I am Picasso the art of gender

One of the beautiful things about plurality is when you have a joint project. We love feeling the joy and euphoria of others as they achieve something.
Of late our project has been our gender.
For the past 3 years we have been gender fluid with each alter dressing and performing the gender role that they identified with. Doing so required a regimented structure and guaranteed dysphoria if an opposite sex alter was sudenly called front. It was better we thought that the dysphoria was shared equally amongst us than to relegate one sex as valid and the other as permanently dysphoric.

Life has a way of making you reasses things. Our perfectly segregated bubbles have started to collapse we have had to blend and code switch, half our circles think we are ftm cross dresser the other half think we are mtf cross dresser. We got into trouble at work because we refused to elaborate as to our biological sex.

Coincidently a lot of intersex pride stuff has been showing up on our feed and some of the aesthetics in there felt right not just for one person but for everyone. So now we are going down the bigender route if folk see a bearded lady thats cool if folk see a guy with gynecomastia thats also cool but we know the truth, that we are a Picasso painting a beautiful whole because of its deformities not something to be glimpsed inspite of them. we are going to embrace our body as is and see our selves in it. No more trying to force it into one or other of 2 binary choices and being dissatisfied and dysphoric.

That's wonderful and we understand it a lot. We may not be a mixed gender system, but even within our female identities there are so many variations. We range from being femme to butch depending on the alter, and I've even been working on replacing most of the outdoors wardrobe because Leila loves to be femme and goth (but Beth bought our wardrobe and she's butch and prefers pant suits or jeans and t-shirts).

We're so glad that you're finding ways to let everyone in your system express themselves.

Violette

Hello,

It is wonderful to read about how this is working out for you all. I am the only agender person in our group. The other two are female, like the body is too. Therefore whenever we grab clothes that make us most comfortable, it does not affect the people around us. The more manly attire is often only worn at home though which suits me fine. I prefer not to be out.

I am sorry to hear you get hounded to elaborate though. I hope there will be a time soon in which you (and everyone else) can just do what you want without being questioned when it comes to appearance and identity matters.

All best,

Kay

I love the "all of the genders together" aesthetics. That's also something I'm leaning towards. It confuses the heck out of people and I love it.

Gender is a performance anyway. People have expressed it in many ways in many different cultures and time periods. Life is too short to stick to only one way of expressing it (unless that's what makes you happy, of course - if it does, carry on!). Do what makes you happy!

One of my favorite things to do to confuse people is ask them to define gender in a way that 'does not rely upon physical sex and is universal to all cultures'. To date, no one can do it. The reality is just that for every supposed gender role or expression in one culture; another culture has a different and opposite role or expression. Only women wear skirts? There's so many cultures (historic and contemporary) where men wear skirts. Only women wear makeup? There's so many cultures (historic and contemporary) wherre men wear makeup. And so forth.

It seems a part of me already responded to this. Fun times.

Anyway, I wanted to weigh in on Vi's comment. Skirts were actually tailored to fit better on people with masculine genitalia aka skirts were made for men. Heels were originally also made for men, particularly short men who couldn't reach the pedals(?) of their horse saddle otherwise.

I must admit that, even thought I wholly agree with "gender biased are based on culture etc.", I now feel compelled to try and answer the question of describing male and female without relying upon physical sex and is universal to all cultures. I know there's no (easy) answer and honestly attempting it goes against my opinion that nobody is born 100% one sex either, but the mere fact that you said nobody managed makes me want to try now haha.
Maybe it's in something we can't measure anyway like feelings. Maybe females feel stronger emotionally, allowing them to sort of sense who is in more distress and thus allowing them to help them first. Maybe men feel less strongly to make sure they didn't feel bad for their prey.
It's the only thing I can come up with and it's honestly bull because it probably grew that way because men are naturally more physically capable and the brain adjusts.

~ Grey

Triskelion wrote:Heels were originally also made for men, particularly short men who couldn't reach the pedals(?) of their horse saddle otherwise.

The "pedals" of the saddle are called stirrups And it's not to "reach" the stirrups, it's to better hold the stirrups. Heels keep your feet from going all the way through the stirrup, you just need to block the heel against the stirrup and your feet are right in the proper place. Otherwise it's a mess to keep your feet in the proper position.

Triskelion wrote:Maybe females feel stronger emotionally, allowing them to sort of sense who is in more distress and thus allowing them to help them first. Maybe men feel less strongly to make sure they didn't feel bad for their prey.

The emotions felt are the same BUT oestrogens make your tears flow more easily and testosterone does the opposite. Also, premenstrual (or during-menstrual) syndromes are a heck of a thing to go through. My emotions were hectic when I had a cycle, they stabilized with progesterone to stop the cycles and since I started testosterone (HRT) I've noticed I cry almost never even when I'm super emotional - before T I would tear up at the first slight of emotion.

Also, oestrogens are depressants and testosterone is an antidepressant. Nothing to do with gender tho. I was already a guy before taking T

IMO gender is one aspect of self-identity therefore it grows and evolves in your brain the same way all the rest of your identity does. That's why you can have DID people with a whole Pride Parade of genders in their system: that's part of how identity grows.

And some people are just "meh, body says this I'll just follow" and it's also another completely legitimate way of experiencing gender. And the opposite too. And everything everywhere all at once and in between to the infinite and beyond.

Gender is weird because identity is weird because brains are weird. (IMHO)

We've always viewed gender as being broken up into Gender Identity, Gender Expression and Gender Role, but we're a bit weird.

ArbreMonde wrote:

Triskelion wrote:Heels were originally also made for men, particularly short men who couldn't reach the pedals(?) of their horse saddle otherwise.

The "pedals" of the saddle are called stirrups And it's not to "reach" the stirrups, it's to better hold the stirrups. Heels keep your feet from going all the way through the stirrup, you just need to block the heel against the stirrup and your feet are right in the proper place. Otherwise it's a mess to keep your feet in the proper position.[

There's a lot of different fashions that started as 'masculine' that became 'feminine' over time. Our point was more the fact that those kinds of gender expressions are mutable and change all the time. It goes deeper than just clothes. In some cultures, women were expected to be healers and doctors while men were not.

For every gendered expression or gendered role in a society, there's a society or culture where that isn't true. Women as warriors and soldiers? The Celts and Scythians are prime examples. The idea of there being only two genders is contradicted by various Native American cultures as well as in India.

ArbreMonde wrote:

Triskelion wrote:Maybe females feel stronger emotionally, allowing them to sort of sense who is in more distress and thus allowing them to help them first. Maybe men feel less strongly to make sure they didn't feel bad for their prey.

The emotions felt are the same BUT oestrogens make your tears flow more easily and testosterone does the opposite. Also, premenstrual (or during-menstrual) syndromes are a heck of a thing to go through. My emotions were hectic when I had a cycle, they stabilized with progesterone to stop the cycles and since I started testosterone (HRT) I've noticed I cry almost never even when I'm super emotional - before T I would tear up at the first slight of emotion.

Also, oestrogens are depressants and testosterone is an antidepressant. Nothing to do with gender tho. I was already a guy before taking T [/quote}

And this gets into the biology...males and females have the same emotions. With regards to testosterone vs estrogen...our brain does not function very well without estrogen in our system- and a lot of it. Without estrogen our brain gets so badly trapped in depression, anxiety and trauma that we can't function.

So, back to the start...it's always wonderful to take a tack on gender expression as a system in order for the system to feel comfortable. Our system is (mostly) female [two non-binary]. As we lose weight and gain confidence, we plan on buying clothes more in line with our preferred gender expression.

What is important is being comfortable in one's own skin and self or selves.

Violette

As I said, I don't stand by my only idea and I knew already that there is no right answer.
The only thing I can add is that it's hard to measure things like feelings to begin with so my argument was already flawed without going into how people experience emotions, which I do think people experience it differently but not based on their biological sex. More like how when you punch two people with the same speed and force, but one person yelps in pain and the other is unfazed. I think emotions do that too depending on the individual and their background + biology etc.

But again, sex and gender (which as Vi says is gender identity vs gender expression vs gender role so it doesn't even include biological sex) are separate. Honestly, the only reason your sex/assigned birth gender is relevant is to make sure doctors can look for Y chromosome specific defects and diseases etc. Also certain medicine works differently based on your biological gender, signs of heart failure etc.
So it's only relevant when it comes to your health in very specific and rare cases.

Personally I just look at people's pronouns and use them. If they wear a dress and make-up (gender expression fits female gender stereotype) but wants to be called 'he' (gender identity fits male gender stereotype) then it is 'he'.
It's like Kay said, I don't dress particularly femme but I do identify as female. Raven tends to want to dress in a more slim fit style of clothing and with more exposed parts, which doesn't work well in winter especially so we tend to just go in between amd that works. Meanwhile at home I wear big shirts and long shorts etc which make me look more manly but I still feel like a girl.

When I was young however, I recall believing fully that I was male and everyone in my environment played into that. My parents, classmates, teachers... everyone. Nobody told me I wasn't and the one time someone did, I went to the teacher to ask and the teacher scolded the boy who called me a girl.
Eventually I developed breasts and I full on panicked and cried etc. A gender dysphoria experience, if you will. My menstrual cycle started late too so it happened more or less at the same time. I ended up looking up what a boy would have in my stead cause I was convinced this was wrong... and then I changed my mind somehow. The dysphoria faded quickly. Maybe I just saw the male bits and thought "eww, nevermind, I'll keep these".

Why am I sharing this? Because I feel it proves that indeed the brain is weird and flexible and gender is up to how you feel even when your body ignores that.

Main point: be the you you're comfortable with.

~ Grey

Oddly enough, it wasn't until we were 24 that we understood that the world saw us as male. By and large, we just saw ourself as female, and sometimes that meant ignoring things like having to use the men's room. We had alters who took care of things like that.

Some of our early journals actually have 'ftm' or 'female to male' scratched out because we would write those because we knew we had to transition, but kept forgetting that we were transitioning from 'male appointed at birth' to 'female'.

Incidentally, there is more and more evidence that transsexuality is a form of intersexuality. It doesn't change the idea that one can be transgender...but we've always defined those as 'transsexual is someone who wishes to transform their body to match their gender' and 'transgender is someone who transcends the gender norms of society'.

Violette