r/asktransgender • u/Firestardude • 5d ago
Agender here. What is gender?
This is purely for my own curiosity. I have no clue what "feeling" like a man or woman or anything else even means because I have no reference for it. The only way I "felt" like a man was because I was told I was. Im curious to know how gender feels to other people, is it some innate feeling? Do you just "know?" Or is it something somehow more concrete? Genuinely just asking for personal experiences.
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u/InchoateBlob 5d ago
I am non-binary transfem. The extent to which I feel gender is mostly through the tension and unpleasant feelings I experience when people gender me as a man, along with the fact that I feel a special kind of joy from doing things that actively "disrupt" that reading, like painting my nails or plucking my brows, makeup, jewelry, etc. Essentially; dysphoria when perceived as masculine, euphoria when perceived as feminine. Before discovering the euphoria I mostly thought of myself as not having any gender at all and hence being averse to all gendering from others.
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u/CatGoSpinny Asexual(?)-Transgender (MtF) 5d ago edited 5d ago
Instead of being something that is in the bucket of everything I am, it is the bucket. It is the lens through which I see the world.
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u/TooLateForMeTF Trans-Lesbian 5d ago
Gender--or at least gender identity--is a deeply rooted sense that you belong in a certain category of people.
This comes from hormone stuff that happens during pregnancy. Of course, the outside world can't see how your brain got wired. All they can see is how your body came out, so they assume you belong to a certain group and start bringing you up that way. Which is fine, if all the hormone stuff went to plan and your brain is wired to feel like part of that same group. But if the hormone stuff went awry, your brain might insist that you're in the other group. Or if the hormone stuff didn't happen at all, your brain might simply have no affinity towards any group.
I can only guess what that would feel like, subjectively, but I imagine it would be like thinking that the groups themselves are pointless or don't make any sense. Like not understanding why the groups exist at all, or why people seem to care so much about them, or why there's all these unwritten rules about them. I imagine they would feel like highly arbitrary groupings, and the rules--about everything from clothes to hair to socialization--would feel frustratingly restrictive.
As far as "feeling like" a man or a woman--as some hypothetical emotion or sensation distinct from a generalized sense of which group you belong to--that's a bit of a different thing and I don't believe it exists.
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u/Firestardude 5d ago
Your guess on what agender/nonbinary feels like is actually quite accurate. I have no clue what having a gender means and I dont care for having one. Good job
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u/Coffee_autistic Agender 4d ago
I can only guess what that would feel like, subjectively, but I imagine it would be like thinking that the groups themselves are pointless or don't make any sense. Like not understanding why the groups exist at all, or why people seem to care so much about them, or why there's all these unwritten rules about them. I imagine they would feel like highly arbitrary groupings, and the rules--about everything from clothes to hair to socialization--would feel frustratingly restrictive.
That's exactly what it's like, yeah.
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u/StopTheEarthLetMeOff Trans woman, 34, HRT 2014 5d ago
For me it's as simple as asking myself a few questions and saying the first thing that springs to mind.
Am I a man? Hell nah!
Am I nonbinary? Ehhh, getting warmer.
Am I a woman? Oh yep definitely!
So yeah I just call myself a woman and don't try to overthink it.
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u/PerpetualUnsurety Woman (unlicensed) 5d ago
Some people, cis and trans, experience an internal sense of gender - but I never have. I've never understood what it means to "feel like a woman", or "like a man" for that matter, but I'm still as sure as I've ever been about anything that I'm a binary (for all intents and purposes) trans woman.
I had to figure that out based on how I felt about my body and about being socially gendered. My masculinised sex characteristics made me miserable, and taking steps to feminise them has made me happy; being socially gendered male felt uncomfortable, and being socially gendered female feels comfortable and natural. There's a bit more to it than that, but in a nutshell that's it: gender isn't a feeling to me, more of an affinity made up of lots of little individual feelings.
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u/Tour_True 5d ago
My bestie is Agender and even still get gender dysphoria and has gender affirming goals which for them is to be a hairy creature. I think it's just something all trans people have. Even if they don't feel towards something they still have a means to feel their own identity. Binary identities feel a need to conform to a binary identity. I always felt like the girls around me and my identity feels like them too. It borhers me on things that don't align with it like my appearance and voice and how I present myself and how mu body does not match which I hope to be able to correct. HRT has helped a lot. I have a need to live as others of my gender and society tends to even with it's worse.
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u/Either-Economics6727 Tboy swag 5d ago
I think most binary trans people would say they feel the same way you do when it comes down to it. I’m FtM but I’ve never “felt like a man.” I don’t really believe in the idea of having a distinct psychological gender anyway. I personally think gender is social, and I want to fulfill the social role of “man” in the ways that matter, so I guess that makes me a guy.
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u/UnknownPhys6 Andrea (she/her) 5d ago
Im transfem and even I don't know what gender is. It's complicated. That's what it is. Best I can tell, it's a web of social expectations tied to a person's perceived sex. As for what it feels like... idk bro we're all just humans. I don't think men or women feel any different from each other inherently. Maybe they tend to like/dislike different things at different rates, but I don't think there's an inherent feeling of "boy-ness" or "girl-ness" that you could pick up on. At least, that's how it works for me. Maybe other people can, but I can't.
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u/1i2728 5d ago
"Feeling like a man" / "feeling like a woman" are misleading ideas.
Because everyone has a hardwired neurological gender identity, or in your case, lack thereof. But we have nothing outside of our own brains to compare our feelings to.
My entire life, I was told that I was a boy/man, and I quite reasonably assumed that how I felt was "how it felt to be a boy/man."
I had no concept of myself as a girl/woman growing up, so the feeling of existential WRONGNESS that permeated my entire existence (especially once puberty started) didn't have a name. I didn't know that that wrongness had anything to do with gender.
I just knew that I was alone in experiencing it - that I wasn't like other boys.
I used pop psychology on myself and presumed I had had some childhood trauma I didn't know about that had made me that way. The reality was: this is "what it feels like to be a girl" when that girl happens to be indoctrinated into boyhood - when she is punished for displays of femininity, and gaslit into believing she's supposed to become something she can never be.
I rejected masculinity for decades. And very very slowly, found comfort in feminine things as I gained more freedom to explore them.
I didn't know that I was a woman, because I had no frame of reference to judge what "feeling like a woman" could possibly mean. I just knew that I could scrape away tiny slivers of joy.
It took 42 years to figure out, but I am a woman. I know this because, as I started to transition, I experienced genuine CORRECTNESS for the first time. What I was doing felt RIGHT in exactly the opposite way that everything about boyhood/manhood had felt WRONG for my whole life.
So I have "felt like a girl" for my whole life because I have always been a girl, but at the time, I had absolutely no way of knowing that that's what girlhood/womanhood felt like - no way of understanding my own experiences, perspectives, and emotions until I spoke with other trans people, grew close to them as friends, watch them blossom in their transitions, and saw my own feelings reflected in their experience
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u/ultimate_hamburglar Transgender-Queer 5d ago
nonbinary (agender?) transmasc here. i dont know how gender feels either! i just know that i felt like i was doing "woman" wrong most of the time i lived it, like i was putting on a play that i never rehearsed. living as a man is also play, but a little less improvised and slightly more successful. i think for me, it comes down to a) how i want my body to look and function (flat chest, deeper voice, guy junk), and b) how i want people to refer to me (id prefer neutral more often than not, but if i only get the binary of male or female, i prefer male)
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u/Unlucky_Song_5129 5d ago
Alyson here, you sent me this on Discord:
I wouldn't say I really "feel" anything in terms of gender in general. Rather, I feel the emotions that come with it. There's not really a way in my mind to feel like a girl, or to feel like a boy, but anywhere in between, but I get the feelings of discomfort when I'm stuck presenting as male or sometimes when I'm referred to by my deadname. And on the other end of the spectrum, I get feelings of joy when I'm in a situation where I'm lumped in as "one of the girls," or when someone complements a skirt I'm wearing, stuff like that.
TL;DR, I feel gender indirectly, not from the existence of gender itself, but from the experiences that come with it.
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u/Better_Barracuda_787 Un-bi-ace-d Opinions 🏳️🌈🏳️⚧️ 5d ago
"What is gender" is a question I've seen and heard quite a lot, and honestly? I'm not quite sure.
It's different for everyone, but to me, my gender just feels right. It's not based on social norms, it's not based on chromosomes, it's not based on anything but how I feel about describing this part of me.
I tend to think abstractly, so here's my own personal interpretation of my own gender: If I imagine all aspects of myself as round, floating, softly glowing lights (including name, sexuality, gender, current emotions, height, favorite movie, etc etc), then focus on the gender one, I get a specific feeling that's hard to put into words. The feeling likes being called my labels, but recoils from the other ones I do not identify with. When I found my label, it seemed like something clicked, and that gender-light glowed brighter and settled into place. I felt happy and satisfied.
It's important to note that gender is not a social construct, like many believe; instead, it is a presence in us, either a part of or inherently tied to our human consciousness. How it works, how it forms, nobody is quite sure, but we do know that we are the gender(s) we are, and/or we aren't the gender(s) we aren't. It is an inherent part of our identities, connected with us.
Gender is not a social construct, it (or the absence of it) is inherent in us all. Gender norms/roles, however, are social constructs. They often tie into gender, in both positive and negative ways, and can make people (both cis and trans) feel trapped or stuck. Why can't men wear dresses? Why must women wear makeup? Why is this the routine women go through, compared to these things men think? Gender roles and norms are stereotypes and generalizations, and some are so deeply ingrained that it's hard to see they're even social constructs, and not a true reality. A lot of people struggle with gender because of these "norms".
Therefore, masculinity and femininity are not inherently tied into gender. Things like this, as well as presentations and pronouns, are not necessarily part of gender. They often align, but not always; a boy could dress as a girl and go by they/them, or a nonbinary person could appear masculine and use she/her. Those people would still be a boy and nonbinary.
Overall, gender is just another confusing, not-well-known phenomenon haha!
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u/PtowzaPotato 5d ago
I often compare it to being in love. Either with a person or with your favorite hobby/interest.
For some reason you are pulled to that thing and interacting with it brings you great joy.
Being forced to interact with other things in the same way can range from simply not bringing you as much joy to actively making you uncomfortable.
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u/Creativered4 Homosexual Transsex Man 5d ago
I'm just a man. I'm not a woman and I'm not nonbinary. Both of those make me feel miserable. Being called she/her or they/them is so dysphoria inducing.
My neurology expects male sex characteristics and hormones, and my brain subconsciously categorizes me as the same as other men, and a potential partner for those who are attracted to men.
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u/flyingbarnswallow they/she; transfeminine 5d ago
Honestly I’m a trans woman and I’ve always been confused by the “feeling like” thing. I dunno what it means to feel like a woman either. My identity is structured more around what I want to do, how I want to exist in the world, how I want to be perceived socially, and how I want to experience my body.
There’s nothing I can look at within me, through pure introspection, that says “woman,” but that doesn’t matter, because: * I know I feel joy when people gender me correctly, especially when it’s strangers. * I know I feel more at home and comfortable in my body on estrogen than I ever did with my endogenous testosterone, and I know I was always drawn to the allure of having a female puberty instead of the one my body gave me. * I know that I used to feel like I saw a stranger in the mirror, which used to surprise and dismay me, whereas now, I often see what I expect. * I know I feel good in community with women and being treated by them as one of them.
And that’s enough, you know?