What is it like to experience gender?

[Ikarus]

Lifting weights, gaming and fps / competitive stuff/ car mechanic /  is masculine. Wearing make up / being chatty / nurturing things / loves drama, now that is feminine. (This is the cultural attitude) These actions obviously do not always correlate in this way, and I suppose most people on the forum would agree with me on this point.

Still a lot of people feel some type of connection to their gender even when they don’t fit into all of the societal constructs of gender. My experience of gender, ....... VOID. Im agender or genderless. For me I cannot see myself relating to this gender feeling people get when doing certain actions. I don’t understand why people think of themselves as a man or woman. Hypothetically, for the sake of argument, let’s say that a man does many actions that a woman does or vice versa, and still identifies as a man or woman, then that man / woman essence which remains seems super abstract or just odd to me... What is it?

I go by he/him, but the way I see it my he/him pronoun feels the same way as someone calling me a biological male which is true scientifically.  Hello male, Hello, yes I am a male. The topic of identity and persona is something I think about a lot in deeper ways as well but that’s another topic. I see myself deep down as a person who has no need for gender labels, or finding out how feminine or how masculine I am. 50/50 quarter masculine, Nope...

Other people see themselves as people, who are this or that gender. I don’t experience the feel so I will probably never understand this. I made this post to better understand the majority of people who experience gender. What is it like for you? Is it important to you / how does it affect your choices / your career / your hobbies / does gender influence anything for you? Um... That’s about it...

 

 

[Collie]

Mkay, so as someone who recently questioned if I was agender and concluded in the end that I'm cis after all, here's what I discovered: I do, after all, have this very, very vague feeling that I'm a woman. Calling myself agender, after a few days, just didn't feel "right". "Cis woman" feels right. It's hard to explain beyond that. 

I imagine that if your internal sense of gender doesn't line up w/ your biological sex, then it's a much stronger feeling. But even me, as a cis person, still discovered that I have a sense of gender.

[Ikarus]

2 hours ago, Reengo said:

I imagine that if your internal sense of gender doesn't line up w/ your biological sex, then it's a much stronger feeling. 

It would be interesting to hear from trans people about their experience and compare it with that of others.

I agree with you, Trans people probably experience gender stronger. 

 

 

 

[lovelyleaf]

I used to think that I was a girl because I like fashion and wearing dresses and being pretty and I thought that made me feminine and by extension a female until literally one day I woke up and was like "actually no" lmao

I don't understand gender at all it's really stupid lol. I usually identify as non- binary and then I wonder if agender is a better descriptor for me but non- binary feels right and I don't see any point in changing it.

I really like a lot of traditionally female things. I like looking like a girl because girls are pretty and being pretty is fun. But I'm not a girl myself. 

[Nix]

That is an interesting question, I have indeed always felt this vague ‘I am a woman’ feeling. Even though I hate dresses, make-up, overly pink clothing and didn’t play with dolls but with cars, legos and dinosaurs instead.
 

But now that I am really trying to put my finger on that feeling I find that I can’t describe it. Maybe in the same way an alloromantic person just ‘knows’ what romance is? Sorry I can’t be more helpful.

[Apex]

It's difficult to describe lol. I do just... have this sense of being a woman. It feels right to me, and being perceived as a woman by society also feels right.

There have been times where I've questioned my gender extensively, and where I've identified as trans, nonbinary, bigender, genderqueer, etc. But something about that always ended up feeling incorrect- like I'm not really being true to myself. That doesn't happen when I identify myself as a woman, so I guess "woman" is just the best fit.

I am pretty feminine, so I at least partially follow my society's construct of what a woman is, but my conception of my gender goes beyond that. There are a lot of ways in which I can't relate to other feminine women, or to other women as a whole, or to the concept of "womanhood." Gender and presentation are both just really vague. Like taking your "wearing make up / being chatty / nurturing things / loves drama" stereotype example, there are a lot of other ways to experience/perform/feel femininity, and that's not even bringing gender itself into the equation. (Same goes for being masculine & being a man, but I'm neither so I can't speak on it much.)

[Ikarus]

On 3/22/2022 at 8:14 AM, Apex said:

 there are a lot of other ways to experience/perform/feel femininity, and that's not even bringing gender itself into the equation. 

Would you mind elaborating on this point… how would this work.

 

I have an idea of what you mean, and I might partially relate to it. 

I mean back when I played vrchat a lot I used a snazzy cute anime avatar. It made me feel different after a while. I felt a little more giggly, playful, and this cute energy feeling. It was the first real gender questioning moment for me.

Later on I realized those feels where not attached to an idea or feeling of womanhood. I enjoyed those qualities on their own. Those feels where a part of me as a person more than a gender. The avatar just made me express them more and feel new. 
 

Does this experience relate at all to what you mean when experiencing femininity without bringing in gender?   

[Apex]

On 3/24/2022 at 10:04 PM, Ikarus said:

Would you mind elaborating on this point… how would this work.

If you mean the "and that's not even bringing gender itself into the equation." part, I just didn't want to insinuate that gender was the same thing as gender presentation. For example, men can be feminine and women can be masculine. And there are nonbinary people who are feminine/masculine, and/or who feel a connection to concepts like manhood and womanhood.

If you mean the "there are a lot of other ways to experience/perform/feel femininity" part, that's a little more difficult to explain. I guess I meant like, someone's interpretation of femininity/masculinity can vary depending on their culture, subcultures, style, interests, job, etc. A woman might be a buff truck mechanic but still consider herself feminine, and her femininity is probably different from her goth friend's expression of femininity, but both of them are still feminine. Though they'd both deviate from the stereotypical societal view of what femininity is.

As for how someone untangles all of this from gender, I don't have a clear answer. What you said about the anime avatar would be an example though- you can like things that have a more feminine "cute energy" without actually attaching that to being a girl.

Edited March 26, 2022 by Apex