Trigender

[Guest MoralAnimal]

Usually I identify as Angrogyne / Bigender but someone told me that I might be Trigendered. I was wondering if someone can tell me a little more about it. I heard that it's genderless, Masculine and Feminine depending on the mood of the indivisual.

I identify as trigender. I have a female side, a male side, and a "neutral" third gender. I've heard that the third gender can be several different things (such as a mix of male and female, genderless, androgynous, etc). Mine is genderless (basically blind to sex motivated behaviors) and asexual (no sex interest, dive, or understanding of sexual/gendered feelings). I have no idea if a trigendered individual can be something different. My hunch is YES. But so far, trigenders are so rare that I haven't met enough to really say so definitively.

I used to consider myself bigender and androgynous. Then I heard about trigender in a bigender forum and felt it really fit. The more I paid attention, the more I realized that my neutral androgenous nature was more than just that. It has been about 6 months since I started recognizing my third gender and have slowly started to discover there is a unique personality/nature there, just like with my male and female side. \

I blog about this and have been trying to create a community (or at least meet more trigendered people). Maybe you can find more about what you are looking for in my writings and my linked blogs and links. :-) Hope that helps!

www.neverburnbridges.blogspot.com

[Guest Donnie]

Oh dear, yet another "label." How about I just say, I'm me.

[Guest Micha]

But who is "me?"

Not who I was raised to be.

That's what's difficult. I don't consider these labels, I don't try to be androgynous to fit the definition. Androgynous is a description, and it happens to describe (not define) me accurately. It's no different than claiming to be blond or have green eyes. It's not conforming to a standard, but describing your own standard. And it's not concrete, everyone grows, and then maybe the descriptions change.

I envy you who can just be "you" and need no description, I really do. I never knew how to live like that.

[Guest Chrysee]

I've mentioned that I'm going to be taking the State of Oregon to court in an effort to have my state funded medical insurance pay for my HRT. As I prepare my case (and being Andro, I have been reading every and anything about Sandra Bem!) I have tried to anticipate questions/topics that may come up. Currently, I am trying to describe my masculine and feminine sides. I am trying to show what each contributes, how they differ, etc. I'm finding it hard to avoid stereotypes. I also find (and why this surprises me I cannot imagine) that they overlap.

Any input?

Thanks,

Chrysalis

[Guest Sam_P]

We do want to be taken seriously as a community right? Politically? Religious opponents and all that?

...

Please don't do this. Don't keep spiraling into these endless "words" to describe things that really have already been described.

Not only is it incredulous to me as a transperson that this is what we do but it will be (you can pretty much bet the farm) perceived as "farther evidence of the confusion of transpeople".

Okay so these labels may not be as easy to remember, but I believe in everyone's right to define themselves, and if the way they feel most comfortable is with a word and pronouns that I'm not familiar with I'm going to try my hardest to learn it. I don't see how we can say to others about how important it is to see us as our correct gender, and use correct pronouns, then turn around and tell others we won't respect the identity that they are comfortable with. For what? Because the wider population doesn't recognise that gender? Don't we often have a similar problem?

How can we police what gender others feel they are? Surely that's just as bizarre as telling me I'm female. I can't say as I'll ever fully understand how it feels to be neutrois/bigender/trigender/genderfluid etc. but what I can do is understand the concept and respect the people who define themselves using those labels. After all, I can't imagine what it's like to be female, but I don't think everyone should be male.

There are plenty of communities around the world (both in the present and historically) that recognise more than 2 genders. I think I even heard about one society where there were 27 distinct genders that people identified as. I think the ability for such diversity should be applauded and fought for, not policed by the people who already know how tough being on the outside of traditional gender can be.

I want to be respected as an individual. I want the right to stand up and say "I'm a neutrois" and be taken as seriously as any man or woman who stood up and said who they were. I want every single person to have that right- even if their gender seems ridiculous to some.

Hear hear.

[Guest Chrysee]

I am not attacking binaries, or even transpeople, and I'm sorry if I came out as sounding like I was. I am telling anyone who feels that non-binaries shouldn't call themselves what they feel they are because it impedes progress that they should rethink. A lot of the GLB community seems to think that accepting transpeople would impede their progress, I've seen a lot of groups say that they won't help transpeople because they don't want to risk their rights. But that doesnt' mean the trans community should to bow their head and shuffle off into the closet so the GLB community can get what they want. And nor should anyone who has a different label bow their head and shuffle off and pretend to be an androgyne when they aren't one just so that nobody can say "Ah ha, see, they're confused!".

Let's face it- if you're convinced transpeople are confused, you're going to find proof that transpeople are confused no matter what we do.

I can't accept any other label- I've tried. I've really tried to think of myself in the binary, or as an androgyne, but that's not who I am. If neutrois weren't a term- I'd have to make a new one for myself because no other word is right. Just like male isn't the right word for you, Sally.

It can be just as hard to explain the non-binary to a binary as it can to explain trans to cis. There are apparently some people who have a gender completely outside the ability to be described in terms of male/female, and I don't understand that at all, I just know it is there and the world works in mysterious ways. And I don't know how much you need to understand to accept, but since you asked.

I guess it's easiest to think about it in terms of sexuality, in some ways? So I'll give that a go.

Most people are attracted to the opposite sex(cisgendered). Some people, however, are attracted to the same sex (binary transgendered). There's degrees to how strongly you feel this attraction, some people are only interested in their target sex, some will fool around with the other but ultimately they're only attracted to the target sex.

Then- there's people who are bisexual (androgyne). They like both. They don't just fool around with the other sex but are ultimately only interested in their target sex, both sexes are their target sex.

A bigender would be kind of like this, only they aren't always bisexual- they switch between homo and heterosexuality. This makes transitioning difficult because if they transition to the other side, then they're unhappy when their gender matches their birth sex, if they transition to the middle then they're unhappy all the time- I think androgynes could find a place in the middle where they're happy, but not all can. Genderfluid can be similar, but I think that they don't completely jump between male and female, they sort of fluidly shift so they can be more male/female and less male/female at various points.

A trigender would be one who switches between 3 points on the graph- you could probably manage to be bigender/androgyne/neutrois and just completely ignore male/female in your gender entirely.

Next up are the asexuals (neutrois). Just like asexuals don't have a target sex, aren't interested in anyone or in fooling around with anyone, neutrois aren't male or female or any mix/combination of that. They're in the 0/0 area- 0% male and 0% female. I'm not really sure how to fit pansexuals into this.

Now, obviously, not everyone is firmly hetero/homo/bi/asexual, not everyone is firmly male/female/androgyne/bigender/neutrois- there's a lot of grey area and wiggle room, there's also genderqueer and genderfluid, and a person doesn't have to be a strict 50/50 mix to be androgyne, they could be 90/10 and feel that androgyne is who they are. And you could even be 49/51 but still feel like the binary is the place for you. A good chunk of labels is deciding where you're most comfortable.

I'd like to make it clear that I'm not saying that androgynes are all bisexual or binaries are all hetero/homosexual or neutrois are all asexual- because that's obviously not true, I'm just making a kind of pathetic attempt to explain this. Also, I'm a neutrois, and I'm just me, any others who'd like to put in a complaint about my description of their gender- go right ahead.

Wonder if you could please distinguish between androgyne and genderqueer? Every time I feel that I have a handle on it, I'm back lost in the woods.

Thanks,

Chrysalis