home/capstone



"Everyone's either a boy or a girl" -Dr. Gubitz, 2024


04.21.2024 Sun 21:44

  1. social exclusion, transgender identity; identification with men/masculinity, rejection of fem, & early queer identity
  2. MOGAI
    • labels
    • infinite genders for every person
  3. aro/ace discovery
    • autism discovery
  4. therefore: identification beyond typ queer labels
  5. otherkin
  6. multiplicity
  7. lesbianism
  8. social constructs, identity, and the development of queerness in autistic folk
    • identity--quilts & clay
    • aesthetics: my experience as an autistic plural person as it relates to identity (partic. gender)
    • gen gender theory
      • easy tie-in to readings, de beauvoir
    • attraction theory
  1. Social Exclusion and Being an Egg: My Early Queer Identity
    • stuffed animals gender change
    • "not transgender, just a girl who really really wants to be a boy"
    • no confidence to claim that identity as my own when i was so used to being forced into the role of girlhood
  2. MOGAI: Marginalized Orientations, Gender Alignments, and Intersex
  3. Ego-Death
  4. Neo-identities & Micro-labels
  5. Inhumanity: Otherkin Identity
  6. Multiplicity
  7. Transmasc Womanhood, Butch Boyhood, and Fagdykes
  8. The Social Constructs of Identity, Queerness, and Autism
+ add discush abut the trinary and binary?

04.22.2024 Mon 19:04
1. Social Exclusion and Being an Egg: My Early Queer Identity

From the age of one to four, I treated all my stuffies like girls. I recall once I took a red marker and colored two of their mouths, like I was giving them lipstick. Once it settled in that it wouldn't wash out, I cried for hours. At some point around the age of five, I began identifying all my stuffed animals as boys. I went from calling them she and her and dressing them up in dresses to using he and him and giving them more "masculine" personalities (whatever that means for a stuffed animal). They became to me, boys. It just seemed fitting that they were boys. Them being girls seemed plain wrong.

I was always a rowdy child. Argumentative, sassy, dismissive of authority, not to mention angry. I went to maybe 4 different pre-schools in an attempt to find one that "worked for me". I was technically shy, but perpetually loud and disobedient when something didn't sit right with me. I think my parents, especially my dad, liked having a masculine girl. So they didn't discourage my tomboy-ish character. My mother herself wasn't exactly gender conforming when she was young growing up in a hyper-gendered teen culture in Venezuela, and so she resonated with my rejection of femininity. Not to mention being the youngest and favorite child, I was never expected to be obedient or submissive, which surely fueled my "masculine" mischeif. I was also apparently already intelligent and divergent from my peers, something I'm sure my parents resonated with, and they simply found my quirkiness to be a result of my budding intelligence. My mother's friends at Google found me cute and charming; I was surrounded by people who knew childhood deviance firsthand and by consequence they expected me to simply grow out of it and become an adult like them. I think my father thought of me as both fragile in my girlhood but rogueish in my masculinity, which made it both easy to relate to me and easy to feel possession over me.

My parents used to put me in dresses, and I was very cute--but as I grew I began to prefer and to dress myself in more masculine attire. I was always drawn to acting in masculine roles, and from a young age wanted to be a knight. In make believe with my sister I always wanted to play the masculine savior. Nevertheless, I was a girl, and I acted my part. I sought male validation and played the part of the cool girl. I think even from such a young age, first grade even, I found myself drawn to appealing to men as "one of them" while being desireable. I remember throughout my first grade year, I had had several boyfriends. I remember trying to keep up with the boys on the playground and in foot races. Jumping over rocks. I was always nervous, I think. I don't think I was ever particularly reckless, maybe it's just not in my nature. I've never been brave, exactly. Which unfortunately, puts me at the disadvantage for sports, roughousing, and other boyish activities. I think this duality has always existed in me. A fearful yet mischevous, feminine yet masculine, little kid. Little boy, little girl. Both wrong, both right. I want to run and jump but im a coward with a low pain tolerance and an unfortunate emotional attachment to my limbs.

In the second grade I met Daniela. They were my best friend all through the rest of elementary school, until I moved to Boulder, CO. Even then I didn't really stop calling Dani my best friend until maybe junior year. We still talk, still have the same sense of humor, still love each other. It's funny, we both ended up trans, aroace, and autistic. I mean I know we attract each other but wow, at such a young age. Daniela was absolutely my only friend through the entirety of elementary school, and honestly most social engagement, particularly the need to make new friends faded away. I have memories here and there of chasing attention, but for the most part it's just Daniela and I, hanging out, doing odd shit. We played a lot of Minecraft. I did still occasionally chase male validation, and in fact, I remember fantasizing about it. It's not the clearest, but I remember really badly wanting to be like-liked by a boy, all the boys, any boy. I wanted to act hard to get, I wanted to reject boys, but first they needed to like me. I remember being curious, watching them play their games. But I stuck to my crowd. I still dressed masculine, had my hair up all the time, uncaring about my appearence, nothing really seemed to work so, why would I care anyways.

Middle school was... rough. An undiagnosed autistic girl with too much confidence, not enough fear, and not nearly enough social skill. I still look back and wonder at how I never got bullied. Maybe I did, honestly, and either didn't notice or can't remember, but it's shocking it wasn't worse for me. Granted, I witnessed so much rejection and dismissal and ostracism in those three years it solidified something in me: That I'd never get a single boy, man, whatever, to look at me. To really look at me. I don't remember much from that time but the feeling of quite literally being looked down upon. I spent nearly everyday in fear from the crippling social anxiety and the complete and utter insecurity. I didn't have a single genuine friend all those years. I jumped around trying to find my way into any male friendgroup I could in search of someplace I could feel like I had both feet on solid ground. I honestly couldn't give exact details but to say that I remember just being drenched in fear, all day, everyday.

I think that's when I started becoming really, really angry. Don't get me wrong, elementary school wasn't sweet peaches either, I still had home to deal with, but middle school was. Like an affirmation of everything I'd ever learned from my father. I grew canines. Learned to tuck my tail between my legs and play pretty. Play ugly. Play whatever worked to make people notice me in the corner. Middle school is tinted with a deep dark gut wrenching anxiety, the look of boy's uncaring faces, and my father's fear-inducing presence. I think I learned about trans people in middle school, too. I don't remember it really. But apparently since I learned they existed somewhere, I had periods of denial punctuated by moments of doubt. I thought: maybe. Maybe I could be a boy. Let's be honest though, given how much ostracism I'd experienced from boyhood in school despite literally everything my poor little body could muster, how was I to proclaim to the world I was actually a boy? It wasn't that easy, I thought. I'm just a girl. Just a girl. That's the real message I suppose I took away from middle school. I spent every waking day trying to get somebody, anybody to recognize my humanity. Maybe just to call me a friend. Looking through old papers in my room, I came across this old journal entry of mine. I don't exactly want to go searching for it, since it fucking sucked to read, but it said something along the lines of... "I've been thinking lately about the possibility of being transgender. I've come to the conclusion that I'm not. I'm not a boy. I've just romanticized it. I'm just a girl who really, really wants to be a boy." Being rejected to thoroughly from boyhood succesfully taught me that I was not permitted into that camp; Who was I to claim boyhood for myself when boyhood had already so rejected me? Girls were not allowed to be boys. Especially not this one. The closest I ever acheived to what I had chased was probably Peter. Out of his whole friendgroup, Peter was the only person who I think at least treated me with respect. I felt maybe like a friend, like a person in his eyes. When I cut my hair for the first time and called them, they said they wanted their Sam back. That was the day after in a breakdown in the middle of the night, I came out as trans to my mom and sister in 8th grade. That haircut was probably the first time I ever looked in the mirror and liked what I saw. I think I genuinely gave up on them in that moment.


2. MOGAI: Marginalized Orientations, Gender Alignments, & Intersex >

I only managed to piece myself together with the help of a queer Discord server called Spectrum. After I "came out" to my mom and sister, which was almost nearly on accident? I was in trans limbo for a while. I think most nearly every trans person has agonized over the question of whether they were "trans enough", and I certainly am not the exception. I knew I had some attachment still to womanhood, femininity, but I knew I was so deeply and utterly drawn to boyhood, that it felt right and so disgustingly relieving. I remember a couple days after my coming out, with my new haircut, I put on my most boyish clothes and took I think my first ever little photoshoot in front of my mirror. I can still remember that night because of just how joyous I was. Just how happy I was at my own reflection. On the night that I came out I remember somehow I ended up dming with a transman, young, I think just 16, probably only two years older than I. He, that night, through our discussion, made me come to realization that I was a transman too, since I was unsure about whether or not I was even cis, much less a "full" transman. It's common perception that transitioning to "the opposite" binary gender (eg transitioning into a binary man/woman) is "the most" trans somebody can be. The same (flawed) logic says that non-binary people aren't trans "enough" to be trans. Case and point, I met a lot of very interesting people there, and my time spent there was time learning about (the/a) forefront of queer discussion. There will always be several hubs of development when it comes to movements (??) like contemporary queer/LGBTQIA+-ness. I was exposed to what many people call "MOGAI", which stands for "Marginalized Identities, Gender Alignments, and Intersex". Which in actuality was created to be an alternate acronym to LGBTQIA+ and to the word "Queer/ness", since many felt unsatisfied. People dislike LGBTQIA+ because it's a tongue-twister, NOT exactly easy to say--and because it's inherently unencompassing despite the "+", since it's just a collection of common identities. Many people don't feel particularly comfortable with the word "Queer" because it's still used actively as a slur, and don't want to be identified as part of the community through that word since they have not consented to its usage. Despite this, MOGAI today means something more specific than just being an alternate label for this specific marginalized community. MOGAI is associated and used practically to refer to the community surrounding and creating neo-labels. Neo-labels are exactly what they sound like: newer labels, but are in particular typically hyper-specific, unconventional, complex, and unique. However, both the words "MOGAI" and "neo-labels" are used in derogatory ways to refer to queer identities and people whom they find illegitemite. MOGAI does stand in a sort-of contrary position to what are called "transmeds", who believe that transness specifically is a clinical condition, and have strict conditions for the validity of trans identities which most often have to do with transitioning medically. MOGAI is also used alongside otherkin identities (often mistakenly described as a "furry" identity) to invalidate transness as a whole by terfs and other anti-LGBTQ positions. Nonetheless, MOGAI is still used as an in-community identifier. MOGAI Neo-labels are coined very liberally, and can sometimes overlap, but the culture has much more to do with creativity and freedom of expression using and creating labels, so this is not particularly an issue. One key label/identity to come from MOGAI is the xenogender. A xenogender is a gender which is defined in terms completely distinct from the gender binary and it's associated spectrum, nouns, and adjectives. That is to say, it cannot be described by either the man/woman spectrum nor the masculine/feminine spectrum. It cannot be described as adrogynous or neutral or both or neither. Xenogenders transcend the binary such that the gender can only be described through sensual experiences, or abstract concepts. Another concept associated with MOGAI is neo-pronouns, which has been the target for much anti-MOGAI discourse. In the Spectrum discord, I learned about these concepts which to many queer people come rather slowly and reluctantly and I met people who greatly identified with them and found joy and happiness using them. MOGAI is also closely associated with many other "weird kid" online communities. Scene, emo, furry culture, anything you can think of that's cringe, really. Nowadays, in many places on the internet, "cringe culture" is recognized widely as an ableist trend which attacks and harms (queer) neurodivergent people, especially kids, for the sake of mainting a cultural status-quo. The phrase "cringe culture is dead" began appearing as a means to express the open and accepting culture that people wanted to create in online spaces. Another MOGAI identity is the Neurogender. Neurogender is a label which is to be used to describe a gender experience which is influenced by someone's Neurodivergency. Online in the past few years, there's been a massive upsurgance in Autistic (self-)identification (professional diagnosis or not), particularly within the Queer community, and especially within the MOGAI community. Despite neo-label coining having gone down in popularity, the impacts and lasting cultural impacts of MOGAI attitudes and concepts have been immense. Xenogender is probably the most well-known term outside the MOGAI community. I don't think I identified with it as soon as I found it, no. I first found the gender identity "Bigender", which describes the experience of having two genders. Those genders can exist simultaneously, and/or be fluid. Bigender exists under the Multigender umbrella. I personally deeply identified with the idea of being (simultaneously) man/woman Bigender. That is, being both a binary Man and a binary Woman. That being said, Multigender identities are inherently non-binary. To be binary means to be EITHER 100% a man or a woman 100% of the time. That being said, it is flexible, and this is only in technical terms. Individuals decide whether or not they identify with whatever label in question. For a while, I identified as man/woman Bigender, at which some point I began gender therapy at my request. This is 9th grade. I remain with the same therapist to this day. I found that slowly, over what I assume to be a period of months, I slowly began to identify less and less with being a woman (though I personally called it "girl"). Around the same time, I began to realize I did in fact feel some other gender there alonside man and woman. As the woman faded, this other gender (which I very creatively titled "Other") became more and more prominent. I remember lying in bed and thinking, being on Pinterest, actually, and browsing (? unsure) pictures of forests. I realized--somehow, I don't remember--that I in actuality identified deeply with it, and that it was in fact the "Other" gender I had been experiencing. I felt very gendered, not neutral, or empty. It was an extremely palpable and now-clear sense of identity with and in the idea, concept, and experience of forests. So, knowing what Xenogenders were, I realized I myself had one. At some point, the feeling of being a woman faded into the background. That began a nearly three-year static gender identity. My transition goals were that of a typical transboy, despite my gender identity being to me much richer and complex. I've gone by a few neopronouns in my day. Xe/xym, hy/hym, uhh, definitely more. I don't quite remember. I don't remember exactly when I started going by Ben, but before that I spent a while with Sam (short for Samantha) knowing I wanted to change it but not really resonating with anything. I went at some point for a bit by Red. Which was short for Redacted, simply because I was irritated I couldn't find a name that fit.

3. Ego-Death and First-Relationship Panic Attacks

Whoo, now time for a rather, sticky, section. This time in my life was, essentially between 9th and 10th, but bleeds into both extremes rather heavily. 9th grade because it was the set-up, and 10th because of the fall-out. I won't speak much on the incident itself, but rather it's effects on me. If I haven't already gone back and talked more about it. I didn't—and don't—have many friends. In fact, for the majority of high-school I'd say I had no friends. A lot of my failure in middle-school was in fact what I can now recognize as simply, me, as an undiagnosed autistic person, experiencing rather crippling social hell because of my inability to know what the fuck was going on ("social deficits", -DSM 5). I'll call what happened The Incident, and the period afterwards The Fallout, for convenience. I think The Fallout is techincally—from what I can remember of my life (not much)—my lowest point. It was not a good couple of months for certain. I definitely split my life into before and after the incident. I can barely really consider myself "awake" before it. I don't see myself in who I was before; I don't want to. Long, long story short: the fact of my own social incompetence was revealed in a rather sudden manner, and the perception I had of myself broke down—completely. At the end of the day, I say I experienced what I affectionately call an "ego-death". Not just did I lose my sense of self, but I lost all self-worth as well. Not that it was high in the first place. The only thing that gave me the hold to pull myself up was actually learning about Autism. Ironically, only a couple months before, my mother's work (Google, filled to the brim with autistics) had an ? Autism awareness/acceptance day. I remember my mom calling me into her office and showing a video of this man describing his experience in childhood with special interests; He had been obsessed with the concept of infinity his whole life that it sounded a lot like me, right? And I said I don't think so mom, Autistic people had social deficiences, and I didn't (LIE, HUGE LIE AND FALLACY, I WAS NOT CORRECT ABOUT THIS ONE). I almost don't know what to say here, since I don't want to talk in much detail about The Incident. The Fallout... I suppose the main things about it were that I was wracked with so much guilt (not particularly for good reason it was more so aligned with the destruction of my identity and the disillusionment with the ideal of a social life) that I didn't exactly think I deserved to live. I found myself, so, panicked. All the time. And so completely crippled by guilt. I told nobody though. Nobody knew. In fact, despite having had a therapist during the time (the gender therapist who does in fact deal with the other, more typical therapist things, as they specialized in trauma and specifically EMDR), I couldn't talk to them about it for months. I think my therapist was really the first person I told, too. At this time, I do think I already had a full-fledged case of BPD, which, if you're unfamiliar, can essentially be summed up by saying that I've got crippling abandonment issues. I think this played a major role in why The Incident was so destructive. I was already incredibly fragile, and I think, truly understanding maybe, my own failure? sent what I had spent so long building crashing to the ground. I think (I honestly don't remember, but I can speculate based on the things I do know, like the crushing guilt. the destruction of self, the sense of loss, of it all being for nothing, of hopelessness, of horror) it was just realizing that the revelation of my social failure meant I had spent the entirety of my life consumed in some pointless, agonizing, self-sacrifical pursuit of something I was never capable of having. That I was always delusioned. That, everything I knew about myself, who I was and where I fit in, everything I thought I knew about the social condition was ruined. Exposed as a lie and a farce. I knew even I myself was a fallacy, and I felt just like, some extreme burden. Like the world was just worse with me in it. Like I genuinely didn't deserve any space in society, and that I ought to be expulsed (die). I was just, there was just something deeply wrong with me. I was a monster. And I had no idea why. I just was, incorrect. Something was clearly warped in my mind, perverted into some foul shape. This is, apparently, a deeply damaging perspective to have on oneself. I remember actually at some point promising myself that I wouldn't try and make friends ever again. That I would simply be alone. I don't remember how, but I (very) slowly (!!!) began to consider Autism. Autism here, was my savior. I honestly can remember very little about this time. I remember vague scenes here and there, but there's absolutely no through-line. I remember,, a couple scenes close after The Incident and then the next thing I remember with any clarity is talking to my then-psychiatrist with a list I had written out of behavior I believed to be Autism symptoms. It wasn't easy for people to believe me, particularly my mother. It took my psychiatrist giving me a diagnosis for her to maybe buy into it, but I had to fight with her to even seek one. Clinical diagnosis and psychological help have always been uphill battles in my family. Nonetheless, I attribute my recovery nearly entirely to realizing I was autistic.

I find that many unaware Autistic adults have a particular mindset as it concerns their abnormality. Certainly at some point coming face to face with their deviancy, there are many ways the brain can reconcile this fact. Most undiagnosed Autistic adults I've come across rely heavily on the notion (and fallacy!) that "nobody's normal" and that "we're all weird in our own way", also presented sometimes as "everyone's different". On the face of it this doesn't exactly seem like harmful rhetoric. And I think certainly it was created and implemented with the genuine intention of reducing social ostracization and bullying within schools by disencouraging the creation of cliques and the all-consuming school-age status quo. Even so, the implementation fails to address the countless sources of pressure which uphold the institution of normalcy, or standardization, which compell children, teens, and adults to perpetuate the social construct of "normalcy". "Nobody's normal" serves very much the same role as color-blind rhetoric does in racial justice. Incapable of agknowleding that our society is built to orbit around the concept of a perfect individual, it's not even a band-aid solution. Typically the notion of "everyone's unique", despite intending to pull marginalized kids back into the social sphere, works exclusively to increase understanding between already-normal children. It expands what normal children can be, but not the bandwith of tolerance for children who can't fit in. Case and point the bandwith of tolerance remains firmly in place. This denial of reality always serves to put me off. "Nobody's normal" is typically only used within the context of making someone you, the speaker, already understand feel better about something odd or shameful. It's downfall is that it fails to undo any measure of the societal construction of normalcy, and can only be used within already existing cliques, groups, or communities. Without public knowledge and exposure, social ostracization is complete. In this context, relatability is normalcy. No single unique individal will ever be normal, those two things are contrary. Normal only exists within the context of relatability, of understanding, of the collective. But I digress... Many unaware Autistic adults simply, in essence, learn self-compassion. This can happen however only if there's an outside source of validation of value. One common example is academic success. Someone may be social deviant, but with academic success as a source of validation of self-worth and value the social deviancy wont ruin someone. Make it through the system, suceed in life, and you can convince yourself you're normal because you eventually fit into working society. You become, or at least always were partially, normal. Normalcy is just societal success.

I was capable of hiding under this success until about 8th grade. Late 7th, early 8th. My 8th grade was the onset of covid, and the last few months I actually spent at my grandmother's house in this little bedroom isolated off the side. I stopped attending classes. I didn't do any homework. I rotted. 7th-9th grade was when I can say was essentially the onset of my Mental Illness era. My grades started falling off in 8th and I couldn't do homework. I can't remember the summer at all. I also think 7th through eigth was when the stuff with my father kicked off? I don't know... Either way, I was really able to get by on my academics, and thought still had potential socially. In 9th my attention turned away from men and I started thoroughly identifying with and seeking out the the Queer community. I had just come out and was still figuring myself out, but I knew the only people I found myself safe with was queer people. It began to dawn on me then what my old dynamic truly was: A desperate grasp for straws in the dark. Like I said before, realizing it had all been fradulous, everything I thought about myself a lie; Fragile identity shattered, but the worst part was that I was the fist that had dealt the final blow. Where was I going with this? Ah yes, confronted with the fact of my own abnormality, I was crushed to learn just what a freak I was. And I became defined in that moment, in the absence of a self, by guilt and disgust and self-hatred and horror. There was nothing for a creature such as me in the world—And there ought not to be! I was a blight upon society. I was void of any redeeming characteristic. My intelligence couldn't save my putrid soul. Because was I even intelligent (ah I have found what I actually went on this digression for)? I had become at the very least an academic failure. Failure. What a defining word. Everything had fallen out of my hands


4. Neo-identities & Micro-labels

So, there I was: Genderqueer, aroace, disentangling myself from near every binary presented to me. Finding myself outside their delineation and scrambling to find some reason for the way I was.


5. Inhumanity: Otherkin Identity
6. Multiplicity
7. Transmasc Womanhood, Butch Boyhood, and Fagdykes

v01 Through some sort of evolution (which took place in my car while listening to car seat headrest driving home from Camilla Hildebrand's house), two alters I previously called Ben (proper) and Marina I believe may have merged. I think in a way they do still exist in their own gradients, but there's a new intersection. At the time I was maybe only a week into my Car Seat Headrest hyperfocus, but still had immersed myself in enough Car Seat Headrest and analogous material that I had built a "texture" about it [1]. I had been listening to There Must Be Blood on repeat, which I do very rarely with songs, but this song really has a grip on me. In that moment--usually im too numb--I was really in tune with the music and was having such a great time that I began to tear up and laugh hysterically. In that moment, in my joy. It truly felt like I had coalesced. There is a distinct sense of being new. This newness was defined by essentially three things, 1. a transmasc meme, which reads "AS A MAN, THE FIRST GIRL YOU WILL RUIN IS YOURSELF", 2. Car Seat Headrest, and particularly the song There Must Be Blood, and 3. lesbian tumblr. It was curious because in particular I knew I identified with a masculinity, a man-quality in Car Seat Headrest. The picture, its colors, its whole texture, resonated with me such that I knew I was it. On the other hand, I still deeply resonated with the lesbian identity Marina had adopted. I knew I was still oriented towards women and that I still felt a distinct sense of kinship towards women.

v02 I am, as of writing this, the twenty-fourth of april 2024, a transman lesbian. There has been much discourse and controversy on the idea of men as lesbians, and I dont exactly feel the need to defend myself, but I will explain how I wear this label for context, since it does in fact seem contradictory on the face of it. Essentially, I'm not exactly a "real" man. I spent a long time trying to truly bury the last of my girlhood. It would crop up time and time again. Anything from wanting to dress feminine to feeling uncomfortable being grouped with boys instead of girls. Realizing I was plural allowed that repressed part of me to materialize into Marina, and she took initiative.

Lesbianism. Just going to describe it here. My lesbianism, that is. So clearly, I'm a transmasc lesbian. If you've ever heard discourse surrounding "he/him" lesbians, I'm that (despite my pronouns not necessarily being he/him. This is because the controversy stems from the sentiment that a lesbian cannot be masculine or man-aligned identity-wise to as to possibly use he/him pronouns. My they/them pronouns do not reflect a neutrality of identity. My identity is firmly masc and man-aligned. I am a transman). My lesbian identity has a lot to do with my experiences with men growing up as a girl. It's about being gendered in a binary world, and how I find myself relating to strangers and my closest friends. It has to do with how I want to be seen, how I want to be grouped, categorized, where I find my identity landing within the binary. I'll stop teasing vagueries and get a little more specific. My lesbianism means that in this binary environment, I find myself facing away from men and towards women, from within the category of women itself. The complexity arises when we examine exactly what it means to belong or find oneself in or to identify with one category or the other.

great article describing the transmasc gendered experience; transandrophobia
8. The Social Constructs of Identity, Queerness, & Autism

[1] analogous material, describe "texture"