Opening the Shell about Gender

Also known as "that one thing that was made as a scam by the big guys up top to sell more bathrooms."

Hey look, another article about a topic so personal that I’m really not sure what type of person would find interest in reading it, but writing it anyways just to get it out of my chest. We all love those, and espessially when it’s a topic that riles up Florida more than reminding them that when the time comes their boot-shape landscape and Miami will be on the same field as Atlantis and a few downed planes – gender that deviates from the one that one is born as, determined as, raised as, deviates as.

I’ve never considered myself fully open about being non-cis. I say non-cis instead of transgender because I consider the specific way I navigate it not entirely under the transgender label, but some secret third thing that could only be placed under a label I’d consider my main one – being agender. But to pinpoint it a bit downwards, not really feeling it at all. What gender? I just never paid attention, not since I was a kid, not now. The concept of a self having a determined sticked-to gender means nothing to me. Like.

Yeah man that sure exists.

I don’t really care though. Carrying on.

Anyways, the reason why I had the idea to write this – there’s a new webring on the block, apparently, which is the Xenics of the Net, dedicated to those who also use lesser-known and more niche microlabels to help explain their sexuality or identity to others...in other words, xenogenders. MOGAI if you will. While I’m not too invested in anything to do with that, I do find the concept extremely useful for both myself and others to use. Sometimes things just get too personally complicated to use with one of those “labels known enough for the flag to be sold in Spencers and god forbid, Disney” labels, and I definetly have that for myself, which will be gotten into in a bit. And when I did see the webring pop up, I wanted to join, but that was quickly encompassed by fear of both being known on a webring (per the usual), and fear of being known as not cis. I don’t mention it too much other than using it/its as my pronouns in my daily life, so it tends to fly under the radar, but I’m...not cis. And I’m often afraid I’ll upset certain audiences that, while I don’t want reading my site in the first place, I can’t really stop from doing so. A “Do Not Interact” criteria does not work on a website, or in general online, other than a way to shake your hands in the air going “hey look at all the things I’m clearly upset by! use them against me, trolls!”.

But there’s a certain point where you have to say to yourself to be a little braver, one step at a time, and this is it for me. My point of being brave this morning was sending the webmaster and webring-leader a sign-up email, and writing this, and be damned to those who lurk here and have an issue with my not-cis-ness. My womanloving, too, though the usual tirades of the vocal alt-right have moved on from Fundies Say the Darnest Things ages to, as I saw today, calling anything you don’t like, including Linux operating systems, transgender behavior.

Literally me, by the way.

To be myself is to be brave. To be openly the freak that TERFs, the American right, transmedicalists, and whatever the fuck else is out there hate, coping and seething about people literally just existing and doing their things and living life with joy. To be myself is powerful. The elementary school lectures to “just be yourself” were right. Literally just be yourself. And stop hating yourself for being yourself, and rather, embrace it. I’m just another webmaster online, and if being happy with myself really does piss someone off, just close the fucking tab, man. Nobody’s forcing you to read this. Go do whatever else you were doing, because I really won’t miss anyone who’s a little hater about it in this day and age.

And, of course, the mandatory list of those xenogenders I was talking about earlier than I fly under the labels of.

Agender - To directly avoid being under the label of femininity or masculinity, or any predisposed ideal of gender expression in general.	Voidpunk - A subculture where one's marginalized identity leads to embracing oneself as non-human. Dehumanization, usually to cope and be in control of it.	Fictosexual - Exclusive or primarily attracted to fictional characters, or sexuality that is influenced by them. Considered part of asexuality's spectrum.