Post 9inADhXf5MROE3YiUi by byttyrs@queer.party
(DIR) More posts by byttyrs@queer.party
(DIR) Post #9inADfVodFm9vkgDL6 by byttyrs@queer.party
2019-05-14T04:20:23Z
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"gender is a spectrum!" is the "so what are you, like, a 40/60 bisexual? or like what's your breakdown" of gender modelsI'm not even saying there's anything wrong with either statement as, like, a rough breakdown of experience ("if gender is a spectrum between male and female, I'm like..."/"if someone who's equally attracted to men and women is a 50/50 bisexual, I'm like...") but both of them are much simpler than the territories they respectively map.
(DIR) Post #9inADfrRKr4b0onU2q by byttyrs@queer.party
2019-05-14T04:25:25Z
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like, how would I answer the "Are you, like, a 40/60 bisexual or what" question? that's just not enough flexibility. like you'd probably rate me as, like, a Kinsey 1 or 2, unless you've heard me talk about butch girls, in which case you'd be hard-pressed to rate me below Kinsey 5. Kinsey's scale did not have "bisexual as in, attracted to gay+ people" in mindsimilarly, if "gender is a spectrum" you'd have trouble capturing what I (a woman) have in common with effeminate gay+ men (cis or trans)
(DIR) Post #9inADgOlKxjCgAO5z6 by byttyrs@queer.party
2019-05-14T04:33:31Z
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I just don't think the answer is eithermore (numeric) axes" (e.g., the 'gender unicorn' or 'genderbread person', if anyone here remembers such things) ornovel conceptual schema (e.g., I saw on Tumblr awhile back the suggestion to use 'solar/lunar' as substitutes for 'masc-aligned/femme aligned', & the development from nonbinary people using celestial/inanimate reference points for THEIR gender to people using celestial/inanimate reference points to UNDERSTAND nonbinary gender is what I mean)
(DIR) Post #9inADhD6JnzhCHwIRk by byttyrs@queer.party
2019-05-14T04:36:30Z
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and I wanna be REAL careful here: I don't care how you explain your own gender to yourself or to other people. that's not what I'm disagreeing with here. if you're stargender, that's fucking excellent. go off, quing!but if we zoom out, look at gender as a social system we want to understand, two common approaches to expanding beyond the binary are "we just need a bigger number/more numeric variables," or "we just need conceptual frames which are unconnected to the binary"I don't like either.
(DIR) Post #9inADhXf5MROE3YiUi by byttyrs@queer.party
2019-05-14T04:39:06Z
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like, if we want to see gender-in-society as connected, as having central principles which help us understand the whole, it is not necessary that those principles be binary... but the gender binary IS central to the process.the truths we come to understand about nonbinary genders SHOULD relate them with binary genders as part of a social system in connection, connections including suppression/oppression by binary gender frameworks.
(DIR) Post #9inADhtdle1PKDqGki by byttyrs@queer.party
2019-05-14T04:47:20Z
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this is maybe the most jarring/abrasive/disorienting thing that I talk about on a regular basis. sorry in advanceI think faggotry is a nonbinary issue. that is, I think 'faggot' as it exists and functions in society is a nonbinary gender, which heterosexual ideology has had continuous need to explicitly acknowledge & reject from the binary for centuries (at least). it's a nebulous category around effeminacy, penetrative receptivity, & 'male' gayness.
(DIR) Post #9inADiFGTFJqPHxXSS by byttyrs@queer.party
2019-05-14T05:17:34Z
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one (very polite & reasonable) response I get a lot to this is, "I've never known a meaning for that word that wasn't just 'a gay man'?"this both highlights my problem with ways of thinking about nonbinary gender which reject any connection to binary gender, and with systematic descriptions of gender, so it's worth focusing on.people have different relationships to faggotry. if you are effeminate, receptive to penetration, & gay+ in the 'male' sense,
(DIR) Post #9inADiatAqcHUM4oAC by byttyrs@queer.party
2019-05-14T05:20:01Z
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you are very close to the center of the category faggot. you might, for instance, hear 'faggot' screamed at you in public when you are walking totally alone. other gay men might receive the epithet 'faggot' when walking with their partners, but this is the only time when they are visibly adjacent to 'faggot'; walking alone, they are read simply as men.it is also not necessary to be a man; I have been read as a faggot for as long as I can remember, &...
(DIR) Post #9inADikSbGGxy2YS5A by byttyrs@queer.party
2019-05-14T05:22:22Z
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that continues to be sometimes true even now, as a woman with visible breasts who frequently passes as cis. when I am gender non-conforming in my attire, and when I conduct myself in effeminate modes of speech, dance, emotional expression, I continue to be read as a faggot.this is not every trans woman's experience, but many of us are read as faggots before &, sometimes, after transition. the boundaries are fuzzy, & the connection to 'maleness' is vague
(DIR) Post #9inADiuO0MDESpCNYO by byttyrs@queer.party
2019-05-14T05:25:08Z
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so, what makes a category that many people understand as "a stereotype about gay *men*" nonbinary?first of all, heterosexuality explains MOST nonbinary embodiments & ways of being back to itself in binary terms. this is how the gender binary cleans house: by sweeping the enormous space outside of the binary back under the rug whenever it strays out. it creates ways to think about 'true' non-binariness that are impossible, or close: never-gendered androids, mythological intersexed persons with
(DIR) Post #9inADj0lcdJgmcBTV2 by byttyrs@queer.party
2019-05-14T05:29:08Z
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fully-functional genitalia for both insemination & gestation. those people who, in real life, heterosexual society marks as out-of-line, ideology STILL makes facile attempts to render in binary terms, only so that they can shore up the fiction of only-men-&-women.we cannot treat the use of 'man' or 'woman' for a person as self-evidence. that would lead to disastrously-incorrect understandings of trans men & women, frequently labeled women & men; sometimes, those labels are self/deceptions.
(DIR) Post #9inADj79EuQ96PAZRg by byttyrs@queer.party
2019-05-14T05:34:06Z
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second, heterosexuality makes a *habit* of describing faggots as non-men, non-women."Not a real man" is part of it. But the example I always turn to is sexual; sexuality & gender are, after all, deeply-linked.On Grindr, there are many straight men looking for hookups & even dating. does this surprise you? it is very common. some of them are looking only for trans women, which makes sense; we're there, in greater concentration than many straight apps.
(DIR) Post #9inADjI8a3D9eUJLZg by byttyrs@queer.party
2019-05-14T05:37:12Z
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But some of these straight men are looking for some laundry list like "TS (transsexual), TV (transvestite), CD (cross-dresser), fem twinks, fem bottoms".What is going on there? Are these men bi, & confused? Well, no; or, you could say that, but I don't think it explains what's going on. These men are looking for *non-men,* and they understand many gay+ men as being gendered outside of 'man' as they mean it; they genderbend, or they are effeminate, or!
(DIR) Post #9inADjSPxpR0AN7YbA by byttyrs@queer.party
2019-05-14T05:39:35Z
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They are merely gay+, & *receptive to penetration.* For these men, it does not threaten their straightness to fuck other men in the same way it would threaten them to *get fucked* by other men; particularly if they can read those men as being gendered Others, distinct from them in a gendered way; even merely an effeminate way.As a brief digression, there is a term- "(rough) trade"- for a straight man willing to have sex with gay+ men, either for money,
(DIR) Post #9inADjcLMvNGf9lU4O by byttyrs@queer.party
2019-05-14T05:42:58Z
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or just asymmetric pleasure; they usually refuse to suck dick or bottom. Those things would 'make them gay,' in a way that having their dick sucked by a man or topping a man would not.I wish I could say that was ridiculous, but I am an (amateur, enthusiastic) student of sexual history, so I cannot. in many places, before these terms 'heterosexual' & 'homosexual,' bottoming was THE dividing line between men & simpering sissies- catamites, or faggots.
(DIR) Post #9inADjjmvFKT2FFQfo by byttyrs@queer.party
2019-05-14T05:47:27Z
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What's the point here? Give me just a moment for a costume change.[returns in a purple suit, green cravat, & green carnation with white-&-black clown makeup, red lips & green hair, grinning in an unhinged, one might even say 'twisted' way] We Live In A Society.nonbinariness exists in connection, overlap, & ambiguity with maleness & femaleness. it has to, or how else could men & women fail? & it is very important that men & women fail; if they didn't, they'd never be punished back into line!
(DIR) Post #9inADjqWWCiVN8OoAi by byttyrs@queer.party
2019-05-14T05:51:47Z
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there are always blurry lines at the edge of the binary, conceptually & in real embodiment; that's part of what we mean when we call the gender binary a fiction! it must be imagined, creatively, into existence, its messy gradients forced into tidy dividing lines with confusing, tortured logic & with regulatory gender violence.I've mentioned one of the border-zones for maleness; but at every edge there is a punishment for transgression, a reason to get back in line & to punish other failures.
(DIR) Post #9inADjxG7A6Xi1YBfc by byttyrs@queer.party
2019-05-14T05:56:31Z
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Let's drag this back to where it started: how do I explain my gender, & how do I explain my sexuality?I'd say about myself that I am a woman, & a trans woman, & that nasty slur I said so much earlier, & I would probably explain something about the path my gender trajectory took from being a 'nancy' marked from childhood for effeminacy, through drag & my relationship with lesbian modes of gender, to who I am today.& I'd say that I am attracted, among other things, to gayness & gay ways of...
(DIR) Post #9ir0XB2DNChStEsx16 by byttyrs@queer.party
2019-05-14T06:00:27Z
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being; I might list such groups of people as 'men, butch women, [that nasty slur I said so much earlier], & non-binary/gender-variant/gender-nonconforming people' as people I am typically attracted to.In other words: many points of reference, MANY more than two, referring to embodiments & people which have histories & social ties in which I am entangled, & which are best understood in connection & overlap & continuity & progression. complexity, & reference to the concrete, the flesh-&-blood.
(DIR) Post #9ir0XBIsNG1liugFzE by byttyrs@queer.party
2019-05-14T06:16:10Z
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again: as far as I explain my own gender history, personally, this is just what I prefer, what's important to me, what works for me.but when it comes to explaining gender, broadly, the whole system, the heterosexual shebang & all of us living outside it, because we are looking for justice... I think you might benefit from looking at who you gender-in-relation-to, whose experiences of gender violence look like yours & whose don't, & drawing connections/explanations from there.
(DIR) Post #9ir0XBUZflNwJC9bDk by neufv@cybre.space
2019-05-14T14:22:05Z
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@byttyrs i also really like the french word genre, because thinking about genders like music genres makes it a lot easier i think. it wouldn't make sense to make a classical music to heavy metal spectrum
(DIR) Post #9ir1AhSqjbkilKBog4 by neufv@cybre.space
2019-05-14T14:21:02Z
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@byttyrs for me being non-binary is really just a refusal to be categorized. which puts me very much in relation to the existing binary, but in a way where i step out and reclaim the traits i have