Join Gem for this episode, "What Happens When... You're Genderslime".

After a spiritual counselling session including a poem by Hafiz, Gem reflects on their exploration of gender so far and why the term genderslime feels like the most accurate way to describe how they feel. Gem talks about the intersection of gender and Autism, being perceived and the importance of being seen and affirmed in our identity.

Thank you so much for listening! I'd love it if you'd consider sharing and reviewing this podcast!

Find out more about me and my work at www.gemkennedy.com and @thegemkennedy in all the usual places.

Helpful links:

"How Does it Feel to be a Heart?" by Hafiz can be found in I Heard God Laughing: Poems of Hope and Joy by

Rebel Dykes: https://www.rebeldykeshistoryproject.com/

Inspiring Women Changemakers: https://www.inspiringwomenchangemakers.co.uk/

Bear Hebert episode: https://www.gemkennedy.com/podcast/23

Neuroqueer Heresies by Dr Nick Walker: https://neuroqueer.com/neuroqueer-heresies/

Autigender: https://neurodivergentrebel.com/2021/01/06/what-is-autigender-the-relationship-between-autism-gender-an-autistic-perspective/

00:23

Hi, it's Day... I don't know what day! It's Tuesday, and yeah, it's been a little while since I recorded anything, as in yesterday.

00:38

So yesterday I did that massive walk, and I recorded two episodes, and then I went back home, or back to the place I'm staying, and rested for a little while, and then I had a sound bath and kind of spiritual counseling session with the really lovely person who owns the house that I'm staying in. And I didn't really know what to expect, but it was so cool. And it was just really lovely to have a conversation with someone who knows nothing about me, I don't know anything about them, and we were able to just really, I don't know... I guess it's not often that I feel like I can, straight from the offset, disclose to someone, for example, that I'm Autistic or genderqueer.

01:35

So I went into it feeling a little bit hesitant, that maybe you know, what would I disclose? What would I feel comfortable to talk about? And actually really quickly it became clear that it was okay for me to talk about whatever was feeling present. And the reason that that was is because we talked for a little bit, and then she asked whether I wanted to pick a reading from one of her books. So she kind of looked at her massive bookshelf that she had in this beautiful room that had a gong and singing bowls and stuff in it, and she picked a book off the shelf, and it was a collection of he's texts, and she said, would I like to just open it on a page that felt good? And I really love that. I've done that before, sometimes in magic or with codependence stuff just kind of flicking, and whenever I get a sense that that's the page just stopping, and that's the page that I read.

02:33

I wanted to read the poem because I feel like it's a really good start for this episode, and it will become clear why. So it's called, "How does it feel to be a heart?"

02:47

"Once a young woman asked me, 'How does it feel to be a man?' And I replied, 'My dear, I'm not so sure.' Then she said, 'Well, aren't you a man?' And this time, I replied, 'I view gender as a beautiful animal that people often take for a walk on a leash and might enter in some odd contest to try to win strange prizes. My dear. A better question for Hafiz would have been, How does it feel to be a heart? For all I know is love, and I find my heart infinite and everywhere.'"

03:20

When Kate, the lady who I had the session with, she started to read the text, and I just burst into tears. I was really not expecting it to be related to gender. I've never come across in any of the kind of mystic texts. I haven't read loads, but anything I've come across before has been really insightful and super interesting, but I've never seen gender referenced, and Kate said that she had never either. So it was so interesting that that came up at that time, and a good poke or prompt for this particular episode, which is what happens when your gender slime? First of all, I don't know who coined the term gender slime. If you know and you hear this, then please let me know, because obviously I am not saying that I coined the phrase. I most definitely did not. So just to get that clear, however, I did see it on, I think it was on Instagram a while back, and someone saying that, I think it was something like genderfluid felt too fast, too fast moving. They felt like gender slime. It really stuck with me. And I just thought, it sounds really cool.

04:35

I also, when I was thinking about genderslime, I also was thinking, Oh, from a sensory point of view, it feels really nice as well. It sounds really good and like, I don't know, the idea of genderslime just sounds cool and feels cool, but I was also thinking genderjelly, but that wobbles. I guess sometimes I feel like genderjelly, but there's definitely like a form to it. So. Yeah, let's go with genderslime, and I'll explain more if you're wondering what on earth I'm talking about, I'll explain a bit more about that.

05:08

But just to say how I got here. So this morning, I woke up, I had really bad dreams, and I did not sleep well, and I think it's because I drank some kombucha, which, which has, which I only realized afterwards, has caffeine in it. I know normally that it has caffeine in it, but I drank two glasses of it before bed, and then couldn't sleep for hours, and I normally fall straight asleep. So that was annoying, but it was delicious kombucha. It was homemade by Kate, where I'm staying.

05:40

Yes. So this morning, I woke up, I did some cards, I went to a delicious vegetarian cafe. It's the first time I've eaten out while I've been here. I've just been having food at home. And I had this delicious gluten free waffle with was like sundried tomatoes and stuff inside, and cheese and halloumi, and it had loads of lettuce on top. Anyway, you don't need to know about the specifics of my food adventures, but I came out for a drive from there, wanting to just explore the area a bit more and see what's around. Unlike yesterday, where I was recording whilst walking, today, I'm actually recording in my car, so I'm sitting just off of a road in like a parking area, and there's just beautiful rolling hills and trees, and there's a lot of cows around. It's really, really pretty. So that's where I am to set the scene.

06:38

Something I'm realizing about my creative process is that there's something that is right in front of me, and it's what I want to get out, what I want to express. And sometimes I'm trying to think beyond that thing, and think, you know, what's the next episode? What's the other thing I want to talk about after that? And I can't get to it. And I realized that, rather than just continuing to try to get to it, just do the next thing, clear the thing that is present, speak that and then see what comes. Yesterday was a perfect example when I was walking on the way, like the first part of the walk, I recorded one podcast episode, and then was like, oh shit I think that's it. I haven't got anything else to say. And then by the time I was walking back, that had totally changed, and I was ready to say what I wanted for the second one. So I'm going with it. And this is about gender.

07:36

So I guess it's really important to say that everyone has a different experience of gender. Everyone feels differently about their gender, or has not really ever had to consider it. It just is something for them. So in the sharing of my experiences, this is not about me saying how you should experience gender or anything. This is just an example of how a person in the world experiences it, and there are so many different ways, and that's what I love about gender. I find it so interesting and curious and cool.

08:15

09:03

11:06

In the beginning, I felt kind of some embarrassment or some awkwardness about, you know, whether I was inconveniencing people and all of that stuff. But actually now, when I hear people refer to me as 'they' it feels really good. And there are some times where I've found 'she' really painful, if people are using it in situations where I haven't disclosed my pronouns, or where I don't necessarily feel like I want to, and other times it's felt less painful and sort of tolerable-ish, I guess.

11:35

But this whole thing about genderslime, so I know, or I understand, for some people that their experience of gender is more fixed and that they not necessarily forever have exactly the same gender identity, but it doesn't move that much. And I think for me, what I realized looking back, and this actually came up in an episode that I recorded with Bear Hebert, who is this very cool anti-capitalist coach who's on one of my podcast episodes. So you can listen to that if you want to hear them talk about cool stuff, but in our conversation, one of the things that came up was dressing, like how we dress for periods of time in our lives. And I had always gone through long periods of wearing trousers, only wearing trousers, and other times of only being able to wear dresses. And I didn't really understand why that was. I just thought that, why did I I don't know why I thought that was. I just thought maybe it was to do with like abody image thing.

12:34

But looking back, it made a lot of sense that I had been in these kind of long periods of wanting to express my gender in a particular way, but not having the language to do that, not really understanding what that meant. And so looking back, I kind of recognized that about myself, and I also recognized that as a person who was assigned female at birth and like socialized as a girl and a person who had a lot of issues around like body image and experiencing fatphobia growing up and being bullied for my size and all those kinds of things as well, I had thought maybe it was to do with needing to kind of perform... this feeling of needing to perform femininity. And because often for fat people, there's this idea that if you're going to be fat, then at least be attractive. This is really problematic, and I don't think that, but that was kind of the messaging that I internalized, was, if you're going to be fat and not straight sized, essentially, then you need to be as pretty as possible. So I would put a lot of energy into, you know, making sure that my face was as pretty as possible, even if I didn't feel good about the rest of my body. And, like, that's horrible and really fucked up. But I think that's where I thought this kind of connection of long periods of time wearing different clothes came from, but looking back anyway, gender made sense to explain that.

14:04

And so over time, I've really, I'd say, over the last four or five years, I've really had more of a chance to explore what it means to me to be not cisgender. And so for a long time I use the term non-binary, and I found that really good, and it fit really well. And then in more recent times, I felt like, I know it works for a lot of other people, and that's totally great. Like, I'm not saying... and I wouldn't not use it, but I think I don't it doesn't feel like my go to first term for gender anymore to describe myself as non-binary, so I started using, like genderqueer or genderfluid. And again, over time, like, certainly in the beginning, trans was not a label that I felt like I could use, and over time, I felt more able to use the term trans as well.

15:00

I'd say over time, I've seen my gender really fluctuate and kind of change in different ways. And there's been some kind of leans into particular directions, and then, like, leans to other directions. And I don't want to just be like masc and femme, because I don't think it's that simple, and a lot of people don't find that language helpful. So I guess for me, if I'm thinking about it like, like a color chart or color wheel, there's times where I've been in different places, but they're all kind of similar colors. So I'm not, like, moving, you know, massively between different colors. I'm just staying around similar kinds of shades and just, you know, moving very slowly around those.

15:43

Over time, genderfluid felt better to me, because it did feel like my gender wasn't fixed, and that there was some movement, and that some days I would wake up and feel, for example, that I want to wear mascara today, or I want to appear more masc today, and I'm really conscious of the sort of problematic nature of like masc and femme, and it feels like there isn't great language to talk about this stuff in a way.

16:12

Gender fluidity felt good to me, but it was a very small window of movement. But then when I found out about genderslime, I was like, oh, yeah, that feels really good, because it's kind of... I feel these sort of gentle slides towards a different way of presenting, and then these gentle kind of slides back. And they're not necessarily changeable on a daily basis. It's more like periods of months or years even where I will want to present in a particular way. And I think that is really cool. I really like the fact that I can just lean into that, and that it's kind of ever-changing, in a way.

16:56

It makes it quite difficult with any kind of trans healthcare stuff for me, because there are times where I feel like I would quite like to have top surgery, and that that would really feel good to me, and then there are other times where I feel like maybe I wouldn't and so when it isn't fixed, then it's quite hard to know where to place yourself. But I would say for me, it's an ongoing kind of learning and figuring out and just seeing what happens. It's so interesting to observe what I feel good, how feels good, to express myself at different times. And so yeah, I guess that's where I would say I'm at with gender stuff and what genderslime means to me. So when you're genderslime? What happens when you're genderslime is that you very, very slowly move between different gender presentations. For me, those are not too dissimilar from each other. But who knows? Like, I don't know if in five years time, I might be presenting in a very different way. I don't know. I guess it's the openness to how that looks and being able to, yeah, just feel open enough to see how your desire to present is and act accordingly, rather than, I think in the beginning, definitely, there was a feeling of like, what does it look like to be non-binary? You know, if I'm trans, if I'm not cisgender, what does it look like to be a trans person? And there isn't a look, spoiler alert, there is not a way that trans or gender non-conforming or non-binary people look. As much as you know, dating apps and places will tell you that there is this aesthetic which is androgynous and thin. That's not accessible for most people and so, yeah, I guess really for me, it's been about learning to work with what I have, like how I express myself and know that there are limitations to how I will be perceived as well.

19:05

I think that there's, there's this whole thing around perception, which is super interesting to me anyway, as an Autistic person. So maybe I'll just say a little bit about that. I think over time, what I've realized is that there are times where I find it very difficult to be perceived by people, and I think that's complicated because of gender, because of being Autistic and having masked for a lot of my life, and, you know, still masking in some situations.

19:42

I guess I'll talk about it in slightly different ways. So the experience as a trans person that my external appearance may not ever be perceived by other people how I want it to. So unless, for example, on some days unless I was to have had top surgery, or unless I was to have a beard, I wouldn't be perceived by people how I would like to be. They are not going to see me how I'm experiencing my gender internally. They're not going to see an external representation of that that is accurate, and I could bind for example, but one, it's sensory hell for me. And two, it still wouldn't give the look that I'm looking for on those days. So the most incredible thing that I have found is when you have people around you who perceive you in the way that you perceive yourself, gender-wise. Obviously you can't know exactly because you're not in their heads. So it's impossible to know 100% but it can be so empowering and so just amazing and magical to feel perceived in your gender, for someone else to understand your gender expression, and for them to find that attractive, for them to be interested in that. And I find that super interesting in other people to connect with, like how they wish to be perceived. And it could be as simple as the words that are used to affirm you. So for example, if someone's giving you a compliment, if someone says that you look beautiful, or that they think I don't know your hair is so pretty, whatever, using words like beautiful and pretty might feel really gendered to someone, and that might feel like things that they don't want to hear because it reminds them that they're being perceived through a particular lens, or that particular words are being used about them that actually don't align with how they identify. And so it could be someone instead saying that you look handsome. That could be so affirming and there have been times where that has felt like a really affirming compliment for me.

21:51

It can also be in terms of sex, like if you're having sex with someone and I feel like they are perceiving me how I perceive myself, that is so affirming, and I have just felt so seen in those situations where someone really sees me for who I am and really understands how I'm experiencing my gender in that moment. It's really hard to explain in words, but if you've experienced it, and I hope that people, if this is something that is of interest to people, I really hope that you get to experience it because it's really cool, and it's such a sort of counter, or like a, yeah, like an antidote for all the other situations in your life that you are not perceived in a way that feels aligned. So to be able to have that connection, whether it's romantic, whether it's platonic, whatever situation it is, for someone to feel like they are seen by the people that know them best is really, really important, and I think that's why it can be super painful when family of origin, or, you know, other people persist to use the incorrect pronouns for you, or persist to refer to you in ways that you have said do not feel good for you, because it's like every time that happens, it's like a little, a little reminder that they don't see you how you want to be seen, and maybe they see you in other ways, but like those ways, can be quite fundamental to our experience and our existence.

23:25

I guess there's that. And then on the sort of other side, how difficult it can be to not feel seen. You know, I've mentioned there, for example, in family of origin situations, but in friendships, in relationships, how hard it can be when we are not experienced or not perceived as we want to be, and that can be incredibly painful. And I think what has happened for me in situations like that is it has almost like swung my sense of gender into something that is not balanced and is not how I usually experience myself. It's almost like a wanting and this is just me. I'm speaking for myself. I'm not saying that this is everyone's experience or that this is how is the correct way to perceive it. I'm just speaking for myself. So for me, feeling unseen in my gender, almost makes me want to do things that are more visible, to show my gender to the person that I feel not seen by. So when I've had experiences where I've not felt seen or understood in my gender, it's kind of rocked me in that I've then felt like these things that I wasn't considering for myself, that I didn't feel like I needed to access, or that I didn't want to do, for example,top surgery, suddenly feel like important. Because maybe if I do those things, maybe then that person will see me, maybe then I'll feel understood by them.

25:04

And I want to be really clear, I'm not saying that this is how all trans people think, because this could be construed as like me saying that trans people only take steps to have trans healthcare because of wanting to be perceived by someone that has upset them. That is not what I'm saying at all. I think it's just really important to be very clear that this is my experience of my gender and where I'm generally kind of happy floating about experimenting in different ways of presenting, but not necessarily feeling the need to make any any sort of physical changes to my body, that the times where I feel really unseen have been the times where I felt like if I was transitioning in an externally visible way, would that help? Would I feel more seen by someone.

25:59

I think there's a difference between being accepting and actually understanding, and society doesn't really encourage us to figure out our own gender identities. We're like literally given one of two at birth, and then we're supposed to do that for the rest of our lives. And obviously it's not that simple, but I think the pain can come where that feeling of being unseen is because of someone's resistance to looking at their own stuff. And I don't want to say that people who haven't explored their own gender can't understand. I mean, I'm sure they can empathize. Definitely. But I think if you haven't really actively looked at your own relationship to your gender, then it's probably quite hard to understand and fully appreciate what someone else's experience is like, particularly if you haven't felt gender euphoria or gender dysphoria, for example.

25:59

And we can only connect with people around this stuff to the extent that they have done the work to figure things out for themselves, right? So someone may be cisgender, and they may have figured out where they stand with things and like how they feel good to present, and, you know, all of those kinds of things, and they may feel like being cis and being perceived as cis and being, for example, quite femme, feels really good to them, and that's great, but they've been through like a conscious process to figure that out. I think the challenge can be where people haven't been through that process or have a resistance to going through that process themselves, and how can those people then meet you in a place where they understand.

27:41

Like when I got my hair cut short, I cannot tell you the amount of gender euphoria that I experienced. It was just the most joyful thing. And I've been putting it off for ages thinking... you know, I had a lot of internalized stuff around when I was a teenager, I'd had my hair cut short, and people had said that I looked like a lesbian. And I mean, looking back, I'm like, it's so funny because, yeah, I looked queer because I am queer. Not that there is a particular way to look queer, but like that wasn't an insult, but because I was so heavily masked and feeling like I needed to fit in as much as possible, the fact that I looked visibly different at times in my life, other times I did it on purpose, but at that particular time, I felt really sensitive to it.

28:28

So I feel a little bit like I'm going around in circles. But there's something about the importance of feeling seen by the people around us that I don't know that I've articulated fully, especially in a world where it's really dangerous to be trans right now for all sorts of reasons, and obviously, depending on where we live in the world, what communities we're in, all kinds of things. Like, I'm incredibly lucky, but I'm aware that there are so many of my trans siblings who are not able to present or to express themselves how they would like to in all places, or maybe even any places.

29:11

It's really complicated, and it's really not easy. But I think where we are able to, not being able to connect with people and not feel seen by people who are meaningful to us is really, really painful.

29:23

The poem also made me think about the difference in how some Autistic people experience gender and the kind of intersection between neurodivergence, specifically Autism, and gender diversity, or gender non-conformity. I'm not going to give you statistics because I don't know that there are truly accurate statistics anyway. But I know that a lot of people that I see in my practice, a lot of people I know, both through work and through personal stuff, lots and lots of people who are autistic have a more complex or even a non-existent relationship or connection to gender, and there are so many amazing terms that explain people's experiences of gender, and that's why I say like, this is my experience, and it's so incredibly diverse and cool. So if this isn't something you've explored before, I highly recommend that you do because it's magical.

30:29

But thinking about the kind of overlap between neurodivergence and gender, it makes sense to me, as an Autistic person to understand that I maybe haven't had a connection with gender in the same way as non-Autistics have, because it doesn't really mean anything to me. I don't really understand how people feel when they're cisgender, because that's not my experience. And it's not to say that I don't believe them or I don't think that it's a proper gender identity. Of course I do. I just think it's not something I can relate to. And similarly, for cisgender people, a gender non-conforming experience is probably not one they can relate to.

31:14

But some terms that I think are often quite helpful with understanding more about gender identity and neurodivergence are things like neuroqueer and autigender. And often when these come up in either groups I'm facilitating or people I'm working with, we have some really interesting conversations about what these terms mean. And so the term autigender is essentially it's not a gender in itself, per se, but it's this idea that a person experiences, or how a person experiences gender, is in connection to them being Autistic. So often Autistic people are much more willing to kind of question the "social norms" and the expectations of what it means to be a human and how we're supposed to do things. And so when things seem nonsensical or they don't seem clear, it can be like... and for some, you know, for some Autistics, gender might feel incredibly clear and like the expectations and the social norms around that are very, very like work very well for them. But where there is this kind of feeling like the lines and the regulations are arbitrary, we're really good often at questioning that and being like, Huh? That's interesting. I wonder why things are like that. And so this idea of kind of questioning things and not necessarily taking things as they are presented to us, can mean that there are a lot more people in the Autistic community who are gender non-conforming compared to maybe in the non-Autistic wider community.

32:55

And there could be all sorts of reasons why that's the case, but basically autigender is that our gender identity is informed or impacted by the fact that we are Autistic. And neuroqueer is another really interesting term that was coined by Dr Nick Walker. And there's also some conversation about other people that came up with the term at very similar times as well. And it's always so interesting how things like that pop up in the world at the same time, but in different places. So thinking about what the definitions are, I've just brought them up here on my phone so I can read them out.

33:31

There's this quote here from Dr Nick Walker, who wrote Neuroqueer Heresies and has written lots around this theory of being neuroqueer, and so it says, "I originally conceived of neuroqueer as a verb. Neuro-queering as the practice of queering, subverting, defying, disrupting, liberating oneself from neuro-normativity and heteronormativity simultaneously. It was an extension of the way queer is used as a verb in Queer Theory. I was expanding the Queer Theory conceptualization of queering to encompass the queering of neurocognitive norms as well as gender norms. And in the process, I was examining how socially imposed neuronormativity and socially imposed heteronormativity were entwined with one another, and how the queering of either of those two forms of normativity entwined with and blended into the queering of the other one."

34:23

So this idea of neuronormativity is like this idea that brains and nervous systems work in one particular way, and that anyone who does not experience life in that way is in some way neurodivergent. I really love the term neuroqueer. I think it's really expansive, and for me, it just builds on... like it builds on the term queer. And I love the term queer as well, again, because it feels so expansive, and there's so much space for self expression and self discovery within that. Also for me, queerness has a political element so I do feel that being queer is inherently political, because we are questioning society's norms. We're doing things differently.

35:12

So with examples of terms like autigender and neuroqueer, there is better and more expansive language now to talk about our experience as gender non-conforming and neurodivergent people, and I think that's really brilliant, because it means that we're able to find other people who have similar experiences. It's not about, you know, this whole argument around identity politics and how we shouldn't be reducing ourselves to labels, but actually being able to find other people using this language is so helpful because there's an agreed kind of baseline, or like a level of assumptions that you can potentially make, that you understand each other from a particular level, rather than having to go right back to the beginning and to talk about, you know, what does it mean to be queer? Explaining that to someone who hasn't figured or hasn't learned about that stuff yet can be really exhausting.

36:11

I just wanted to say a bit more about gender and being perceived as an Autistic person. I think especially when we've been heavily masked and have felt to some extent that we have performed gender in order to fit in without necessarily understanding what gender actually is. That is a bit of a recipe for feeling a lot of discomfort around being out and about and perceived in public, and I certainly know that there were times where I would dress in certain ways or behave in certain ways that were aligned with whatever society had of me, like had expectation-wise of my gender, and that they left me feeling like deeply uncomfortable.

37:03

So it's really complicated. I guess, having said all of these things, I'm worried that I've just said a lot of words and it doesn't make sense. But for me, gender and finding a term or a way of presentation or a way of understanding gender for ourselves is really liberating, and there can be a lot of nuance and, yeah, just so much richness within how someone experiences gender and how that changes over time if they're allowed to engage with it and express it.

37:43

The greatest gift that you can give to someone who is exploring their gender is to give them space to get curious about things for themselves and for you to get curious too, and to ask, you know, what words feel good for me to use about you? It's not just about pronouns. It's also about what words feel really affirming, or what are the things that I, for example, in a romantic relationship. What are the things that I do that make you feel really seen in your experience or in your gender identity?

38:11

Something I could talk about for a long time, but hopefully you can get the gist. And so I would say, what happens when you're a gender slime is that you move very slowly between different states, or I move very slowly between different states, but they're all quite similar. I'm just kind of bobbing around being my gender slime self. I think that's everything.