[Kobi]

Originally Posted by DapperButch

Hi, Kobi. My guess is you define as a female identified butch, correct?

The second part of the question is if you call people who do not identify as trans, cissexed, bio male or bio female, or xy male and xx female in conversation.

Dapper,

Sparkle's post rang true to me and may explain why I am having so much difficulty with this.

I never experienced a discrepancy between the internal and external manifestations of my gender. I am a female/woman. The struggles others may experience in this area was never part of my experience or mindset or thought process.

I also never experienced any discrepancy between my gender and my sexual orientation. I am a lesbian. It never occured to me to have to or want to define myself as male or female identified. It's kind of like what part of lesbian isnt clear?

The only discrepancies I have run into are the ones where my sense of who I am as a woman and a lesbian conflict with societal expectations/definitions/labels of what a woman and lesbian are.

I feel the same discrepancy within the queer subculture which seems more comfortable using labels/concepts that dont fit who I am as a way to define who I am for whatever purpose it may serve.

In my everyday life, I refer to myself as a lesbian which implies both my gender and sexual orientation. I rarely have the need to label it further.

In everyday life, I refer to others as male or female. It never occured to me to define or have the need to define their journey to male or female. After my exposure to gender issues/discussions on this site, it still seemed more respectful, to me, to refer to the end product, so to speak, rather than the journey when dealing with individuals. Maybe I need to rethink this.

I do see how on a societal level, agreeing on acceptable terms/label/descriptors would be helpful in furthering gender exploration/development/possibilites and integrating them into the prevailing binary system.