There’s a false dichotomy between “born this way” and “choice”. We encounter it in the MOGII communities, where there’s a rapid embrace of the notion of inherent genetic and brain differences, first for gay and lesbian people and, more recently, for trans folks ( Read more... )

When I was 38, my girlfriend broke up with me. She indicated that her life had become too complicated to maintain a relationship - too many other demands on her time and energy. And Iw as obviously just casually involved, enjoying the connection for the sex and fun. She knew it wasn’t serious for me because I hadn’t tried to restrict her from ( Read more... )

Do we want to rid the world of gender, that evil conformity-demanding set of constraints, or do we like gender, as long as we don’t get the wrong one shoved down our throats? This is a recurrent discussion within my Facebook groups and other support environments. Some of us have gone to a lot of trouble and expense to package our presentation so ( Read more... )

"If it's 'transgender' and not 'transsexual' now, why isn't it 'heterogender' instead of 'heterosexual ( Read more... )

I get to show up at work in a skirt when I feel like it. I've been hired to do data entry at NYC's Department of Health. It's a job I'm eminently qualified for (I'm fast at typing and data entry). The option of working skirted isn't due to my proficiency (although it contributes to my confidence in exercising the option), it's because it's DOH, ( Read more... )

Marie, a transgender woman, does not like my distinction between sex and gender.

I identify as a person who has both a sex and a gender, the first of which ("male") I explain as my physiological or morphological physical structure and the second ("sissy" or "femme" or "girl") is who I am as a person, which isn't defined by my body or its parts ( Read more... )

So I was casting about for a topic to blog on. (I don't usually have difficulty coming up with something, but given that I try to pump these things out once a week I guess it's inevitable that sooner or later I'd have nothing in particular in mind when the time came, right?) I mentioned this to my partner and she joked that I could borrow a page ( Read more... )

Binary thinking is either/or thinking. In our own gender-variant subculture, when we say "nonbinary" or "binary" we're referring to the gender binary, of course--the notion that either you are male, and hence a man, or you are female, and therefore a woman ( Read more... )

The transgender community isn't quite monolithic but in general, within trans groups there's not much welcome for a lot of focus (prurient or otherwise) on a person's physical sex. Sexual morphology. Plumbing. Whatever you want to call it ( Read more... )

"Is it possible to raise your child entirely without gender from birth?"

The question is the title of an article by Alex Morris, a contributing editor for New York Magazine and Rolling Stone. It's not a question of his own posing, though; he's reporting on the fact that some parents have been contemplating that question, and how they're ( Read more... )