{"id":7380,"date":"2021-02-11T20:03:20","date_gmt":"2021-02-12T01:03:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aderack.com\/journal\/?p=7380"},"modified":"2021-02-11T20:08:53","modified_gmt":"2021-02-12T01:08:53","slug":"a-cultural-divide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aderack.com\/journal\/2021\/02\/a-cultural-divide\/","title":{"rendered":"A Cultural Divide"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"initial-letter\">\n<p class=\"has-drop-cap wp-block-paragraph\">I genuinely have never known what it&#8217;s like to be male. I was never raised as &#8220;culturally male,&#8221; as the TERfs would have it. I have never had any interest in masculinity. I have my whole life shied away from thinking of myself or being classed as a dude. I just never quite understood why it bothered me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I had no connection with <em>any <\/em>gender, really. I tolerated other people&#8217;s assumptions about me, though it made me feel gross\u00e2\u20ac\u201dbut I had none of my own. The start of my transition was me, recognizing and accepting and exploring this lack of a relationship and what it might mean for me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><a href=\"https:\/\/aderack.com\/journal\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/EsIQNQDXMAQIkKk-1.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"768\" src=\"https:\/\/aderack.com\/journal\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/EsIQNQDXMAQIkKk-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-7383\" srcset=\"https:\/\/aderack.com\/journal\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/EsIQNQDXMAQIkKk-1.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/aderack.com\/journal\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/EsIQNQDXMAQIkKk-1-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/aderack.com\/journal\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/EsIQNQDXMAQIkKk-1-768x576.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">My gender is a bit weird and wibbly still, but I <a href=\"https:\/\/aderack.com\/journal\/2021\/01\/girl-now\/\" data-type=\"URL\" data-id=\"https:\/\/aderack.com\/journal\/2021\/01\/girl-now\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">do have one<\/a> now. That&#8217;s the thing, though\u00e2\u20ac\u201din every way that matters to me, this is my first gender; my only one. The one that&#8217;s always been latent, and that I&#8217;ve spent the last couple years grasping toward. It&#8217;s still a work in progress to define it and understand how it applies to my life. but it&#8217;s not a moving target. It&#8217;s always been pretty stable, even when I&#8217;ve had no active connection with it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In a sense it feels funny I&#8217;m considered trans, as I&#8217;m not really transitioning <em>from<\/em> anything that I think of as real. It&#8217;s more a matter of finally paying attention and growing into myself, after putting it off for my whole life. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This is the only me there has been. Yeah there was this protective husk, stumbling around for decades. but that wasn&#8217;t me. It was the parcel post shipping container. It had no awareness, no sense of self. It didn&#8217;t feel anything, want anything. It was just layers of swaddling, to get me through the long exchange.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I don&#8217;t know anything about my assigned gender beyond what I can read in a book or see on a screen. Experientially I can&#8217;t tell you how it feels any more than I can describe what microwaves look like. It&#8217;s an alien concept. It has nothing to do with me.<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I genuinely have never known what it&#8217;s like to be male. I was never raised as &#8220;culturally male,&#8221; as the TERfs would have it. I have never had any interest in masculinity. I have my whole life shied away from thinking of myself or being classed as a dude. I just never quite understood why [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ocean_front_end_style_editor":"no","ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"0","ocean_second_sidebar":"0","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"0","ocean_custom_header_template":"0","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"0","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"0","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"0","ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"off","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[1156,1074,1150,1123],"class_list":["post-7380","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","tag-azure","tag-gender","tag-self-concept","tag-transition","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aderack.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7380","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aderack.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aderack.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aderack.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aderack.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7380"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/aderack.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7380\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7385,"href":"https:\/\/aderack.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7380\/revisions\/7385"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aderack.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aderack.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aderack.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}