Below are the 5 most recent journal entries recorded in nicola_legrand's LiveJournal:

Monday, July 7th, 2008
2:40 am	Androgyne Positive and Androgyne Negative? I've suddenly come across quite a lot of material on the Internet about neutrois people, and it's really set me off, but I'll try not to be too heavy about it! As I understand it, some people use the terms androgyne-positive and androgyne-negative to talk about those who, respectively, like to have a mixture, nay, a synthesis, of male and female characteristics, and those who want to avoid any noticeable gender-related characteristics at all. Attaching 'negative' to this state of being sounds pretty awful, but it's not meant to be. It doesn't mean the person being referred to is negative in any way, but simply that they don't embrace the gender-related traits. An example is the person born female who didn't want her boobs to show to the world. Similarly you might find somone born male who doesn't want to show a lot of body hair or a bulge in their jeans. The word neutrois might sound better than androgyne-mnegative, but I understand it's an equivalent term. All this has made me realise I'm not a complete gender-neutral, in fact I rather relish several gender-related characteristics, both male and female, some of which are just to do with the way I look and some of which are just the way I am, my temperament and my approach to life. I like having my long hair, my rather too colourful clothes, and my collaborative approach to many things in life, which might look to many people to be female characteristics. At the same time, I have plenty of body hair to be going on with, and I like the fact that you can see a bulge in my jeans. This is at least at the mild end of masculinity, I guess. If I come across to the rest of the world as sort of a girl sort of a guy sort of a girl thing, well, I'm quite happy with that. When it comes to neutrois people, however, I'm certainly not an authoritative voice, so I'll refer anyone who's interested to the new Neutrois section of my androgyne web page. Neutrois Links on the DareDevils Androgyne Explorer Above all, I hope I haven't misrepresented anyone in writing this piece. Where neutrois people are concerned, I know I'm a beginner at this particular aspect of transgender life. Current Mood: thoughtful (Comment on this)
Friday, June 13th, 2008
1:48 am	Testing for androgyne I'm a bit of a sucker for these personality questionnaires you find around the web and in magazines. Every so often, I come across one that deals with how masculine or feminine you are. So of course when I found the Butch versus Femme test, http://members.tripod.com/~womens_voices/BF100/BF100.html I was sure to have a go at it. I've done such tests before, but I wondered whether anything different would come of this one. I don't know whether there's any real science behind these tests, and I didn't even understand some of the questions, which were written in what to me was a strange American patois. Nonetheless, I set to work, ran through all 100 questions very quickly and made sure I didn't cotton on to any patterns my answers might have formed. I didn't want my pre-determined answer, I wanted some surprises! Well, I didn't get any. No matter how arbitrary this test might have been, I got my usual answer - Androgyne, right in the middle of the scale, androgyne, androgyne , androgyne. Full Stop. Er, period. That's the result I always get. Don't get me wrong, I'm more than happy to have my androgyne state confirmed yet again. I just thought that sooner or later I'd get a result such as, "You are totally wacky, and your responses don't make any sense". But no, it all makes perfect sense as ever. The test result went on to say I liked nice clothes without being fussy about it, and I could get along with all sorts of parnters, and jobs. All true to life, considering the patchwork of apparently unconnected things that my life has been so far. Lucky I've been writing here about being an androgyne, really! I'd look a bit silly by now if things had turned out differently. Current Mood: pleased (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, August 1st, 2007
8:53 pm	Hard questions for the gender reassignment industry At least for UK readers, I'd say this is well worth a listen. BBC Radio 4: Hecklers 1st August, 2007. Radical feminist Julie Bindel postulates that sex change operations constitute unnecessary mutilation, before an audience of doctors and transsexual people at the Royal Society of Medicine. The panel of expert opponents includes gay rights campaigner Peter Tatchell and two people who feel they were born into the wrong gender. I didn't have the chance to hear the whole broadcast tonight, but I did hear some very interesting arguments about how, in the opinion of the protagonist, people are forced into gender re-assignment surgery, whereas if we didn't have such a gender-obsessed society, we wouldn't need to adapt people's bodies for them to be happy. As someone who's never dreamt of having any kind of surgery done on me, and as one who rejects the traditional gender roles both of women and men, I have a certain amount of sympathy for this point of view. This is not to take the rug from under people who disagree or feel differently. I'm not in the business of preaching that other people should or shouldn't do this or that. I'm certainly not writing anything here as an attempt to limit anyone. But I hope the debate in this broadcast will help to clarify some people's ideas (including mine) about what a man is, what a woman is, and who's got the right to say. I do feel that while those born women have often moved on from the gender roles they leanred in childhood, some transgender people are willing to accept ways of being 'the opposite sex' that are pretty oppressive. Put simply, I feel we all need to just be ourselves, and it's a long journey to figure out what that means. Nicola Current Mood: busy (Comment on this)
Tuesday, July 3rd, 2007
1:10 am	GenderFAQ - or, more likely, never asked questions Q1. So are you some sort of hermaphrodite, then? The short answer is no. The long answer is no, too. I identify myself as an androgyne. This has nothing to do, in my case, with any ambiguity of my sex organs. In any case, I understand that the word "hermaphrodite" is on the way out, "intersex" is pretty mainstream, and the new term in some quarters is DSD (Disorders of sexual development). So there, better learn about the sex-and-gender alphabet soup. But that's by the by. I don't know who first said it, but it's become a pretty widespread saying, "Sex is between your legs, gender is between your ears". Genetically, that is, from birth, I was male and still am. My own biological sex for me is as simple as that. I realise it's not as simple as that for everyone, but it is for me. That has only a remote bearing on my gender, which is a complex cultural/mental/"spiritual" - er - matrix. It's about how I don't identify with the whole male Thang, which I'd caricature as risk-taking, aggressive, dominating. Nor is it an alternative to espouse 100% femininity, which I could also caricature as nurturing, sweet and submissive. I am not setting out to insult real men and women by saying this, and I don't expect to meet anyone with 100% of these characteristics. I don't respond at all well, and never did, to the "all boys together" situations I've sometimes found myself in at school, after work and in my own leisure time. "Come on, lads", and such expressions, I've always felt, somehow leave me out. So do greetings like "Hi, girls" in some transgender settings that I've come across. How do you know I call myself a girl? In fact I don't.  That does throw you up against the limitations of the English language, and I don't have any answers to that one, short of inventing some intergender language that nobody would understand. I'm not talking about "gender-neutral" pronouns and the like. That's a good idea, probably doomed to failure outside some very specialised environments, but anyway it still doesn't make it for me. I'm not neutral, I'm positively an androgyne, and I haven't got any pronouns for that. Q2. Why don't you look like an androgyne? What does an androgyne look like? Gender is between your ears, you know, not in your makeup bag. Appearance doesn't tell you much about a person's gender, unless they've gone out of their way to make it so. I know some rock stars have taken on a kind of ambiguous appearance - Sonny and Cher come to mind, as does David Bowie. Does that actually make them androgynes? No, it doesn't at all. I wouldn't know whether any of them identify that way. I'd contend that such an appearance may be an expression of gender, but it doesn't have to be. In everyday life, I probably look like a half-way regular guy. I have long hair on my head (feminine?) and facial hair on my face (masculine?), and probably hark back to our ape forbears more than many. Both kinds of hair just grow there without much effort from me, At the same time, my choice of clothes does to some extent reflect a feminine streak. I like more colour than conventional male dress allows. I don't mind patterns so long as they're not too Euclidian - I don't go in for stripes and squares. i like more curved, flowing, Mandelbrot-like shapes, and don't mind if there are 17 million colours involved. Maybe my shirts are too silky for a rough lad, but not frilly enough to be blousy and woman-like. In private, or somewhere like the beach or a park, I might hazard a robe or a kaftan, and run about in a pair of women's panties. Nobody seems to care, amazingly enough. Q3. So does that mean you're a crossdresser? Tricky one, that. Someone born male in our culture is not supposed to wear girl's panties or skirts, but sometimes I do just that. I'll leave it up to you to say whether that's crossdressing. What am I crossing from and to? that's difficult to define, and probably doesn't matter. Why is it such a big deal anyway if someone who's supposed to be a guy wears a garment without two leg bits? I'm fully in favour of skirts for men in any case. They're comfortable, and look better on me than any ratty old business suit. It does seem that in the transgender world, being a crossdresser means more than wearing some garments from the opposite sex. To do it properly, you need also to adopt the make-up / toiletry habits of the opposite sex as well, and the shoes and the voice, and the walk, and maybe the shaving. I haven't done any of that, nor do I see the relevance. Q4. So you're just lazy, aren't you, can't be bothered to make the transition? Not like my friend Tammy who spent $15 million on reassignment surgery. She's really got the courage of her convictions. I'm not making any transition, I'm already there. In some sectors of the transgender world, it does seem to be a point of honour to make it out in the streets "passing" as the opposite sex. No insult to anyone who's on that particular journey, but it is not mine. I don't want anyone imposing that on me. Similarly, I'm not booking up for any surgery because I have no need or desire to have a different set of misleading sexual organs! I do know some people who have really got to look at that issue because I'm sure they were born in the wrong body. I may have been born in the wrong culture, but that's a whole other story. Q5. Are you gay? As it happens, I'm bi-sexual. As far as I can tell, this is pretty much separate from my gender concerns. In some ways, it works pretty well, because both male and female partners have had something to offer that I've loved and identified with . This isn't something I know technically how to answer completely, but I take it that some completely straight people are androgynes too, and some who are a lot further along the gay spectrum may be as well. But it's helpful to look at sexuality and gender identity as two separate continua. Q6. I still don't get it. Are you transgender or not? In many ways not. I'm not trans anything in the sense of crossing to something else. On the other hand, it's politically tempting to ally myself with other people who question and challenge the male/female gender norms. So I don't mind being included, just so long as I don't have to take on the expectations of other people. I suppose the word "genderqueer" is the best to cover this political dimension. Q6. So are you madly spiritual then? I don't know where this comes from, but in a lot of androgyne contexts I come across the assumption that someone like me is supposed to be wildly spiritual. Yet another idea from other people that I can't take on board. Maybe if I'd been born in Samoa or in a Native American community this would have more meaning. In any case, I have real problems with words like "spirituality" being used in the casual way in which they sometimes are. Please define what you mean. Well, my brain is telling me to stop. I've probably opened enough cans of worms for one day anyway, and will return to some of these topics as time rumbles on. Call me Nicola or Nicholas, I don't really mind! Current Mood: working (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, June 27th, 2007
11:30 pm	Where I'm coming from There are men and there are women. That's all there is too it. Men are born with penises, women with clitorises. Men grow up to be masculine, and women grow up to be feminine.  Men fancy women and women, despite all their life experiences, fancy men. They get together and have kids. And the parrot makes 5.3. So there it is - you can draw straight lines from the well-defined genitals of the new-born baby to society's acculturation of that child into the correct sexuality and gender identity. The kids grow up to be masculine hetero males and feminine hetero females, and the cycle begins again. The only problem with this admirably simple scheme is that for millions of us it doesn't work. It didn't work for me, which is one good reason for writing this journal. To cram half of humanity into one little box or another little box is not possible. You might as well say there are only black people and white people, or only tall people and short people. Of course, nothing's that simple. What I want to explain and explore here is what it ccan be like to be elsewhere on the spectrum from male to female, not to mention that this can leave you in a strange relationship with the other sexes. Being an androgyne, which is wha I'd call myself, is a poorly understood and frequently misinterpreted state that most people have probably never even thought about. It's taken me long enough to get to grips with it myself, and I'm always expecting to learn more from other androgynes, genderqueers, intergender people or whatever other labels emerge over time. It's tempting to write a long diatribe on Day 1, but if might be better to have a series of well defined topics to tackle over a longer time, hopefully influenced by other people I come across who inhabit this between-gender space. There's the theoretical background, not that I'm trying to write your social science paper for you! The next entry will start to go into my personal reasons for being here. nicola Current Mood: contemplative (Comment on this)