"It just seems to be clothes" - Tumblr post about gender essentialism

So I see that as of late, the newest variation on the “trans people reinforce gender stereotypes!” whining is that “genderfluid people aren’t real, wanting to wear a dress one day and a suit the next doesn’t make you a woman then a man, stupid teenage girls!”

I’ve also seen a lot of people in trans communities, trans discussion threads, etc. say that they just can’t get their head around why it’s a gender thing when it’s “just about clothes”, or how depressing it is that people feel like if they’re anything but totally feminine or totally masculine they can’t be a boy or a girl anymore.

I’m no authority, but I do use genderfluid as an adjective for myself. I’d call myself a genderfluid androgyne. I also consider myself both transgender and transsexual, as a person living as an androgyne full time and pursuing medical transition. I find myself tugged between trans NB communities and trans binary communities a lot because of that combination of, well, being NB and identifying so strongly with a need to medically transition.

But I’d also love if both “sides” of this discussion tried to breach the gap of understanding that always seems to be present.

So let’s make one thing clear. When talking about gender fluidity in the context of gender identity, it is not “about clothes”. It can include a lot of things. It can include a fluctuating sense of bodily and/or social dysphoria that leads to a fluctuating interpretation of someone’s gender. It can include a fluctuation in how someone instinctively perceives themselves and wishes to be perceived. It can include alterations in how somebody goes about their life.

“But why do so many genderfluid people talk about feeling more masculine or more feminine sometimes? That’s not gender, that’s just how you look!”

Well, good lord, it’s like not even trans people come out the womb up on the latest academic talk. Seriously, talking about being trans in a society that never wants to talk about us, let alone nicely, is hard. Talking about a non binary gender identity is hard. It is not language most people grow up being exposed to. It is not language we are typically taught. Sometimes people stumble over themselves in an attempt to explain how they feel, or fall back on concepts that cis people find easier to understand, or want terms that indicate closeness to being male/female but not a total commitment to the concept, or a million other things.

Some of us are sheltered fifteen year olds! Some of us grew up in isolated areas! Some of us are older, and used to “outdated” ways of talking about things!

“Some days I feel more masculine” does not have to mean “some days I fancy wearing men’s jeans”. It can mean “some days, I have dysphoria about my chest” or “some days, I feel no dysphoria about my facial hair”. It can mean “Some days, I feel closer to being a man, but I’m not going to use that word precisely”. It can mean, “some days I get confused for a second when people call me ‘ma’am’ and not ‘sir’“. It does not mean that every one of us figures that fancying a dress today “makes us” a girl, for heaven’s sake. (I dress the same no matter how my gender shifts over time. I wear all types of gendered clothing all the time. I don’t give a shit.)

“But then how come they all wear stereotypical clothes on boy days and girl days, huh?”

Why the fuck do you think? The same reason a lot of trans men and trans women swap out their wardrobes for more stereotypically masculine/feminine ones when they transition! Even though any gender can wear whatever they want! And the same reason nobody should give them shit about it applies here, too.

Because it increases the likelihood of being recognized for your gender in our society. Because if perhaps you can’t change your body, you can change your clothes. Because as a kid you heard “boys do this” and doing that thing makes you feel aligned with maleness even if you know that boys can wear skirts and girls can wear suits. Because you like to be able to make an implicit declaration of your gender and not feel invisible about it.

Those of us changing our wardrobes aren’t necessarily saying “I fancy a dress, must be a girl day”. Plenty of us are saying, “It’s a girl day- if I wear a dress, I’ll feel better about it”.

This isn’t even getting started on those people whose genderfluidity may instead be between, say, girl and genderqueer. Etc.

All this proves is that genderfluid people are as subject to the same kind of gender essentialism the rest of society is. We may opt out of binary identification, but we don’t get to just opt out of society. And not everyone is dedicating their very existence to tearing it down. Some people want to get on with their lives and deal with their shit with no fuss. Stop scapegoating genderfluid people for gender essentialism. There’s not some huge number of us saying that wearing trousers makes you a man on the national news.

Just because we don’t spout out super-accurate Trans Lingo TM that covers every nuance every time somebody asks for an explanation, or we split our wardrobes in half to calm our dysphoria down, or we oversimplify things to get cis people to stop asking us intrusive questions, doesn’t mean we’re fake. It just means we’re actual human beings.

(written by partially-stars on Tumblr)