Makes a lot of sense, and I’m glad that you’re making content to clarify labels. People get really confused, bewildered or frustrated with “too many genders”, “too many labels”, but it really isn’t that complicated. Nonbinary is both a gender and a category of gender. Every gender label I can think of that isn’t binary falls under nonbinary: even agender is technically nonbinary since it isn’t part of the binary. In most casual contexts “nonbinary”, the category, is all that needs communicating. It literally doesn’t affect other people’s lives at all if there are a dozen or a thousand subcategories of nonbinary, unless they deliberately seek specificity from someone
This video was exactly what I needed. Only recently have I discovered that my gender is wack. Though I’d consider myself non-binary, my favorite term is genderfuck. That’s one to really scare the grandparents and confuse the straights
I remember back when we called it genderqueer, before “non-binary” came to prominence. I identified as genderqueer during that time as well. If memory serves, non-binary came to replace genderqueer because queer was considered a slur by some folks and there was a call for a name that was more generally accessible and acceptable to describe folks who don’t fit the gender binary. Looking back now, I definitely feel that something was lost in the change in terminology. I feel that non-binary definitely has a way of reinforcing the binary. Genderqueer is vague enough to allow for things to be nebulous. Like genderqueer makes me picture a gender cloud rather than one gender selection out of three options; man, woman, non-binary. I think non-binary as a term has been actually a bit stifling for me considering that. Thanks for the video!
I'm currently going through the whole 'getting tired of thinking about gender' thing so honestly I just say 'nonbinary' or 'Idk' now because everything is confusing. As for my sexuality, I just label it as a vaguely confused sounding shrug.
This would actually explain my feelings of when I'm feeling girly and putting on feminine characteristics I feel more like I'm doing drag than actually representing my gender... Because if I'm not a woman, representing as one won't feel genuine and instead is a fun act. Exploring these feels is so weird!
Queer is such a helpful label to identify as! For the longest time I was searching for the right labels. I also went through that very tiring phase during which I had to constantly think about how I experienced my gender/ sexuality every single day. Until I arrived to the same conclusions as you. I think my hesitation to use the word came at first from the way some people treated it as a very controversial slur that needed to be avoided. (I am not English or American and I have no idea of it's actual usage, but I mean, "queer history", "queer theory"). But there's this thing with the word queer that I don't think any other label has. It's broad and says absolutely nothing specific, except that the person who uses it has a complicated relationship to their gender/ sexuality. On the same time though, it's very powerful , for some reason. Maybe because of it's history, or maybe because of it's non-specificity exactly. It communicates "yes, I am not cis/straight and you are not entitled to know what is my relationship to this part of myself, you just have to respect me"
@EdwardSpagedward89 I imagine you'd still be happy and comfortable even if no one ever called you a "man" or grouped you together with other men though. I'm not convinced that cis people actually have a particular need to have their gender affirmed and recognised. But it seems very hard to test.
i agree, but also, gender is a huge facet of identity. the gender binary is very defined and pervasive, like, when you we grow up as people, most of us become cishet, and the cishet "sphere" is very coded, because broadly speaking, women are feminine and seek masculine men, and vice versa. most women have long hair and most men have short hair. etc etc. these are used as signifiers to quickly assess whether someone is a suitable partner. i feel like it's only for queers where gender is more "important" in the sense that we don't rely on the cishet norms in the same way. i have a feeling that cishet people need the current gender system to be simplistic and cookie cutter, you know what i mean?
I so agree. feel like we're all taking a step backwards here and needlessly complicating things. Part of the problem is that people constantly misuse the words sex, gender and gender norms, etc. Honestly I just reject gender altogether and I'm much happier for it. We're born into a body that has a sex and we have a sexual orientation. We may or may not fit into society's social expectations for our sex. Or we might be somewhere in between. That's really always been true and it doesn't even need to be labeled.
@EdwardSpagedward89 I'm comfortable being a woman, but at the same time, I find it very hard to describe what a woman even is. Gender is kind of silly in a way.
Genderqueer was the first non-binary gender I was ever exposed to, even before hearing the term NB, so it's surprising to me that someone might not have heard of it. To me "non-binary" is a much more recent term? It definitely wasn't around when I was a teenager. I completely feel you on just saying trans to avoid having to explain further, I tend to just say non-binary when I'm more specifically agender, because I feel like the cishets are more comfortable with the idea of someone at least being somewhere on the quantifiable gender spectrum than being told they're not even on the spectrum to begin with (which is how I view being agender - we're gender spectators, we don't participate, haha).
Oh jeez... I relate to thinking "what do I feel today?" so much. My gender is living rent free in the "girl-agender/nonbinary" area. And I just ask myself "how much do we feel like a girl and how much not girl today?". And it's just... so tiring. Maybe I should just stop worrying about the gender%, it's changing so it's not like I can figure it out once and for all.
I relate so much to the obsessively micromanaging how I feel about my gender part... for me I just identify as demigirl because I identify as a woman but not entirely since I still feel weird about a lot of stuff and don’t wanna be weighed down by intrusive thoughts of “what if I’m not girly enough”. But part of me feels like it’s just a leftover of denial that’s still alive in my head idk
I realized around last year that I’m non-binary and I could see myself falling into that keeping a journal and tying down EXACTLY what I am paranoia. Demi- girl was the closest I got, but I’m now thinking I’m more gender fluid than that; and funnily enough I got to that conclusion without the need to do any of that over the top micromanaging bullshit I would have done to justify my existence to cishets. Turns out that process was entirely unnecessary.
I think I always kind of equated "non-binary" with "genderqueer" in terms of an umbrella term for one's relationship to gender, so it's good to hear your personal thoughts on it as one genderqueer person.
This is painfully relatable, as a teenager with a weird relationship with gender most of the things in this video are spot on. I’m honestly so thankful you make this videos and I’m sure plenty of young people questioning are too. Hope your channel gets the attention it deserves and hope you have a good one 💚.
"I look like crap", "I don't know what I am doing guys". That may generally hold for most everyone right now, but I have to ask. Are they ok? Now that I think about it, trade's work is probably hard to do right now. Labels for people are hard because people are generally kinda complex and changing, and meanwhile, the words themselves are also changing. But also, it is people who decide what words mean, by a weird kind of consensus. I can't wait till the world is ready to let people do whatever they want rather than everyone needing to pin themselves down.
Honestly what I needed to hear today- that finding your exact label isn’t worth freaking out and being obsessive about. And always love getting to learn more about you
I really feel this video in some respects. For me, gender is just...ultimately not meaningful in any actual tangible way. I understand that it's real in the sense any social construct is, I just don't feel that it's ultimately a useful one. Definitely not for me. Like, sure, you can assume things about a person's environment growing up because of social forces, but you can't really know anything about that person based on their gender. So...idk, I'm comfortable identifying as Agender, though no pronoun ascribed to me bothers me. Lucky me, I guess?
I identify with this a lot too. Like, I have always felt on the feminine end of the spectrum and never felt like “a man” but also not fully like a woman either. So, in terms of Trans I have socially transitioned and am fully intend on going on HRT but need to fight my lazy ass, figure out how to add Medicare part d to my plan, find a good doctor, and then I don't know. I currently am living with my parents until I can move into a place. I feel like I can't move forward as long as I am living with parents.
I relate to your experience a lot. I use a similar tiered conception of my gender (trans>nonbinary>transfemme>more specific labels) and I also started out thinking I was binary trans. For my own use I tend to label myself genderflux or girlflux because I generally feel feminine but the intensity of that varies pretty significantly, but I have also used labels like demigirl and femby. I can definitely see getting tired of trying to micro-label myself and going to a more catchall label like genderqueer being a freeing thing. I've given up on figuring out my romantic orientation and generally just label myself queer and asexual in that respect.
As someone more recently coming to terms with gender this is so incredibly helpful. Gender just feels weird to me... Which is also why I'd hesitate to call myself trans, exactly like you stated worried about co-opting.
@@pjaypender1009 I see. I don't doubt that. I guess it seems a teensy tiny bit bigoty, if I didn't know better. In my personal life, all the cis gays I know aren't and haven't been. But there are all kinds of people.
Every time I watch one of your videos I just find myself nodding and going, "yes, same, exactly." And that for me is such a big thing because I think you're the only nb person on the internet right now who I've heard put what this feels like into words in a way that I can relate so much. Thank you so much for doing this.
Wow! So many things! I love hearing you explain this. I'm kinda blown away rn.🤯 I've always felt nauseated and depressed at the thought of being called "man" but I'm also very comfortable with my secondary sex characteristics. I mean, you look at me and I can't imagine seeing anything other than male....I guess until we start talking because 'dudebros' definitely picked up on my outsider-ness 😄 I would always have the same ratio of female:male friends, I loved doing traditionally female things to the same level I HATED sports. I recall someone telling me, "well, you ARE like half woman half man" and I took it as a compliment that I cherished. It was YEARS later that it hit me out of nowhere, "they meant that as an insult!"🤣 There was a period of time when I accepted the way I appear and started behaving in a way that fit the expectation. I was very drunk, depressed, out of control... other things... during that period. It was pure darkness without even an echo to provide hope that there was an end to the emptiness. I just finally said, "I guess I'm just some singular fucking weirdo." And I just suffocated the idea of genders in my head. "I am me that's all." No one asks and I don't give them a reason to. But, that just means I'm letting parts of myself atrophy so that other people don't start no shit won't be no shit. This is rambling and I'm sorry, this is what's rattling in my brain box rn😳 The academic explanations of things didn't mean anything to me, but this video really did something in my head. I think I'm going to need to sit silently for a while. Your videos are the best. So calming. So insightful. So QueerSMR😄❤️❤️❤️ "everything I do is queer, because it just fucking is" -best quote of 2020
Haha, I feel the part about those "compliments" so hard! Slightly related: when people get confused about whether to call me sir or ma'am or whatever, I cherish those moments. The other person usually apologises, but I actually find their confusion so validating!
Your story almost exactly mirrors mine. I identify as transmasc non-binary. I also have lived as a transmale multiple times until I finally figured out that I was non-binary. I love my identity and am very proud of it. I, too, medically transition and I adore my beard and deep voice. Love your channel and good luck on your test!
Your relation to gender is so eerily similar to mine. When you said "I just experience gender in a really fluxy way" I felt such a strong connection to that, because that's exactly what it is like for me as well and I've never heard anyone describe my own gender experience so accurately. Instead of my gender itself fluctuating like it does for genderfluid people, it feels like my gender is made up of all sorts of different parts which are constantly fluctuating, but they don't actually define my gender differently when they happen to be at different levels. I also happen to take active pleasure in screwing with traditional ideas of gender, so genderqueer fits perfectly. I could also relate a lot to feeling liberated after the realization of being non-binary. Approaching life, identity, expression, etc. from this new standpoint is so freeing and in hindsight so ridiculously obvious. Previously, when I still thought I was at least somewhat man-aligned, I would weigh myself based on how traditionally conforming I was, when I wore make-up I could understand conceptually that I was now somehow being non-conforming, however that simply never sat right with me. As a non-binary genderqueer person there is no possible way to conform or to not conform, you just are and that is how I came to realize I always experienced existence. Like you, I also started out thinking I was a trans man, because that was the only available option I found at the time, since I knew I very clearly wasn't a cis woman and I very clearly did feel dysphoria. The only difference for me is that even though I am on testosterone (5+ years currently), have had some gender related surgeries, and have a very comparable transition path to transmasculine NBs and binary trans men, I don't identify with the transmasculine label. The reason for it is that I don't feel comfortable describing myself as a masculine person. Awhile ago I actually found a label for people like me, it is called transneutral!
i love that you put the effort into making subtitles, not only is helpful for the deaf but also for me that im not a native english speaker that sometimes misses a few words when hearing english.
This idea of rejecting quantification of gender sorta reminds me of a thing foucault said about how society tries to make us categorize and obsess over categorizing ourselves in order to control us. Edir: continuing here, he was specifically discussing sexuality, how xociety wants us to study and dissect and obsess over it in order to categorize ourselves, so society can then use those categories to oppress
i came to this video because i also mostly use the genderqueer label and you just perfectly summed up my feelings i still struggle to escape the obsessive 'which gender do i feel like today?' (which isnt helped by the fact that in my lauguage there are only the two gendered pronouns so i feel like i have to settle for one of them) but yeah i always find that i cant realy categorise my gender and that i dont actually care for how its categorised, i just dont want other people to categorise me and have some expectations of how i should express my gender
i feel the exact same way about my gender and i'm so glad someone has been able to vocalise how i feel!!! i'm amab and i've never seen myself as female, but no matter how i try to present myself, i just don't see myself as male either and it's so confusing that i don't even understand what my label would be. calling myself queer makes so much more sense than any specific gender label and i'm glad that i'm not the only one that perceives my gender in this way! it's something that i repressed for a while in fear that no one would understand and/or respect it, but i've become so comfortable with who i am over time that there's no point in trying to conform to anything or put myself into little boxes. it's easier to be myself and myself is...queer!
Okay but like- I’m a teen so when you described how you felt that hit VERY close to home for me. My sister is very nice and we have a code for what my gender is for that moment but I’ve honestly just been answering “idk I haven’t thought about it” for a little while. I just feel like every gender but none of them at the same time ehehe
I'm agender and I consider myself transneutral. A lot of my transition has been similar to trans men, but for me, the point was not to masculinize myself, but rather to neutralize all "feminine" traits.
Yeah even as I was watching Luxander talk about it, I thought the word "transmasculine" probably only works for people who still put themselves on a gender spectrum between masculine and feminine at opposite ends, rather than rejecting gender altogether.
I like non-binary but also demigirl, but I usually just say non-binary. Because sometimes I like being viewed as female, but other times I'd rather people not view me as female, I'd want to be viewed as just... a person. That there is a people. Sometimes using "she" gives me the "don't like that" wince and other times I'm fine with it. I'm trying out mixing she/her and they/them and have swapped to a more neutral nickname. I'm not out to everyone and still go by my more feminine nickname with certain groups. I'm typically fine with it but it's a weird trip when talking online between the people I'm out to and the people in not (two separate groups of friends) and I'll hear my more feminine nickname used and be like "... oh right that's also me!". I do plan on coming out to almost everyone sometime, it's not that the people I'm not out to probably won't accept me, I just feel like it's a bit of an awkward convo to ask them to call me a different nickname than what they have been using for years now (I know I know, I'm just very nonconfrontational) And I do still feel attachment to my birth and fem nickname, my parents call me by my full birth name occasionally and I still view it as me... confusing. I also don't want people to stress out if they "slip up" and call me by my fem name or juggle on if I'm fem that day or not. My name is like that car meme, "This is great, but I like this better". Social transitions are more stressful than I thought.
What is the purpose of labels? Are they more for figuring ourselves out or describing ourselves for others? The best answer I can give to that is... yes! And sometimes those things are at odds. I think when it comes down to it, us figuring ourselves out and being comfortable in our own skin is way more important. For everyone that needs to understand the exact specifics, they should be able to the longer explanation for the motivations behind whatever labels people choose for themselves.
I really love hearing about how you see your gender identity! I identify as nonbinary, which as you mentioned is an incredibly broad term. Because there are so many ways to be and do nonbinary identities I'm really interested in how people with nonbinary identities describe and think about gender and do gender. For me I typically just use nonbinary because that's the term I identify with the most, but I also sometimes enjoy using the term genderqueer. While I don't strongly identify with trans and don't introduce myself as such, I do consider myself trans. I like nonbinary because it defines what I'm not but doesn't define me any more than that.
This video reflects exactly how I feel about gender and what many people don't quite understand. People, always try to look for labels to describe themselves, and I also looked for them. For the longest time I was also very confused about my gender and never finding the correct label for myself. But once I find out non-binary term and all the umbrella under it, it actually took me very short time to get tired and overwhelmed with so many names and labels with so little differences between them (the same with bisexuality), that I consider that there's no actual need for explaing with every little detail about who you are or who you like, the same we don't do it for other things in life. Of course you can label yourself all you want if you feel like (that may also help you to know yourself better), and specially if some of those defines you perfectly, but there's no actual need, that just confuses everyone too much, and it did to me as well. That's why we are non-binary, genderqueer or whatever label you prefer, because we are not binary. That means we are not in an specific point in gender, we are just ourselves. Thank you so much for the video, I was kind of desperate of knowing there's other people out there talking about how I feel about gender and different labels.
Queer and Genderqueer are vague terms that are adopted to be vague by design. It seems to be that essentially they mean ''something???'' Not the norm, and that's great.
This is a bad argument that has been made and debunked before AM, stop acting like marginalized people are at fault for the system that traumatized them
YES! Love this - thank you for saying everything that I haven't known how to articulate, nor do I ever feel like explaining myself to this extent, haha. But it is amazing and wonderful to hear your words and feel how much they resonate :)
It's really interesting to me that, in spite of having recently shifted from identifying as non-binary questioning, to binary(-ish) trans woman, I'm relating even more strongly in some ways to yours and other non-binary people's descriptions and discussions of their gender identity because I feel like I finally have some clarity about who I am. And I wouldn't have reached this understanding of myself without non-binary creators sharing their experiences and their own journey in understanding themselves. The stuff you do is so helpful. Thank you!
It's wild to me how accurately this tracks with my experiences of gender as a transfemme nb "?????" who previously identified as a trans woman. I hate those pressures you're talking about. My gender is queer for sure, but I don't even wanna call myself genderqueer because having a final gender label at all is just too much pressure for me. I'm just done with labeling it altogether, and I want to be myself unapologetically.
This was a great video! Hearing your experience with finally finding a label that freed you from the confinement of binary-ness really struck a chord with me. I started watching your videos and Ash Hardell's videos about a year and a half ago and immediately resonated with both your stories/commentary. Took me until just about six months ago to realize it's because I too am nonbinary! IDK the point of this comment other than saying i feel ya and also you're doing great work!
Honestly I loved how you spoke about these issues you've faced. I actually think I feel the same way about my gender/sexuality. I don't need to justify my experience to anyone else, and my sexuality/gender don't need to have any particular label assigned to them unless I want them too. You're the best!
Ohh! I kind of relate to that in the opposite way haha. I use genderqueer as an umbrella term and nonbinary as a specific gender. So like I'm trans then, genderqueer, then bigender, and then one of my specific genders within being bigender is nonbinary. I kind of use them interchangably.. it's a mess
Thanks for putting it so clearly. It resonated and reminded me that it is fine to just be free about it. I've been feeling a lot of pressure to define my pronouns and I'm like "I dont fucking know... just dont call me -it-" I know you do have your pronouns determined but the way you talk about genderqueer over nonbinary in terms of specificity made me feel really seen. I can just throw my hands up and be like "idfk, my gender is queer, my sexuality is queer, I dont buy your rules"
I relate so much about not trying to quantify every day, every sentiment.. I started making journals from a very young age with the idea of capturing the ''essence'' about my identity and sexuality. We somehow grow when we accept we are not one thing forever, we are not the same thing everyday, we are changing beings, we are fluid. Even cis people are fluid in some ways, but we all try to restraint ourselves from being the fluid beings that we all are.
Thanks for sharing! I tend to categorize the labels that I use in a similar way that you do in the video. I'd also put trans at the top, but because I'm in an early stage of transition, and because most of the people I was close to in my childhood barely understand binary trans people, let alone nonbinary people, I don't really like telling most people that I'm trans. I get the feeling that they'll think of me as a trans man, which isn't very accurate. It requires more explanation than it's worth, so that's why I leave it out most of the time. But I still identify as trans in the sense that I was assigned a gender at birth and it didn't really pan out. My next label of choice is nonbinary, which I didn't like at first because it was too nebulous, but now I tend to prefer it because it's the easiest to explain. It tells most people what they need to know. I'm not a man or a woman. Please do not refer to me as either. I debate over whether I'm transmasculine or not. Some of my experiences relate to transmasculine people, others not so much. I think my biggest red flag against being transmasc is that there's a part of me that connects to wlw culture. My place in that is definitely more nblw, but part of me calls myself gay and uses that to refer to my attraction to women. But part of me feels like that's wrong and that me liking women, while definitely not straight, isn't gay either. And a lot of my childhood gender feels felt more akin to me being a gay boy (I thought I was attracted to men at the time) than a straight girl. I don't know, this is stuff I need to work out on my own or with a therapist, the point is that I might be transmasculine, but maybe I'm not. The next label that I actually go to is agender. 9 times out of 10, I consider this label my specific label. I go back and forth sometimes. When I first came to terms with my being trans, it was through settling within the agender zone of existence. Sometimes, I felt like I didn't have a gender at all. Other times, I felt like I had a gender, but it was neutral. I generally lean towards the gender neutral definition of agender oppose to the genderless definition. But when I first came out, I felt closer to the former. These days, the label only comes up when my friends come into my room and see my agender pride flag hanging up and they ask what it is. My other specific label is gender neutral. A part of me feels like this isn't valid because gender neutral is used to describe one of the definitions of agender. But I feel more comfortable specifying that I have a neutral gender rather than being genderless. And genderless is a valid identity, so why not gender neutral? This doesn't come up at all really, unless I'm talking to other teams people. Or if I'm filling in a gender option where I'm allowed to write my own and nonbinary either isn't a preselected option or I feel like being more specific. But yeah, this is a long winded way of saying that if I could fill in my own gender box, I'd say nonbinary/agender/gender neutral in that order.
As someone who has been trying so hard to find a box that fits, and then create a bulletproof argument in order to convince the box that I belong in it, what you've said in video was a huge relief. Thank you for talking about this.
thank you so much for making this video. it's insane to me that i've come across someone that has the same view of gender. and put so eloquently! thank for putting into words what i've felt for years. the biggest thing for me is this expectation that i need to fill a certain role. i don't care for that! i just want to be me, and who i am just doesn't fall into one of two genders. i'm just me!
Gender is such a complex subject and understanding all the terms correctly and what exactly they mean can be really difficult. So I'm really grateful that you're helping me get rid of my ignorance about it. You explain things really well and give advice that I think helps a lot of people who hear it. Thanks so much ❤
I always love your videos and relate to a lot of what you say. I have told a couple people I’m non-binary but I’m also nervous to fully come out as I was AFAB and still present somewhat feminine and sometimes it feels like too much of a hassle to explain. I love that you came to the place of “I don’t owe anyone anything in regards to my gender”. My gender experience is also fucky and I’m so glad I know you exist. It’s nice to not feel alone in things.
As a cis-gay, I can confirm that we are indeed the worst. Nonetheless, great vid Lux. Always love hearing your perspective and experience! Thanks for sharing them ❤
i do not watch you enough, somehow. and somehow you described so closely to how i have navigated my gender while figuring it all out and also said the exact reasons i'm beginning to accept queer as my gender and sexuality label. it's just too much! too much to worry about. thanks.
I really relate to so much of this! Thank you for discussing it. I feel much happier about the term genderqueer than I do about non-binary. It basically sums it up nicely. I’m totally happy being seen as agender, non-gender, whatever. But there is no flexibility to my gender. I never embody feminine or masculine. It never changes. I just hard nope out of gender entirely, that whole box in me is blissfully empty. I find that often when using the term non-binary, ever-changing flexibility is assumed. Thanks to therapy I’ve learned that the deep distress I feel over the presence of my internal reproductive organs is dysphoria, and it is just a horror show to live with, but outwardly I have big curves, a big chest and I just feel whatever about it. Got lumps. Am human. So what? It’s not a female body, it’s not secondary sexual characteristics, it’s just me. I’d have them off if I could, but only because it’s like carrying two bowling balls around with a messed up spine, not because I feel any type of way about their appearance. When people see those curves as some kind of hyper-femininity, that’s their problem. Therefore I do not feel comfortable referring to myself as part of the trans community as I believe they often experience social and medical struggles that I cannot relate to. I have the privilege of not having to discuss this and being able to be invisible when it suits and just let people assume whatever. I am very aware of that privilege. Basically 99% of questions about my gender can be answered with “nope”. Hard nope out of all of it. Gender? Nope. As I’m aromantic, don’t want kids and am now celibate, it’s never going to come up in any meaningful way.
Im way old lol. I wanted to understand new terms as my daughter uses them. But I had a good friend of fine who always referred as a butch woman. When it came to have babies, she carry the baby not her femme wife. People were confused but for her it made sense career wise and she never tried to be a man either she was a butch woman and this woman wanted to get pregnant. I never knew what queer vs trans was. Thanks for the info.
I relate so much to this right now. It's really nice to hear that I dont have find the specific label that describes me exactly, and that I dont need to quantify my gender every day. I needed that validation lol
I love how you speak about how the label is a form of two way communication. As a cis person your label is important to me because it explains how I can respect you best, i.e. which pronouns to use. But also your labels are yours and it doesn't matter what I think.
Thank you for holding up the mirror. I came out as Enby last summer (assigned F, I am Stephan, but TH-cam is signed into my old gmail on my phone). My own obsessive/ intellectual journey through the “what does it all mean” has only taken a few years, thanks to people like you sharing with us. I’m older, so I also had some lost time to make up for. I’ve said “androgynous” since my teen years in the nineties. Younger people have set me free with the new language lately. I have literally thought so many times that makeup and a dress feel like drag on me. I was afraid to tell anyone that. Thank you. I feel more neutral than masc, but much of this video expresses the same feelings I’ve been arriving at. Not wanting to follow any rules or consider anyone else’s projections onto me whatsoever. The intense “bucking” goes back to teen years. Perhaps my gender is gender-Aquarius lol. Thanks again Luxander, your ability to share with such clarity from your heart is truly appreciated. 🙏
Dang, I relate to this so much and you put into words really well an experience that I had at the beginning of trying to figure myself out. I did the same thing with the day by day journal stuff. Since it was a little later (circa 2015), I had resources about the spectrum of identities, and I spent a lot of time with ideas like the "Genderbread Person" trying to quantify percentages of male and female, or with long lists of specific identities trying to tell which one I was. I eventually gave up and settled on "nonbinary" and "transmasculine" since I fell under both umbrellas, and together they communicated what others needed to know. I love your videos and I love seeing other nonbinary trans people. Makes me feel like I'm not alone.
Yesssss!! Ty for this video! I happen to use all the same gender labels that you do and I love the way you layered them. This is going to be such an awesome resource for me to share with people.
This video made me really happy because it is so rare for me to find someone with a similar journey to mine. I’ve used the label genderqueer for almost 7 years now, for many of the same reasons you do. I also love to clarify to people that it was one of the first non-binary labels that existed, which is partly why I feel so connected to it. Great video!
Omg I relate soooo much to your experience. I too just say I'm queer now, just waaaay more simple. If I really want to go into more details, I could say I'm genderqueer, demisexual and androsexual (attracted by ''masculine'' people, but again, very broad and unclear limits and that's just fine for me). I used to think I was cis because I only knew about binary trans people... I knew I wasn't a man and I identified (and still do) with my assigned gender at birth (female). But wow, the first time someone mentionned non-binary I was like OH WAIT A MINUTE! You're saying I dont *have to* be one or an other? Or that I could be both, or outside of it completly? Oh, then i have some thinking to do... 6 years later, I'm thinking about starting HRT. I was afraid of so many things, but now I'm more affraid of going on longer without trying and see if it actually makes me feel better about my body.
Was kind of hoping for another metric of ideas to put a label on my gender as non-binary, and mostly got that I should not worry too much. Got a little weird when you said your idea of masculine clothes is pretty almost entirely what I wear, I am amab, but pretty sure few guys I see dress as consistently with it as me, wish I could step up my nb dressing game. But also the quick mention of disliking drag as a performance, got my attention enough to finally subscribe. I know that as a non-cis person I should support drag performance or something, but there is something about the campy stuff that makes me feel really uncomfortable, and have been kind of afraid to say anything like it might be old bias or something.
Yeah. I was kind of confused when they said "Cis gays are the worst". I'm assuming that I'm missing some form of context, since while I also don't like drag this is not the response I have (then again I'm a cis gay guy so that's to be expected).
Loved your video once again. Very informative and inspiring. I totally resonate with those feelings you mentioned of suffocation that comes from trying to micromanage feelings day to day. I went through a long period of not labeling myself at all, partly because I wasn't aware of any label that accurately reflected how I felt and partly because I didn't want to shoe-horn myself into a box for the sake of it. It did cause some pretty big problems though with others, including former partners, not really understanding me and feeling confused. Discovering the term 'non-binary' was an enormous relief - it's a term that accurately describes me without the need to delve too deeply to that micro level and in the last few years it has become more recognised in mainstream society (although much education is still needed in this regard) .
I have struggled with medically transitioning because of the history of forced sterilization of indigenous female bodied persons. I have contemplated my own ideas behind how I would do my gender presentation. I use agender for myself but don’t feel as though I need to perform androgyny to make other person acknowledge my identity. I don’t use trans, I don’t use the word cis to describe myself. My hair is tied to my sobriety and indigenous identity, i have had to overcome my own internalized fatphobia about my own body and choose not to change it to make society more comfortable. I don’t feel like I have to perform my gender in a way to make other people understand it, i usually default to “well google can explain a lot of things that i don’t have to.”
So, we are soulmates in the "how we came to identify as genderqueer" thing and omg! hasuahsuhas (and its so good to finally see someone that thinks the same way as me, because i thought i was just weird and lazy for sooooo long! so yey genderqueer power!)
I'm right there with you. My gender is usually very flux and/or fluid, but I still prefer they/them pronouns, maybe because I don't think I'm a man and I am afab and still look female. It's frustrating too, because I think about getting top surgery and/or hormones but I'm worried about the change being too much. I'm not fond of using the "queer" label to describe me, because I've mostly known myself as a cis straight woman. That all changed when the nonbinarys attacked xD lol jk
I feel like describing my gender is a lot like describing my spiritual practice. I'm Pagan, and it's a really, really broad umbrella that means a lot of different things to people. For the most part I can say that I'm Pagan and leave it at that. If people want to know more I can say that I'm a pantheist Pagan witch with Celtic leanings who digs on chaos magic and Jungian archetypes. For the most part I can just say I'm queer and people get that I'm not cis/hetero. If they want more info I'm bisexual, genderqueer, demisexual, and polyamorous. I don't feel like I can really claim trans because I don't feel like I'm transitioning in a really visible way, kind of like you mentioned with starting hormones.
Not a critisim, but I'm getting flashbacks to all the times my nice senior developer co-workers have explained some complicated part of the company's database-structure to me.
Yep, my labels from broadest to simplest: 1. Nonbinary/trans 2. Nonbinary girl 3. Demigirl I almost never say I'm a demigirl irl. I did the whole "am I a girl or a boy today?" thing as a teen and it was exhausting. I kinda wish transneutral was more of a thing though bc while I'm transitioning, it's more bc I wanna look less feminine, not more masculine
I stopped bothering with labels. Took testosterone for 6 months in 2016 and stopped. My preferred name is Cole. My pronouns I don't correct people when they say either she or he I tell people that I don't care what they refer me to as. But am fully masculine. I bind my chest I have to have my chest flat. When people ask me what they should refer to me as I tell them... I don't know. I will just say "he" is fine. But I usually just tell people I don't do labels that I am just me. But I am masculine. Hormone altered voice and bind. I will tell people that I am Me. I am just Cole.
The thinking that led me to conclude I'm agender is very similar. I can especially relate to the everything is drag point. That's pretty much how existing in public feels, because there is nothing that will be perceived by others as absence of gender. Gender will be projected onto me no matter what I do. I mostly dress very plain and what I think of as neutral and non-presentational, but that reads as soft masc because masculinity is the social default and not presenting is not on the menu.
The way you define genderqueer is like the way I define "demigirl" cause the only thing it communicates is "not quite a girl" I kinda like how vague it is. I tried specifying how much of a girl I felt or at what times I felt like a girl and, just no, it's so tiring
I LOVE this explanation and I LOVE you! Thank you so much for sharing so openly and explaining in such detail! I love your process and free expression, not tied to any expectations! 🥰😍🙌
I came out in a really messy way at 17 coz i just lacked the space to be able to find the words for anything about myself to do with the topic of gender really. At age 18 I was the exact same as you - I was reading about all different labels on the internet and trying to quantify myself and my thoughts. It was like being shown a sequence of ten 7-digit numbers (each with various different integers) and then being asked to look at it for 2 seconds and being asked what the growth pattern or product rule is? I hope that makes sense. I turned to HRT at 19 and began that just before my 20th birthday. I did HRT for 2-4 months, then stopped, and for a while I've described myself as genderqueer not knowing where I was going in life and whether id stopped hrt because i cant accept myself or because i found out i didnt need it? Hearing your experience definately makes me feel as if 'genderqueer' really fits me regardless of if I pickup HRT again in future. But my own experience with gender just feels so much like what you said, and seems too extraordinary at times to be able to describe it that doesn't involve a 5-10 minute monologue from me.
maybe not the best place to be exploring these feelings (not you Luxander you and yours are fantastic, just youtube as a whole) but i am female-identifying and -bodied, so i am, as a whole, Cis. Im okay with that. I have found, as i have been trying to make space for the fluidity of gender and language, that i embraced non-binary Language as a neutralizing force. Those who express binary or neo-pronoun preferences are to be respected, but otherwise i love the idea of not needing the binary language to define the human experience, so as i am a cis woman i am as comfortable with they/them as i am with she/her. I feel like i might be missing something and would love to be educated by you or the community, as it is not your job to educate on every bad idea that comes your way. Its just something ive been thinking about a lot lately. Love your stuff, always appreciate your perspectives
Wow I have never felt more seen. I have a trans friend that told me hey you can consider yourself trans and I was like wut, I don't want to take up space where I shouldn't... my thought process was like he's a real trans person and I'm not cuz I'm not changing my body or transitioning and I consider myself genderfluid (I'm a woman and non-binary) and I've struggled with that for a while, especially because I still partly identify as my gender assigned at birth. Now I'm like, well.....gender is a fuck so I'm not going to worry too much about specific labels. It's hard living in a very cis place though, because I always wonder would I feel more comfortable being non-binary if I wasn't constantly perceived and addressed as a woman? Also my relationship with gender presentation is complicated, because I want to be read as androgynous and not be immediately clocked as afab all the time and I usually feel more comfortable in gender neutral clothes (tshirt and pants or kind of loose shorts). I think I do tie in my gender identity with my presentation a lot, and it's hard for me to feel valid in my identity inherently. Ultimately I really want to feel comfortable being genderfluid and just dressing in what I feel like day to day and not have to feel this genderfluid imposter syndrome every time I dress "feminine", but I'm just not there yet and honestly I don't really know how to get there. Do you have any advice on that? Also I would really like to watch/follow more genderfluid and genderqueer people on youtube and socials, do you have any recommendations?
Thanks for this vid. I thought I was a trans guy then realized I was genderfluid, but I usually go by trans guy still. If I'm being honest it's mostly out of fear of being mocked, but hey, maybe I'll get better at it someday :)
I worry a lot less about whether these labels are real or not, and more about "What is this person trying to tell me about themselves when they use this label for themselves?"
Oh shit, I was just thinking "if someone tells me they're trans, more than anything that just gives me a hint as to what their life experience has been like" and then they said that exact thing straight after
I think ANYONE being asked or having to explain or having WHO YOU ARE CONSTANTLY being focused around your sexuality and your gender is exhausting . You are a human being and who you are is much more defined by your tastes in art , music , your moral stances , your personality , if you are extroverted or introverted etc etc . That is how I see it . As the mom of a gay teen I also can understand when he doesn’t want and he doesn’t OWE me ,or anyone else for that matter ,any explanations about that aspect of him . He is so much more defined by other things , he believes . He also feels uncomfortable how all the LGBTQ+ folks are all sort of lumped into the same “ group” if you may , he does not like that at all . And , when you casually remarked ,” oh cis gays are the worse” it didn’t bother me , but rather confirmed my sons assessments that LGBTQ+ is too broad of a community to have all these very very different insights to be seen as “ the same thing “. You most probably do not “ get “ or like cis gay men as much as my son does not “ get “ or understand non binary people . And that is ok , people are different , so I really think this whole labeling really has to stop so we can focus on other more interesting and less divisive issues that define us as HUMAN BEINGS .
Makes a lot of sense, and I’m glad that you’re making content to clarify labels. People get really confused, bewildered or frustrated with “too many genders”, “too many labels”, but it really isn’t that complicated. Nonbinary is both a gender and a category of gender. Every gender label I can think of that isn’t binary falls under nonbinary: even agender is technically nonbinary since it isn’t part of the binary. In most casual contexts “nonbinary”, the category, is all that needs communicating. It literally doesn’t affect other people’s lives at all if there are a dozen or a thousand subcategories of nonbinary, unless they deliberately seek specificity from someone
This video was exactly what I needed. Only recently have I discovered that my gender is wack. Though I’d consider myself non-binary, my favorite term is genderfuck. That’s one to really scare the grandparents and confuse the straights
What's your gender... It's a surprise!
I remember back when we called it genderqueer, before “non-binary” came to prominence. I identified as genderqueer during that time as well. If memory serves, non-binary came to replace genderqueer because queer was considered a slur by some folks and there was a call for a name that was more generally accessible and acceptable to describe folks who don’t fit the gender binary. Looking back now, I definitely feel that something was lost in the change in terminology. I feel that non-binary definitely has a way of reinforcing the binary. Genderqueer is vague enough to allow for things to be nebulous. Like genderqueer makes me picture a gender cloud rather than one gender selection out of three options; man, woman, non-binary. I think non-binary as a term has been actually a bit stifling for me considering that. Thanks for the video!
I'm currently going through the whole 'getting tired of thinking about gender' thing so honestly I just say 'nonbinary' or 'Idk' now because everything is confusing. As for my sexuality, I just label it as a vaguely confused sounding shrug.
i'm so tired of gender which is .... ironic
hi we have the same name
@@saggguy7 indeed we do! Hello name friend!
@@camposporium4536 hahaha
I say that my gender is no and my sexual orientation is yes.
"Literally everything I do is drag" Judith Butler's loving this shit
This would actually explain my feelings of when I'm feeling girly and putting on feminine characteristics I feel more like I'm doing drag than actually representing my gender... Because if I'm not a woman, representing as one won't feel genuine and instead is a fun act. Exploring these feels is so weird!
Queer is such a helpful label to identify as! For the longest time I was searching for the right labels. I also went through that very tiring phase during which I had to constantly think about how I experienced my gender/ sexuality every single day. Until I arrived to the same conclusions as you.
I think my hesitation to use the word came at first from the way some people treated it as a very controversial slur that needed to be avoided. (I am not English or American and I have no idea of it's actual usage, but I mean, "queer history", "queer theory"). But there's this thing with the word queer that I don't think any other label has. It's broad and says absolutely nothing specific, except that the person who uses it has a complicated relationship to their gender/ sexuality. On the same time though, it's very powerful , for some reason. Maybe because of it's history, or maybe because of it's non-specificity exactly.
It communicates "yes, I am not cis/straight and you are not entitled to know what is my relationship to this part of myself, you just have to respect me"
I honestly feel like we need to just evolve beyond the concept of gender as a society.
@EdwardSpagedward89 I imagine you'd still be happy and comfortable even if no one ever called you a "man" or grouped you together with other men though. I'm not convinced that cis people actually have a particular need to have their gender affirmed and recognised.
But it seems very hard to test.
EdwardSpagedward89 how about 'we need to evolve beyond the concept of gender, but also if you're ok with the gender you have then that's chill too'
i agree, but also, gender is a huge facet of identity. the gender binary is very defined and pervasive, like, when you we grow up as people, most of us become cishet, and the cishet "sphere" is very coded, because broadly speaking, women are feminine and seek masculine men, and vice versa. most women have long hair and most men have short hair. etc etc. these are used as signifiers to quickly assess whether someone is a suitable partner.
i feel like it's only for queers where gender is more "important" in the sense that we don't rely on the cishet norms in the same way. i have a feeling that cishet people need the current gender system to be simplistic and cookie cutter, you know what i mean?
I so agree. feel like we're all taking a step backwards here and needlessly complicating things. Part of the problem is that people constantly misuse the words sex, gender and gender norms, etc. Honestly I just reject gender altogether and I'm much happier for it. We're born into a body that has a sex and we have a sexual orientation. We may or may not fit into society's social expectations for our sex. Or we might be somewhere in between. That's really always been true and it doesn't even need to be labeled.
@EdwardSpagedward89 I'm comfortable being a woman, but at the same time, I find it very hard to describe what a woman even is. Gender is kind of silly in a way.
This might be the most relatable video I have ever seen
Genderqueer was the first non-binary gender I was ever exposed to, even before hearing the term NB, so it's surprising to me that someone might not have heard of it. To me "non-binary" is a much more recent term? It definitely wasn't around when I was a teenager. I completely feel you on just saying trans to avoid having to explain further, I tend to just say non-binary when I'm more specifically agender, because I feel like the cishets are more comfortable with the idea of someone at least being somewhere on the quantifiable gender spectrum than being told they're not even on the spectrum to begin with (which is how I view being agender - we're gender spectators, we don't participate, haha).
Oh jeez... I relate to thinking "what do I feel today?" so much. My gender is living rent free in the "girl-agender/nonbinary" area. And I just ask myself "how much do we feel like a girl and how much not girl today?". And it's just... so tiring. Maybe I should just stop worrying about the gender%, it's changing so it's not like I can figure it out once and for all.
I relate so much to the obsessively micromanaging how I feel about my gender part... for me I just identify as demigirl because I identify as a woman but not entirely since I still feel weird about a lot of stuff and don’t wanna be weighed down by intrusive thoughts of “what if I’m not girly enough”. But part of me feels like it’s just a leftover of denial that’s still alive in my head idk
I realized around last year that I’m non-binary and I could see myself falling into that keeping a journal and tying down EXACTLY what I am paranoia. Demi- girl was the closest I got, but I’m now thinking I’m more gender fluid than that; and funnily enough I got to that conclusion without the need to do any of that over the top micromanaging bullshit I would have done to justify my existence to cishets.
Turns out that process was entirely unnecessary.
The biggest thing I miss from this video is having "The Gay Agenda" at the top of the Patreon supporters
I think I always kind of equated "non-binary" with "genderqueer" in terms of an umbrella term for one's relationship to gender, so it's good to hear your personal thoughts on it as one genderqueer person.
This is painfully relatable, as a teenager with a weird relationship with gender most of the things in this video are spot on. I’m honestly so thankful you make this videos and I’m sure plenty of young people questioning are too.
Hope your channel gets the attention it deserves and hope you have a good one 💚.
"I look like crap", "I don't know what I am doing guys". That may generally hold for most everyone right now, but I have to ask. Are they ok?
Now that I think about it, trade's work is probably hard to do right now.
Labels for people are hard because people are generally kinda complex and changing, and meanwhile, the words themselves are also changing. But also, it is people who decide what words mean, by a weird kind of consensus.
I can't wait till the world is ready to let people do whatever they want rather than everyone needing to pin themselves down.
I just didn't sleep super well the night before recording lol, thank you for the concern tho
I dont always have the emotional energy to engage with your channel but when I can you're always so open and affirming and informative
Honestly what I needed to hear today- that finding your exact label isn’t worth freaking out and being obsessive about. And always love getting to learn more about you
I really feel this video in some respects.
For me, gender is just...ultimately not meaningful in any actual tangible way. I understand that it's real in the sense any social construct is, I just don't feel that it's ultimately a useful one. Definitely not for me. Like, sure, you can assume things about a person's environment growing up because of social forces, but you can't really know anything about that person based on their gender.
So...idk, I'm comfortable identifying as Agender, though no pronoun ascribed to me bothers me. Lucky me, I guess?
That makes a lot of sense to me
I identify with this a lot too. Like, I have always felt on the feminine end of the spectrum and never felt like “a man” but also not fully like a woman either. So, in terms of Trans I have socially transitioned and am fully intend on going on HRT but need to fight my lazy ass, figure out how to add Medicare part d to my plan, find a good doctor, and then I don't know. I currently am living with my parents until I can move into a place. I feel like I can't move forward as long as I am living with parents.
I relate to your experience a lot. I use a similar tiered conception of my gender (trans>nonbinary>transfemme>more specific labels) and I also started out thinking I was binary trans. For my own use I tend to label myself genderflux or girlflux because I generally feel feminine but the intensity of that varies pretty significantly, but I have also used labels like demigirl and femby. I can definitely see getting tired of trying to micro-label myself and going to a more catchall label like genderqueer being a freeing thing. I've given up on figuring out my romantic orientation and generally just label myself queer and asexual in that respect.
As someone more recently coming to terms with gender this is so incredibly helpful.
Gender just feels weird to me... Which is also why I'd hesitate to call myself trans, exactly like you stated worried about co-opting.
Great video; was insightful. Video on cis gays? Curious why they're "the worst?" Thanks for sharing your journey.
Cis gays are often the worst because gay men and lesbian TERFs tend to be the biggest gatekeepers on the face of the earth.
@@pjaypender1009 I see. I don't doubt that. I guess it seems a teensy tiny bit bigoty, if I didn't know better. In my personal life, all the cis gays I know aren't and haven't been. But there are all kinds of people.
@@pjaypender1009do you mean gatekeeping spaces, communities, etc. or meanings of words?
Every time I watch one of your videos I just find myself nodding and going, "yes, same, exactly." And that for me is such a big thing because I think you're the only nb person on the internet right now who I've heard put what this feels like into words in a way that I can relate so much. Thank you so much for doing this.
YES! This!! I feel exactly the same reaction to your videos!
yes same
Wow! So many things! I love hearing you explain this. I'm kinda blown away rn.🤯
I've always felt nauseated and depressed at the thought of being called "man" but I'm also very comfortable with my secondary sex characteristics. I mean, you look at me and I can't imagine seeing anything other than male....I guess until we start talking because 'dudebros' definitely picked up on my outsider-ness 😄 I would always have the same ratio of female:male friends, I loved doing traditionally female things to the same level I HATED sports. I recall someone telling me, "well, you ARE like half woman half man" and I took it as a compliment that I cherished. It was YEARS later that it hit me out of nowhere, "they meant that as an insult!"🤣
There was a period of time when I accepted the way I appear and started behaving in a way that fit the expectation. I was very drunk, depressed, out of control... other things... during that period. It was pure darkness without even an echo to provide hope that there was an end to the emptiness.
I just finally said, "I guess I'm just some singular fucking weirdo." And I just suffocated the idea of genders in my head. "I am me that's all." No one asks and I don't give them a reason to. But, that just means I'm letting parts of myself atrophy so that other people don't start no shit won't be no shit.
This is rambling and I'm sorry, this is what's rattling in my brain box rn😳 The academic explanations of things didn't mean anything to me, but this video really did something in my head. I think I'm going to need to sit silently for a while.
Your videos are the best. So calming. So insightful. So QueerSMR😄❤️❤️❤️
"everything I do is queer, because it just fucking is" -best quote of 2020
@kiki bluuub aww thanks 🙂❤️
Haha, I feel the part about those "compliments" so hard! Slightly related: when people get confused about whether to call me sir or ma'am or whatever, I cherish those moments. The other person usually apologises, but I actually find their confusion so validating!
Your story almost exactly mirrors mine. I identify as transmasc non-binary. I also have lived as a transmale multiple times until I finally figured out that I was non-binary. I love my identity and am very proud of it. I, too, medically transition and I adore my beard and deep voice. Love your channel and good luck on your test!
Your relation to gender is so eerily similar to mine. When you said "I just experience gender in a really fluxy way" I felt such a strong connection to that, because that's exactly what it is like for me as well and I've never heard anyone describe my own gender experience so accurately. Instead of my gender itself fluctuating like it does for genderfluid people, it feels like my gender is made up of all sorts of different parts which are constantly fluctuating, but they don't actually define my gender differently when they happen to be at different levels. I also happen to take active pleasure in screwing with traditional ideas of gender, so genderqueer fits perfectly.
I could also relate a lot to feeling liberated after the realization of being non-binary. Approaching life, identity, expression, etc. from this new standpoint is so freeing and in hindsight so ridiculously obvious. Previously, when I still thought I was at least somewhat man-aligned, I would weigh myself based on how traditionally conforming I was, when I wore make-up I could understand conceptually that I was now somehow being non-conforming, however that simply never sat right with me. As a non-binary genderqueer person there is no possible way to conform or to not conform, you just are and that is how I came to realize I always experienced existence.
Like you, I also started out thinking I was a trans man, because that was the only available option I found at the time, since I knew I very clearly wasn't a cis woman and I very clearly did feel dysphoria.
The only difference for me is that even though I am on testosterone (5+ years currently), have had some gender related surgeries, and have a very comparable transition path to transmasculine NBs and binary trans men, I don't identify with the transmasculine label. The reason for it is that I don't feel comfortable describing myself as a masculine person. Awhile ago I actually found a label for people like me, it is called transneutral!
i love that you put the effort into making subtitles, not only is helpful for the deaf but also for me that im not a native english speaker that sometimes misses a few words when hearing english.
This idea of rejecting quantification of gender sorta reminds me of a thing foucault said about how society tries to make us categorize and obsess over categorizing ourselves in order to control us.
Edir: continuing here, he was specifically discussing sexuality, how xociety wants us to study and dissect and obsess over it in order to categorize ourselves, so society can then use those categories to oppress
i came to this video because i also mostly use the genderqueer label and you just perfectly summed up my feelings
i still struggle to escape the obsessive 'which gender do i feel like today?' (which isnt helped by the fact that in my lauguage there are only the two gendered pronouns so i feel like i have to settle for one of them)
but yeah i always find that i cant realy categorise my gender and that i dont actually care for how its categorised, i just dont want other people to categorise me and have some expectations of how i should express my gender
i feel the exact same way about my gender and i'm so glad someone has been able to vocalise how i feel!!! i'm amab and i've never seen myself as female, but no matter how i try to present myself, i just don't see myself as male either and it's so confusing that i don't even understand what my label would be. calling myself queer makes so much more sense than any specific gender label and i'm glad that i'm not the only one that perceives my gender in this way! it's something that i repressed for a while in fear that no one would understand and/or respect it, but i've become so comfortable with who i am over time that there's no point in trying to conform to anything or put myself into little boxes. it's easier to be myself and myself is...queer!
Okay but like- I’m a teen so when you described how you felt that hit VERY close to home for me. My sister is very nice and we have a code for what my gender is for that moment but I’ve honestly just been answering “idk I haven’t thought about it” for a little while. I just feel like every gender but none of them at the same time ehehe
I'm agender and I consider myself transneutral. A lot of my transition has been similar to trans men, but for me, the point was not to masculinize myself, but rather to neutralize all "feminine" traits.
Yeah even as I was watching Luxander talk about it, I thought the word "transmasculine" probably only works for people who still put themselves on a gender spectrum between masculine and feminine at opposite ends, rather than rejecting gender altogether.
Ooh! I've never heard "transneutral" before but that's a really great description.
@@bravetherainbow Gender apathy is a term I've heard, or gender indifference, like a sort of passive rejection of gender.
I like non-binary but also demigirl, but I usually just say non-binary. Because sometimes I like being viewed as female, but other times I'd rather people not view me as female, I'd want to be viewed as just... a person. That there is a people. Sometimes using "she" gives me the "don't like that" wince and other times I'm fine with it. I'm trying out mixing she/her and they/them and have swapped to a more neutral nickname. I'm not out to everyone and still go by my more feminine nickname with certain groups. I'm typically fine with it but it's a weird trip when talking online between the people I'm out to and the people in not (two separate groups of friends) and I'll hear my more feminine nickname used and be like "... oh right that's also me!". I do plan on coming out to almost everyone sometime, it's not that the people I'm not out to probably won't accept me, I just feel like it's a bit of an awkward convo to ask them to call me a different nickname than what they have been using for years now (I know I know, I'm just very nonconfrontational) And I do still feel attachment to my birth and fem nickname, my parents call me by my full birth name occasionally and I still view it as me... confusing. I also don't want people to stress out if they "slip up" and call me by my fem name or juggle on if I'm fem that day or not. My name is like that car meme, "This is great, but I like this better". Social transitions are more stressful than I thought.
What is the purpose of labels? Are they more for figuring ourselves out or describing ourselves for others? The best answer I can give to that is... yes! And sometimes those things are at odds. I think when it comes down to it, us figuring ourselves out and being comfortable in our own skin is way more important. For everyone that needs to understand the exact specifics, they should be able to the longer explanation for the motivations behind whatever labels people choose for themselves.
I'm so confused about my gender right now and I feel like your video helped me a little. Thank you.^^
I really love hearing about how you see your gender identity! I identify as nonbinary, which as you mentioned is an incredibly broad term. Because there are so many ways to be and do nonbinary identities I'm really interested in how people with nonbinary identities describe and think about gender and do gender.
For me I typically just use nonbinary because that's the term I identify with the most, but I also sometimes enjoy using the term genderqueer. While I don't strongly identify with trans and don't introduce myself as such, I do consider myself trans. I like nonbinary because it defines what I'm not but doesn't define me any more than that.
This video reflects exactly how I feel about gender and what many people don't quite understand. People, always try to look for labels to describe themselves, and I also looked for them. For the longest time I was also very confused about my gender and never finding the correct label for myself.
But once I find out non-binary term and all the umbrella under it, it actually took me very short time to get tired and overwhelmed with so many names and labels with so little differences between them (the same with bisexuality), that I consider that there's no actual need for explaing with every little detail about who you are or who you like, the same we don't do it for other things in life. Of course you can label yourself all you want if you feel like (that may also help you to know yourself better), and specially if some of those defines you perfectly, but there's no actual need, that just confuses everyone too much, and it did to me as well.
That's why we are non-binary, genderqueer or whatever label you prefer, because we are not binary. That means we are not in an specific point in gender, we are just ourselves.
Thank you so much for the video, I was kind of desperate of knowing there's other people out there talking about how I feel about gender and different labels.
Queer and Genderqueer are vague terms that are adopted to be vague by design. It seems to be that essentially they mean ''something???'' Not the norm, and that's great.
"Queer" is an umbrella term. "Genderqueer" has a meaning. It's a gender, just like man or woman.
@A M. Statistically most people are cis & straight. That woud be the norm. Queer literally means divergent from that.
@A M. Yes but just because gender is a societal construct doesn't mean its effect on us isn't real.
This is a bad argument that has been made and debunked before AM, stop acting like marginalized people are at fault for the system that traumatized them
YES! Love this - thank you for saying everything that I haven't known how to articulate, nor do I ever feel like explaining myself to this extent, haha. But it is amazing and wonderful to hear your words and feel how much they resonate :)
It's really interesting to me that, in spite of having recently shifted from identifying as non-binary questioning, to binary(-ish) trans woman, I'm relating even more strongly in some ways to yours and other non-binary people's descriptions and discussions of their gender identity because I feel like I finally have some clarity about who I am. And I wouldn't have reached this understanding of myself without non-binary creators sharing their experiences and their own journey in understanding themselves. The stuff you do is so helpful. Thank you!
It's wild to me how accurately this tracks with my experiences of gender as a transfemme nb "?????" who previously identified as a trans woman. I hate those pressures you're talking about. My gender is queer for sure, but I don't even wanna call myself genderqueer because having a final gender label at all is just too much pressure for me. I'm just done with labeling it altogether, and I want to be myself unapologetically.
This was a great video! Hearing your experience with finally finding a label that freed you from the confinement of binary-ness really struck a chord with me. I started watching your videos and Ash Hardell's videos about a year and a half ago and immediately resonated with both your stories/commentary. Took me until just about six months ago to realize it's because I too am nonbinary! IDK the point of this comment other than saying i feel ya and also you're doing great work!
Honestly I loved how you spoke about these issues you've faced. I actually think I feel the same way about my gender/sexuality. I don't need to justify my experience to anyone else, and my sexuality/gender don't need to have any particular label assigned to them unless I want them too. You're the best!
Ohh! I kind of relate to that in the opposite way haha. I use genderqueer as an umbrella term and nonbinary as a specific gender.
So like I'm trans then, genderqueer, then bigender, and then one of my specific genders within being bigender is nonbinary.
I kind of use them interchangably.. it's a mess
Thanks for putting it so clearly. It resonated and reminded me that it is fine to just be free about it. I've been feeling a lot of pressure to define my pronouns and I'm like "I dont fucking know... just dont call me -it-" I know you do have your pronouns determined but the way you talk about genderqueer over nonbinary in terms of specificity made me feel really seen. I can just throw my hands up and be like "idfk, my gender is queer, my sexuality is queer, I dont buy your rules"
I relate so much about not trying to quantify every day, every sentiment.. I started making journals from a very young age with the idea of capturing the ''essence'' about my identity and sexuality. We somehow grow when we accept we are not one thing forever, we are not the same thing everyday, we are changing beings, we are fluid. Even cis people are fluid in some ways, but we all try to restraint ourselves from being the fluid beings that we all are.
Thanks for making this video. I'm currently questioning/exploring my own gender, and this gave me some things to think about.
Thanks for sharing! I tend to categorize the labels that I use in a similar way that you do in the video. I'd also put trans at the top, but because I'm in an early stage of transition, and because most of the people I was close to in my childhood barely understand binary trans people, let alone nonbinary people, I don't really like telling most people that I'm trans. I get the feeling that they'll think of me as a trans man, which isn't very accurate. It requires more explanation than it's worth, so that's why I leave it out most of the time. But I still identify as trans in the sense that I was assigned a gender at birth and it didn't really pan out.
My next label of choice is nonbinary, which I didn't like at first because it was too nebulous, but now I tend to prefer it because it's the easiest to explain. It tells most people what they need to know. I'm not a man or a woman. Please do not refer to me as either.
I debate over whether I'm transmasculine or not. Some of my experiences relate to transmasculine people, others not so much. I think my biggest red flag against being transmasc is that there's a part of me that connects to wlw culture. My place in that is definitely more nblw, but part of me calls myself gay and uses that to refer to my attraction to women. But part of me feels like that's wrong and that me liking women, while definitely not straight, isn't gay either. And a lot of my childhood gender feels felt more akin to me being a gay boy (I thought I was attracted to men at the time) than a straight girl. I don't know, this is stuff I need to work out on my own or with a therapist, the point is that I might be transmasculine, but maybe I'm not.
The next label that I actually go to is agender. 9 times out of 10, I consider this label my specific label. I go back and forth sometimes. When I first came to terms with my being trans, it was through settling within the agender zone of existence. Sometimes, I felt like I didn't have a gender at all. Other times, I felt like I had a gender, but it was neutral. I generally lean towards the gender neutral definition of agender oppose to the genderless definition. But when I first came out, I felt closer to the former. These days, the label only comes up when my friends come into my room and see my agender pride flag hanging up and they ask what it is.
My other specific label is gender neutral. A part of me feels like this isn't valid because gender neutral is used to describe one of the definitions of agender. But I feel more comfortable specifying that I have a neutral gender rather than being genderless. And genderless is a valid identity, so why not gender neutral? This doesn't come up at all really, unless I'm talking to other teams people. Or if I'm filling in a gender option where I'm allowed to write my own and nonbinary either isn't a preselected option or I feel like being more specific.
But yeah, this is a long winded way of saying that if I could fill in my own gender box, I'd say nonbinary/agender/gender neutral in that order.
As someone who has been trying so hard to find a box that fits, and then create a bulletproof argument in order to convince the box that I belong in it, what you've said in video was a huge relief. Thank you for talking about this.
I'm glad you cleared things up!♥️
thank you so much for making this video. it's insane to me that i've come across someone that has the same view of gender. and put so eloquently! thank for putting into words what i've felt for years. the biggest thing for me is this expectation that i need to fill a certain role. i don't care for that! i just want to be me, and who i am just doesn't fall into one of two genders. i'm just me!
Gender is such a complex subject and understanding all the terms correctly and what exactly they mean can be really difficult. So I'm really grateful that you're helping me get rid of my ignorance about it. You explain things really well and give advice that I think helps a lot of people who hear it. Thanks so much ❤
I always love your videos and relate to a lot of what you say. I have told a couple people I’m non-binary but I’m also nervous to fully come out as I was AFAB and still present somewhat feminine and sometimes it feels like too much of a hassle to explain. I love that you came to the place of “I don’t owe anyone anything in regards to my gender”. My gender experience is also fucky and I’m so glad I know you exist. It’s nice to not feel alone in things.
As a cis-gay, I can confirm that we are indeed the worst.
Nonetheless, great vid Lux. Always love hearing your perspective and experience! Thanks for sharing them ❤
i do not watch you enough, somehow. and somehow you described so closely to how i have navigated my gender while figuring it all out and also said the exact reasons i'm beginning to accept queer as my gender and sexuality label. it's just too much! too much to worry about. thanks.
I really relate to so much of this! Thank you for discussing it. I feel much happier about the term genderqueer than I do about non-binary. It basically sums it up nicely.
I’m totally happy being seen as agender, non-gender, whatever. But there is no flexibility to my gender. I never embody feminine or masculine. It never changes. I just hard nope out of gender entirely, that whole box in me is blissfully empty.
I find that often when using the term non-binary, ever-changing flexibility is assumed. Thanks to therapy I’ve learned that the deep distress I feel over the presence of my internal reproductive organs is dysphoria, and it is just a horror show to live with, but outwardly I have big curves, a big chest and I just feel whatever about it. Got lumps. Am human. So what? It’s not a female body, it’s not secondary sexual characteristics, it’s just me. I’d have them off if I could, but only because it’s like carrying two bowling balls around with a messed up spine, not because I feel any type of way about their appearance. When people see those curves as some kind of hyper-femininity, that’s their problem.
Therefore I do not feel comfortable referring to myself as part of the trans community as I believe they often experience social and medical struggles that I cannot relate to. I have the privilege of not having to discuss this and being able to be invisible when it suits and just let people assume whatever. I am very aware of that privilege.
Basically 99% of questions about my gender can be answered with “nope”. Hard nope out of all of it. Gender? Nope. As I’m aromantic, don’t want kids and am now celibate, it’s never going to come up in any meaningful way.
My gender is Tina Belcher moaning, "Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh." ;) Seriously, good video!
Despite you saying your not a good person to ask specific questions about my gender identity your videos have been really helpful ☺ totes thankchu
Im way old lol. I wanted to understand new terms as my daughter uses them. But I had a good friend of fine who always referred as a butch woman. When it came to have babies, she carry the baby not her femme wife. People were confused but for her it made sense career wise and she never tried to be a man either she was a butch woman and this woman wanted to get pregnant. I never knew what queer vs trans was. Thanks for the info.
I relate so much to this right now. It's really nice to hear that I dont have find the specific label that describes me exactly, and that I dont need to quantify my gender every day. I needed that validation lol
I love how you speak about how the label is a form of two way communication. As a cis person your label is important to me because it explains how I can respect you best, i.e. which pronouns to use. But also your labels are yours and it doesn't matter what I think.
Thank you for holding up the mirror. I came out as Enby last summer (assigned F, I am Stephan, but TH-cam is signed into my old gmail on my phone). My own obsessive/ intellectual journey through the “what does it all mean” has only taken a few years, thanks to people like you sharing with us. I’m older, so I also had some lost time to make up for. I’ve said “androgynous” since my teen years in the nineties. Younger people have set me free with the new language lately. I have literally thought so many times that makeup and a dress feel like drag on me. I was afraid to tell anyone that. Thank you. I feel more neutral than masc, but much of this video expresses the same feelings I’ve been arriving at. Not wanting to follow any rules or consider anyone else’s projections onto me whatsoever. The intense “bucking” goes back to teen years. Perhaps my gender is gender-Aquarius lol. Thanks again Luxander, your ability to share with such clarity from your heart is truly appreciated. 🙏
Dang, I relate to this so much and you put into words really well an experience that I had at the beginning of trying to figure myself out. I did the same thing with the day by day journal stuff. Since it was a little later (circa 2015), I had resources about the spectrum of identities, and I spent a lot of time with ideas like the "Genderbread Person" trying to quantify percentages of male and female, or with long lists of specific identities trying to tell which one I was. I eventually gave up and settled on "nonbinary" and "transmasculine" since I fell under both umbrellas, and together they communicated what others needed to know.
I love your videos and I love seeing other nonbinary trans people. Makes me feel like I'm not alone.
Yesssss!! Ty for this video! I happen to use all the same gender labels that you do and I love the way you layered them. This is going to be such an awesome resource for me to share with people.
Wow, Thank you. this video is everything I've been looking for to find out about myself (genderqueer). I love your voice.
I don't know how to contribute to the conversation, but I loved the video! :D
I personally just use nb and trans masc because I don't want to get too detailed because i don't know more than that.
This video made me really happy because it is so rare for me to find someone with a similar journey to mine. I’ve used the label genderqueer for almost 7 years now, for many of the same reasons you do. I also love to clarify to people that it was one of the first non-binary labels that existed, which is partly why I feel so connected to it. Great video!
I'm genderqueer as well and I feel this so much!
Omg I relate soooo much to your experience. I too just say I'm queer now, just waaaay more simple. If I really want to go into more details, I could say I'm genderqueer, demisexual and androsexual (attracted by ''masculine'' people, but again, very broad and unclear limits and that's just fine for me).
I used to think I was cis because I only knew about binary trans people... I knew I wasn't a man and I identified (and still do) with my assigned gender at birth (female). But wow, the first time someone mentionned non-binary I was like
OH WAIT A MINUTE! You're saying I dont *have to* be one or an other? Or that I could be both, or outside of it completly? Oh, then i have some thinking to do...
6 years later, I'm thinking about starting HRT. I was afraid of so many things, but now I'm more affraid of going on longer without trying and see if it actually makes me feel better about my body.
Was kind of hoping for another metric of ideas to put a label on my gender as non-binary, and mostly got that I should not worry too much. Got a little weird when you said your idea of masculine clothes is pretty almost entirely what I wear, I am amab, but pretty sure few guys I see dress as consistently with it as me, wish I could step up my nb dressing game.
But also the quick mention of disliking drag as a performance, got my attention enough to finally subscribe. I know that as a non-cis person I should support drag performance or something, but there is something about the campy stuff that makes me feel really uncomfortable, and have been kind of afraid to say anything like it might be old bias or something.
"It's just like, DOUBT" phew. isn't it.
11:17 sounds like your next video waiting to happen
Yeah. I was kind of confused when they said "Cis gays are the worst". I'm assuming that I'm missing some form of context, since while I also don't like drag this is not the response I have (then again I'm a cis gay guy so that's to be expected).
Loved your video once again. Very informative and inspiring. I totally resonate with those feelings you mentioned of suffocation that comes from trying to micromanage feelings day to day. I went through a long period of not labeling myself at all, partly because I wasn't aware of any label that accurately reflected how I felt and partly because I didn't want to shoe-horn myself into a box for the sake of it. It did cause some pretty big problems though with others, including former partners, not really understanding me and feeling confused. Discovering the term 'non-binary' was an enormous relief - it's a term that accurately describes me without the need to delve too deeply to that micro level and in the last few years it has become more recognised in mainstream society (although much education is still needed in this regard) .
I have struggled with medically transitioning because of the history of forced sterilization of indigenous female bodied persons. I have contemplated my own ideas behind how I would do my gender presentation. I use agender for myself but don’t feel as though I need to perform androgyny to make other person acknowledge my identity. I don’t use trans, I don’t use the word cis to describe myself. My hair is tied to my sobriety and indigenous identity, i have had to overcome my own internalized fatphobia about my own body and choose not to change it to make society more comfortable. I don’t feel like I have to perform my gender in a way to make other people understand it, i usually default to “well google can explain a lot of things that i don’t have to.”
So, we are soulmates in the "how we came to identify as genderqueer" thing and omg! hasuahsuhas (and its so good to finally see someone that thinks the same way as me, because i thought i was just weird and lazy for sooooo long! so yey genderqueer power!)
Good to know that I am not the only one who had a phase of asking myself how I felt gender wise everyday (or even more than that).
I love you, you explain things so well. I just discovered you today. Thank you for what you do!!
I'm right there with you. My gender is usually very flux and/or fluid, but I still prefer they/them pronouns, maybe because I don't think I'm a man and I am afab and still look female. It's frustrating too, because I think about getting top surgery and/or hormones but I'm worried about the change being too much. I'm not fond of using the "queer" label to describe me, because I've mostly known myself as a cis straight woman. That all changed when the nonbinarys attacked xD lol jk
I love the word 'fluxy'. It may not have a definition, but it works! 😎
I feel like describing my gender is a lot like describing my spiritual practice. I'm Pagan, and it's a really, really broad umbrella that means a lot of different things to people. For the most part I can say that I'm Pagan and leave it at that. If people want to know more I can say that I'm a pantheist Pagan witch with Celtic leanings who digs on chaos magic and Jungian archetypes. For the most part I can just say I'm queer and people get that I'm not cis/hetero. If they want more info I'm bisexual, genderqueer, demisexual, and polyamorous. I don't feel like I can really claim trans because I don't feel like I'm transitioning in a really visible way, kind of like you mentioned with starting hormones.
Not a critisim, but I'm getting flashbacks to all the times my nice senior developer co-workers have explained some complicated part of the company's database-structure to me.
I was nearly nine minutes into this & then saw the calendar...
my brain didn't know what to make of that XD
Yep, my labels from broadest to simplest:
1. Nonbinary/trans
2. Nonbinary girl
3. Demigirl
I almost never say I'm a demigirl irl. I did the whole "am I a girl or a boy today?" thing as a teen and it was exhausting. I kinda wish transneutral was more of a thing though bc while I'm transitioning, it's more bc I wanna look less feminine, not more masculine
Do you identify with agender people all that much? Or is that not really your thing
Interesting, & thank you for this. Glad to have another perspective, cuz I'm also still figuring out my gender.
I stopped bothering with labels. Took testosterone for 6 months in 2016 and stopped. My preferred name is Cole. My pronouns I don't correct people when they say either she or he I tell people that I don't care what they refer me to as. But am fully masculine. I bind my chest I have to have my chest flat. When people ask me what they should refer to me as I tell them... I don't know. I will just say "he" is fine. But I usually just tell people I don't do labels that I am just me. But I am masculine. Hormone altered voice and bind. I will tell people that I am Me. I am just Cole.
Just finding this video. I, too, identify genderqueer for gender and sexual identity. I appreciate your words.
Whats your pronoun?
The thinking that led me to conclude I'm agender is very similar. I can especially relate to the everything is drag point. That's pretty much how existing in public feels, because there is nothing that will be perceived by others as absence of gender. Gender will be projected onto me no matter what I do. I mostly dress very plain and what I think of as neutral and non-presentational, but that reads as soft masc because masculinity is the social default and not presenting is not on the menu.
The way you define genderqueer is like the way I define "demigirl" cause the only thing it communicates is "not quite a girl"
I kinda like how vague it is. I tried specifying how much of a girl I felt or at what times I felt like a girl and, just no, it's so tiring
Great explanation! I am gonna send people here the next time someones feels the need to ask me for an explanation about my gender identity
I LOVE this explanation and I LOVE you! Thank you so much for sharing so openly and explaining in such detail! I love your process and free expression, not tied to any expectations! 🥰😍🙌
I came out in a really messy way at 17 coz i just lacked the space to be able to find the words for anything about myself to do with the topic of gender really. At age 18 I was the exact same as you - I was reading about all different labels on the internet and trying to quantify myself and my thoughts. It was like being shown a sequence of ten 7-digit numbers (each with various different integers) and then being asked to look at it for 2 seconds and being asked what the growth pattern or product rule is? I hope that makes sense. I turned to HRT at 19 and began that just before my 20th birthday. I did HRT for 2-4 months, then stopped, and for a while I've described myself as genderqueer not knowing where I was going in life and whether id stopped hrt because i cant accept myself or because i found out i didnt need it? Hearing your experience definately makes me feel as if 'genderqueer' really fits me regardless of if I pickup HRT again in future. But my own experience with gender just feels so much like what you said, and seems too extraordinary at times to be able to describe it that doesn't involve a 5-10 minute monologue from me.
maybe not the best place to be exploring these feelings (not you Luxander you and yours are fantastic, just youtube as a whole) but i am female-identifying and -bodied, so i am, as a whole, Cis. Im okay with that. I have found, as i have been trying to make space for the fluidity of gender and language, that i embraced non-binary Language as a neutralizing force. Those who express binary or neo-pronoun preferences are to be respected, but otherwise i love the idea of not needing the binary language to define the human experience, so as i am a cis woman i am as comfortable with they/them as i am with she/her. I feel like i might be missing something and would love to be educated by you or the community, as it is not your job to educate on every bad idea that comes your way. Its just something ive been thinking about a lot lately. Love your stuff, always appreciate your perspectives
Wow I have never felt more seen. I have a trans friend that told me hey you can consider yourself trans and I was like wut, I don't want to take up space where I shouldn't... my thought process was like he's a real trans person and I'm not cuz I'm not changing my body or transitioning and I consider myself genderfluid (I'm a woman and non-binary) and I've struggled with that for a while, especially because I still partly identify as my gender assigned at birth. Now I'm like, well.....gender is a fuck so I'm not going to worry too much about specific labels. It's hard living in a very cis place though, because I always wonder would I feel more comfortable being non-binary if I wasn't constantly perceived and addressed as a woman?
Also my relationship with gender presentation is complicated, because I want to be read as androgynous and not be immediately clocked as afab all the time and I usually feel more comfortable in gender neutral clothes (tshirt and pants or kind of loose shorts). I think I do tie in my gender identity with my presentation a lot, and it's hard for me to feel valid in my identity inherently. Ultimately I really want to feel comfortable being genderfluid and just dressing in what I feel like day to day and not have to feel this genderfluid imposter syndrome every time I dress "feminine", but I'm just not there yet and honestly I don't really know how to get there. Do you have any advice on that?
Also I would really like to watch/follow more genderfluid and genderqueer people on youtube and socials, do you have any recommendations?
Thanks for this vid. I thought I was a trans guy then realized I was genderfluid, but I usually go by trans guy still. If I'm being honest it's mostly out of fear of being mocked, but hey, maybe I'll get better at it someday :)
Really informative, thanks again for sharing!
I worry a lot less about whether these labels are real or not, and more about "What is this person trying to tell me about themselves when they use this label for themselves?"
Thank you. This resonates with me so much.
Oh shit, I was just thinking "if someone tells me they're trans, more than anything that just gives me a hint as to what their life experience has been like" and then they said that exact thing straight after
I think ANYONE being asked or having to explain or having WHO YOU ARE CONSTANTLY being focused around your sexuality and your gender is exhausting . You are a human being and who you are is much more defined by your tastes in art , music , your moral stances , your personality , if you are extroverted or introverted etc etc . That is how I see it . As the mom of a gay teen I also can understand when he doesn’t want and he doesn’t OWE me ,or anyone else for that matter ,any explanations about that aspect of him . He is so much more defined by other things , he believes . He also feels uncomfortable how all the LGBTQ+ folks are all sort of lumped into the same “ group” if you may , he does not like that at all . And , when you casually remarked ,” oh cis gays are the worse” it didn’t bother me , but rather confirmed my sons assessments that LGBTQ+ is too broad of a community to have all these very very different insights to be seen as “ the same thing “. You most probably do not “ get “ or like cis gay men as much as my son does not “ get “ or understand non binary people . And that is ok , people are different , so I really think this whole labeling really has to stop so we can focus on other more interesting and less divisive issues that define us as HUMAN BEINGS .
yay !! was so excited when i saw u uploaded