Gender Confusion

[Jamie]

I realy don't know how to start this, and I'm not exactly sure why I am sharing this here, other than the fact that I am aftaid to share it with anyone I know in persion in case I decide otherwise, but I think I am Pangendered. This feeling has been growing with me for some time now and even seems to be getting into my dreams. I don't know how much of this is nature and how much of this is nurture. I have strong male personality traits and even some mental/cognative ones. such as being drawn to details and being destracted by movement during conversation over being destracted by other individuals. I am also drawn to stair at mouths while conversing with people over eyes or bodies, which are apparently male traits. (http://www.mnn.com/health/fitness-well-being/stories/men-and-women-literally-see-the-world-differently) I am also dislexic, which is more common in men than women. My masculine trates can seem so strong at times that I even whent so far as to check to see if I have any trates that would denote some level of physical hermaphroditism (I don't, but I think my mind is hermaphroditic)

I wonder if babies give off gender ques also somehow as my mother settled on a geder mixed name for me and according to the stories, my mother was often quite frusterated at people because they would say I was a "cute baby boy" even when I was dressed in obviously girl clothes! This is just to point out why I am unsure what may be nature, and what may be nurture, so to speak... perhaps my family were giving off the ques that I was a boy and that's where people where getting the idea... I don't know.

As for personality, I ranked as masculin as most men on one of those more reputable online sights (it's been far to long to remember the name of the test or the site it was on.) I have always understood men and more masculin women over the clearly feminin type who have always seemed insain, irational and petty to me. Also, my interests have also generaly been more masculin in nature, and I have been a bit more ceriberal sense puberty at least.

Other than the fact that my mother, and paternal grandmother are not themselves very femine and both have hormonal disorders, I'm not sure what altered my brain to be more masculin, as the only major hormonal alteration to fetal sexual/ sexual identity development I know of is feminization based on stress hormones. when I found out about this in my early 20's I considered the posability that I was a genetic male and that my mothers stress levels were so high during pregnancy that I ended up a girl. That theory went out the drain when I found out that females who are geneticaly males never have periods. LOL!

well, this is my input, and I would love to hear other peoples thoughts, ideas or links to studies/other information if anyone has any. I'm not 100% sure what I am looking for, but I'm glad I could write about it none the less.

[Steinhauser]

I don't know much about transgenderism, besides that trans people are usually very, very sure that they know.

I have strong male personality traits and even some mental/cognative ones. such as being drawn to details and being destracted by movement during conversation over being destracted by other individuals. I am also drawn to stair at mouths while conversing with people over eyes or bodies, which are apparently male traits. (http://www.mnn.com/health/fitness-well-being/stories/men-and-women-literally-see-the-world-differently)

I'd like to bring up another possibility. Have you ever considered you might have an autism spectrum disorder? Paying less relative attention to biological motion (the way human bodies move) in one's vision field, and staring at mouths instead of eyes, are both hallmarks of autistic behaviour.

 

Check out Ami Klin's research with autistic eye-tracking:

As an aspie myself, I found Dr. Klin's work very enlightening, particularly in explaining WHY most people are so damn preoccupied with each others' eyes.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autism#Characteristics

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asperger_syndrome#Characteristics

[Existing Alternatives]

Thanks for sharing this. Please don’t take my word as any form of medical or scientifically-based advice, just my thoughts. If you think it’s all pure nonsense, feel free to treat it as such.

First thought that came to my mind when reading this was “So what?” So, you stare at mouths, are dyslexic, don’t care for spelling, joined FDR, etc. – I don’t think that makes you any more of a man or less of a woman. There are plenty of men out there who are more feminine than most women, and vice versa. None of us have “perfect” amount of testosterone or masculine/feminine traits balance, but that’s what makes us special. And who gets to define "perfect," anyway? A lot of time we are trying to fit into definitions assigned to us by the society, but at the end of the day we are all individuals and should only be concerned with our own comfort.

It is an interesting exercise to try and understand why you are the way you are, but you are running a risk of making it an obsession with some potentially dangerous conclusions.  Personally, I would advise you to enjoy what you enjoy and live the way you want to live, who cares what you stare at when people talk! (Unless, of course, it's a medical thing that needs to be taken care of right away...)

[Jamie]

I understand your point, I mostly listed those traits because they seem to have more to do with hardwireing than simply personality or orientation. It is plausable that I have a slight autistic spectum disorder as my mother was diagnosed with a slight autism herself, though I would hope that the psychologyst who determened I was dislexic apposed to whatever else the school thought I was would have noticed. It seemed he mostly thought I wasn't due to my unusualy large vocabulary, willingness to comunicate and high I.Q. Looking back though, I would often miss subtle social ques and be ostracized for it by peirs. I have also generaly been rather dense to signs of physical atraction from others.

[Guest Exceptionalist]

I understand your point, I mostly listed those traits because they seem to have more to do with hardwireing than simply personality or orientation. It is plausable that I have a slight autistic spectum disorder as my mother was diagnosed with a slight autism herself, though I would hope that the psychologyst who determened I was dislexic apposed to whatever else the school thought I was would have noticed. It seemed he mostly thought I wasn't due to my unusualy large vocabulary, willingness to comunicate and high I.Q. Looking back though, I would often miss subtle social ques and be ostracized for it by peirs. I have also generaly been rather dense to signs of physical atraction from others.

 

It is only a disorder if you like to pathologize yourself. You could also argue that it is a neuronal variety, which is a rather neutral than a normative statement. To say that variant A is good and variant B is disfunctional based on someones own view how a person should interact, is kinda pretentious. Nope, it is not you but you didn't reflect that.

[Seleneccentric]

Based on my experience with pangender/transgender/queer-identified people, I would not say that everything is perfectly clear to them right away, or that they feel an unchanging, deep conviction that they are one way or another. Confusion seems perfectly understandable. Aren't we all on a strange, twisty path to understanding what and who we are?

 

If you haven't already pursued it, you may be surprised by the amount of support in that community. However, I would add that personally, I have found self-delusion, unprocessed abuse, etc. to be just as common there as anywhere else.

 

You have my sympathy for having to struggle with something so complex and confusing — but taken another way, it is an exciting opportunity. You might have lived your whole life without getting the opportunity to face these possibilities, but now you at least have a chance. I wish you the best of luck.

[David Twyman]

Could the term pangendered be a tautology for "I feel disconnected

From my sexuality?"