I'm pretty high on the cis het side of the scale, but I'm an understanding and individual freedom loving person. I believe "to each their own" and support that strongly.

I'm an elder millennial. While we used LGB slurs casually, I never really meant them as slurs against the community. It's just how my peers spoke. Trans was never on my radar at the time. (Maybe a little, but I figured it was much rarer than it appears to be)

Homosexuality was always easy for me to understand. From a particular instance: "Do you like girls, Jackie? (Nod). Me too. That's cool." End of need to understand. Plus it was about a butt, and a butt is pretty sex/gender nonspecific.

I also always felt honored when people came out to me.

I just feel like I'm having trouble empathizing with trans individuals. I cannot imagine myself in that position like I can with homosexual or asexual individuals. The pronoun thing also wracks my brain. I'm more accepting of "they" as an object, but "they" as a subject for an individual feels so horrid to me.

First and foremost, I don't personally know anyone trans. I'm not sure how to change that without being weird.

Thanks for your support in my learning!

I'm making a video game, which is sort of a mixture of a puzzle game and interactive fiction. I'm a little uncertain about some name and pronoun choices that I currently offer to the player and I thought that you guys might be able to help me.

The game is in English. At the beginning of the game, the player chooses the main character's name and pronoun. This is presented through two screens that offer the choices through textual narrative. It goes something like this, with [brackets] marking the options that the player can currently choose between.

This is the story of...
[...Alice Aster.]
[...Alan Aster.]
[...Al Aster.]

It is...
[...her story.]
[...his story.]
[...their story.]

Detached from the wider narrative context, this method may seem clunky, but I believe it works within the game itself. Mechanically, that is. I'm less sure about the options that I'm offering.

The player can choose any of the three options in the first screen and again any in the second, regardless of what they chose in the first. This affects the player character's name and pronouns used throughout the game.

Now, there clearly are also many other pronouns that people identify with in English, just like there are many other names. However, for technical and design reasons, it would be challenging for me to have the player freely type in their preferred name or pronouns, and neither can I really present a long list of options. At the same time, by condensing all non-binary choices into the most common (?) "their" and by assuming that "her" also equates to "she" and so on, I wonder if I end up coming across as someone who thinks they are on top of things, but clearly has only a very superficial understanding of the topic. Which, to be honest, might not be that far from the truth.

Similarly, of the three names offered, "Al" is intended as a more gender-neutral or non-binary option than the other two. Does that make sense? Would there be a better way to handle this? Are there names that better signal non-binary or gender-neutral identity?

Or am I simply approaching this wrong?

The game itself does not deal with gender identity. As you can see, I'm not the right person to write about the topic. The choice of gender in fact has relatively little effect on the story itself. The player also has no choice over other matters of identity, including their character's cultural background or family structure. The character is not intended to be the player, but someone whose story the player follows. But it still feels important for me and for the story to offer a choice about the name and the pronoun. And I wouldn't be comfortable with it being just a "traditional" choice between male and female, as it would quite explicitly imply and reinforce assumptions about the world that I think we should move away from as a society.

Not that my game is of course going to change the world in any meaningful way. But having worked on it for about six years now, it has been one long personal learning experience for me. And this feels like another opportunity to understand something better.

Thanks in advance for any thoughts and advice.

Over the past few months I've been questioning my gender identity, and so I've been doing what any good millennial does and trying to read up on what everyone else in my position did and does. I've found a few resources here and there, but I'd really like to read/watch/listen to more if I can. I'm looking for blogs, YouTube channels, podcasts, twitter users, and possibly even music... Anything created by non-cis people and which discusses their experience with figuring out their gender identity.
Hopefully my fellow Tilderen can recommend some good media to me? I'd also be glad and grateful to hear any personal stories from folks here as well, though I do know it can be a very personal thing so no sweat if you don't feel happy sharing.

Hello! If you've clicked on this I'd like to start off by apologizing for the title! I'm in a bit of a strange headspace right this moment as I try to digest some thoughts thrown my way today. I'm currently coming at this from the personal lens of myself, but I think there are some larger questions/generalizations that could be made and might be helpful for others.

Ok, so for some background I am a "straight" man. My previous partners have all been women, with the exception of one who identified as female when we were dating, and my current partner is non-binary but female-presenting and has identified as such the entirety of the time we have been dating. I have previously viewed myself as straight and an ally to my partner and the lgbtq+ community. Today, I was having a long conversation with my cousin about his experiences coming out of the closet and with homophobia in our family. I mentioned at one point that I didn't feel comfortable making some assumptions/statements since I am straight and not a member of the community. He (very politely) brought up that, at least strictly technically speaking, the fact that I am dating someone who is non-binary means we are not in a heterosexual relationship and that I am not technically straight, more likely being bi or pan (if we could lets not turn this into the bi vs pan debate which I know is a controversial topic but not really what I'd like to focus on). He also made a point to stress that these are all technical definitions and that gender and sexual identity are very personal and if I don't feel that it describes me then it isn't for him to decide I'm wrong. This made me a bit uncomfortable. It made me uncomfortable because while he's right, it feels wrong. I feel like if I began identifying as pan/bi, it would come off as a straight white male looking for a way to put himself in the position of being oppressed or marginalized for woke points. I don't know if it is because the college I went to was full of dudes like this, constantly looking for ways to be the victim, but its just something I feel deep in my bones. I don't really know though. I feel like if someone came up to me and described my life as their own and told me they identified as pan/bi I would agree and support them, but I won't extend that to myself. I don't know if its just a lifetime of assuming I was straight is why this is or if the term is actually wrong.

I guess to summarize/generalize, I'll put some reallly fucking loaded questions where I know the 'real' answer is "It is a deeply personal thing and will vary by person to person because the LGBTQ+ community isn't a monolith with all the same ideas" but I'm hoping maybe writing all this out and reading some of the results will help me color, process and digest my thoughts.

1. What/where would you put the line between straight and not straight (if anywhere). I know personally while I like to keep an open mind, I do heavily preference female-presenting people, whether they be trans, nb, or identify as a woman. But is that openness to dating someone who doesn't identify as a woman enough for me to be not-straight? I want to say yes, I don't think you need to date someone of a different gender to be not-straight. My cousin is bi but has exclusively dated men. I wouldn't tell him he isn't bi.

2. I am very uncomfortable with this question but do you feel there is a degree of "not-straight" you need to be to be an active part of the queer community. To kind of explain my thoughts on that: From an outside perspective, no one that hasn't been told my partner is nb would question if we said we were a straight couple. I've never and probably will never feel fear or be oppressed based on my sexuality. I dunno. I just feel really weird. like I'm inserting myself into a community I've always identified as an ally of but been an outsider to.

Anyway, sorry for this rant. I know the two questions are really loaded and I honestly feel like I know the answer to both of them. But just because i know the answer doesn't change how conflicted I feel and so I guess I'm just trying to work through some of the thoughts and conflicts.

I also want to take a second to note: I am actively talking with my partner about these thoughts and feelings. This is an ongoing discussion in our household, I am just looking for more perspectives and views to help me see things from different angles and work through my thoughts and feelings. Helping me through this is absolutely not the responsibility of anyone on Tildes and I don't want it to seem like I am putting that pressure on the community.

This is going to be a bit of a ramble.

I'm not even sure where to even start.

Browsing r/egg_irl has me confused. Am I trans? What does it mean for someone currently living as their birth-assigned-gender to be trans? Would I be happier as a woman? Or non-binary? I don't feel major bodily disphoria. I don't dislike my body. I am curious what it would be like to have a female body.

When I was a teenager I read Commitment Hour, by James Alan Gardner. It's about a village where young people switch back and forth every year (go to sleep as one, wake up as another), until they turn twenty and have to choose one or the other. I loved it. I fantasied about what it would be like to quickly switch back and forth. I liked the idea of finding out what it's like to have a female body without having to permanently commit to it. That fantasy has tempered a bit since then, but I wouldn't say it's completely gone.

I've been growing my hair out, but I've also grown my beard out. Both started as laziness. I didn't feel like bothering to get my hair cut or mess with shaving my face. I hate shaving. Now it's something of a security blanket. I feel exposed without them. Another reason I grew my beard out was because there were a couple of times when I was a teenager that a stranger thought I was a girl and it made me uncomfortable. I grow hardly any chest hair and I like it that way; but I have a lot of leg hair, and I like that too.

I've never been the macho type or had much use for machoness.

I don't know If I would like being female, or if I just like the idea of it. There have been other things that I liked the idea of but not the thing itself. How can I respond to others seeing it as a phase if I'm not even sure myself if it's a phase.

I don't like the social stigma around it. I come from a conservative family. I don't know how they would react. I live in a small predominately Mormon community where everybody knows everybody and gossip runs rampant. I don't know if being female is what I really want, but I at least want the space to experiment and find out.

I don't know what I want and I hate not knowing. Even deciding whether or not I should even type this out, let alone post it, has been a major mental battle.

I've been on Tildes a while, but I created a new account because my main account could be connected to my real identity and I'm so not ready for that. Even putting this out there anonymously has me terrified.

After a let of questioning, I am reasonably sure that I am a transgender girl. But what do I actually do? I'm 18, but I'm still in high-school living with my parents who won't be supportive of me if I come out. I have no consistent income and don't have a therapist. I guess there's no magical answer and I just need to wait until I'm independent and then start thinking about it.

Fellow LGBTQ+ ~ers, I'm hoping you can give me some direction and pointers in dating advice.

I'm a male in my early 40s who has become single after a dozen years and finally realizing/admitting that I'm gay. This isn't a huge deal (I've always identified as queer/not straight) but it does leave me in a place of total ignorance on how to proceed in meeting gay men and dating them.

I'm not intetested in sex-without-friendship, so Grindr is out. I'm not a fan of social media, so FB is useless to me. Even if there are any gay bars left, I'm not the bar type. My preferred personals site was craigslist... which shows you how out of the loop I am.

Any advice on dating sites and/or alternative ways of meeting people? I'm thinking about getting a bunch of shirts printed with a wittier version of "Introduce me to your gay friends!" and a rainbow necklace or bracelet...

If location matters, I'm a fair distance outside the Seattle area but get there often enough.

Thanks, all!

So I've been wrestling with this idea for a long time.

I get that the idea behind being transgendered* is that you don't feel like you were born into a body of the correct sex. You were born male but feel like a woman, or you were born female but feel like a man, and all that. That part I get. I obviously don't "get it" at the level that someone who has that issue would get it, but I know how wonky the mind can be and it doesn't strike me as too hard to believe that this is a thing that happens.

Simultaneously, I see that people of a more progressive mindset are enthusiastic about eliminating gender norms and stereotypes. Women aren't constrained to the kitchen, and men are perfectly fine being stay-at-home dads. All of this I vehemently agree with.

However, I notice a very foundational contradiction when I read or hear about how transgendered people came to realize that they identify as the opposite gender. Pretty much all of the time, I hear them say things like, "I was born a male, but I always enjoyed playing with dolls and wearing dresses," or, "I was born a female, but I always enjoyed rough-housing and trucks," or whatever. Granted, I don't frequently seek these stories out, but whenever I come across them, they follow that general format.

What I don't understand is how you can believe that gender norms are completely arbitrary while simultaneously using those norms as evidence that you were born into the wrong sex. It seems to me that believing in the superficiality of gender norms should automatically render the concept of being transgendered redundant. After all, if being a man or woman isn't determined by the things society socializes us to believe, how would you possibly have any indication that your body has the wrong sex? What would having the "wrong sex" even mean if gender norms are disregarded? If being a man or woman isn't determined by your actions or preferences in life, what left is there to define the genders except your biological sex?

Surely there must be a concept or aspect to this whole thing that I'm missing, because it's hard to believe that such a widespread and vocal social movement has been made out of such a paradox. If anyone has some clarifying information, I'd appreciate it.

*I know "transgendered" isn't the preferred term, but it's clear in meaning and the preferred term is just going to change again soon anyway. So no offense meant by using it.

EDIT: It has since been made known to me that "transgender" itself suffices as an adjective, so my terminology was off on a grammatical basis. For posterity, though, I'll leave the submission as-is.

So I'm moving soon and I was just curious about how those of you who move around a bit go about finding new people to hang out with. I usually just try to find the nearest gay bar and go from there. But I'm curious what all you people do.