Question time!

[ng_moonmoth]

I found this list of questions in my daily stroll around websites that explore various aspects of gender issues. I found them interesting and revelatory enough to answer all of them, and thought others might want to take a look and try them out.

Please feel free to answer only the ones you are comfortable answering. I found that writing out my answers was much more valuable to me than sharing them.

Usage Note: I use the prefixes "morpho-" (Greek "form") and "episio-" (Greek "groin") to identify conclusions drawn from examining someone's physical form or genital configuration, respectively. For example, your episiogender is the gender commonly believed to be associated with what your crotch looks like, and when you address someone in a manner normative for someone based on how their body looks, you are morphogendering them.

1. How did you choose your name?
   Still looking for a first name that doesn't get me misgendered with a binary gender. People are too often influenced by their binary experience of "gender-neutral" names for those to work for me. Once I get that, the rest of the name is ready to go. It acknowledges my family history, and references a couple of family members I liked/would have liked -- and isn't anything like the name I have now.
2. What gives you the most dysphoria? (Acknowledging that not all trans people experience dysphoria)
   Understanding that I am going to be misgendered, regardless of my body shape -- until our culture at large no longer does that.
3. Do you have more physical dysphoria or more social dysphoria?
   Social. Performing/being expected to perform a binary gender is stressful.
4. What do you do to perform self-care when you’re feeling dysphoric?
   I put on something I'm comfortable going out in, and window shop for (and sometimes buy) stuff that aligns with my sense of self well enough for me to call it "mine".
5. What was the first time you suspected you were transgender?
   Going through puberty. As my body developed, it became less aligned with my sense of self, rather than more aligned as the conventional narrative would have it.
6. When did you realize you were transgender?
   Seven or eight years ago, when I realized internally that my emotional and sexual gratification did not depend on my morphology or anything derived from it.
7. What is your favorite part of being transgender?
   The freedom to choose what I like and do based on who I am, not on what other people extrapolate from my morphology.
8. How would you explain your gender identity to others?
   Nonbinary and genderqueer.
9. How did you come out? If you didn’t come out, why do you stay in the closet? Or what happened when you were outed?
   Personally, I don't "come out" -- I "go out". When I go out, I am going out as myself, and I feel like I don't need to say anything more. Other times I am more playing a role than being out as myself, and don't feel a need to assert my identity then. But I will acknowledge it if asked.
10. What have your experiences with packing or wearing breast forms been?
    These items feel artificial. They don't do anything for me because they don't feel like part of me.
11. What are your experiences with binding or tucking?
    If my morphology protrudes into what I'm wearing in a way I don't like, I'll squish it out of view. Otherwise, I'll leave it alone.
12. Do you pass?
    When I have a football :-) More seriously: pass as what? Expressing my gender identity runs a significant risk of my being categorized as a joke, fake, fraud, freak, or pervert, rather than being recognized as a person. Finding a presentation that doesn't fall into one of those categories is a perpetual challenge.
13. What (if any) steps do you want to take to medically transition?
    Hormones might be a future possibility, as a way to blur my morphology by sending conflicting messages.
14. How long have you been out?
    I've been incorporating non-normative items into my presentation for about ten years, more so as time goes on. For the last five or so, I've been willing to acknowledge my gender identity to those who ask.
15. What labels have you used before you’ve settled on your current set?
    I didn't find any that fit until I found the ones I'm using now. Once I found them, I realized that they fit very well.
16. Have you ever experienced transphobia?
    I get some funny looks every now and then, and the occasional rude comment. But I'm careful about my choices of expression, and make sure I'm comfortable with what I'm wearing before I go out wearing it. I think that probably helps a lot.
    
    Does it count if I'm standing around waiting for a food order to come out from a place with counter service, and another customer tells me, unprompted, that they work for someone who does surgical gender intervention and was I contemplating that? Yeah, that really happened. I believe they meant well, but it still came out odd.
17. What do you do when you have to go to the bathroom in public?
    If I'm under cover of my episiogender, I'll use the one that matches my crotch. Otherwise, if my expression would leave me uncomfortable using that one, I'll hold it until I can find a gender-inclusive restroom -- but I still feel like an intruder if it's also one of a very few labeled as "family" or "disabled". Some events I attend have relabeled gendered restrooms as gender-inclusive. In those cases, I use the one that has the plumbing that matches how I would pee - regardless of why I'm going in.
18. How does your family feel about your trans identity?
    I'm not out to any of them right now. I know the ones I believe will understand, and will tell them first when I feel the time is right. After that, I'm not sure.
19. Would you ever go stealth, and if you are stealth, why do you choose to be stealth?
    My gender identity doesn't come with a "stealth" option -- OEM, or aftermarket.
20. What do you wish you could have shared with your younger self about being trans?
    You are not alone. There are others like you. Like you, they are mostly hiding. These are people with whom you can be yourself.
21. Why do you use the pronouns you use? (mine are xe/xyr/xyrs/xyrself)
    I wanted a pronoun set that was as different from the common sets as my gender identity is different from theirs. I have a definitive gender identity, so I wasn't inclined to singular "they".
22. Do your neurodivergencies affect your gender?
    I have a hard time relating to the way other people think. I'm not surprised I don't relate to the way other people think about gender. Are you?
23. What’s your biggest trans-related fear?
    Not being able to have my current relationship (partner is cis, and believes they are straight, but my being nonbinary hasn't broken the relationship yet) survive my transition to out all the time.
24. What medical, social, or personal steps have you already taken to start your transition?
    No medical steps yet. I am willing to affirm my gender identity to those who ask (but not yet those who misgender me). I am willing to disclose my gender identity to those who I believe from other interactions will affirm and respect it. I am going out as myself more often, and incorporating a wider range of expression.
25. What do you wish cis people understood?
    How little of one's interaction with others is actually gender-specific. Aside from the cultural rules we have constructed, and that affect our interactions, there is very seldom a case where someone else's gender matters more than that.
26. What impact has being trans affected your life?
    Having to construct a "deep cover" identity that was not abhorrent to my gender identity while being "cis enough to pass" has resulted in emotional damage and stress that I didn't realize until my trans identity began to break through. And the cover identity was emotionally distant to the point of affecting my relationships with others.
27. What do you do to validate yourself?
    I remind myself that I have made significant strides in expressing and disclosing my gender identity, and the relationships I have made in this context seem positive and likely to last.
28. How do you feel about trans representation in media?
    Right now, it's somewhat problematic. The stories are too often focused on someone being trans, rather than someone who is trans being something else.
29. Who is your favorite trans celebrity?
    I don't get this "celebrity" bit very well. Who someone is is much more important to me than how many people their life intersects. In terms of (more or less) "widely-known transgender people", knowing that Lynn Conway exists and has had a noteworthy career is empowering.
30. Who is the transgender person who has influenced you the most?
    In terms of understanding myself and my relationship with my gender, I'll vote for Julia Serano as having had a big influence.
31. How are you involved with the trans community, IRL or online?
    I'm pretty much not right now. If I am attending something the trans community sponsors, I will drop my cover identity and go as myself -- if I go at all.
32. How do you see yourself identifying and presenting in 5 years?
    I will have finished the process of retiring my cover identity, and will have empowered myself to confidently select forms of expression that affirm what is most/more important to me each day. Just like people of any other gender.
33. What trans issue are you most passionate about?
    Being trans does not invalidate one's identity -- gender or otherwise. Trans people are people.
34. What advice would you give to other trans people, or what message would you like to share with them?
    Your gender is valid because you say it is your gender, and express it as you believe people of your gender express it. Whether any form of expression is shared by, or assigned to, other gender identities does not diminish its being part of your gender expression, or invalidate your gender identity.
35. How do you feel your gender interacts with your race, disability, class, weight, etc. from the perspective of intersectionality?
    Aside from the gender, everything else about me feels too mainstream to raise intersectionality concerns. I am aware that I live in a relatively tolerant environment with a fair amount of privilege, and am able to explore this environment with much more freedom and less risk than those who are less fortunate.
36. What, if any, is the difference between your gender identity and your gender expression?
    My gender identity is consistent. My gender expression varies as I try to find ways I feel are affirmative of my gender identity. We do not currently have cultural language for this.
37. Do you feel more masculine, feminine, or neither?
    I guess "neither" comes closest. How I feel sometimes aligns well enough with what's considered "masculine" or "feminine" for me to not be uncomfortable with the term, but it's more likely not to.
38. What is your sexual and romantic orientation, and what are your thoughts on it?
    I describe myself as omnidemisexual: anyone who doesn't say they aren't is a potential partner, but I won't be interested until we work out the details and form an emotional connection. To me, sex is a means of interaction, and it feels right to me that anyone I can work out an enjoyable interaction with can be a partner.
39. Is your ideal partner also trans, or do you not have a preference?
    Doesn't matter at all to me. Being trans does not make them any more or less valid in my eyes.
40. How did/do you manage waiting to transition?
    Since realizing that I was embarking on a journey of transition, I have been proceeding in small steps, as I feel I am ready for them. The response from the steps as I take them seems overwhelmingly positive, and that is keeping me going.
41. What is the place (blog, website, forum, IRL space) you get most of your info on being trans or on trans related things?
    Here are some of the places I visit more or less daily, most of which are active enough to make it worth the stop:
    
    • Genderfork
    • Julia Serano's Whipping Girl blog
    • Beyond the Binary UK
    • Trans Express tumblr
    • Nonbinary Support tumblr
    • Gender Analysis with Zinnia Jones
    
    
    I frequently wind up following links to Everyday Feminism, which contains quite a few worthwhile articles on the interaction between trans identity and feminism.
42. Do you interact with other trans people IRL?
    There are some. Mostly ones I'm out to because they recognized my own variance and asked me about it. A couple more I met online and felt comfortable disclosing my cover (meatspace) identity to -- and who honor that separation. Others who I know are trans, but their (or my) being trans doesn't enter into our interaction. Otherwise, I use my "street" identity -- however far I'm out that day.
43. Are you involved in any trans-related activism?
    Not at the moment. I believe I will have the most impact by living my life in my own gender, and showing others that this choice does not invalidate my existence or my relationship with them.
44. Free space! Answer any question you want, or make up your own question to answer.
    What does my closet look like? Like a cross-section of the relevant sections of a department store. My experience is that the options categorized as "women's" are about four times as large as those categorized as "men's" -- with about half a "men's" section having a similar garment in a corresponding "women's" section. So, six parts stuff from the "women's" department, one part stuff from the "men's" department, and one part stuff you have to look closely to tell. For that last, I pick that which fits best -- which is most often the one that matches my body.
    
    Right now, I'm wearing more morphonormative stuff than I expect to eventually wear, but that percentage slowly decreases.