![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eftychia at 01:04am on 2002-12-09[This is crossposted, so I guess half the followup discussion will appear under the copy in my personal journal (![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif){kind=small}
dglenn) and half will show up under the copy posted to ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif){kind=small}
genderqueer.]
It just hit me, reading a few other folks' stray comments about gender, transition, etc., and contemplating my own uncertainty about my own identity, that intergendered/bi-gendered/gender-outlaw is probably one of those identities that can be a permanent gender identity or merely a temporary stopping-place on the way to further self-discovery. (And that dying of old age is probably the most certain way of knowing it wasn't temporary.)
This is one of those
#blink#
Oh!
Hmmm....
Nah.
But...
Huh?
#blink# #blink#
[scratch head]
types of thoughts, not a really reasoned-out hypothesis.
I'm interested in other people's gut reactions (especially from transgendered folks) as well as after-thinking-a-moment reactions.
(And I fully retain the right to change my mind after I've thought about it more.)
(no subject)
i've often thought i should've been a guy, and while i don't by any means consider myself transgendered, i think i'm definitely heavily skewed toward 'somewhere in between' more than i'm purely female (in much the same way that i'm heavily skewed toward being into men, but still consider women to be a viable option -- just not one i've had the opportunity to explore more than minimally as yet). but i think that's a lot more common than people really think. it's just that our society still doesn't really approve of that sort of thing, so people do their best to fit themselves into their assigned cubbyholes, and cut off any parts that don't fit.
a real shame, that. one hesitates to imagine the number of lives it's destroyed.
so, yet again, here's to you for being among the most out-there gender outlaws i've met. remind me to tell you sometime about Steve/Lynn, who used to show up at an open mic in SF in one or another persona as it suited him/her.
(no subject)
--Nate
Um, yes.
Why? Because you define it as an identity. "Identity" is the thing us social animals strive perhaps most for, only slightly below food and air, if we're in interaction with even only one other social animal. In every other aspect of our identity, we do go through a lot of trial and error---even in profession. Some identities appear late in life---ex., my classifying myself as a dancer. Some disappear---ex., me being an introverted person. I've seen some fall by the wayside when the person feels that s/he doesn't need it anymore---people finding religion in their teenage years and losing it in college, for instance. Some do find that things they've taken on are their true calling. And many things can serve as evolutionary steps in identity development if it turns out that they are not the final stop, because while being in a certain identity we learn things about that identity, where it places us socially in terms of interactions, and most important, how we ourselves react to being identified such. Those all shape the next step, or whether there will be a next step or not.
Naturally, these all change from person to person.
So, um, yes. It can be both ways, is how my uninformed self feels.