I've always thought that gender and sex were matched to each other. if your sex is a male your gender is male and vice versa, or you were transgender, your gender being different to your sex. I don't quite understand how gender can be a spectrum. there are two sexes, so isn't there just two genders? when there is a 3rd gender then doesn't it just become the way your act or feel? like your personality? if someone could explain it for me then it would be much appreciate it i may just be really ignorant on the subject. i hope nobody gets offended by this it was not my intention
Well, for starters there aren't just two sexes. There are all kinds of interesting things sex chromosomes can do, some that result in ambiguous external genitalia and some that do not. Check out: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex However, being intersex is not the same as being transgender - one can be intersex and cisgender (in agreement with the gender assigned at birth) or intersex and transgender (not in agreement with the assigned gender). And yes, at its heart gender is "the way you feel". It's exactly the same as how a cisgendered person "feels" their gender, the only difference being that modern Western society supports that feeling better when it matches with external genitalia. (There's plenty of evidence that many tribal cultures didn't operate this way, including some that didn't even connect sex and gender at all.) However, I don't think anyone would ever tell you as a cisgender person (based on your profile, correct me if I'm wrong) that you just "feel" like a man - you say and society affirms that you are a man. It's a spectrum because nothing about human identity is black and white. Think about any human characteristic you want - skin color, hair color, vocal range, anything; they all come in infinite variety. Why would gender identity be any different?
I understand if people are born intersex, i hadn't thought properly about that. though some intersex people must be male but with female parts and vice versa. I think society can make you feel like you should be masculine or do male tasks like go to work because you're a boy or feminine and do housework and cook because you're a girl. i feel like a man because i am a male (biologically) more than anything.I do think that society should allow either gender to be masculine or feminine. the thing is there are men that are very feminine and woman that are very masculine but they still feel like men or women and gender roles have all but gone as many women work and men clean and may stay at home and look after the kids. Isn't it very common that transgender people experience gender dysphoria? (would it be rude of me to ask if you have experienced it?) so if you experience this when your gender doesn't match your biological sex, then gender and sex must be linked. i doubt agender people get dysphoria as there isn't a biological sex linked with it. and as well most or all transgender people have reassignment surgery to fit there gender. this would support that peoples biological sex makes them feel like there gender, otherwise wouldn't feeling like a girl make your a girl or vice versa? I appreciate your reply, its nice to talk to other people on this topic
Quick comment ( I prefer letting others give you complete answers so I won't make this too long ), I identify as agender/non-binary and I have gender dysphoria as well as social dysphoria. Obviously it doesn't apply to every agender person but even tho we don't feel like a certain gender, it doesn't mean we don't experience a bit of hate towards a part of our body. It makes sense that we wouldn't like our body to look only like a woman or male ( biologically-wise ), however some are completely fine with the body they have.
agender people do get dysphoria (including physical dysphoria.) Some agender people I've spoken to strongly dislike their genitals but don't want the genitals of the opposite sex instead. Or they experience dysphoria in regards to their breasts and want them removed. Same with people of other gender identities. It's not influenced by gender roles for most people. I've always kind of seen myself as a guy to some degree (sometimes more than at other times,) but at the same time being female is still a part of my identity. I've experienced what is probably low levels of dysphoria since I was a young teenager. Well I disliked my breasts as far back as then, and overtime I became a bit more normalised to them and would mostly avoid looking at them, then other parts as well I'm uncomfortable with, but it's hard to say if that's dysphoria or not. I know there are cismen and ciswomen who are unhappy with gender roles, but I don't think they find themselves wanting to look like the opposite sex, or have the genitalia of the opposite sex, or having an internal debate about it.
Maybe, I'm thinking about taking hormone blockers, but I hate needles D: If I don't take that and I complete my puberty, I probably would have a breast removal surgery, but I'm scared of getting that too xd
I'm a man. I also knit, nurture my daughter, and work in the nursing profession, all typically feminine things. None of these things changes my gender, any more than they would change yours. Gender identity is more than gender expression and gender roles, although all these things are connected. I'm not trying to say gender and sex aren't linked, just that it's not as simple as penis = man, vagina = woman. For many binary-identified transsexuals, yes, there is a desire to see ourselves in the physical body with identify with. It's the "born in the wrong body" narrative (which is an extreme oversimplification, of course). But this narrative doesn't fit everyone. Some trans people get dysphoria, others don't. Some trans people want surgery, others don't.
I don't think it's correct to say "most or all". There are a lot of trans people who don't have surgery for whatever reason - fear of surgery/doctors, not able to afford it, not permitted to do it because of where they live, or just simply not a desire to do it. Please be careful with making statements like this without doing research first, it can be a little unintentionally harmful and invalidates those trans people who are unable/don't want to get surgery. ^^; I can't give much on how agender people feel, but I will say that I am a feminine transman. The simplest way to describe it is that I feel male inside and have a strong disconnect with being seen as female - it's physically painful to be referred to as female, have my deadname used, or be forced to do things because I'm "a girl". However, I generally only dislike my chest if I am around other people and they're misgendering me. I sometimes think "man, a penis would be awesome", but I don't have a desire to get surgery for that. The only reason I can think of that would actually make me change my lower body is if people refuse to see me as male unless I get the surgery. After running this by a friend of mine who is agender, they said they can feel something similar to this, but instead of just being towards being female, it's to BOTH at the same time. For them, it's equally intense to male and female, so they identify as completely agender. For some, it might be stronger towards one gender than the other, which might cause someone to identify as a demiboy or a demigirl. I've heard a few genderfluid people say that some days, gender dysphoria hits really hard if they are presenting as a specific gender and they feel better if they present as a different gender. I've also heard that rather than dysphoria, they might experience gender euphoria when they are presenting as that day's gender. Third genders have existed for an extremely long time in the world, it's really only western culture which has started to wipe out their validity. There are quite a few cultures where the soul doesn't relate at all to the vessel it's in, meaning that it's possible to have a "male" soul in a "female" body, or to have a "genderless" soul in a "male" body, etc. Native American culture has the most well-known one I think - Two-Spirit, which is where a male soul and a female soul both reside in the same body. Comparisons can be drawn to the genderfluid or bigender identities.
