Gender identity questions worth thinking about

Via figleaf, Bond @ Dear Diaspora has a series of questions aimed at helping those struggling with their gender identity to think about it more clearly.

Figleaf writes a bit more about it at his post, but it was really his decision to answer them that has encouraged me to post my answers here, too.

Without further ado, here are the results from the Snowdrop jury:

If a genie came to you and offered you one wish, to change your body in any way you like, what would your wish be? (Thanks to Rebecca for asking me this one some months ago.)

To be less hairy. My body's tendency to sprout hair all over the place is really annoying, because it's a constant anchor to male physical identity to the point where it inhibits me expressing my female personae. I would ask a genie to ensure I had no facial or body hair, only the hair on my head and my pubes would remain.

If you could either a) be born in the body of the other sex, with your same gender identity, or b) be born in this body, but be someone who never had gender dysphoria, which would you choose? Why?

I think I would choose to be the opposite sex but the same gender identity. Since I experience my gender identity as being fairly fluid anyway, I think being a woman but with my current male-ish ID would not be too hard. Being male with no real female/feminine leanings sounds like denying who I really am, because there is that feminine side to me and taking that away would take away a part of myself.

If you could either a) change yourself to have the body of the other sex or b) change the world so you’d be accepted unconditionally as your gender without changing your body, which would you choose? Why?

I would choose b) because having a body of the other sex wouldn't really resolve the fluidity; but having a world that was equally happy with me in a skirt or in trousers would make a huge difference to how happy I could be in society.

If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?

To be slimmer (but maybe keep the man-boobs!) I would like to be able to use a corset to produce in myself a genuine hourglass figure. In a way, this answer could swap places with the genie one (so I would ask the genie to give me my hourglass figure, and I would change my hairiness by waxing or shaving lots, I guess)

What would your gender identity be if you’d been born as the other sex? How masculine or feminine would you be? (This comes from an old one for when one is questioning her sexual orientation: What would your sexual orientation be if you were the other sex?)

Probably I would be a bit more feminine overall in expressing it, but I would still experience the same fluidity I think - I would have some very "mannish" traits as well as some stereotypically feminine traits, and oscillate between them.

In terms of sexual orientation, I think I would feel freer to express my basic bisexuality, and would find more men sexually attractive than I do at the moment, but I think partly the licence thing is to do with cultural norms that have been imposed (homophobia, and the girl-on-girl fantasy that men are allowed to enjoy). But I would definitely still be attracted to women, and I would also be attracted to men. I would probably identify as mostly heterosexual, but sex with women would also play a huge part in my sex (fantasy) life. I would, without a doubt, have a reputation as a slut. And I would be proud of that!

When given the opportunity to construct a persona, such as online, in writing, or in video games, what gender do you make yourself, and why?

I'm nearly always a woman, because that's the body I don't get to experience in real life. Even when I'm writing fiction, I very often make the first-person or focal character a woman, and identify most strongly with her (although I do worry, as figleaf does, about my tendency to make all the dialogue sound just like me). It is very much living out my desire to experience a female body as much as I have done a male body.

Jewish tradition teaches that each person has three names: the name she is given at birth, the name she is called, and her real name. What is your real name?

I find this really hard to answer. My birth-name is a (poorly-kept) secret from online space; my "name I am called" is Snowdrop (or Snowdrop Explodes). But I almost want my real name also to be Snowdrop, and that would be why it has stuck. But another part of me wants it to be different, and for some reason I have two possible names - "Valerie" (like my new guitar!) or "Vivian" (like Viv Richards, the awesome West Indian batsman). Both are names that can be given to boys or girls.

What gender were you in your past life?

This is even harder to answer, because I don't really believe in past lives. Intuitively, I want to say male-bodied but I am also drawn to the crossdressing of female figures like Joan of Arc, and the fabled Pope Joan. Queen Boudicca is another figure who appeals to me as a "past life", and that woman-in-traditionally-masculine-role figure might actually be the best guess I have. But really, I just don't know because I don't really have a way to think about it in my head that works for me.