So, I’m afab and probably agender, which is where the confusion is coming from. I’m on estrogen and progesterone because otherwise my cycle is stuck to ‘on’, so even my relationship with hormones is complicated.
Neither of these things directly tell me my subconscious sex, but when the testosterone makes me feel awful, or when being treated and seen as a woman makes me feel wonderful, or when estrogen gives me mild waves of buzzing bodily euphoric, I make inferences about my subconscious sex from that.
See, none of that resonates with me at all. Going off my meds makes me feel terrible, but that’s from the resulting anemia. I’ve tried living as a man, I’ve tried living as a woman, I’ve never gotten that “yes, this is me” feeling that people talk about. I don’t know what “psychological self conceptualization” as a gender means, because it’s all uncomfortable for me?
It feels like what you’re talking about is the university course and I’m still in primary education.
Sure, you have to realize - I spent several decades never questioning my gender and living as a man, and I certainly could have gone the rest of my life that way. It took a lot of change for me to even recognize the experiences I had were even gendered. You may actually lack the hermeneutical tools to interpret and understand your gendered experience, but it sounds like “agender” is already giving you a foothold. Feeling alienated from both genders is a thing that tells you “this is me”. The evidence from the brain scans about subconscious sex shows that most people are going to not evenly fall into two camps like male and female, so why is it surprising that you wouldn’t feel at home in either?
What I mean about psychological self-conceptualization of my gender: when I dream, my brain sometimes generates a “me” that moves around and does things, interacts and experiences in the dream, etc. That “me” has a gender! I think of myself as a certain way, and it determines how I interact with other people, and how they interact with me. When I am stuck thinking of myself as a man, even when I feel dysphoria from being a man, it can be distressing - but I don’t have direct control over my self-conceptualization. It’s like a habituated way of thinking about myself.
Sometimes in my dreams I will be interacting as a man, and then a sudden shift in my gender happens as I interact with a male stranger for example, shaking his hand I become aware of my breasts and suddenly I’m interacting with him as though I were a woman. It is a bizarre experience for me, and most of my life I never thought about my self conceptualization at all. Of course, the self concept is not just in dreams, and when I started voice therapy I realized my self-concept influenced how my voice sounded, and that I had to tackle habituating a voice partially by habituating conceiving of myself as a woman, by reminding myself over and over that I look like a woman and I need to navigate the world as a woman.
You probably have a self-conceptualization as a woman to some extent, you probably have to for pragmatic reasons. I think socialization can play a big role in that psychology, the ways we acculturate and learn how to interact according to the gendered roles. To not do so is generally not adaptive and creates friction, for example I am learning that my habit from living as a man of holding doors open for everyone is starting to backfire as I learn that men would rather die than have a woman hold a door open for them. I am violating social norms when I hold doors open, and they rush forward to take over holding the door I’m trying to hold open for them.
The socialization is still separate from the self-conceptualization, but I think they can be related in terms of the self-concept tapping into those social roles we have learned.
So, I’m afab and probably agender, which is where the confusion is coming from. I’m on estrogen and progesterone because otherwise my cycle is stuck to ‘on’, so even my relationship with hormones is complicated.
See, none of that resonates with me at all. Going off my meds makes me feel terrible, but that’s from the resulting anemia. I’ve tried living as a man, I’ve tried living as a woman, I’ve never gotten that “yes, this is me” feeling that people talk about. I don’t know what “psychological self conceptualization” as a gender means, because it’s all uncomfortable for me?
It feels like what you’re talking about is the university course and I’m still in primary education.
Sure, you have to realize - I spent several decades never questioning my gender and living as a man, and I certainly could have gone the rest of my life that way. It took a lot of change for me to even recognize the experiences I had were even gendered. You may actually lack the hermeneutical tools to interpret and understand your gendered experience, but it sounds like “agender” is already giving you a foothold. Feeling alienated from both genders is a thing that tells you “this is me”. The evidence from the brain scans about subconscious sex shows that most people are going to not evenly fall into two camps like male and female, so why is it surprising that you wouldn’t feel at home in either?
What I mean about psychological self-conceptualization of my gender: when I dream, my brain sometimes generates a “me” that moves around and does things, interacts and experiences in the dream, etc. That “me” has a gender! I think of myself as a certain way, and it determines how I interact with other people, and how they interact with me. When I am stuck thinking of myself as a man, even when I feel dysphoria from being a man, it can be distressing - but I don’t have direct control over my self-conceptualization. It’s like a habituated way of thinking about myself.
Sometimes in my dreams I will be interacting as a man, and then a sudden shift in my gender happens as I interact with a male stranger for example, shaking his hand I become aware of my breasts and suddenly I’m interacting with him as though I were a woman. It is a bizarre experience for me, and most of my life I never thought about my self conceptualization at all. Of course, the self concept is not just in dreams, and when I started voice therapy I realized my self-concept influenced how my voice sounded, and that I had to tackle habituating a voice partially by habituating conceiving of myself as a woman, by reminding myself over and over that I look like a woman and I need to navigate the world as a woman.
You probably have a self-conceptualization as a woman to some extent, you probably have to for pragmatic reasons. I think socialization can play a big role in that psychology, the ways we acculturate and learn how to interact according to the gendered roles. To not do so is generally not adaptive and creates friction, for example I am learning that my habit from living as a man of holding doors open for everyone is starting to backfire as I learn that men would rather die than have a woman hold a door open for them. I am violating social norms when I hold doors open, and they rush forward to take over holding the door I’m trying to hold open for them.
The socialization is still separate from the self-conceptualization, but I think they can be related in terms of the self-concept tapping into those social roles we have learned.
Good luck exploring your gender!