Confused!

[Lana Mae]

I am looking for enlightenment and not a fight about anything! So, under TG, we have (loosely) crossdressers, androgenous, and transsexual. Crossdressers are just men who dress like women but may or may not move along the TG spectrum. Androgenous is a mix of male and female to whatever %. This would include non-binary. They may move along the TG spectrum as well. Transsexual is moving toward becoming a female at what ever stage on their journey. Their journey is called transitioning and can include HRT and surgery but they are not required as not everyone can afford them! So, if I am confused on any of this please reply and straighten me out! Thanks , girls! Hugs Lana Mae

[kimdl93]

If you weren't confused, you would not be TG. The boundaries are like the transition of colors on the spectrum...ambiguous and different for each viewer. Don't fret about that, nor about how to define yourself.

[Beverley Sims]

If I tried to straighten you out by telling you where I think you are wrong in your thinking, I would only be dishonest and confuse you more.

I think you have got a handle on it and are essentially right in your thinking so be like me and stay as confused as I think the rest of us are.:-)

[Aunt Kelly]

Oh, Lana Mae... I think you have as good an understanding of the terminology as anyone, and better than most. There are always some who love to split hairs on terminology. Please don't let that get to you. I've never known you to be anything but genuine and sincere. If you want to find a term that fits, more power to you, girl, but in the end, the important thing is being happy with who you are, not what label is assigned to you.

Hugs,


Kelly

[Fiona123]

I think we are conditioned to view gender in binary terms: male/female and so forth. Really gender is a continuum with infinite variation. Our vocabulary lags behind our understanding.

[Pat]

I think you're looking for order where there is none, though I understand the feeling that it ought to be there. I look at your taxonomy and immediately feel left out. The problem, I think, is that there's a disconnect between terms we apply to others and terms we apply to ourselves. Each of us individually experiences our gender identity in a different way so we express it in a different way. The individual expression can cross the lines that others try to draw around us. We experience that as other people telling us we are things that we know we are not. Some people tell me I'm "really" TS -- I just haven't come to accept it. It's totally settled in their mind what I am. However, I do not experience being TS. Externally, I understand I look a lot like a TS -- I live 24/7 in a female presentation, I take hormones to make my body align to my mental image of myself, I submit to electrolysis, etc. All things a TS would do in the early stages of their transition. There's one difference, though: I'm not a woman. I could take ALL of the steps a TS takes in their transition and I still wouldn't be TS. Your taxonomy would then lump me into "Androgynous" which are "mix of male and female to whatever %" but I don't experience my gender as mixed -- I'm completely one gender albeit a gender not yet named.

When I feel the need to classify others (and it's a habit I'm actively trying to break) I tend to think being transgender is the same in all of us and we differ in matters of degree. Not in the sense of sparking "transier than thou" arguments, but in the sense that we're all expressing the same idea in our individual ways. We're all humming the same tune, as it were, but in the musical style that's native to our own unique soul. Yeah -- old hippie.

[suzanne]

Humans like to categorize things. It makes life, and especially decision making, easier. But too often we try to boil everything down to a binary on/off situation, like a light switch, where on = "fits in the box" and off = "doesn't fit in the box".

But real people are more complex than that. I'd say most people aren't even box shaped in the first place! What if someone fits into several different boxes at one time or another, but not necessarily all of them all of the time? Or just the one crossdresser box, where I only dress 50% of the time and you might dress 100% of the time. Am I less of a crossdresser than you? Does it matter?

I don't think in terms of the binary on/off switch. Real people have dimmer switches or a gray scale, which go from 0 to 100% and there's infinitely many possibilities in between. So if I'm dressed 51% of the time and you are 97% of the time, what does that mean?

We are what we are. A little of this and a lot of that, or vice versa. I describe myself this way: a middle aged, large framed genetic male who is gender fluid with extra affinity for the feminine end of the spectrum (65% feels about right to me). I don't expect to ever find large numbers of people like me, so there won't be enough of my type for society to even bother making a box for me to fit into.

I think it's a waste of time to even think about categories. Much better to just get out there, own who I am and enjoy it.

[TrishaTX]

I have it simple in my mind, if you display female...you are female to me, if you display male ...the same...in between..I ask! I am not a big fan of categories...

[Lana Mae]

Thanks everyone for your replies! So there are crossdressers of various degrees on one end of the spectrum and transwomen who have transitioned with HRT and surgery at the other end! Everyone is just as "trans" as everyone else or not! I think transwomen who have had HRT and surgery are just women and should leave off the trans! I respect all levels and everyone on the spectrum should respect everyone else! I don't know if all crossdressers have GD, I do have it! Not to a great degree but I can feel it! It pulls at me to a greater or lesser degree every day! Again thanks and I just wish we could do away with labels and just be ourselves! Hugs Lana Mae Trisha, I agree with what you said. It is all about presentation and if it is mixed just ask!

[StephanieM]

I think we focus too much on labels. We are what we are and everyone of us is as different as you can possibly be from each other. Society has too much grouping and not enough individuality if you ask me.

[Wen4cd]

I never liked the 'spectrum' model at all. All I see in spectrum is a heirarchy lain over on it's side with TS as the top tier. I think it subtly traps people into thinking of themselves in terms of where they are along a fixed path.

I'll take a syzygy model any day. The syzygy motif resonates with me far, far more than a gender spectrum model ever has. This is my truth. We live on a vibrating tightrope of tension string between two poles. We can navigate this tightrope and be where we want, when we want, at any given moment, so long as we're accepting that we are the unity of these energies, not travelers working from point a to point b.

syzygy.jpgsyzygy2.jpgsyzygy3.jpg

[Lana Mae]

I did not mean a spectrum as using a fixed point! Almost every one can slide on the spectrum! Some days you are at point c and other days at point p. It should not be portrayed as fixed points! I imagine once at the point of HRT and surgery you would pretty much be at a fixed point but not sure on that one! Gender fluid is not fixed at all! Let's just say we are human and drop all this! LOL Hugs Lana Mae

[Veronica Lacey]

A little off-centred reply...

I think it can be helpful to identify who we are for our own benefit. In identifying others, well, for the most part I do not see a need. They are who they are. All I try is to get along with them and hope they reciprocate.

Sometimes I truly feel that society has gone way too digital. We feel the need to identify and quantify most anything and everything to degrees. What we see in front of us must not be the whole story so let's zoom in until pixelation occurs and we are focussing on the grainy reality whether it be animal, vegetable or mineral. It used to be a box of 16 crayons. Then 64 crayons (more greens and blues and reds than before.) Then we went digital and there were 16 million+ colours. This constant drive for dissection and classification may be all the rage in societal studies and sciences but perhaps it really is not that important for simple, everyday social interaction.

Going beyond calling a person queer or gay may have been a step in the right direction. Then there was group of people referred to as LGB. Then it was LGBT. Then more letters. Last one I read was LGBTQIA. Now the confusion sets in for me and maybe that is what has fuelled your desire to understand it all a little better. Maybe that has something to do with the acronym not obviously including cross-dressers. Maybe the entire acronym as an entity itself is to simply suggest that a larger, growing and evolving group of humans do not fall into societal norms of the past.

I applaud your efforts to understand where society currently identifies people, Lana Mae. I have just found that I can get too attentive to those details, experience frustration and forget to just go out there and interact with people rather than what my mind tries to classfiy.

Good Luck!