male is the new Neutrois

by dominicdemeyn

A lot of things have bothered me lately: the fact that my car is not insured and I cannot reach the person who is supposed to help me draw up a new insurance contract, the fact that at work I recently stayed five hours longer to complete a project which it wasn’t necessarily my job to do, and the fact that recently I have been reading a lot about individuals who take Testosterone and want to become male.

Also, I am seeing a specialist on trans issues, who is digging into my psyche and I am struggling with the emotions that go with that. I don’t want to do intense psychological work, as I’ve done this before and I hate being in that emotional place.

What freaks me out a lot lately is that this specialist is watching me and doing tests on me (only verbal tests, thank God), and has already diagnosed me with Borderline (yeah, yeah, I have known that for years) and mild autism (I got some autistic traits that counteract the Borderline traits and vice versa, which I find very refreshing). We’ve established that I am a complex person and not definitely this or definitely that and I am glad the one in charge of my name change realizes that. That’s a good start.

 

I just wonder why there are so many tests and I can’t just say I want to do this because every fibre in my body screams for it and it feels right and that is not really considered valid. Why would anyone in their right mind not accept that there is no gender? Why would anyone want me to be male or female. What’s it to them?

If you live mainly in your head and you have long stopped even feeling parts of your body and consider the body to be secondary to the mind, then I think it’s quite valid to be outisde of gender. To add to this, you do not abide by gender rules, and have nearly absolutely nothing to do with your peers (men and women, who identify themselves so). Why do people still try to make me have a gender, as if it was imperative to my existence? I can exist without one.

 

I also wonder why many who have initially said they are Neutrois or another type of agender or genderqueer or another type of label suddenly now take Testosterone and say they are a guy and even aspire to live as male. Where does this shift from genderless to male come from? Is it easier for them to do so? Has society made them do it, because of their constant stigma and forms of victimisation? Have they lost their ability to see past gender and thought in their little heads they have to settle for one, discarding their formerly so proud assertion that they are genderless?

All these defectors aren’t really helping the cause, the cause for a genderless way of life, the struggle to highlight gender politics’ bigotry and enslavement of the human spirit. Binary thinking.

For God’s sake, stop following the binary. Even if you are, in your heart and soul, a person who recognises and appreciates gender diversity and who does not necessarily feel so utterly male or female that you need to make other people’s lives hell, why don’t you show it proudly and unabashedly? Show the world that you are not part of the binary. I have three brothers, I know a lot about male priviledge and that you are able to get more out of being or presenting male and may even get to fool the medical establishment in order to get the surgery you want. But that, to me, is not a true victory. While you think you are fooling others or even being authentic, you are only playing their game and using the established gender concepts and pandering to their ideals, using their language.

I find that the struggle to be outside gender norms is akin to the struggle of women’s liberation. This is Neutrois liberation. It does not mean that this cause is more important than other causes, but it’s a highly political one and one to be taken seriously.

Please stop shaping your body accordsing to what’s practical or more suitable to society or even prettier. Unless you are truly male (and I don’t doubt that many people who take T are, or else they wouldn’t put their bodies under so much stress and make irreversible changes to their bodies), why don’t you live as neutral or at least be proud enough of it that you resist the temptation to be mainstream? Male is not the default gender for genderqueer people and certainly not for Neutrois. Neutrois exist alongside male and female and should not be amalgamated into the binary. I think it’s sad that many people default to male. It only goes to show how much priviledge is in the male gender, and how easy it is to become male (legally).

 

I sometimes seriously feel like apologising to people for being so difficult, and I don’t mean because of an inherent personality disorder or two or however many they are (I’ve not gone through all the tests that exist out there, yet). I’m talking about my gender problem. I want to apologise to the therapist (the one who determines whether I’m real), because I am so complicated and don’t ever shut up about gender equality and my desire to be outside of the binary and still have the same human rights as the default males. I want to apologise to her for taking up so much of her time, and for her having to try and understand me eventhough she knows already that I am either male or female or both. “She knows”, but yet she listens to me and my incoherent ramblings about gender neutrality. She must indeed think I am very sick and very deluded.

She is probably just waiting until I scream out for my first T shot and until I find enough masculine force in me to warrant becoming male. Or she thinks perhaps a small hormone imbalance and a bit of oestrogen would change the whole situation, and I would suddenly find myself in the kitchen preparing dinner for my husband, wearing only skimpy clothes to appeal to him, because that will be my only mission in life.

People apparently think I can be male one day and female the next. Isn’t that rather proof that these categories are arbitrary and don’t have a solid foundation?

 

Male or female energy: energy. Energy: neutral. Male or female: Neutral.

If anything, the default category should be neutral.

 

And the ennemies of gender liberation forget that there are more parts to a human than just the body, or just energy. There’s also thought and desire, motivation. There’s philosophy, morals, psychology, worldview, instinct, and all sorts of factors that decide whether one is male or female.

At least for those people who have these.