Oh Noez! What about Teh Menz? -Patriarchy isn't a dude's friend EITHER!

[Pope Pixie Pickle]

eh, I wear feminine cut clothes mostly, but I like a tie with a collared shirt sometimes. I sometimes wear a collared shirt and tie with a skirt.

I'm usually femme-y presentation mode more often than the occasional dudely attire just for the yuks, although day-to day I'm a jeans and tee-shirt or more femme top, with boots or converse, and hair plaited because IDK what the fuck to do with it.

I totally wanted to be a boy when I was 3 though, and was always a tomboy who hated skirts and dresses, I only got the dresses and skirts thing at about 14.

I'd never consider being seen outwardly as androgynous as something that would ever happen to me because BOOBS and mine aren't small, although I hated having large boobs as a teen and totally wanted a reduction, because unwanted attention and creepyness, as well as not being able to find pretty and comfy and cheap bras. It's only got worse since then on the buying bras front, although I'm not wanting a reduction anymore.

I'm pretty comfortable with my body these days, including being slightly overweight, but I'm a lifelong tomboy type who likes to rock a dress or a girl-suit with trousers (I don't feel comfortable in skirt suits.) and maybe a tie. I think I'd feel more comfortable in a skirt suit shirt and tie than a traditionally feminine office/interview get up.

[Anna Mae Bollocks]

That is a fucking awful test.

Good, it's not just me. 

TBH, it's really hard to explain. For me, it was an innate sense of not being what I was supposed to be. I don't know how it worked for other queers or how to explain it better than that.

Not trying to troll or act a dumbfuck here, but I'm totally confused at this point.

Sometimes when I watch old movies, I get off into a thing where I'm thinking how cool it would be to look like the female lead. Not a sexual thing, I just wish I could BE that for awhile, if I had those eyes, that shape, moved like that, etc. I feel like my shit's all fucked up...body image thing. Is it kind of like that, but opposite sexed?

I suppose it can be, if you're transsexual. Dysmorphia is a bit like that, except it involves feeling alienated from your body and THIS DOES NOT BELONG HERE (ime, anyway; ask ten queers what being queer is like and you'll get a hundred answers).

That is a fucking awful test.

Good, it's not just me. 

TBH, it's really hard to explain. For me, it was an innate sense of not being what I was supposed to be. I don't know how it worked for other queers or how to explain it better than that.

Not trying to troll or act a dumbfuck here, but I'm totally confused at this point.

Sometimes when I watch old movies, I get off into a thing where I'm thinking how cool it would be to look like the female lead. Not a sexual thing, I just wish I could BE that for awhile, if I had those eyes, that shape, moved like that, etc. I feel like my shit's all fucked up...body image thing. Is it kind of like that, but opposite sexed?

Kind of, but think more on a daily basis and that you don't fit the usual gender roles that you were born with.

Awful test was awful, reckoned I was mentally androgynous, and a female to male crossdresser, (I just like wearing suits and ties, and trousers a lot..)and that I'm weird because bisexuals don't usually do that, but I socialise in a feminine manner.

^^ Yes. I do a lot of man-drag when I'm...masculine or whatever you want to call it. This end of the gender spectrum for me (which involves a whole set of different subconscious behaviors than the other end).

Thanks, I think I'm starting to see it a little. 

[East Coast Hustle]

I admit, I still don't understand it, not that my understanding is necessary. But I appreciate everyone who has taken the time to try to explain it to me.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

OK...

So I think we've established that women in our culture get shafted. I think we've established that our current culture focuses on white males from an advertising/consumer perspective.

So, what can men do that would help women in this situation?

We've discussed considering the sort of swear words used.
We've discussed how we as individuals behave/treat women and not ignoring guys in our social group that act like asshats toward women.

What else can guys do to help the situation?

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

That is a fucking awful test.

TBH, it's really hard to explain. For me, it was an innate sense of not being what I was supposed to be. I don't know how it worked for other queers or how to explain it better than that.

My guess is that it was written by a child.

[Verbal Mike]

ECH, I'm very far from being able to explain this from personal experience, but maybe that can actually be advantageous, assuming my (intellectual) understanding of the concept is similar to that of people who have had to deal with it more seriously... Basically, I think of it like this: society provides a set of templates, mainly focussed on behavior, which people are grouped into. People are subtly trained as children to (a) categorize people by these templates (in our culture, "boy/man" and "girl/woman") and (b) adjust their behavior to fit the template expected of them (in our culture, based purely on their junk.) While there may be some overlap between natural predispositions of male and female and expectations of boy/man and girl/woman, the gender templates are socially constructed and not really biologically anchored. And while heterosexual attraction patterns are part of the template, they seem to be autonomous, to some degree, from both biological sex and social gender. Hence, you can have a person whose junk made their parents train them to be a boy/man, but for some reason they identify with the girl/woman template more and don't suppress behavior that matches it – maybe to the degree that they don't see themselves, and don't act, like a boy/man. That person might still happen to be attracted to women, or they may be attracted to men; this isn't necessarily part of having a gender that doesn't match society's expectations. (I know a transguy who went through a sex-change operation but kept at least the womb, married a cis guy who apparently isn't attracted exclusively to women, and recently had his child.)

Hope this perspective helps somehow, and I heartily invite the LGBTQ and otherwise better-informed than myself to correct me where I'm wrong. Actually, I beg you to, since I really want to make sure I get this right.

[Juana]

OK...

So I think we've established that women in our culture get shafted. I think we've established that our current culture focuses on white males from an advertising/consumer perspective.

So, what can men do that would help women in this situation?

We've discussed considering the sort of swear words used.
We've discussed how we as individuals behave/treat women and not ignoring guys in our social group that act like asshats toward women.

What else can guys do to help the situation?

Listen. Don't try to take control of a conversation about women or women's experiences. If another guy tries to do either of the latter two, tell them to sit down and shut the fuck up (because your voice is louder than ours; why do you think guys get kudos when they say they're feminists?)

That is a fucking awful test.

TBH, it's really hard to explain. For me, it was an innate sense of not being what I was supposed to be. I don't know how it worked for other queers or how to explain it better than that.

My guess is that it was written by a child.

For sure.

ECH, I'm very far from being able to explain this from personal experience, but maybe that can actually be advantageous, assuming my (intellectual) understanding of the concept is similar to that of people who have had to deal with it more seriously... Basically, I think of it like this: society provides a set of templates, mainly focussed on behavior, which people are grouped into. People are subtly trained as children to (a) categorize people by these templates (in our culture, "boy/man" and "girl/woman") and (b) adjust their behavior to fit the template expected of them (in our culture, based purely on their junk.) While there may be some overlap between natural predispositions of male and female and expectations of boy/man and girl/woman, the gender templates are socially constructed and not really biologically anchored. And while heterosexual attraction patterns are part of the template, they seem to be autonomous, to some degree, from both biological sex and social gender. Hence, you can have a person whose junk made their parents train them to be a boy/man, but for some reason they identify with the girl/woman template more and don't suppress behavior that matches it – maybe to the degree that they don't see themselves, and don't act, like a boy/man. That person might still happen to be attracted to women, or they may be attracted to men; this isn't necessarily part of having a gender that doesn't match society's expectations. (I know a transguy who went through a sex-change operation but kept at least the womb, married a cis guy who apparently isn't attracted exclusively to women, and recently had his child.)

Hope this perspective helps somehow, and I heartily invite the LGBTQ and otherwise better-informed than myself to correct me where I'm wrong. Actually, I beg you to, since I really want to make sure I get this right.

That sounds about right, actually.

[LMNO]

Incidentally, at what point did Transvestites drop off of the "trans*" label?

That is, people like Ed Wood and Eddie Izzard--  Heterosexual (in this case, white also) male-identifying males who have a need to wear women's clothes. 

To be more blunt, straight guys in drag who aren't trying to be women.  Calling them "cishetero" doesn't seem to apply... however: They identify with their biological gender, and are attracted to the opposite gender.

WHAT DO?

[Salty]

OK...

So I think we've established that women in our culture get shafted. I think we've established that our current culture focuses on white males from an advertising/consumer perspective.

So, what can men do that would help women in this situation?

We've discussed considering the sort of swear words used.
We've discussed how we as individuals behave/treat women and not ignoring guys in our social group that act like asshats toward women.

What else can guys do to help the situation?

Listen. Don't try to take control of a conversation about women or women's experiences. If another guy tries to do either of the latter two, tell them to sit down and shut the fuck up (because your voice is louder than ours; why do you think guys get kudos when they say they're feminists?)

You will have to forgive my ignorance, but I thought Rat was just asking questions to further the conversation. How is he trying to take control. I feel theres a large aspect to this whole thing I'm just not getting.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Incidentally, at what point did Transvestites drop off of the "trans*" label?

That is, people like Ed Wood and Eddie Izzard--  Heterosexual (in this case, white also) male-identifying males who have a need to wear women's clothes. 

To be more blunt, straight guys in drag who aren't trying to be women.  Calling them "cishetero" doesn't seem to apply... however: They identify with their biological gender, and are attracted to the opposite gender.

WHAT DO?

I think that's when you have a "fuck it!" moment.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Also, this is what that stupid fucking test had to say about me (I do not recommend wasting your time taking it)

S.A.G.E. Test Results

Your Raw Score is: -640, which indicates that overall you are Masculine

Your appearance is Androgynous

Your brain processes are mostly that of a Male person.

You appear to socialize in a masculine manner.

You believe you have mild conflicts about your gender identity.

You indicated your were born Female.

ANALYSIS:
Female to Male Transsexual, who is a serious candidate for Gender Reassignment Surgery

Riiiight. 

[Juana]

I don't know that I would have ever included transvestites under the trans* label. It's really short for transgender, which comes in a lot of different flavors because it's about transcending the gender binary (transsexuals, genderqueers etc. although there's a lot of intracommunity discussion as to whether people who aren't actually transsexuals should be included as trans*. I personally feel uncomfortable claiming "trans*" because I primarily associate it with transsexuals, which I am not, and transsexuals fall into a whole different category than people like me).
If you are a male-assigned-a-birth man, who happens to cross dress (regardless of who you're attracted to), then I wouldn't call you trans*.

OK...

So I think we've established that women in our culture get shafted. I think we've established that our current culture focuses on white males from an advertising/consumer perspective.

So, what can men do that would help women in this situation?

We've discussed considering the sort of swear words used.
We've discussed how we as individuals behave/treat women and not ignoring guys in our social group that act like asshats toward women.

What else can guys do to help the situation?

Listen. Don't try to take control of a conversation about women or women's experiences. If another guy tries to do either of the latter two, tell them to sit down and shut the fuck up (because your voice is louder than ours; why do you think guys get kudos when they say they're feminists?)

You will have to forgive my ignorance, but I thought Rat was just asking questions to further the conversation. How is he trying to take control. I feel theres a large aspect to this whole thing I'm just not getting.

Rat asked "what do we do here besides not be assholes?". That was my advice (eta) and he's not trying to take over the discussion.

[Salty]

Oh! Ha! I get it now. Thanks.

These threads make me go 

I LIKE IT.

[The Dark Monk]

WAIT so... "cis" and "trans" are both in reference to "gender role"...

This entails no deconstruction of gender roles?

Shouldnt trans and cis both be thrown out the window?

ETA: like, i think the idea of "bigender" is a step forward; although it has a baseline assuming what roles are for each gender, it acknowledges the possibility of acting different roles in different situations!

They have nothing to do with gender roles. Gender roles are "women cook and clean, and men bring home the bacon and mow the lawn." "Cis" and "trans*" are over-arching umbrella terms regarding gender identity. They have nothing to do with societal expectations of a gender or how you live them out.
Also, "bigender" is a gender. They're people who identify as both a man and a woman at the same time (and there are more than two genders, Joh!).

I'm still not understanding this whole gender identity thing (when it doesn't pertain to if you have a penis or not).
If you don't come to the conclusion based on roles and what society expects of male or female, then how is it you feel like one or the other? How do you know that this feeling isn't just human?

Sita, I tried to google something to clarify it for myself as much as you, and I found this hash of test questions that asks everything from whether you like stuff like math and Star Trek to whether you get aroused fantasizing that you have a wang.

Not sure what to make of it. http://www.hemingways.org/GIDinfo/sage/test.htm

This was fun! I was extremely bored and the pictures didn't work for the image part, but it killed time.

Your Raw Score is: 430, which indicates that overall you are Androgynous

Your appearance is Masculine

Your brain processes are mostly that of a Female person.

You appear to socialize in a androgynous manner.

You believe you have mild conflicts about your gender identity.

You indicated your were born Male.

ANALYSIS:
Male to Female Crossdresser
NOTES:

    Your Answers indicate your psychological state has likely prevailed since you were quite young.
    You are in a statistical minority as a anallophilic crossdresser. Most crossdressers are heterosexual. Your motivation for crossdressing may be driven by the undirected nature of your sexuality, as a way to more fully explore the Female gender role.

The amount of grammatical error was amazing.

[Salty]

So in regard to the, uh, OP...

I just got rejected for a massage that my buddy passed my way. I called the dude and he eventually stammered that they were looking for female therapists. What's troubling about this isn't sexism that prevents me from making sweet sweet money. It's that he could barely talk to me. He sounded like a lost puppy. He sounded like a really sheltered frat boy type who wandered into a lively gay bar by mistake. He was in fact a little terrified to clarify this situation.

I've encountered this before. There is an element of intense fear to be in the wrong place with regard to ones sex. I think this has directly to do with the sharp lines that seeks to divide what is male and what is female. This guys was so frightened to find himself potentially in the wrong side of that line. It causes confusion and lack of empathy and understanding.

That's how patriarchy hurts men. It forces us all to live by a certain standard. Even when it is absurd.