GENDERFLUID AWARENESS

I. WHAT IS GENDERFLUIDITY?

Time-dependent gender can be expressed in patterns other than just a `transition' from 'male to female' or 'female to male'.

For instance, some people can fluctuate between male and female on a timescale of a year, or a week or an hour.

This is often envisaged from viewing gender as a continuous spectrum between male and female.

It clearly extends in the Non-Binary manners of there being further 'gender poles' apart from male and female, and of some people simultaneously having more than one gender.

II. THE GENDEERFLUID MASCOT

This has become a fairly customary symbol of Genderfluid people in recent years.

Our version of this, however, is the first version we are aware of to sometimes have antlers.

Blue watery fluid antlers that sometimes bud and bloom, and sometimes ebb away to small or absent size :)

This site's main message its that the following two pictures are of the same person, just at different times or in different contexts :)

III. GENDERFLUID ISSUES

1) Aside from similar past and in some places still present persecutions similar to those experienced by Trans* peoples, Genderfluid and Non-Binary peoples have often also experienced gender binary prejudices.

Some of these have been in LGBT spaces that aren't or weren't aware of, or OK with, Non-Binary matters.

Furthermore, some Genderfluid people have experienced prejudice in Trans spaces in some ways similar to ones experienced by Bi people in LG spaces.

Much as Bi people used to be confronted or dismissed for 'not being gay enough', Genderfluid people were and in some places still are confronted or dismissed by Trans people for 'not being Trans enough'.

This has sometimes taken the form of MTF- or FTM-normativity, by which people expressing gender in other patterns than these over time were left out or invalidated.

Some Queer spaces however have recognized the concept and way of being now widely termed Genderfluid for many years.

And some Trans or Trans-accommodating spaces have accommodated a wide range of people for many years.

In our safer spaces here, Out-Transgender people, Closet-Transgender people (Pre-op or Passing), and Genderfluid people (Out or Closeted) have been accepted for at least two decades.

2) Genderfluid people then often have time-dependent pronouns.

We might e.g. wear different pronoun badges on different days, not out of being Out in one place and Closeted in the other but rather because our gender expression has changed.

We might also need to re-introduce ourselves in meetings which start with introductions including giving pronouns, or to spend a bit longer saying that we are sometimes she/her, sometimes they/them and sometimes he/him.

Some of us also use different names while at different points on the gender spectrum. We might e.g. have names of more than one gender, or gender ambiguous names.

At least we here aren't mean if anyone calls us by a name that doesn't meet our current gender expression.

See the Glossary for more about pronouns.

3) In some cases, we quickly alter our appearance to help people distinguish.

For instance, we might attach or detach large hairpins, and some of us have been known to wear retractable skirts :)

This is a different issue from Transitioning involving a new wardrobe; some of us need to simultaneously wear or carry clothes and accessories for multiple gender expressions.

By 'quickly alter', we literally mean that. Two to ten seconds may be as much as is convenient for us.

The skill of being able to adjust one's clothes and accessories on that kind of timescale is quite different from that of leisurely putting on clothes from one of two different wardrobes! And again quite different from Passing. Some of us feel we have to 'make do' without Passing in one or more of our states of gender expression. Others of us have to balance how much time we spend changing clothes in toilet cubicles with missing time at socials.

4) Though, for sure, some of our genders only fluctuate significantly on the timescale of a week through to a year or more.

5) Some of the issues in 2) and 3) are sometimes tied to Social Anxiety issues. For instance, some of us can be Anxious when we can't do better than a ten-second in-public clothes change. Or we can be Anxious about time missed out from socials.

6) We're also obviously among those who aren't at all OK with 'gender policing' of toilets, given that we may often need to change gender expression in such places. Kindly increase the number of gender-neutral toilets. Kindly also don't demand to know why, in places that have no gender-neutral toilets bar the Disabled ones, people 'who don't look physically Disabled' occasionally also use the Disabled Toilets. Those doing the latter are also discriminating against Closet-Disabled people, and mentally-disabled people are entirely entitled to use Disabled toilets too!

While not all Socially Anxious or Genderfluid people identify (publically or privately) as Disabled, we are surely entitled to be among those using any kind of gender-neutral toilet whilst these remain rare in the city. [Gender Dysphoria is a Condition, but we don't all consent to being diagnosed with it, and we don't all identify having this Condition with having a Disability.]