Safe spaces for learning about gender identity
July 14, 2022 10:45 PM Subscribe
I have always known that something is going on with my gender identity, but until recently I didn't have any idea how to articulate it.
Where can I find safe online spaces or resources to learn more?
I'm 50, AFAB and I've never felt like a woman. Not like a man either. If I was a young person right now, maybe I'd identify as non binary but that doesn't feel right either? I refer to myself as a female person, and I feel pretty comfortable with ambiguity.
My new therapist is a trans man, and I've started talking to him about some of this but there are some things that are so private and intimate that I'm not sure I can talk about them.
In a weird way, I feel like I'm invalidating his gender identity by trusting him in this way as usually I'd NEVER talk to a male person about this stuff.
Anyway, I'm wondering if there are articles or books about gender identity that anyone can recommend, or online communities.
Up to now I've never tried to hide my offline identity when I interact online, but I think it might be time to create a more anonymous persona if I'm going to be discussing these things online. Or maybe not? So many things to be confused about.
I'm 50, AFAB and I've never felt like a woman. Not like a man either. If I was a young person right now, maybe I'd identify as non binary but that doesn't feel right either? I refer to myself as a female person, and I feel pretty comfortable with ambiguity.
My new therapist is a trans man, and I've started talking to him about some of this but there are some things that are so private and intimate that I'm not sure I can talk about them.
In a weird way, I feel like I'm invalidating his gender identity by trusting him in this way as usually I'd NEVER talk to a male person about this stuff.
Anyway, I'm wondering if there are articles or books about gender identity that anyone can recommend, or online communities.
Up to now I've never tried to hide my offline identity when I interact online, but I think it might be time to create a more anonymous persona if I'm going to be discussing these things online. Or maybe not? So many things to be confused about.
I've never felt like a woman. Not like a man either. If I was a young person right now, maybe I'd identify as non binary but that doesn't feel right either?
Same here, 100%.
It seems to be quite common amongst autistic women (it's the thing that made me set aside my "but I like reading fiction, so I can't be autistic!" misgivings and consider the possibility more seriously), so it comes up every so often on the r/AutismInWomen subreddit I mentioned on one of your other questions. I'm not sure the conversation ever goes very far, admittedly. Elsewhere, there's a little bit about it in each of Spectrum Women, Aspergirls and Women and Girls with Autistic Spectrum Disorder (caveat: even the most recent of those is from 2018, and this is an area where language and attitudes are changing fast). It's also something Sarah Hendrickx mentions with regard to her personal experience in some of her talks (I found them on YouTube); I think she phrases it something like "I don't feel male or female, I just feel like me".
I would also be interested in reading more on the subject. I suppose it's not surprising that it's validating to find other people expressing the same feelings as you about an aspect of your identity, but I have so seldom recognised myself on a page (or a screen) that it hits unexpectedly hard.
posted by ManyLeggedCreature at 1:25 AM on July 15, 2022 [7 favorites]
Same here, 100%.
It seems to be quite common amongst autistic women (it's the thing that made me set aside my "but I like reading fiction, so I can't be autistic!" misgivings and consider the possibility more seriously), so it comes up every so often on the r/AutismInWomen subreddit I mentioned on one of your other questions. I'm not sure the conversation ever goes very far, admittedly. Elsewhere, there's a little bit about it in each of Spectrum Women, Aspergirls and Women and Girls with Autistic Spectrum Disorder (caveat: even the most recent of those is from 2018, and this is an area where language and attitudes are changing fast). It's also something Sarah Hendrickx mentions with regard to her personal experience in some of her talks (I found them on YouTube); I think she phrases it something like "I don't feel male or female, I just feel like me".
I would also be interested in reading more on the subject. I suppose it's not surprising that it's validating to find other people expressing the same feelings as you about an aspect of your identity, but I have so seldom recognised myself on a page (or a screen) that it hits unexpectedly hard.
posted by ManyLeggedCreature at 1:25 AM on July 15, 2022 [7 favorites]
Given that you've also been exploring autism recently, you might want to look into autigender and other autism-related concepts of gender. It's incredibly common for autistic people to be trans or to otherwise question their gender identity, part of the huge latent "but whyyyyy" of the way our brains work in a deeply conformist society where the things we're supposed to conform to don't make a ton of inherent logical sense.
In a weird way, I feel like I'm invalidating his gender identity by trusting him in this way as usually I'd NEVER talk to a male person about this stuff.
This is a really interesting point to make, and something I hadn't considered deeply until you raised it. For me, as one non-binary/trans person, I feel like the sheer fact of me being trans (and thus having thought a lot more than people who accept their assigned genders without question about what it means to be various flavours of person) makes me extremely open to these questions and conversations in a way that I don't see as at all invalidating of the masculinity I also want my transness to express. I don't know if some of this is because I consider myself transmasculine but not an entire trans man, as I don't feel like I can fully embody either of the binary genders, hence the between and beyond space feeling more comfortable. Given that your therapist is both trans and a therapist, it's incredibly likely that they're comfortable diving into these spaces; if you want to go about it respectfully, I don't think it would hurt at all to ask them if they're comfortable with you spending time in future sessions exploring gender stuff. In the room with you their primary role is as your therapist, as a person who also happens to be trans, rather than as a trans person whose identity you have to tiptoe around (or at least I assume).
I've seen mostly cis women therapists in the past and the one who I came out to was fine in a trying-to-be-supportive way, but it was clear that she supported but didn't 100% get my experience. When I saw a trans man for therapy last year, there was so much stuff we both got that I didn't need to skirt around or explain, and it was very refreshing. One pitfall we did both occasionally fall into though was general conversation around the state of trans rights & experiences in society, which was obviously an interesting topic for both of us but not really what I was paying him for - something we both acknowledged and something that was ultimately a factor in me ending the therapeutic relationship.
Coming back to your request for spaces & resources, there's a ton of trans & gender-questioning content on Instagram, much as I hate to recommend that platform. I don't know if I see so much of it because I've trained the algorithm to feed it to me, and it can be very hit and miss (the algorithm also occasionally feeds me dogwhistle TERFy content just for shits and giggles that I have to be very proactive about reporting/no thank you-ing so as not to let it proliferate). The community has its issues, like any community of humans, but I've definitely hit on some useful content there that's made me think about gender more deeply.
As someone who socially transitioned comparatively later in life (late 20s with an established relationship & career rather than as a teen), the joy I get from feeling like my gender is a journey I get to spend my entire life exploring, rather than a fixed destination I was supposed to have 100% successfully arrived at by the time I became an adult, has been worth the occasional shitty moments and pockets of discrimination. Your gender experience can be as specific and unique to you as it needs to be - frankly, I find the idea that humans having a diversity of interests and presentations in every area except gender (where you're expected to slot into one of two clearly-delineated buckets with no overlap) both absurd and insulting.
You mention having never felt like a woman (and I feel you on that, having tried a lot in my early 20s and failed resoundingly at ever performing that role to anyone's satisfaction, including my own). That doesn't necessarily make you a trans man or non-binary or any other label. I have a friend who's recently started using the label genderqueer to describe the fact that she doesn't feel like a woman, even though she's comfortable for now with she/her pronouns and basically every other female-coded linguistic signifier (sister, girlfriend, etc.) and doesn't feel any sense of masculinity at all. And that's enough! That's where she's at with her gender right now and that's great. The world is full of people who'd line up to tell her that actually she is just a woman, either because of those other female signifiers she's comfortable with, or because of her chromosomes or secondary sex characteristics or whatever, and they can all go do one. Personally I believe it's necessarily liberatory for our species to go on this collective journey towards realising our genders are just as unique and individual as everything else that differentiates us from one another as people.
If you want to MeMail or email about this I would be more than happy to discuss further or hear out anything you want to explore if you're comfortable doing so; the length of this comment probably illustrates how much I like to talk about this stuff.
posted by terretu at 1:43 AM on July 15, 2022 [16 favorites]
In a weird way, I feel like I'm invalidating his gender identity by trusting him in this way as usually I'd NEVER talk to a male person about this stuff.
This is a really interesting point to make, and something I hadn't considered deeply until you raised it. For me, as one non-binary/trans person, I feel like the sheer fact of me being trans (and thus having thought a lot more than people who accept their assigned genders without question about what it means to be various flavours of person) makes me extremely open to these questions and conversations in a way that I don't see as at all invalidating of the masculinity I also want my transness to express. I don't know if some of this is because I consider myself transmasculine but not an entire trans man, as I don't feel like I can fully embody either of the binary genders, hence the between and beyond space feeling more comfortable. Given that your therapist is both trans and a therapist, it's incredibly likely that they're comfortable diving into these spaces; if you want to go about it respectfully, I don't think it would hurt at all to ask them if they're comfortable with you spending time in future sessions exploring gender stuff. In the room with you their primary role is as your therapist, as a person who also happens to be trans, rather than as a trans person whose identity you have to tiptoe around (or at least I assume).
I've seen mostly cis women therapists in the past and the one who I came out to was fine in a trying-to-be-supportive way, but it was clear that she supported but didn't 100% get my experience. When I saw a trans man for therapy last year, there was so much stuff we both got that I didn't need to skirt around or explain, and it was very refreshing. One pitfall we did both occasionally fall into though was general conversation around the state of trans rights & experiences in society, which was obviously an interesting topic for both of us but not really what I was paying him for - something we both acknowledged and something that was ultimately a factor in me ending the therapeutic relationship.
Coming back to your request for spaces & resources, there's a ton of trans & gender-questioning content on Instagram, much as I hate to recommend that platform. I don't know if I see so much of it because I've trained the algorithm to feed it to me, and it can be very hit and miss (the algorithm also occasionally feeds me dogwhistle TERFy content just for shits and giggles that I have to be very proactive about reporting/no thank you-ing so as not to let it proliferate). The community has its issues, like any community of humans, but I've definitely hit on some useful content there that's made me think about gender more deeply.
As someone who socially transitioned comparatively later in life (late 20s with an established relationship & career rather than as a teen), the joy I get from feeling like my gender is a journey I get to spend my entire life exploring, rather than a fixed destination I was supposed to have 100% successfully arrived at by the time I became an adult, has been worth the occasional shitty moments and pockets of discrimination. Your gender experience can be as specific and unique to you as it needs to be - frankly, I find the idea that humans having a diversity of interests and presentations in every area except gender (where you're expected to slot into one of two clearly-delineated buckets with no overlap) both absurd and insulting.
You mention having never felt like a woman (and I feel you on that, having tried a lot in my early 20s and failed resoundingly at ever performing that role to anyone's satisfaction, including my own). That doesn't necessarily make you a trans man or non-binary or any other label. I have a friend who's recently started using the label genderqueer to describe the fact that she doesn't feel like a woman, even though she's comfortable for now with she/her pronouns and basically every other female-coded linguistic signifier (sister, girlfriend, etc.) and doesn't feel any sense of masculinity at all. And that's enough! That's where she's at with her gender right now and that's great. The world is full of people who'd line up to tell her that actually she is just a woman, either because of those other female signifiers she's comfortable with, or because of her chromosomes or secondary sex characteristics or whatever, and they can all go do one. Personally I believe it's necessarily liberatory for our species to go on this collective journey towards realising our genders are just as unique and individual as everything else that differentiates us from one another as people.
If you want to MeMail or email about this I would be more than happy to discuss further or hear out anything you want to explore if you're comfortable doing so; the length of this comment probably illustrates how much I like to talk about this stuff.
posted by terretu at 1:43 AM on July 15, 2022 [16 favorites]
Following with interest as someone in a very similar boat. Not sure if I'm actually non-binary, or just profoundly apathetic about gender (which feels like the opposite of trans to me?), or simply not understanding what is meant by "feeling" a gender (I've tried really hard to understand the concept and I just...don't). No desire to transition in any way or change my pronouns, nor do I feel either upset or happy at the idea of being perceived as male or neutral (which often happens online but would never in person with my physical appearance). Just very indifferent about the whole concept internally, and very hostile about any external gender-based expectations, whether directed at me or at anyone, really. For what that's worth. I've also found the r/autisminwomen subreddit helpful for reading about things along these lines, though I only lurk there instead of participating.
posted by randomnity at 7:45 AM on July 15, 2022 [8 favorites]
posted by randomnity at 7:45 AM on July 15, 2022 [8 favorites]
In a weird way, I feel like I'm invalidating his gender identity by trusting him in this way as usually I'd NEVER talk to a male person about this stuff.
This doesn't address your main question but I just wanted to say I wouldn't beat yourself up about this. The main person I talk to about gender stuff is also a trans man, and I am especially open with him about it not because I think of him as "not a man" and thus nonthreatening, but because I think of him as a trans person. (Obviously not all trans people want to process it with you but he genuinely loves talking about gender and that's not uncommon among my trans and nb friends.) Your therapist is a) your therapist and b) trans, of course he would feel like a safe person to discuss gender with!
posted by babelfish at 10:17 AM on July 15, 2022 [2 favorites]
This doesn't address your main question but I just wanted to say I wouldn't beat yourself up about this. The main person I talk to about gender stuff is also a trans man, and I am especially open with him about it not because I think of him as "not a man" and thus nonthreatening, but because I think of him as a trans person. (Obviously not all trans people want to process it with you but he genuinely loves talking about gender and that's not uncommon among my trans and nb friends.) Your therapist is a) your therapist and b) trans, of course he would feel like a safe person to discuss gender with!
posted by babelfish at 10:17 AM on July 15, 2022 [2 favorites]
I think the difference with your therapist vs. a random cis man is that your therapist has lived experience of questioning / bending / transgressing / redefining / expanding / choose your awesome verb / etc gender. They have actual expertise in gender-expansiveness. That's not something I expect most cis people to know much about. If you somehow met a cis man who'd done this much thinking about gender, you'd probably enjoy talking to him about it too. So your interest is probably not so much about invalidating your therapist's gender as it is just being hungry for his insight / expertise.
Also, you can ask about, and your therapist can consent to, the meta aspect of these convos. You could say something like, "We've had a lot of convos about gender and I want to be sure they feel ok to you. I learn a lot from them but if you ever want to not talk about gender, I'm really open to that feedback from you." I would say exactly this and expect the convo to go well since it's quite a respectful framing.
posted by nouvelle-personne at 10:33 AM on July 15, 2022 [1 favorite]
Also, you can ask about, and your therapist can consent to, the meta aspect of these convos. You could say something like, "We've had a lot of convos about gender and I want to be sure they feel ok to you. I learn a lot from them but if you ever want to not talk about gender, I'm really open to that feedback from you." I would say exactly this and expect the convo to go well since it's quite a respectful framing.
posted by nouvelle-personne at 10:33 AM on July 15, 2022 [1 favorite]
The aforementioned My (New) Gender Workbook remains the canonical suggestion. Some people do bounce off it pretty hard, though. There is another workbook that came out relatively recently that gets recommended, but the name escapes me. (That's unhelpful--I'm sure there are 9000 such books on Amazon or at your library written by people who only noticed trans people existed like three seconds ago.)
I do like How to Understand Your Gender, which despite the title is not a workbook. The standard disclaimer is that I moved in the same circles as one of the authors--it's coming out of a community familiar to me, so of course I'm inclined to like it. With the disclaimer that it's from 2003 and I last read it in 2005 or 2006, Finding the Real Me: True Tales of Sex and Gender Diversity still stands out to me for its efforts at capturing a large range of gendered experiences. (I spend a lot of time moaning about people treating non-binariness as a monolithic third gender (congrats, you made a gender ternary, it's an upgrade, but not much of one) and that book most decidedly does not to do that.)
profoundly apathetic about gender (which feels like the opposite of trans to me?),
I'd argue this is a misconception and that the strength of one's gender is actually orthogonal. There's obviously a minimum amount of interest one has to have in one's gender to socially or medically transition, but there are plenty of weakly gendered trans people. It's just a heck of a lot easier to relax into your gender being sort of :shrug: when cis people aren't making it a problem for you--you can find plenty of old comments from me describing myself as strongly gendered and... I'm just not.
posted by hoyland at 11:03 AM on July 15, 2022 [3 favorites]
I do like How to Understand Your Gender, which despite the title is not a workbook. The standard disclaimer is that I moved in the same circles as one of the authors--it's coming out of a community familiar to me, so of course I'm inclined to like it. With the disclaimer that it's from 2003 and I last read it in 2005 or 2006, Finding the Real Me: True Tales of Sex and Gender Diversity still stands out to me for its efforts at capturing a large range of gendered experiences. (I spend a lot of time moaning about people treating non-binariness as a monolithic third gender (congrats, you made a gender ternary, it's an upgrade, but not much of one) and that book most decidedly does not to do that.)
profoundly apathetic about gender (which feels like the opposite of trans to me?),
I'd argue this is a misconception and that the strength of one's gender is actually orthogonal. There's obviously a minimum amount of interest one has to have in one's gender to socially or medically transition, but there are plenty of weakly gendered trans people. It's just a heck of a lot easier to relax into your gender being sort of :shrug: when cis people aren't making it a problem for you--you can find plenty of old comments from me describing myself as strongly gendered and... I'm just not.
posted by hoyland at 11:03 AM on July 15, 2022 [3 favorites]
Things that really helped me:
1) Talking to trans friends about their experiences
2) Going to a nonbinary support group (basically, I had thought and read and chatted with therapist and etc as much as I could on my own or one-on-one and needed to just be around a bunch of people talking/feeling about the topic). If you have a queer resource center in your city, that'd be where I'd start. A local FB group (if you're on FB) is also a good place to start looking; I just googled "cape town nonbinary group" and got some results. :) I am autistic and the thought of going to a group-ANYTHING, and specifically about weird social stuff, filled me with dread. Turns out: I just needed to be with the right group of people to feel comfortable. If you're not okay doing something like that in person right now, or there isn't one near you that you can go to, lots of them have moved to Zoom during COVID.
3) Listening to Gender Reveal (which also has transcripts if you're not a podcast person) -- if you're looking for a place to start, "Gender 101 Revisited" is probably best, and then search for "gender" and hit the other numbered eps (102, 201, etc) -- these are typically listener questions and the questions are very often folks who are exploring early-gender-discovery questions. They're very affirming and are likely going to resonate with you.
Gender Reveal also has a Slack that's super welcoming. It's not always the most-hoppin' place, but it'd be a good start if you're looking for online communities; there'd likely be suggestions in the specialized channels for other forums, discords, etc you might want to check out.
posted by curious nu at 3:52 PM on July 15, 2022 [2 favorites]
1) Talking to trans friends about their experiences
2) Going to a nonbinary support group (basically, I had thought and read and chatted with therapist and etc as much as I could on my own or one-on-one and needed to just be around a bunch of people talking/feeling about the topic). If you have a queer resource center in your city, that'd be where I'd start. A local FB group (if you're on FB) is also a good place to start looking; I just googled "cape town nonbinary group" and got some results. :) I am autistic and the thought of going to a group-ANYTHING, and specifically about weird social stuff, filled me with dread. Turns out: I just needed to be with the right group of people to feel comfortable. If you're not okay doing something like that in person right now, or there isn't one near you that you can go to, lots of them have moved to Zoom during COVID.
3) Listening to Gender Reveal (which also has transcripts if you're not a podcast person) -- if you're looking for a place to start, "Gender 101 Revisited" is probably best, and then search for "gender" and hit the other numbered eps (102, 201, etc) -- these are typically listener questions and the questions are very often folks who are exploring early-gender-discovery questions. They're very affirming and are likely going to resonate with you.
Gender Reveal also has a Slack that's super welcoming. It's not always the most-hoppin' place, but it'd be a good start if you're looking for online communities; there'd likely be suggestions in the specialized channels for other forums, discords, etc you might want to check out.
posted by curious nu at 3:52 PM on July 15, 2022 [2 favorites]
There is also menopause. That is a major change. The gendernidentity rug is pulled out from under you in a sense, and hou don't feel lime whatever your self was. Best to you.
posted by Oyéah at 4:35 PM on July 15, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by Oyéah at 4:35 PM on July 15, 2022 [2 favorites]
Response by poster: There is also menopause. That is a major change. The gendernidentity rug is pulled out from under you in a sense, and hou don't feel lime whatever your self was. Best to you.
That's definitely a good point, but sort of in an unexpected direction? I had a hysterectomy in 2020 and while the surgery and recovery was no fun, I didn't have any of the difficult emotions I expected to have around femininity or experience any sense of loss. At all?
And my "not a woman" sense has been around since before puberty.
I can't help wondering how much of it is a trauma response to being aware since I was very young, that being a woman exposes one to all kinds of dangers, specifically the controlling attention of a profoundly antagonistic world.
But knowing myself, if I'd felt like a woman-to-be as a child, that kind of challenge would have brought out a tendency to be even more feminine, but on my own terms. Which didn't happen.
I don't know if the attraction towards being androgynous / neutral ect is a camouflage to hide from danger, or just how I am.
posted by Zumbador at 9:52 PM on July 15, 2022
That's definitely a good point, but sort of in an unexpected direction? I had a hysterectomy in 2020 and while the surgery and recovery was no fun, I didn't have any of the difficult emotions I expected to have around femininity or experience any sense of loss. At all?
And my "not a woman" sense has been around since before puberty.
I can't help wondering how much of it is a trauma response to being aware since I was very young, that being a woman exposes one to all kinds of dangers, specifically the controlling attention of a profoundly antagonistic world.
But knowing myself, if I'd felt like a woman-to-be as a child, that kind of challenge would have brought out a tendency to be even more feminine, but on my own terms. Which didn't happen.
I don't know if the attraction towards being androgynous / neutral ect is a camouflage to hide from danger, or just how I am.
posted by Zumbador at 9:52 PM on July 15, 2022
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I wouldn't worry too much about speaking to your therapist about this-- that is what they are trained for. It is a marker of doing his job right that you are comfortable exploring difficult topics.
And best of luck!
posted by blnkfrnk at 11:49 PM on July 14, 2022 [3 favorites]