As I’ve already explained to two other commenters, the first step was digging through my own mind for every piece of myself that was male and tracing how it got there. This took over a year to actually do, but all of those pieces turned out to be Cached Thoughts I had absorbed from the environment.
Another way to look at it, is that in social contexts a person’s body is a lot like a costume that comes with a role to play. I found that gender is purely a function of that role, at least in my case. I would hypothesize that dysphoria, at least in part, results from an individual having an especially clear concept of the body they wished they had, and subconsciously trying to play the role attached to that body instead of their own.
I had my own breakthrough when I learned to recognize and differentiate the role from myself and detach myself from it, so that nothing in my personality depended on my body(I could freely want a different body without it affecting who I see myself as). Ironically, I think role-playing in online games played a large part in my learning to do that.
Oh sorry I must have missed that. My mistake. Anyways, I agree that a person’s body is basically a costume or a shell and that there is often a role associated with that. However, how do you deal with the social aspect of being agendered? As far as my experience goes in the real world, you can tell people all you want that you’re without gender but if you look like a boy you’ll be treated like one. Whether you play that role or not.
I remember when I first started really passing and the world started treating me as a girl I would constantly worry about playing into the stereotypical role: should I be wearing make-up today, do I look okay, should I pretend to be bad at that? I quickly realized however that there was no point to transitioning just to conform to a new role again. So I simply stopped trying to play into any specific gender role and did what comes naturally. Since then I identify somewhat as a tomboy. I do what I like and I like what I do and I’ve never been happier. I would never want to go back to having a male shell however, the female body is by far the closest to my gender identity. Is that sort of what you’re aiming at?
However, how do you deal with the social aspect of being agendered? As far as my experience goes in the real world, you can tell people all you want that you’re without gender but if you look like a boy you’ll be treated like one. Whether you play that role or not.
You actually answer this yourself.
I simply stopped trying to play into any specific gender role and did what comes naturally.
I wouldn’t really proclaim my lack of gender identity in any case, unless the subject came up specifically. If the body you have is going to affect how people treat you, I feel that wanting a different body for the role it comes with isn’t addressing the problem so much as dodging it.
What I mean is, if I’m going to be treated a certain way just because of the body I have, it doesn’t matter to me (on the meta level) what that treatment is. I’m treated like a boy because I look like one, but to me, that isn’t any better or worse than being treated like anything else because I look like one. It’s a much deeper and more general problem than a person’s personality not meshing well with the role socially associated with their sex.
Granted, the body I have isn’t the body I would choose to have, but to me that now feels like something entirely unrelated to issues of identity. With the conscious recognition and isolation of the role, all possible bodies are equal so far as my identity is concerned.
I would never want to go back to having a male shell however, the female body is by far the closest to my gender identity. Is that sort of what you’re aiming at?
Not quite; I don’t believe gender identity should exist at all. Rather, what I’m aiming at is the separation of preference-of-body and preference-of-role from each other as well as from identity. A question I once posed to myself was, if all the social connotations attached to each of the sexes were perfectly reversed, swapped, would that change what body you would choose to have? And I found that I could not give a simple answer. The question of body seemed straightforward, but my mind kept trying to attach something else that confused the answer, and that something turned out to be the question of role. Suddenly it was clear to me, on a gut level, that they really were separate questions, and that the question of role was effectively a question of environmental preference that just happened to be tangled up with this “gender” concept in our own society.
As I’ve already explained to two other commenters, the first step was digging through my own mind for every piece of myself that was male and tracing how it got there. This took over a year to actually do, but all of those pieces turned out to be Cached Thoughts I had absorbed from the environment.
Another way to look at it, is that in social contexts a person’s body is a lot like a costume that comes with a role to play. I found that gender is purely a function of that role, at least in my case. I would hypothesize that dysphoria, at least in part, results from an individual having an especially clear concept of the body they wished they had, and subconsciously trying to play the role attached to that body instead of their own.
I had my own breakthrough when I learned to recognize and differentiate the role from myself and detach myself from it, so that nothing in my personality depended on my body(I could freely want a different body without it affecting who I see myself as). Ironically, I think role-playing in online games played a large part in my learning to do that.
Oh sorry I must have missed that. My mistake. Anyways, I agree that a person’s body is basically a costume or a shell and that there is often a role associated with that. However, how do you deal with the social aspect of being agendered? As far as my experience goes in the real world, you can tell people all you want that you’re without gender but if you look like a boy you’ll be treated like one. Whether you play that role or not.
I remember when I first started really passing and the world started treating me as a girl I would constantly worry about playing into the stereotypical role: should I be wearing make-up today, do I look okay, should I pretend to be bad at that? I quickly realized however that there was no point to transitioning just to conform to a new role again. So I simply stopped trying to play into any specific gender role and did what comes naturally. Since then I identify somewhat as a tomboy. I do what I like and I like what I do and I’ve never been happier. I would never want to go back to having a male shell however, the female body is by far the closest to my gender identity. Is that sort of what you’re aiming at?
You actually answer this yourself.
I wouldn’t really proclaim my lack of gender identity in any case, unless the subject came up specifically. If the body you have is going to affect how people treat you, I feel that wanting a different body for the role it comes with isn’t addressing the problem so much as dodging it.
What I mean is, if I’m going to be treated a certain way just because of the body I have, it doesn’t matter to me (on the meta level) what that treatment is. I’m treated like a boy because I look like one, but to me, that isn’t any better or worse than being treated like anything else because I look like one. It’s a much deeper and more general problem than a person’s personality not meshing well with the role socially associated with their sex.
Granted, the body I have isn’t the body I would choose to have, but to me that now feels like something entirely unrelated to issues of identity. With the conscious recognition and isolation of the role, all possible bodies are equal so far as my identity is concerned.
Not quite; I don’t believe gender identity should exist at all. Rather, what I’m aiming at is the separation of preference-of-body and preference-of-role from each other as well as from identity. A question I once posed to myself was, if all the social connotations attached to each of the sexes were perfectly reversed, swapped, would that change what body you would choose to have? And I found that I could not give a simple answer. The question of body seemed straightforward, but my mind kept trying to attach something else that confused the answer, and that something turned out to be the question of role. Suddenly it was clear to me, on a gut level, that they really were separate questions, and that the question of role was effectively a question of environmental preference that just happened to be tangled up with this “gender” concept in our own society.