Hey everyone!
So today, we’re going to be talking about the difference between gender identity and
gender expression, because sometimes I see people conflate these two things or falsely
accuse trans people of not understanding the difference between them, so I just wanted
to clear up some misconceptions.
So the simplest explanation is that your gender identity is simply your gender, while gender
expression is how you outwardly present your gender to the world.
Your gender could then be cis man, cis woman, trans man, trans woman, nonbinary person,
or a bunch of other possible labels including agender which just means having no gender.
But then regardless of your gender or lack thereof, your gender expression could be any
number of things: feminine, androgynous, masculine, tomboyish, etc.
And in the queer community we have tons of words for our varied gender expressions like
femme and butch.
So you could be a feminine cis man, or a masculine nonbinary person, or a butch trans woman,
or a femme trans woman, or any other combination of genders and gender expressions.
So I want to dive a bit deeper into this and explore some of the intricacies of it, but
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Anyway, back to the video!
So one of the things I want to talk about right off the bat is that trans people often
know very well the difference between gender and gender expression.
When people are questioning their gender, I think one of the first things they ask themselves
is, “Could I just be a masculine woman, or could I just be a feminine man?”
And sometimes, the answer to that is yes.
Like there are obviously masculine cis women and feminine cis men, but often times that
question is just one of many that a person asks themself on the way to figuring out that
they’re trans.
And so when I hear people condescendingly say, “Did you ever think you might just
be a masculine woman?” or whatever, it’s just so patronizing.
Like yes, I guarantee you every trans person you ask that question will have considered
that possibility.
Like we know that there is a range of available gender expressions, and we also know that
what’s different about us isn’t just our gender expression but our entire gender identity.
Oh and by the way, I often say gender identity to clearly differentiate it from gender expression,
but more and more I’m just saying “gender” instead of “gender identity”.
Honestly the identity part is just redundant.
Like your gender identity is just your gender.
How you identify your gender is your gender.
What I’ve seen happen a lot of the time is that cis people get “genders” and trans
people get “gender identities” and it very much feels like a way of Othering us.
Like cis women can say “I’m a woman” but trans women are expected to say “I identify
as a woman,” and I think that’s bullshit.
Trans people should just be able to say “I am…” whatever gender, instead of having
to say “I identify as”.
And of course it’s okay if you still want to say that you identify as whatever, I’m
not saying you can’t, and sometimes that language *is* useful, I just in general don’t
think it makes sense that we’re expected to “identify as” but cis people just “are”,
you know?
So, throughout this video, just know that I’m using gender and gender identity interchangeably.
I lean towards just saying gender but when I want to be clear that it’s different from
gender expression in this context I might say gender identity.
So, for trans people, figuring out their gender can mean playing with their gender expression
in a lot ways, like trying on different clothes, experimenting with makeup, or binding so that
their chest is less prominent.
The important thing to note is that none of these things *make* someone trans, they can
just be useful tools in helping you figure out what identity you’re comfortable in.
Gender is definitely not as simple as: Do you wear pants? Boy.
Do you wear a dress? Girl.
It doesn’t work like that.
Girls wear pants all the time and men should feel free to wear dresses too.
And what do non-binary people wear?
Like one pants leg and one dress leg?
The point is: you can play around with your gender expression and still be cisgender,
that’s totally okay.
But for a lot of trans folks, trying different ways of expressing their gender can help them
sort out internally what gender they most identify with.
Because even though gender expression doesn’t define your gender, people often use their
gender expression to communicate something about themself to the world.
So a trans woman might feel more comfortable in a dress not because all women have some
innate desire to wear dresses but because it signals to the world that she is a woman,
and because dresses are so often associated with women, having that thing that’s associated
with womanhood be associated with her could make her feel more comfortable in her womanhood.
But on the other hand, sometimes men, cis or trans, rock dresses and that doesn’t
necessarily make them less masculine.
Clothes don’t inherently have any gender, they only have the gender our society as prescribed to them.
So if a dress feels good because society associates it with femininity and you like being perceived
as feminine, that’s awesome, but you can also say “Fuck that association” I’m
going to be masculine or androgynous and wear a dress just because it’s comfortable and
I like it, and that works too.
And all this stuff applies to other aspects of gender expression that we’ve gendered as well.
Makeup isn’t inherently “for girls” and there are plenty of dudes who wear makeup,
but it can also help trans feminine folks feels more comfortable in their bodies.
And so this stuff can be tricky to talk about because while gender and gender expression
are different, they’re often related.
I don’t mean that in like a “if you wear a dress you’re a girl” kind of way, because
we know that’s bullshit.
I mean that girls, cis and trans, are generally more likely than guys to express their gender
in a feminine way.
As a whole, women tend to wear more makeup than men.
But while people tend to express themselves in a way that corresponds with their gender,
that’s definitely not always the case.
Like it’s very common for women to have a feminine gender expression, but there are
also tons of women who have more a masculine gender expression.
And that’s why we have words like tomboy to describe a girl who’s gender expression
is more masculine than what is considered the norm.
We don’t really have an equivalent term for guys whose expression is more feminine
that doesn’t carry some sort of negative value judgement because our society tends
to see femininity as lesser, but that’s a topic for another day.
So anyone, cis or trans, can have any kind of gender expression regardless of their gender.
But that doesn’t mean that gender expression isn’t meaningful or isn’t linked to our
gender in any way.
Because for a lot of people, their gender expression is vitally important for portraying
who they are to the world, and anything else would feel inauthentic.
So I don’t want you to dismiss gender expression as just being some frivolous thing about aesthetics
because it can actually have a deep meaning for people.
And when rigid gender roles are enforced, like women have to dress this way and men
have to dress that way, anyone with a gender expression outside of those norms is punished,
regardless of their gender.
And that sucks.
I think the goal we should all be striving for is a world in which people are allowed
to present in the way that makes them the most comfortable, because rigid gender roles
do nothing but hurt anyone who doesn’t happen to align with them.
And especially in queer communities, gender expression can be an important part of someone’s identity.
Like for example, in queer girl spaces, terms like femme and butch are used both to denote
someone’s gender expression and aesthetics, as well as tell you something about their identity.
Like it’s not as simple as femme means feminine and butch means masculine.
These words have a deep history in the queer community and can be important identifiers for people.
They’re gender expression labels, but they have a deep meaning and connection to many
people in relation to their sexual orientation.
Queer butch women, for instance, often face discrimination not just because they like
women but because their gender expression dares to be outside the norm; while queer
femme women often aren’t believed to be queer at all because of their gender expression,
which is in itself another form of marginalization.
And I know that for a lot of women who like women, these terms can help them define their
gender on their own terms.
So, again, gender expression isn’t “just clothes” by any means.
People can identify very strongly with the way they express their gender, even cis people.
Like, you may have seen in the news relatively recently that Lena Waithe decided to cut off her hair.
She had a really good quote when she was discussing that decision that I want to read for ya’ll.
She said: “I was holding on to a piece of femininity that would make the world comfortable
with who I am, and I think I thought for a long time, 'Well, if I cut my hair, like,
I'll be a stud... or I'll be a butch.
I always thought, 'no, I'm not that. I'm, like, so soft.’”
And I think this is a really good example of what I was just talking about.
For plenty of women who like women, a more masculine gender expression can make them
feel more comfortable, but they’re often held back from that because of a society that
says all women should present feminine.
And so it’s no small feat to chop off your hair in defiance of such a strong societal
norm, and that’s why it’s understandable that its taken her until now to do it, and
why it’s so cool that she did.
She’s doing what make her comfortable, and I think that’s amazing.
She even said that she has “gotten gayer” since cutting her hair which she said jokingly
but I think it gets at an important point.
Cutting your hair obviously doesn’t literally make you gayer, plenty of queer women have
long hair and love it, but for many queer women, their gender expression is linked in
a strong way to their sexual orientation, and so expressing themselves in a more masculine
or androgynous way can help them feel more at home in their body as a queer woman.
I hope that makes sense.
I’m just trying to stress the ways in which a gender expression outside of the norm can
be vitally important to queer people while also making it clear that queer people who
present in a way that is considered “normal” for their gender are also totally valid.
I think it would be wrong to say that gender expression has no connection at all to a person’s
gender, because to many, it’s actually an important facet of their gender, but I also
think it would be wrong to say that someone’s gender expression is always indicative of
their gender -- because a cis man can put on a dress and still be a cis man.
And gender expression can also be impacted by how our society has gendered certain things
like makeup or dresses.
For instance, there are often nonbinary folks who dress and express themselves in a certain
way who are then read as masculine or feminine when they feel their gender expression is
very androgynous or neutral.
An annoying thing that has cropped up in our kind of societal lens of gender is that the
definition of androgynous clothing became just wearing masculine clothing.
And so it’s hard for folks to wear a dress and still be read as androgynous.
But there are lots of folks with androgynous style out there who I think are great and
are working to change society’s perception of androgyny.
Because gender-neutral style is so flexible, and you can do so many things with it, and
I’m excited to see where all that goes and to see how it changes what we perceive as
androgynous in the future.
And tying this back into the difference between gender and expression, for a lot of nonbinary
folks, the window of things that are acceptably gender-neutral enough for society is pretty small.
Lots of clothes and other aspects of gender expression are highly gendered.
And so it’s very likely that nonbinary folks would express themselves in a way that others
perceive as masculine or feminine, not because their gender expression is necessarily masculine
or feminine but because of how society has trained others to perceive those things.
Or they could just love dressing in a way that’s overtly masculine or feminine, and
they would still be nonbinary.
So in this case it’s especially important to remember that someone’s gender expression
doesn’t always tell you everything you need to know about their gender.
A very feminine- or masculine-looking person could easily be nonbinary.
And while lots of nonbinary folks often aim for an androgynous look because that’s a
thing that’s important to their identity, many don’t, and all of these people are
equally nonbinary.
And there’s just one last thing I want to cover before this video is over, and that’s
the transphobic insult “man in a dress”.
This is often used by transphobes to discredit trans women by implying that it’s their
gender expression that’s feminine but not their gender itself.
And that’s bullshit.
I’ve personally gotten this one a whole heck of a lot, and the hilarious thing is,
I hate dresses.
I’m not comfortable in them, I don’t like wearing them, I think I only own like one
right now and I’ve worn it maybe twice in my life.
My gender expression is, I think, more masculine than the general public would assume of a trans woman.
I have a very tomboy lesbian vibe.
My girlfriend describes me as “sporty femme” and I think that’s a good label.
I resonate more with the femme label than butch though I do have a lot of butchy aspects to me.
I think futch is also a good label for me.
But anyway, the point I’m getting at is that I know that my gender is what it is regardless
of my gender expression.
Regardless of whether I’m in pants or a dress, wearing a full face of makeup, or no
makeup, I’m still a girl.
I have a very strong grip on the difference between expression and identity, and in my
experience, the vast majority of trans people understand this as well.
It’s the transphobes who can’t seem to understand this.
They lash out at people they perceive to be men and tell them to be more masculine, they
lash out at people they perceive to be women and tell them to be more feminine.
They want to enforce rigid gender roles and rigid gender expressions, while we want to
see everyone free to do what makes them comfortable.
And I hope that you’ll do your best to encourage the people in your life, regardless of whether
they’re cis or trans, to express their gender in whatever way makes them most comfortable.
Forcing a rigid gender expression on others only serves to hurt them when their gender
expression would have no negative affect on you.
So, I hope this video helped explain some of the differences between gender and gender
expression, and don’t forget to check out the link in the description to get started
with the Dollar Shave Club.
Thanks so much for watching, and I’ll see you next time.