of guilt and regret about not standing up for yourself or protecting your privacy when you had the right to. Try to be kind to yourself. We’ve all done that and all you can do is learn as much as you can from others about how to have the conversations in advance and explore where your boundaries are before they are crossed.

SEXUAL ORIENTATION AND GENDER

Another aspect of coming out in terms of gender is how it impacts your sexuality. When my husband came out at trans one of the most common questions I got was whether that made me straight. I haven’t gotten nearly as many questions about my sexuality when I have come out as nonbinary but I also haven’t come out to nearly as many people. However, I definitely questioned my own sexuality and how to describe it to others when I came out to myself as nonbinary. Also consider that coming out to your partner may cause them to question their own sexuality (which they may or may not feel prepared to do). I’ll talk more about all these intersections of gender and sexual orientation in Episode 6 as well.

GUIDELINES FOR CIS PEOPLE

One of the other posts on my blog I recommend checking out is called How to Be Respectful Towards a Trans Person. This is a resource written for cis people as a guideline of how to respond when someone in their life comes out to them as trans. It has different sections depending on the nature of the relationship to the trans person. You can read through this yourself to get a better understanding of how people should and should not respond to you when you come out or you can include it in your resources that you recommend or give to people when you come out.

REACH OUT!

Coming out is an intense, scary, repetitive, exhausting, but often rewarding experience. If you are struggling with this process and want to reach out, you can email me at letstalkgenderpodcast@gmail.com. Remember, you are not alone.

That’s it for Episode 5 of Season 2 of Let’s Talk Gender.

The music for this podcast is by Jamie Price. You can find them at Must Be Tuesday or on iTunes.

Coming up in Episode 6 I will be talking about some of the more complex aspects of being nonbinary such as genderfluid identities, how physical and social aspects of gender can feel at odds with each other, and how nonbinary genders interact with sexual orientation.

Talk to you soon.

RELATED POSTS

Processing…

Success! You're on the list.

Whoops! There was an error and we couldn't process your subscription. Please reload the page and try again.

Gay vs Trans

There are lots of ways that being gay and trans are similar but there are also a lot of differences. I have found that when I initially start talking about gender with someone new who has minimal queer literacy, they often get confused between sexuality and gender and conflate being trans with being gay.

Below are a lists of similarities and differences between being gay and being trans based on my experiences of being gay and non-binary and my husband’s experiences of being gay and trans. We both identified as gay first, and later discovered and expressed our non-cis gender identities.

SIMILARITIES

Incorrectly assumed to be the default (cis or straight)
Living with confusion and feeling like you don’t fit in before you know why
Have to figure out your identity
Have to ‘come out of the closet’ ie tell other people
Dealing with fear of rejection, prejudice, loss of housing or work as a result of coming out
Excitement and comfort of finding people that have the same/similar identity/experiences as you
Culture, experiences, and history specific to queer community
Lots of different terminology, language, and labels
Different interaction with people in your community than people outside of it
Risk to physical and psychological safety by living authentically
Pride parades, pride month, pride flags and symbols
Being labeled by strangers (often incorrectly) based on how you look or who you’re with
Often become parents via alternative fertility methods, surrogacy, or adoption
Prejudice in health care and legal systems (significantly worse for trans identities but present for both)
Lack of appropriate/relevant sex education

DIFFERENCES

Who you like vs who you are ie sexuality vs gender
Gender based experiences and identities are much less understood and accepted by the general public than sexuality based ones (though this wasn’t always the case and we hope to get to the same place with acceptance of gender identities)
- Significant energy has to be put towards educating the people around you when you come out as trans that isn’t necessary when coming out as gay
Coming out as gay requires the other person to change how they refer to your partner (if you have one) whereas coming out as trans requires them to change how they refer to you (which takes a lot more work on their part)
Dysphoria with trans identities that doesn’t relate to gay identities
Possibility of medical intervention and changes to legal documents with transition
Difficulty accessing appropriate/competent medical care as a trans person when it wasn’t a problem as a gay person
Gay community is readily available and easy to find while trans community is much smaller and harder to find
Extreme shift in privilege with transition that is much less pronounced with coming out as gay
Most trans people pick a new name, gay people don’t

If you have anything you’d like to add to these lists, leave me a comment below!

Processing…

Success! You're on the list.

Whoops! There was an error and we couldn't process your subscription. Please reload the page and try again.

Gender as a Spectrum vs Many Different Spectrums

The first definition of gender that I came across that differed from the binary definition was the idea of gender as a spectrum from male to female with neutral in the middle. For a long time this made sense to me. As someone who identifies as a mix of male and female, I could conceptualize and communicate my gender to others using this model.

Original Genderbread Person graphic showing sex, gender, presentation, and sexual orientation as separate concepts, each with their own spectrum.

However, since hearing more stories from other non-binary, genderqueer, and genderfluid folks, this model seems limiting. What seems more useful is seeing gender as separate spectrums. Male from 0 to 10, female from 0 to 10, and ‘other’ or ‘third gender’ from 0 to 10. This model allows for representations of identities such as agender, demiboy or demigirl, and bigender.

This shift is also important when looking at gender presentation. We often talk about presentation in terms of masculine, androgynous, and feminine. Androgynous can mean a blending of more subtle feminine and masculine traits or it can mean mixing the more extreme aspects of masculine and feminine presentation. A single spectrum from masculine to feminine would not be able to represent the difference in these two examples. With separate scales from 0 to 10, you could place a dot at 5 on both scales, or place a dot at 10 on both scales.

Gender Unicorn showing separate scales for masculine and feminine aspects of gender identity, expression, sexual attraction, and romantic attraction.

Having two or more separate scales for gender identity and gender presentation does not exclude anyone. Cisgendered and cis-normative people can still represent their gender and presentation using this model. But it allows for the flexibility to represent many different non-binary and gender non-conforming experiences than a single spectrum does.

Have you ever used one of these models to rate different aspects of yourself? Is this newer model inclusive enough to represent your experience of the world? If not, what would you change? Have you ever asked your friends or family to rate themselves on a similar model? How did it go? Leave me a comment and tell me your experiences!

The Labels I Use And Why

Gay

I use this as a gender neutral term for homosexual. However, it is still a comparison of my gender to my partner’s and if society gets my gender wrong then they’re also going to assume I’m interested in people who do not match my partner (more on this here). This was a great label before I started questioning my gender and before my husband transitioned but has become somewhat problematic for society to understand since then.

Neutrosexual

This is a term I have made up (I think). It follows the same idea as androsexual (male-attracted) and gynesexual (female-attracted) which leave the person’s gender out of it and just specify who they’re attracted to. Neither of those work for me because I’m attracted to people who fall closer to the middle of the spectrum so I prefer neutrosexual. That way, if society still puts me in the female box, at least they’ll understand who I’m attracted to (once I explain the label).

Queer

A nice all-encompassing label. It can be misunderstood by older generations that weren’t part of the reclaiming process and also lacks the specificity I like from labels but has served me well. It can encompass sexuality and gender which is nice but I find that people assume it’s only referring to your sexuality until you specify. Thus:

Genderqueer

Fairly self-explanatory. All encompassing term similar to queer but specifying gender! Tends to represent people with a fluctuating sense of gender (which works for me) though doesn’t have to. Comes with its own flag of lavender, white, and green which also happened to be my wedding colours so I have strong positive associations with it (thus the name of the blog).

Gender neutral

This describes my day-to-day experience and expression of my gender the best. Though I do have both a male and female gender they balance out fairly evenly which lands me in the middle most of the time.

co-gender

This is the most accurate term for my gender but is a fairly obscure one. It describes someone who has two or more genders that exist in harmony with each other (such as co-existing or co-habiting). I have read descriptions of people’s experiences of being bi-gender or tri-gender where it feels like there is a gender war going on inside them all the time and they can fluctuate wildly day-to-day or even hour to hour. This does not match my experience at all so although ‘bi-gender’ technically describes me I prefer co-gender. Some people include this in their name for example Meaghan co Ray. Because of the ‘existing in harmony’ aspect it has a spiritual connotation which also matches my experience of my gender. For a long time the only label that I had heard that worked for me was Two-Spirit but as I am not Indigenous I cannot use that label publicly. Eventually I found co-gender which is a good substitute.

non-binary

I don’t mind using this term as an umbrella term to differentiate from binary experiences but as my sense of gender still falls on the binary spectrum I kind of feel like I am extra binary – both of the genders. I also generally avoid labels that describe the absence of something rather than identifying the presence or experience of something else. So non-binary doesn’t specifically resonate with me as a label but I’m fine with saying that I fall under that umbrella if that is the label that society ends up using for all gender non-conforming people.

So there you have it. At the most specific I am a co-gender neutrosexual (which sounds a bit bizarre) but I generally go by genderqueer and gay.

What are your labels? How did you find the labels that fit you? Are the labels that you use for yourself different from the ones you would communicate to others? Does society understand your labels or do people generally have a different definition than the one you use? Tell me your story in the comments below!

Intersections of Gender and Sexual Orientation

When my husband transitioned I was asked a few times if that meant I was straight. I knew this would be a question people would have but it took me a while to understand why that question was coming up and why I felt so annoyed by it. I tried to explain to a few people why I still identified as gay with varying success. I realized that the underlying issue is that although sexual orientation and gender are two completely separate aspects of a person, they are connected in society because of the labels we use to communicate them. This is my attempt to tease out these two aspects of identity and look at ways that they are entangled and misunderstood by society as a whole.

The basics

Sexual orientation is who you go to bed with.

Gender is who you go to bed as.

Though of course both are much more than that.

If sexual orientation was simply who you are attracted to or who you want to be in a relationship with the labels would mean something like ‘male-attracted’ or ‘female-attracted’ or ‘male and female attracted’ or ‘attracted to anyone regardless of gender’. Some labels do mean these things. Bisexual and pansexual for example. Or the more recently adopted terms of androsexual and gynesexual. But what about gender-neutral-attracted? Would that be neutrosexual? That’s the term I would use. Think it’ll catch on?

Where it gets complicated

The other sexual orientation labels require you to specify your gender as well as those that you are attracted to – homosexual and heterosexual (as well as lesbian and gay). Technically these labels mean ‘same-attracted’ and ‘different-attracted’ which requires you to first define your own gender so that society can identify who would fit into the ‘same’ category or the ‘different’ category. What if you’re questioning your gender identity and you don’t know what category you fit in but you are still attracted to the same people? Or what if your gender identity doesn’t match your gender presentation and people constantly assign the wrong gender to you (because who is going to ask your gender in order to clarify your sexual orientation)? This is where these labels intersect gender and become problematic for some people.

Take me as an example. I identify my sexual orientation as ‘attracted to people who are the same as me’. In order for society to understand who I would be referring to they first have to understand what category I am in. Because I am AFAB (assigned female at birth), they put me in the female box. Before my husband transitioned it was all good in society’s view – I was a lesbian. Though not entirely true or accurate it didn’t cause daily confusion. When my husband transitioned, society switched him to the male box and my sexual orientation label no longer made sense to most people. But rather than questioning their previous understanding of my sexual orientation or gender they would ask me if this meant I was straight. This is where their brain went even though nothing about me had changed.

what’s wrong with this question

The first problem is the feeling that society was policing my use of labels. Regardless of my own gender identity and that of my husband, I should be ‘allowed’ to continue to identify as gay if I felt like that label still represented my sexual orientation. I can understand people wanting to ask in order to make sense of how that works for me but that is not where their question usually came from. It was always phrased as ‘Doesn’t that make you straight?’ not ‘Does that impact your sexual identity at all?’

The second problem is seeing sexual orientation categories as absolutes instead of a spectrum. Gay does not need to mean 100% of the time attracted to same sex as myself, never ever anyone else. It is up to the individual where this line is for them. If 90% of the time I’m attracted to people like myself do I ‘qualify’ as gay? Am I ‘gay enough’? Or am I ‘required’ to use the label bisexual or pansexual if I’ve ever, even for an instant, been attracted to someone different from myself? What about if you identify as straight but you had a crush on someone who is the same sex as you once? Would you be ‘required’ to use the label bisexual or pansexual as well? Or would you have to be equally attracted to men and women in order to ‘qualify’ as bisexual? We need labels to communicate our experiences to each other but when labels become boxes they restrict people’s understanding and this becomes a problem. If my use of the label ‘gay’ was seen as a spectrum it would be possible for me to stay in the ‘female’ box society puts me in and be predominantly female-attracted but have fallen for this one guy, my husband.

The third problem was that society went from seeing us as in the same gender category to opposite gender categories. Gender should not be seen as two categories but also as a spectrum. If gender is a spectrum, it would be possible for me and my husband to still be closer to each other than either end and the label ‘gay’ (or same-attracted) would still make sense. Their question about my sexual orientation changing revealed their rigid understanding of gender and their assumptions about my gender identity.

The fourth problem with this experience is that it made it clear that people thought of my husband’s transition as a switch from being female to being male. Nothing about my husband’s gender was changing. He was still the same person, he had always represented himself in an honest way to me but just didn’t have the right words to express it to himself, to me, or to society. When he finally did, he had to transition in order for society to identify who he had been all along correctly but in my experience he barely changed at all.

This all sounds very rant-y and I suppose it is in some ways. But I’m not mad at people who ask me ‘doesn’t that make you straight?’ It just reveals their limited view of gender and sexual orientation. If they are the type of person that would be open to expanding their worldview and if I have some time (and energy) I’ll question why they think that would be the case.

How I answer the question

My personal crisis about my sexual orientation when my husband first identified that he was trans had very little to do with whether I would still be attracted to him. There was some doubt, sure, but the majority of my stress came from how I was going to explain my identity to other people who had only known me as gay.

When they ask ‘Doesn’t that make you straight?’ the options I came up with for answers were:

I am still gay because I am primarily attracted to women but happened to fall in love with this man.
I am still gay because I am attracted to people who are the same as me and we are much more similar than we are different.
I am gay because even though I identify as female I am actually closer to the middle of the spectrum and so is Jake.

When Jake was first coming out as trans and I was getting the biggest number of these questions I was not yet comfortable discussing my own gender identity so I usually stayed away from #3. I felt like #2 was too vague and might be confusing or frustrating for people because it doesn’t specify anything about gender (which is actually what they’re asking about). A close friend of mine had a female friend who was gay and had been dating a guy for four years. She explained her identity as something like #1. So that’s what I went with most of the time. It still felt somewhat inauthentic but usually safety trumps authenticity (as most queer people can attest).

So that’s it. Pretty straightforward eh? Maybe next time I get asked that question, instead of answering I’ll ask them why they asked it in the first place and see if they can question their own assumptions instead of me doing it for them.

What is your sexual orientation and how does it relate to your gender? I am especially curious what you think of these ideas if you have never thought about your gender or sexual orientation before. Leave a comment below!

My Story So Far

Background

I grew up in a liberal family in downtown Toronto. I was dressed in practical clothes that I could play around in outside – overalls, jeans, shorts and t-shirts, running shoes. I was surrounded by people of all types. I had a couple close family members who were gay and who had partners that were accepted as members of the family.

I am fairly introverted and luckily, so is most of my immediate family so I was raised in an introvert-friendly environment which helped me develop self-confidence. I don’t know whether it is my introversion or just my personality but I tend to figure myself out using introspection rather than trial and error type experiences. This is probably why I was a bit of a late bloomer, sexually speaking.

Throughout junior high and into the beginning of high school, as my teenage hormones started to make themselves known, I realized I was more interested in the girls around me than the boys. This was partly an innate sexual experience but I do remember thinking about what personality traits I liked in other people and discovered that the females around me had more of these traits.

So at some point in grade 9 I told my mom that I knew I liked girls but I wasn’t sure whether or not I liked boys. She asked me a couple of questions to help me figure it out and I came back a couple of weeks later to tell her I didn’t think I liked boys. This is how I came out to my family. I was also out at school around the same time.

The only time I remember being in the closet was when I went to undergrad and wanted to see what my dorm-mates were like before coming out. That lasted all of two weeks. I couldn’t stand it.

As far as I could tell I had three labels to choose from – queer (nice all-encompassing label but misunderstood by older generations that weren’t part of the reclaiming process and lacking the specificity I wanted), gay (general term for homosexual but usually applied to men), or lesbian (women who like women). I never liked the label ‘lesbian’, originally because it’s a noun instead of an adjective. It felt like I was putting myself in a category instead of describing a part of myself. Now, I don’t like the term because it is strongly female gendered both for me and my partner. So I generally used the label ‘gay’ but I was also comfortable with ‘queer’. More on my labels here.

I didn’t start dating anyone until undergrad, mostly because I knew all the queer kids in my high school and wasn’t interested in any of them and didn’t know many people beyond that sphere. I met my now husband in the summer after second year and we were married six years later in a lovely gay wedding on a beach just outside Halifax.

When he transitioned from female to male I had a brief re-look at my sexuality, decided I still liked the label gay because of its gender neutrality, and attempted to field questions from family and well-meaning acquaintances about whether his transition means I’m straight (more on this here). I also like saying I’m Jake-sexual. At this point I am a person who likes people who are similar to me. I am attracted to that sense of same-ness in my relationship and for me, this falls squarely in the homosexual category, regardless of gender.

Gender

My first experience of my gender as anything other than female was about a year after I came out as gay. I started having days where I felt like a guy. I already had mostly tom-boy type clothes, nothing extremely feminine, and didn’t particularly like dresses, skirts, leggings, makeup, or painting my nails. But this was different. I felt like a boy. So I wore my most boy-ish clothes and tried to make sense of what was happening.

There was a guy in my year named Ray who had a locker down the hall from me and on the ‘boy’ days I felt like someone was talking to me when they called his name. It just happened.

After a couple of days up to about a week, I would switch back to feeling like Meaghan, feeling female again, and go back to wearing whatever I wanted. A week later, I’d have another few days of feeling like I was a boy named Ray. I ended up separating my closet out into girlier clothes and boy clothes so I could just go to one side or the other depending on the day.

After about three months of this I was confused, frustrated, annoyed, and had no idea how to explain what I was feeling to myself or anyone else. This was before google, and YouTube, where you can search for ambiguous things and hopefully find someone describing a similar experience. So, March break of that year while we were at the cottage, I took a notebook and found a secluded spot to sit. I wrote a list of personality traits that I felt like described me when I was Meaghan, and a list of personality traits that described me when I was Ray, and I connected the ones that were the same (about half of each list) and decided that these traits were me. I couldn’t have two people, or spirits, or genders fighting each other for supremacy all the time. I needed some semblance of consistency and identity and these traits became the core of that. For many years I forgot about this three-month experience and left my gender alone. For the majority of the time it remained slightly female of center.

When I was in undergrad I was part of the queer group on campus. I met a few people who were gender neutral or questioning whether they were trans, four or five of whom either transitioned during that time or have transitioned since. I was exposed to new language about gender identity and expression and learned the basics of what it meant to transition. The non-binary label was not pervasive in society or even queer communities yet. I felt a vague envy of the people who presented as androgynous and identified as gender neutral or gender-fluid but didn’t delve into it more than that. My presentation became more masculine, or androgynous. This has fondly been termed my ‘butch phase’ by my older sister.

I was thrown into the deep end of the gender identity pool when my husband started questioning whether he might be trans. With my full support, he explored various aspects of his masculinity and eventually came to understand that he was male and began his transition. Throughout this process we learned all about physical and social dysphoria, binders, packers, how to navigate the medical and legal systems for transition, and had nearly daily conversations about gender (and still do).

As he started being read as male we were suddenly seen as a straight couple. This partly bothered me because it took away our visible queer identity but it also put me squarely in the ‘female’ box. This was uncomfortable enough that it was partly what triggered me to revisit my own gender identity. But now, I had the language to understand it and the tools to explore it.

My experience of my gender and process for exploring it are significantly different from what my husband went through but, seeing as we were both assigned female at birth (AFAB), many of the same strategies are useful, not to mention having a partner that intimately understands what I’m going through. So far my exploration process is mostly on a personal level (which I will now be sharing with you) but I haven’t ruled out the possibility of some component of social, medical, or legal transition in the future.

On the Horizon

Fairly recently we have also been trying to conceive. This in itself has been an interesting process for a number of reasons and is the other part of what triggered me to revisit my gender identity (see the Pregnancy and Parenting section for more recent updates). Hopefully, at some point I will be pregnant which I am anticipating will come with its own shift in gender and dysphoria, requiring new management strategies and tools. And then of course, there will eventually be navigating being a gender queer parent. Exciting times ahead!