Happy Genderfluid Day! 🙂🎉🎊🎉🎊🏳️🌈💗🤍💜🖤💙 (Colours of the genderfluid flag)
Before reading this post, you need to empty your mind 🗑 of all preconceived ideas of gender, especially the outdated, unscientific notion of binary male/female biological sex and gender identity. Neither biological sex, nor gender identity is binary, but rather, both are on a spectrum. Surely, intersex awareness day has educated everyone enough for them not to make basic errors, such as, it's a girl or it's a boy! Much as that is all very sweet. Yes, I can already hear Ann Widdecombe and Liz Truss (both right or further right of centre UK politicians) thinking 😫😱 but fanatically sticking to some narrow definition of sex or gender is just lazy! So, let's begin!
The gender identity of being genderfluid is a subcategory within non-binary gender and means that a person feels that they experience more than one gender simultaneously or sequentially over time. That time span can be anywhere between years, months, weeks or moments. So it may not always be obvious how a genderfluid person feels about their gender at any given moment, because it may have shifted to a different gender from the one they seem to be expressing in the clothes they put on at the beginning of the day. However, that doesn't stop them from feeling an overall cohesion as a human being and cohesion about their general sense of being a non-binary or partially non-binary person. The genders they feel at the same time or one after another can be as little as two (termed bigender) or several genders (termed polygender because poly means many) or all known and unknown gender (termed omnigender or pangender because the prefixes pan- and omni- mean all).
Genderflux is a related gender identity but somewhat distinct. It specifies that your gender or genders fluctuate in intensity. Currently, there is no separate Genderflux Day so at the moment we celebrate being genderflux on Genderfluid Day because it is in the same family of gender identities and people can experience both. However, I think it would be great to have a separate day, the day after Genderfluid Day, celebrating, embracing genderflux people and educating people about what genderflux means. For instance, cis people can be genderflux if they experience different levels of intensity of the gender they were assigned at birth. Or, someone can fluctuate within multiple genders, which is termed multiflux.
Or, like me, you can be demiflux. Which means, like demigender people, you have a part-static gender and a part-fluid gender or genders but you also experience fluctuations within this. People like me who experience gender fluctuations and fluidity can refer to this combination as being fluidflux (or perhaps demifluidflux if they also have a static gender too). However, despite these general terms, everyone's experience is unique to them. For instance, I am genderflux both within my static female gender as well as within my fluid genders. In other words, I can fluctuate in how feminine I feel as well as how male, or genderfree, or androgynous or other gendered etc I feel. For further discussion, here's a well-written article (including a picture of the flag) on how to understand the lesser-known identity of being genderflux and how to be an ally if it's outside your experience of gender.
Similarly, genderfluidity can also be experienced as someone's full gender identity (without any static parts to their genders) or as a demigender whereby, like me, they have one static gender (female) yet they are fluid between that one and their other gender or genders, termed demifluid.
Unlike me, some genderfluid people feel they are trans, but it is much more complicated for them to decide for sure if they want to transition, since this would restrict them to one gender identity. So any permanent physical change is unlikely to satisfy how they feel over the course of their lifetime. I personally wouldn't recommend gender reassignment for genderfluid people because sometimes it can take years for a different gender to emerge and so what seems like a good, permanent decision at one stage of life may not turn out to be right for their predominant gender or genders in the future. This is because being genderfluid is a type of multigender ie. being many gendered, unlike a transman or transwoman who only, consistently and persistently over the course of their whole life, have just one gender with which they identity and need to express to alleviate constant gender dysphoria until they can be themselves. Obviously, it's up to the individual as to what they feel is right for them but probably, as a general principle, it's easier for genderfluid people to not undergo any irreversible procedures, to retain their fluidity. I think this is important, otherwise there is this false binary mentality whereby people can assume that either they are cis or they are statically trans or non-binary and should make changes accordingly.
I wonder whether those who seem to change their mind about their gender reassignment and contemplate detransitioning, are not people who 'got it wrong' or believed in some ideology, as some erroneously put it, or were somehow cisgender all along. Some of them are perhaps people who are genderfluid so are right to think they are not cis but don't perhaps realize the full spectrum of gender identities and experiences so are unaware that not being cis does not automatically default you to being trans. Hence, detransitioning and trying to be cisgender will not suit them either.
This is why I think it's so important for people to be educated and knowledgeable about the huge varieties of genders along the spectrum, including some obscure ones, even if it seems over-pedantic and over-complex at times with hundreds of terms with which to grapple. It's key to your personal, individual sense of self as well as helping you understand and appreciate other people's feelings about themselves so you can be sensitive and supportive of the people around you too, whether they are your family, partners, kids or friends. 🤗
While I'm on the subject of misunderstandings about gender identity:
Genderfluid (and genderflux) people feel they are exactly the same person, throughout their gender identities and expressions. Their different genders are not to be confused with having Disassociative Identity Disorder, (a psychological problem usually arising from trauma and as a way of coping with post-traumatic stress syndrome) where someone acts out multiple personalities, with each of their personas having completely different names, personalities and preferences.
Genderfluidity also should not be confused with transgenderism or merely cross-dressing, because the latter has no bearing on your gender identity or sense of self, it's merely the act of putting on and wearing clothes that do not match your assigned gender, which even fully cisgender people can do if they wish. And being gender non-conforming does not automatically mean you are non-binary or genderfluid because that merely means dressing or behaving in ways that society has stereotyped as being outside your binary and restrictive gender role. A cis person can, therefore, equally fall outside such narrow gender expectations! The difference is that a non-binary and/or genderfluid person will have a naturally occurring, internal sense of a different gender or genders from the one they were assigned at birth whereas a cis person will not. They will fully feel like the gender they were assigned at birth, in an internal, non-stereotypical way.
Hence, as a demifluidflux person, I not only object to gender roles and stereotypes for feminist reasons (as well as for philosophical and sociological reasons), but also because they go against my gender identity so I don't wish to be boxed in by them. I'm not the type of lesbian who wants to carry out gendered behaviours, dress sense and roles of any kind, be it by being always butch or femme. I also don't expect my partner to conform to gender stereotypes or roles either, but rather be able to express her gender identity freely too! I've attempted to depict this in my artwork through my series: Face2face (non-binary genderfluid) Lesbians because I feel that there is a lack of representation of genderfluid lesbians and their relationships, compared to more butch/femme type lesbian couples.
So if there's one thing to remember, it's that one should never make assumptions about anyone of any gender identity (whether cis or not, demi, trans, non-binary) based on their clothing or apparent gender expressions. As Elise Schuster rightly points out:
"As a culture, we’re taught that people who identify with certain genders express those genders in specific ways,” Schuster says. “So we might assume that someone wearing a dress identifies as female, for example, but that’s not true! Anyone can express their gender any way they wish, so there isn’t really any way to know someone is polygender unless you ask them!” " (see here for quote and an excellent article on what the term polygender means)
That being said, see my fashion design blog post for Genderfluid Day today on the role of style and fashion in gender identity and expression, available at:
https://fashionwhatshotwhatsnot.blogspot.com/2022/04/non-binary-and-genderfluid-fashion-is.html
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