here's that longer post, but keep in mind i'm halfway through a bottle of soju rn
so as a binary trans person, i often had a difficult time understanding the really specific genders and gender identities i'll see. obviously i'll still support them, but i had trouble understanding. and that's just because my gender journey has been different.
sometimes (in less than positive circles) i'll see bad faith arguments against people with these genders like "the census isn't going to mark you down as 'catgender' lmao" which is annoying because i've never seen anyone say that?
the thesis of this post started to prickle in my head when i saw genderqueer mutuals of mine reblogging that post that was like "what is the gender identity you describe yourself as around cis people, and what's the specific one you actually identify as?" reading through people's responses and the way they described the nuances of their genders made me go
"oh shit, it's all music"
because if i'm listening to altar of plagues and my coworker asks what kind of music i'm listening to, i'm just going to say "metal". and if my grandma asks, i'll just say "rock". but if i'm talking to another person who i know is familiar with metal, that's when i feel like i wouldn't be wasting my breath going into specifics. because i know they'd know how describing a band as "black metal" is different than describing one as "power metal" or whatever.
that's what a lot of bad faith arguments around nonbinary genders don't seem to realize. they're not for the cishet majority to understand. i'd even argue that they're not for binary trans people to understand either, considering it took me this long to understand.
but it seems like when people talk about their gender through the lens of anything that goes beyond just male, female, or even strictly nonbinary, it comes from a place of wanting to discuss the nuances of gender identity.
like here's an interaction between two hip-hop heads that has never happened:
person 1: i like memphis rap -- specifically horrorcore.
person 2: okay, i have no followup questions. let's talk about something that has nothing to do with rap or music.
like if someone is coming out as cloudgender to you, it's because they think you're someone who can hang and talk about what that means. what does "cloudgender" mean to you? is it the constantly-shifting state? the association with the weather? the moodiness? the same way two people could have a 6 hour heated discussion about the differences between delta blues and hill country blues, but if you played a charley patton song back to back with an rl burnside song, some people who aren't familiar with blues won't be able to tell the difference. you might as well play the same song twice. so if someone identifies as a demigirl in some circles but to you they just say they're nonbinary or even just "female", they clocked you as a gender normie lol.
and just like gender, genre "doesn't exist", but it still has societal impact. a lot of the blues i listen to wouldn't sound out of place next to country artists. where are the lines? race? class? culture? all of the above? and this becomes muddier when you look at marketing. being plastered with a specific genre can be the kiss of death for your mainstream career, or the thing that pushes you to the top. it's a social construct, but we are social people.
anyway, i hope this makes sense. as a binary trans person i'm not sure where i fit in this analogy. maybe it's like i listened to a bunch of specific subgenres and went like "yeah these all scratch the same itch for me". but if people find meaning within the nichest of niche genres, i think that's amazing. you are an onion and you just kept peeling. when i see people with identities like bloodgender or flowergender, i see someone with a much more nuanced and complex relationship with their gender than i ever could have. i see poetry. i see music.
the booze is catching up with me.
