Hi Harpies,
I need your help. I work in a residential treatment center for people in recovery from substance abuse. I have a 20-year-old patient I’ll call Pat. Pat identifies herself as gender queer but is unsure if this is because she is actually gender queer or just not society’s idea of what a woman should be (she reports being a tomboy growing up, preferring to wear short hair, and enjoying working with her hands). To add to this, she sometimes wonders if she is trans but does feel comfortable in her female body.
Finally, one of the reasons she says she identifies as gender queer is that she prefers hanging out with guys over girls (which is something I often hear from young women) so I wonder how much of this may be a lack of sense of self in general. I really don’t want to minimize whatever her gender identity is but I worry that for a young woman with very little sense of self this may be some way to find identity that could be, in the end, more confusing. Obviously the decreased sense of self could also be a result of not fitting in to typical gender roles.
I guess I’m asking for resources about gender queerness that you think might be useful and for perspective and feedback from those of you who are gender queer and/or trans about how you came to know you were gender queer and or trans and how you parse the two.
Thanks,
veggiewood
I have many of those same feelings… Just about all of them actually. So *hugs* to her from someone else out here who understands if she wants them.
In terms of books, I’d recommend anything by S. Bear Bergman (though my personal favorite is The Nearest Exit May Be Behind You; Gender Outlaws is an anthology so has the advantage of giving a multiplicity of voices). Julia Serano’s Whipping Girl is a really good book on trans women and feminism, but might be a little jargon-heavy sa an introduction to transgender stuff.
What a terrible place to be in, in recovery and unsure about your gender identity. I hope she finds herself, no matter what else happens.
Reading your post gave me chills – I’m going through something somewhat similar with a friend. Zie never “identified” with women, had more male friends than female (something I hear, sadly, from nearly every young woman I know).
Hir earlier gender questioning came not from gender identify issues, but from misogyny. The thorough hatred of anything considered female. Hir body was “wrong” (not socially ‘acceptable’ and feminine), her thoughts were “wrong” (competitive and harshly humorous), her priorities were “wrong” (not the stereotypically feminine).
Of course, I’m not saying this is what’s going on with Pat, but it’s been heartbreaking to watch my friend struggle with. Zie’s coming out of it considering hirself genderqueer, but that’s only after doing lots of research and thinking on her own.
For me, I had to come to being gender-queer after coming to feminism.
At first, I thought I was just the wrong kind of woman, that I didn’t fit with other women, that I was weird or doing it wrong, or just… something.
But after I learned more about feminism and became a feminist, I realised there are endless ways to be a woman. Endless ways to express a female identity. And *after* I knew that, *after* I internalised that — I STILL realised there was something that didn’t fit.
And that’s when I realised I am part-guy. My gender-queerness is more than/different than being butch, being a tomboy, etc. And I’m really the only one who can see and identify that difference, because it exists within me, not in some outwardly discernable way.
I think it really hit me when I conceptualised my relationship with the cigender, somewhat hetero guy I’m with: sometimes I think of us as being in a gay relationship. It’s not just a “straight” relationship that defies gender roles. It’s something different than that. And that helped me realise that I just don’t see myself as entirely woman.
I wish I could offer something more, but I hope my experiences add to the conversation. I’m sending good vibes to both you and your client.
This is some tough crap. I went through the same thing but came out on the side of ‘nah, still female.’ (Anecdote alert) I’ve heard that it’s actually fairly common, for women / female bodied / whatever people, to not have a particularly strong gender identity in the first place, which could explain why the majority of GQ people I’ve come across started at ‘female’ before drifting. Don’t quote me on it, because I don’t have any data to back it up. Anyway. For me, it was weirdly a kind of choice that I made out of feminist solidarity, because renouncing femaleness, at the end of the day, felt like a betrayal and a very personal manifestation of misogyny. (MAGICAL DISCLAIMER this was my experience and I’m not accusing other questioning people of being secret misogynists)
All this is just to say that identity is a personal journey; I was not particularly aided by outside resources, so I don’t have anything to recommend. Best of luck to Pat and others who are questioning.
Thanks all – this is helpful. Hoping The Exit is Behind You…is available on Nook so I can get started right away. I’m open to any more feedback.
@veggiewood, one book I really enjoyed was called “My Gender Workbook” – which looks at ways gender is constructed and performed, and through exercises and self-reflection how unhelpful binary gender nomenclature is, and that often things are not easily put in an either or gender category.
One thing that can take things to quite a deep personal reflection is Donna Haraway’s “Cyborg Manifesto”, which looks at ways past a gendered world.
“To add to this, she sometimes wonders if she is trans but does feel comfortable in her female body.”
I’m sorry your patient is going through such a difficult time, but the line above thrilled me. I’ve never met anyone else who felt “a little bit” trans. I’ve always felt like maybe I was kind of transgender, but I thought maybe it was just an odd expression of my bisexuality, or unhappiness at not fitting into what is thought of as feminine, or something like that. (And maybe that’s all true.)
But it seems ridiculous not to be sure–all the transgender people I’ve ever heard of seem to say that they always knew that they were in the wrong body, had the wrong sex, etc. Even if they didn’t get any treatment for it, they knew, for sure, that something was not right.
I’ve never felt that, and I won’t ever do any kind of transition, but I’ve always felt like maybe I somehow was just a bit trans. It’s nice to know that I’m not the only one.
I do have to point out that 20 is not too young to have a sense of self! It sounds like she’s going through almost exactly what I went through at that age, and it wasn’t my sense of self that evolved, it was my ability to hold my ground in the face of everyone else’s opinions that evolved.
Note that not everyone has childhood moments of “feeling trans”, but I did. I was at the fresh young age of 8-ish, when I wondered whether my gender was a mistake, but I felt being “the other gender” would be a mistake too. Since I had no vocabulary for what I felt, no role models to follow, I spend the rest of my childhood reluctantly in my gender while secretly delighting in those moments when I could be publicly “the other gender” (such as the time I was cast in a different-gender role for a school play and I was happier than I had been for much of my youth).
Through high school I was convinced that I had one gender brain in a different gender body, since I socially feel like I’m closer to one role and physically feel closer to the other, and that self-definition comforted me for a while. Also, I was worried about “betraying” my gender by rejecting it wholly, and sadly now that I have done so in coming out as genderqueer, I’ve actually been accused of doing just that by my own mother among others.
If there’s one piece of advice I could give to anyone who is dealing with youth who question their genders: BELIEVE THEM. Please, be that one person who doesn’t ask “are you sure”, or “have you considered it might be this other cause”, etc. Because the whole world is already doing that. The whole world. If you show not even a flicker of doubt that she is the expert at her own identity and her own gender, she’ll work things out for herself much faster and with more accuracy than if you try to “help”, I promise.
But if you want a good resource for people of all genders, try http://genderfork.com/
Another rec: “Child, Friend, Kin, Queer: Coming Out as Non-Binary,” a self-published ‘zine by RJ, the maker of the webcomic Riot Nrrd.
http://www.riotnrrdcomics.com/store/books-and-zines/
While helpful for someone who is actively questioning hir gender identity, it’s also aimed at family, friends, and other potential allies of genderqueer folks.
Particularly fabulous is The Great Big Marvelous Gender Machine that provides a nuanced way of looking at the whole spectrum of possibility with regards to gender.
Best of luck with to your patient in hir journey!
@veggiewood – I really liked everything that Skada had to say about being trans/genderqueer. It’s very much an internal thing. I’ve been trying to find a way to articulate the line between being a woman who just happens to defy gender stereotypes and being trans or genderqueer, too, and I think it might all come down to personal identity. I know that my own genderqueerness is almost impossible to define for others because it’s just a deep part of my identity; I still don’t quite know how to explain it to others. (Not that I’m required to, but I’d like to be able to put it into words both for myself and others.)
Also, if your patient is genderqueer, then it wouldn’t be “more confusing” for she or zie to embrace her/hir identity. Even if she/zie isn’t genderqueer, it’s probably best just to help her/hir explore her gender identity while you remain neutral. It’d most likely be more confusing to be told anything that frames the matter in absolutes – “You’re more likely female because…” or “You’re more likely genderqueer because…” Just let your patient explore her/hir identity without leaning toward one direction or the other. I’ve found that time is a really important part of coming to terms with one’s gender. Sometimes, it takes years to fully understand and form a vocabulary for your own identity. There’s no rush. She/Zie doesn’t have to make any decisions now. She/Zie can recover from her/hir substance abuse and have a strong sense of self without necessarily having a solid set of terms with which to describe her/hir gender identity. She/Zie should focus on feeling comfortable with her/hirself regardless of whether she/zie is trans, genderqueer, or a woman.
I found my genderqueer identity in my mid-twenties. To add to what others have said, I would caution that a lot of resources describe genderqueerness in terms of a transmasculine spectrum or a combination of male and female traits. Since she/zie thinks trans is a possibility, this may be okay, but I know I found it a little confusing because I was looking for an identity where it was fine to embrace my “female” body (by the way, breasts and vulva don’t have to be female!) and not necessarily be more male, but be less female. For me, genderqueer is something outside of the binary and it has to do with discovering things about myself on a basis other than gender. I guess the point is to advice her/zie that there are many options and ways of understanding gender. I always assumed I was a girl because the only other option I knew was trans, and I wasn’t that. There are in fact many many ways to be cis, trans, genderqueer, etc. and I’d encourage her/zie to play around a little and think about what feels right.
The “What Is Gender” boards are one resource, but they do sometimes skew a certain direction. I like Genderfork for examples of different gender identities.