Bigender communities and acceptance

Parent Cafe
1

<p>I always hear about gay and lesbian alliances and gay and lesbian communities and rights and what not at colleges. But what about bigendered people? We are always marginalized by heterosexuals. We’re marginalized by homosexuals. And we’re usually treated rudely by both groups if the topic comes up.</p>

<p>My question is why is that it’s always homosexual groups that get played up and are constantly whining about things when there are still other categories of gender and sexual orientation that are never spoken of and thus are often laughed at or discriminated against.</p>

2

<p>Bigendered is not a familiar term to most people. In fact, I’m not aware that it has a generally-recognized definition. That’s problem number one.</p>

<p>Secondly, the fewer of you there are, the more you’ll have to work to be recognized. Unfair but true.</p>

<p>But I do wonder why you wish to be recognized at all. I’m not aware of a bigendered culture as such. What exactly do you want to be recognized for? What about your behavior or feelings do you want to be acknowledged?</p>

<p>This very forum might be a good opportunity for you to articulate your concerns and educate some people, starting with me.</p>

3

<p>[Bigender</a> - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bigender]Bigender”>Non-binary gender - Wikipedia)</p>

<p>Why do I want to be recognized? Why do homosexuals want to be recognized? The same reason. If there’s a group of people and a guy starts hitting on another guy it’s accepted now because he’s gay and it’s obvious. If I’m in a group of people and I switch to en homme then back to en femme and back and forth it gets weird. And I have to explain to people I am bigendered. I usually don’t have that much of a problem because I stay pretty androgynous most of the time and my switches are more subtle. But even then it’s awkward to explain to people that you’re both a man and woman. They either think you’re a loopy gay person, or a cross dresser or transexual. But there’s a clear difference between all of these things. So I end up having to modify my behaviour so that it fits with my biological gender more than I am comfortable with. And isn’t that what the homosexuals were complaining about all along?</p>

<p>Also if you’re part of the gay community it’s like something to be proud of. You have a place of your own and you have acceptance. Same with being straight. However I’m not even a bisexual bigender. I am sexually attracted to the opposite sex, unless I am really really en femme. As such I tend to gravitate more to the straight side. However it’s very hard to pick up girls when all of a sudden you start acting like one and they don’t know why.</p>

4

<p>I’m afraid the Wikipedia article isn’t the best thing to refer people to for an explanation of what bigendered means. It’s short, vague, and states fairly clearly that there is no strict definition of the term.</p>

<p>Instead, why not just express how you feel in your own words? What do you experience that causes you to identify as bigendered?</p>

<p>And understand that this is going to sound loopy to some people. You act like a man for a while, and then like a woman for a while, and then like a man again? And you expect people not to be freaked out? That seems a bit naive. Your behavior may stand out to a group of otherwise open-minded people the way a flaming homo stands out at a VFW meeting.</p>

<p>To express my question in another way, how does your male-female shifting differ from someone with dissociative identity (multiple personality) disorder? Do you really have a different identity at various times, or are you simply expressing yourself in a more masculine or more feminine way depending on your mood? And do you expect this to be a life-long characteristic, or is it part of feeling out your identity, a pattern that will pass as you get comfortable with who you really are? (Your screen name, iamsounsure, suggests that you’re still feeling this out.)</p>

<p>Specifics, please.</p>

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<p>First, I would guess that the OP doesn’t consider their shifting to be an identity disorder, but rather an identity characteristic. There’s a large stigma against mental illness in our society (not that I condone that stigma, being from a family rife with brain chemistry imbalances), and to classify bigenderism as an illness isn’t very conducive to offering up acceptance or keeping an open mind about it.</p>

<p>But I do agree that it’d be good to teach us about your community in the context of your own personal experience. I have a slew of gay and bi friends, and two dear FTM friends, but I’m not familiar with bigenderism. Maybe we simply need to be taught.</p>

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<p>

At many colleges, this is true. That certainly wasn’t the case at mine and, I suspect, many of the top colleges. I had friends who identified as genderqueer, pansexual, and even pomosexual (that friend is rather pretentious :p). All felt very comfortable, both in the LGBT community and in the larger university community. </p>

<p>Your complaints are well-placed, however. You’re right that non-normative people tend to get marginalized even by the advocacy groups supposedly representing them. There’s a reason the HRC isn’t popular with the trans crowd. :rolleyes:</p>

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<p>I was kind of glad it was only a short summary. I don’t think an essay is necessary for the point I am trying to get across.</p>

<p>I experience bigenderedness by having both extreme masculine and feminine qualities. They’re all still me, it’s not a case of split personalities. Sometimes I switch roles depending on the situation and sometimes it just happens or I feel like it. There very subtle actually. Think of most people you know? Would you be able to tell if they were a male of female based purely on behaviour? I don’t think you would immediately. Most people do have two sides. It’s been written about a lot in psychology being described as the anima and animus. My male and female sides are just a lot more varied.</p>

<p>I don’t get why it should sound loopy to people. A gay guy wants […] and this is considered socially acceptable, but I change gender roles and I am crazy? I think that’s BS. I’m not even a crossdresser or a transexual. I just have the mental and emotional faculties of both a man and a woman and I drift between them.</p>

<p>Like I said before I don’t think it’s dissociative identity disorder. I have a very strong sense of “me” and who I am. It just involves multiple genders. I don’t even have gender dysphoria as I like being a guy, though when I switch to en femme I wish I was a girl. But you can’t have your cake and eat it too. As for whether this is a life long characteristic or a feeling out of identity I couldn’t answer. I’ll tell you when I’ve lived more of life. Hahah also my screen name didn’t have anything to do with this. When I made it I meant it in a iamsounsure of life way; more philosophical.</p>

8

<p>Thanks for sharing a bit more. I’ll sign off with a simple answer to your original question and look forward to reading more tomorrow.</p>

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<p>Because there are lots and lots of homosexuals and not, as far as we know, many bigendered people. It’s the same reason Russians are greeted with, “Oh, you’re from Russia!” but Lithuanians are greeted with, “Uh, you’re from Lithuwhat?” No other reason. If you talk to people about yourself, and others like you do the same, then eventually you’ll be first recognized, then tolerated, and finally accepted.</p>

9

<p>I think it’s a bit ridiculous how that works. Recognition, then tolerance, then acceptance? It’s like a formulaic roadmap to not being discriminated against.</p>

<p>This leads me to wonder, as a society have we become more tolerant as a whole, or are we still the same bitter xenophobes that simply “jump through the hoop” of tolerance when it’s rubbed in society’s face enough. It’s the latter than that means there’s really no such thing as acceptance and that we only do it because “we have to” and not because it’s the right thing to do.</p>

10

<p>That’s kind of a negative view of humanity.</p>

<p>People are programmed to be apprehensive of something out-of-the-ordinary. Your job, as the different person, is to show them that it’s really ordinary.</p>

<p>Your very first post attacks everyone for rejecting your community. I know that the first thing I had to do was to google “bigender”… I wasn’t rejecting you; I simply had no idea who you were.</p>

<p>I think something that might help you is to take some gender studies courses… Look for something applicable, like a GLBT and Society sort of course, and learn the science and psychology behind how people come to understand and accept unfamiliar communities.</p>

<p>Most people have to work really hard to be understood, in some manner or another. Most people are in the minority on <em>something</em>, unless they’re sheep. Appeal to that sense. </p>

<p>I’m a woman engineer, and I’m constantly bucking up against misogyny. My husband, bless his heart, has always been the mainstream straight white Christian male, and he’s just recently moved to rural Utah to start a new job. Suddenly, he’s a religious weirdo for not being Mormon, and he’s having a difficult time being different for the first time in his life.</p>

<p>Being different is tough. It requires a near infinite amount of patience, but take time to savor that victorious feeling when you get someone to understand what you’re about. You’ll convince more and more people of your legitimacy as you go on in life.</p>

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<p>[url=<a href=“http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/24/AR2009102401524.html?wprss=rss_metro]washingtonpost.com[/url”>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/24/AR2009102401524.html?wprss=rss_metro]washingtonpost.com[/url</a>]</p>

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<p>“Bigendered is not a familiar term to most people.”</p>

<p>To show you how clueless some are, until I read this, I wondered what
“big-ender” as opposed to “bi-gender” meant.</p>

13

<p>Hi iamsounsure,</p>

<p>I identify as bigender and feel some of the same pain as you do especially with “alliance” groups at school which mainly focus on the gay, lesbian, and bi side of things (even though they claim to be support for people who have various gender identities). Just thought I would drop in, show solidarity, and let people know we DO exist! </p>

<p>Can you recognize and accept us now?</p>

<p>Thanks.</p>

14

<p>What a surprise. I thought this was a thread about tolerance towards fat people. Big Ender.</p>

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<p>If Iamsounsure is still around, I do want to ask “how do you know?” That is, how do you know you have mental and emotional faculties of both a man and a woman? And/or how is that different than anyone else? What are emotional and mental faculties that belong just to men or just to women?</p>

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<p>Maybe you’d get more support if you dropped the pejorative and disrespectful language in referring to gay people (whining homosexuals, etc.).</p>

<p>Also, I understand that you don’t identify as a crossdresser, but if you view that word as primarily describing behavior rather than identity (as many do), it seems to me that that’s the closest parallel that most people are familiar with. After all, I never identified as a crossdresser, but I did, technically, “cross dress” at one time, before I began my transition. There isn’t as clear a difference between all those categories as you may think. Ask 10 trans people to define “transgendered” and “transsexual,” and you’ll probably get 10 different answers. Same with “bigendered,” which is a relatively new term – in my own experience, used mostly by so-called “middle path” transpeople who go back and forth in their gender expression and presentation (or always present androgynously), without any real preference for male vs. female, and don’t like to call themselves crossdressers because of the negative implications that have always been associated with that word. But I can’t say I’m familiar with people who go back and forth in identity without changing their external presentation, and expect others to notice the change. (I imagine it isn’t always easy for people to notice the change unless your affect changes in some noticeable way. I can’t personally relate to any of this – since there’s always only been one “me,” regardless of presentation, and my affect, voice, speech pattterns, and body language have hardly changed at all since my transition – but I’m not suggesting it isn’t real. I’m just not that familiar with it.)</p>

<p>I would also be very careful about ascribing “male” and “female” to particular frames of mind, thought patterns, attitudes, behaviors, likes and dislikes, etc., held by a single person. Gender is a spectrum, not a binary divided by a fine line (in my opinion). </p>

<p>Finally, please remember that “bigendered” is a very new term, a tiny subset of a group (the trans umbrella) that is, in and of itself, extremely tiny in number compared to gay and lesbian people. So you shouldn’t be terribly surprised if people aren’t familiar with it until you explain it. As I said, I’m not that familiar with it myself, even though I’ve been involved in the LGBT community in general, and the trans community in particular, for many years now, and my own son – in college now – is gay.</p>

<p>Donna</p>

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<p>Oh, and mantori.suzuki: since I presume you’re not gay yourself, you have no business whatsoever using the phrase “flaming homo.” It’s incredibly offensive. Stop it.</p>

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<p>just curious…I too had to read this three times in the original post to figure out what bigender was referring to…
why isn’t there a hypen between bi and gender? just for clarification purposes?
(and don’t say that it’s like bisexual because you can’t read bisexual any other way, for example, bis exual)</p>

<p>I must be very bored…</p>

19

<p>What a surprise. I thought this was a thread about tolerance towards fat people. Big Ender.</p>

<p>me too. I have the Queen tune stuck in my head now.
:)</p>

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<p>I am still reading this as big-ender.</p>