Conversation

I think the thing other people are parsing as 'gender' isn't 'gender' to me. I talked with a nonbinary friend recently who described their nonbinaryness as sort of... not wanting to be misunderstood as having female traits. This is valid! This also is completely different from-

Aella

@Aella_Girl

Feb 5, 2020

what I understand as gender. I think there's some other huge cultural understanding of gender going on that isn't translating into my world. The way I parse gender, how well you are described by typical gender traits have very little to do with the gender you are.

Aella

@Aella_Girl

Feb 5, 2020

e.g., if you're an extremely masculine woman (like me!), this doesn't make you less of a woman. In the nonbinary gender framework, it seems like this *does* actually make you less of a woman. This is totally foreign to me.

Replying to

In what ways do you consider yourself to be masculine?

Aella

@Aella_Girl

Replying to

@EmmaGorowski

Tend towards systemic over social thinking; score low conscientiousness, very high openness, mid-range disagreeableness on the big 5. On autism spectrum. People tell me I'm masculine.

5:44 AM · Feb 5, 2020

Replying to

Interesting. I am very similar and while these traits are more common in males and can therefore be considered masculine I don’t consider myself to be a masculine person in general.