gender

5 Ways to Learn More About Your Gender

Kate Sloan
Sometimes my gender feels like a queer femme version of a boy at summer camp 😂 (featuring beautiful mb in the background)

I’m no gender expert, but I sure have thought a lot about my own gender. And I think more people could stand to do that type of deep thinking, whether they ultimately come to the conclusion that they’re cis, trans, or some flavor of gender-agnostic.

Socrates said “the unexamined life is not worth living,” and while I wouldn’t go that far, I do think an unexamined gender can cause you grief. Stumbling through life within the bounds of a prescribed gender role, without ever seriously interrogating that role’s suitability for you (or lack thereof), can breed resentment, anxiety, anger, insecurity, and depression. I’ve seen it happen – often for people who later discovered themselves to be trans, but also for some cis people who came to reject conventional gender strictures that had been stressing them out or holding them back. Who says a man or woman (or enby, for that matter) has to look and act a certain way? And more to the point, do you want to listen to them?

With that in mind, here are 5 quick suggestions for exploring your gender more deeply, if you haven’t already…

Work your way through My New Gender Workbook by Kate Bornstein

An absolute classic in the queer-&-trans canon. I’m sure it’s saved countless lives by this point. It’s a workbook that asks you questions about gender to help you figure yourself out. Kate Bornstein is a nonbinary icon and queer elder, and all of their books are fantastic, but this one holds a special place in my heart because of how practical, thought-provoking, and kindness-forward it is. I’ve gifted it to many, many people over the years, and lots of them have told me that they found it helpful.

Talk to other people about their gender

If you’ve got trans and/or queer friends who are open to it, you could pick their brain about gender: how they feel about their own, what led them to their current gender presentation, whether they see gender as a spectrum or something else, etc. Tread carefully, because this can be a touchy subject for some, with good reason – trans people especially are too often expected to justify and explain their gender, often in dehumanizing ways, so it’s quite reasonable if they don’t want to discuss it with you. But if they are down to chat, you might find their insights illuminating. Ideas on gender vary a lot across time and space, too, so you’d probably get vastly different answers from, say, lesbian poets in Bushwick than from trans escorts in Melbourne or drag performers in Paris.

Try on clothes you don’t normally wear

Clothing is one of the main ways we express our gender in the world, so it makes sense that changing the way you dress can be one of the most impactful – but also scariest – ways to push yourself outside your comfort zone gender-wise. Rampant transphobia might make this tricky or outright unsafe to do in public sometimes, unfortunately (which fuckin’ sucks; everyone should get to safely experience the joy of a fitting-room glow-up moment!!), but at the very least, you can do it in your own home. You could borrow a friend or partner’s clothing (with their permission, hopefully!), hit up your local thrift store, or maybe even just alter some clothes you already own. Try on a new gender expression for size, and notice how it feels!

Keep a gender envy journal

I forget which trans friend of mine introduced me to the concept of ‘gender envy,’ but it’s such a specific feeling that now I always notice it when it comes up! Sometimes I’ll see a person walking down the street, or a character in a piece of media, who activates a sense of longing inside me. It’s a specific longing to look like that person, dress like them, move like them, talk like them, and/or be perceived the ways they are perceived. For instance, Jane Lane from Daria and Spinelli from Recess were some of the first characters I ever felt this way about – and still to this day, I love dressing hard-femme/soft-butch like them, and wearing black leather boots and sharp-shouldered jackets like they do.

Part of self-discovery is simply mindfulness: paying attention to which things consistently light you up and attract you. Start keeping a journal of all the people and characters you feel gender envy toward, and you might notice some useful patterns after a while!

Make a list of adjectives

I don’t know about you, but I find terms like “masculine” and “feminine” to be pretty limiting in their scope when I’m trying to define somebody’s gender, including my own. These concepts are highly dependent on time, place, socioeconomic context, etc., and ultimately they can feel imprecise (or beside the point entirely) for those of us who deviate from the beaten path at all.

So, instead of trying to locate yourself on a binaristic gender spectrum, maybe ask yourself which adjectives describe the gender you find dreamiest to imagine embodying. (It’s okay if this changes over time, or even from day to day!) For example, here are some adjectives that describe my particular queer-cis-femme gender at the moment: brash, funny, charming, dapper, sharp, swaggery, sparkly, slutty, irreverent, and bright. What words come to mind for you?

 

Dear reader, how deeply have you explored your own gender? Have any of these methods been helpful for you?

 

This post contains a sponsored link. As always, all writing and opinions are my own.

Vibrators Are For Everyone

Kate Sloan

How did vibrators develop a reputation as being “for women,” when in fact they can feel good for anyone, regardless of gender or genitals?

I think there are several answers to this question, but one of them is the fact that vulvovaginal orgasms are usually seen as more “complex” and “elusive” than penile orgasms. However, this is a misconception; people with vaginas reach orgasms less frequently and less reliably than people with penises because our culture frames penetrative intercourse as the main/best/only “real” sex act, and it’s a sex act that happens to stimulate the penis directly, while largely ignoring vulva-owners’ main sexual pleasure organ, the clitoris. (This is why, for instance, Kinsey found that women take an average of four minutes to reach orgasm during masturbation, and lesbian women orgasm more often than straight women.)

By their very nature, vibrators provide more intense sensations than any part of the human body can. So it makes sense that a lot of people with vulvas, now and in the past, turn to vibrators to get themselves off. The sex act we’re supposed to find most satisfying usually isn’t, and our partners may be unaware or indifferent to that fact – not to mention, many of us receive inadequate sex education which leaves out crucial information about sexual pleasure – so of course we often use mechanical tools to help us close the gap between our real sex lives and what we wish they were. There are many other reasons people use vibrators, of course, but I think this has been a big one historically, and it partly explains why vibrators are seen as being for vulvas primarily.

That being said, vibrators can feel good for anyone. They function by stimulating sensitive nerves, which we’ve all got plenty of. Vibrators have been shown to help with sexual dysfunctions like erectile dysfunction and anorgasmia, too. To think of vibrators as being “only for women” (by which people usually mean “only for cis women,” sigh) is not only limiting, but also plainly false.

There are lots of benefits to using vibrators on penises, besides just “they feel good” (duh). This masturbation method can be physically easier to achieve than a traditional stroking motion, so it’s a good option for people with disabilities or chronic pain, or just people who feel like jerking off in a slightly lazier way sometimes (#relatable). Vibrators can also be enjoyable for many transfeminine folks, including those who experience genital dysphoria – several of the transfems I know are especially enamored with the Magic Wand and/or the Hot Octopuss Pulse. Vibrations also feel really different from any other type of stimulation, so if you’re ever bored of your masturbation routine or just feel like trying something new, they’re a great addition to your nightstand drawer.

As the partner of someone with a penis, I also really enjoy using vibes on them. It can be easier on my chronically sore hands than giving a handjob (or a blowjob, for that matter), and it allows me to snuggle up close to my partner and watch their reactions. I can utilize my many years of experience using vibrators on myself to inform my technique when using them on a partner, and the results are often explosive.

The clitoris (left) and penis (right), including the parts that are located inside the body. Image via Anatomy of Sex.

On that note, one of the things I like best about using vibrators on penises is that it really demonstrates how similar our genitals are to each other. Clits and dicks are formed from the same tissues in utero, and respond similarly to stimulation. While there are some toys which are specifically shaped to suit one or the other, many vibes can easily be used on all kinds of genitals, with wand vibrators being a prime example. I think this is heart-warming, in that it shows us we’re all more alike than we realize – but it’s also practical from an economic standpoint, in that you don’t have to buy multiple vibrators if you and your partner are able to share the same one (possibly even at the same time!).

When I took a 2-week break from vibrators recently, the main thing I noticed was that my orgasms without vibrators are much weaker than those with vibrators. Contrary to sex-negative discourse which claims that vibrators cheapen sex or make it less “real,” incorporating vibrators into my sex life has only ever improved its quality, and the intimacy I feel with my partner(s), because those earth-shattering vibrator orgasms make sex more fun for both of us. I wish that everyone who wants that magnitude of pleasure could experience it – and I think one way to help create that world is to further normalize the idea that anyone can use a vibrator. Yes, even you.

 

This post was sponsored by the folks at The Haus of Shag, who carry some of my all-time favorite vibrator brands, like Fun Factory, Magic Wand, and Dame. Feel free to check ’em out! As always, all writing and opinions are my own.

The Women I Like

Kate Sloan

Like most bisexuals (at least, most of the ones I have talked to), my attractions are not equally spread across all the genders I am attracted to. I’m also not always attracted to people of all genders in the same ways. There are differences – not hard-and-fast rules, necessarily, but trends – and for a long time, those differences made me secretly doubt my own bisexuality even as I was yelling on the internet about how all self-identified bisexuals are valid. It’s funny how the things you most believe to be true are often the things you have a hard time accepting are true about you.

Compared to my relatively frequent crushes on men and people whose presentation floats between androgyny and masculinity (insofar as gender presentation can be simplified that way, which ultimately it kinda can’t), my crushes on women and feminine people are rare. This hasn’t always been the case for me – I skewed much gayer in high school, an inexplicable swing of the pendulum toward a side that I’ll probably swing back toward one day – but it’s been this way for several years now. In some ways it’s a blessing: my infatuations with women are uncommon enough that when one does happen, I notice it – hard.

It’s fairly predictable, the way it happens, and the people it happens with. They tend to be brunettes, with bold personalities and excellent boundary-setting skills. They have smoky voices and great laughs. They have strong opinions about whiskey or gin. They’re comfier in leather boots than in luxe heels. Many of them are Jewish, like me – perhaps because I love a broad with a big, strong nose and a commanding demeanor. (#NotAllJews, for sure. But a good number of them!) They love rock music or experimental theatre or arthouse films. They overflow with passion and conviction.

There is something about a dark-haired woman in heavy eyeliner and a leather jacket that just… sends me. I struggle to piece together my sentences like a ruffled ceramicist holding out a broken vase in cupped hands: Is this what will make you like me? The women I like seem to transcend words like “feminine” and “masculine,” embodying one on some days and one on others, and sometimes both at once, side-stepping categorizations and mostly just not giving a fuck.

The women I like are braver than me, more decisive than me, and (crucially) more dominant than me. I’m a submissive through and through, and sometimes it feels so infused into my bones that it feels like it is my sexual orientation. Certainly, a partner’s dominant energy (or lack thereof) is typically more of a deciding factor in my attractions than their gender identity or presentation. The women I like almost always look like they would gladly beat me up if I asked, and would sweetly request bruise pictures the next day. They probably don’t know how to cook a pot roast or sew a button, but they do know their way around bondage cuffs and a heavy wooden paddle.

The women I like are usually well-spoken if you can discount all the curse words (and let’s not forget that creative and colorful swearing can be, itself, a type of well-spokenness). They speak before they think, which sometimes gets them into trouble, but they’re humble enough to apologize when they know they’ve fucked up. They get a little blushy and flustered when they have a crush, but not as much as I do – because I love a woman who can confidently push my buttons and let me feel like the smaller, gigglier, frailer one among us.

The women I like usually self-identify as gay, with that word specifically. There is something about it that piques my interest immediately when a woman uses it, maybe because the first person I ever dated (who then identified as a gender-weird girl and is now, last I checked, nonbinary) called themselves “extremely gay” the first time I ever saw them, and their surety in that sentiment made me feel extremely gay too. It’s a shame that so many gay women see bi women like me as automatic write-offs, but at the same time, I’m glad that the biphobes self-select themselves the hell out of my life.

The women I like have usually seriously questioned their gender identity at least once – and I’m focusing this post on women because many of them have chosen that label after a fair bit of self-reflection and consideration, which I respect very much. My crushes on nonbinary and genderqueer people are a different topic entirely and I don’t want this post to come across as though I’m lumping those folks together with women, because I’m not and I don’t. I do love the self-knowledge and boundless curiosity it takes to examine the gendered label society gave you, whether or not you eventually decide it fits, and many of the women I like have done exactly that.

The women I like will tell you to shut the fuck up if you say something transphobic or racist or ableist or biphobic. They will also not judge you if you call yourself a not-strictly-P.C. term (like “crazy” or “dyke” or “slut”) because they respect your right to self-identify as you wish and reclaim words that feel good.

The women I like tend to pride themselves on their sexual skills, whether that’s oral or fingerbanging or strap-on fucking or all of the above. They pack dildos in their handbags or slide lube packets into their jeans pockets for later use. They ask questions about my likes and dislikes and don’t assume that us having a gender label in common means we enjoy all the same things. They, in fact, relish the differences between us, those electric points of contrast that make the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

The women I like are chivalrous because they’ve chosen to be, not because society tells them they ought to be, the way it does with men who date women. They may get a bit flustered when they bring me flowers or open my car door for me, but it’s not because they feel silly doing those things – it’s because they like doing those things so much that it’s slightly embarrassing. I try to compliment them all the way through so they can step into their deliberate chivalry with backbone and verve.

The women I like make me wonder what they’re into in bed, in a way I never feel quite as intensely with men, even men I desperately want to fuck. The comparative lack of social and sexual scripts for queer relationships means that my queer infatuations are even more of a blank slate, even more of a choose-your-own-adventure erotica novel, and my lady-crush du jour could just as easily be into floggers or knives or vintage stockings – it’s a mystery I’m always excited to solve.

The women I like are few and far between. But when I meet one, I know it. I feel it in my heart and my stomach and my cunt. I feel it in the way I start sweating, giggling, and trying to seem impressive. I feel it in the way she shakes my hand, or bumps my shoulder with hers, or offers to buy me a drink. It’s a special kind of magic somehow made all the more special by its rarity. I wish, and wait, and wonder what her lipstick would look like intermingled with mine.

How They Fuck Me

Kate Sloan

Gender is a sex toy. That’s not all it is, but it can be that.

I remember the first person I dated telling me they’d always been gender-weird and sort of wished they’d been born a boy. I remember their backwards baseball caps and baggy cargo shorts and strong, angular fingers. I remember my heart swelling, like a classical music sting in an overwrought rom-com, every time their boyness pressed up against their girlness. They could be flirtatious and dapper and charming, and none of these things felt gendered to me, or if they did, they felt multi-gendered, a prismatic rainbow of light they cast all around them. We both referred to them then as my “girlfriend” but that word seemed inadequate and small next to the bursting gradient I felt them to be.

In the coming years, several friends and partners came out to me as trans or non-binary, and each time, it felt like a shimmering gift. The trust they placed in me was so powerful, so surprising. I took it seriously. I did research, and asked questions, and said thank you.

And sometimes one of the questions was “How would you like me to affirm your gender during sex?” and sometimes the answers were very, very hot.

I remember my high-school FWB’s admission that they thought they were genderqueer, or genderfluid, or trans. We spent hours on a baby names website together, scrolling through androgynous names, until we found one that fit. They tried it on like a suit jacket and I saw them glow when I used it. That made me glow too.

I took them shopping for smart vests and vintage ties. Thus kitted out, they looked – and looked like they felt – handsome and whole.

The way they fucked me changed. Their approach became more confident, their touch more sure. One day after school, they had me pinned against my front door, hands roaming all over me; I said, nervous about curfews, “Maybe you should get going soon,” and they deadpanned, “Or I could have sex with you.” I felt the shivers of gender euphoria-by-proxy; we felt more aligned with each other now that they were more aligned with themselves. I tugged on their tie and they smiled like a wolf.

There have been other flitting hints of gender variance throughout my love stories, sometimes overt, sometimes covert. There was the high school boyfriend who tried on my red lacy bra and panties on a dare at a party, and loved how he looked in them so much that I bought him a bra for Christmas (to the chagrin and mystification of my mom, who accompanied me to the mall). There was the college boyfriend who told me he’d feel just as at peace in his gender if he’d been born a girl. There was the beardy beau who scoffed at my admission that I’m attracted mostly to masculinity; “I’m not very masculine,” he said, and I saw him suddenly through new eyes. Almost everyone I’ve ever loved, or passionately liked, has stepped outside their appointed gender box in some way. It’s my privilege to have seen these people how they hopefully wanted to be seen. I’m always searching for ways to do that better.

When mb first told me they were questioning their gender, we were sitting in an ornate, empty bar in Montreal, cocktails in hand. “I’ve been having some… gender feelings lately,” they said, “like really enjoying it when you call me feminine words.” This hadn’t been purposeful on my part – I calls ’em like I see ’em, and what I always saw when I looked at my partner was a person who at once embodied handsomeness and prettiness, beauty that transcended gender lines. We’d played before with dressing them up in my clothes, adorning them with lipstick and eyeliner, for scenes that then portended only power exchange and not a shift in identity. This revelation wasn’t a surprise; it hit me in the gut with a thump of Oh. Okay. Of course.

“What resources do you think I should look at?” they asked next, and I recommended My New Gender Workbook, Kate Bornstein’s seminal text, which I’ve gifted to many a gender-curious friend. I can’t advise directly on these issues but the other Kate can, and I trust her to. She did.

It was a few weeks later that mb breathed into the phone late at night, “I think I’m non-binary.” A few weeks after that, we went shopping – first for eyeliner and lipstick, then for shirts and bags – and I very nearly cried each time they emerged from a fitting room in something sweetly feminine or starkly androgynous. I couldn’t, and can’t, fathom such bravery. Every coming-out is a feat and a blessing.

The next night, we got sloshed at a Toronto tiki bar, and they asked me, voice shaking, if I had any reservations about dating a gender-weird person long-term. If perhaps I had envisioned a more binaristic trajectory for my life story. I wiped tears from my eyes at the very thought that anyone would reject such a gorgeous, wonderful person for something as unobtrusive as their gender. I told them I love them and that’s what matters. When you love someone this deeply, the fleeting states of what they are never seem as important as who they are, that seed at the center of their heart that stays the same even as the outside changes. Gender variance never scared me away from someone whose hand I wanted to hold. They could still hold my hand, as we walked through life together.

Once again, I saw gender confidence translate into sexual confidence. When my beloved murmured at night, “Daddy’s gonna slide their cock so deep inside you,” or “Do you like it when daddy makes you come in their mouth?” nothing felt different, and yet it all felt even better. When they kissed me roughly until our lipsticks mingled together, or let me put their eyeliner on them before they put my collar on me, I felt assured again and again that nothing had been lost. My Sir, my daddy, my partner, is still all of those things. They simply embody those roles now with truer self-expression and more gender-fuckery – two things that have never scared me and have always pulled me closer to people, wanting to bask in their bold beauty.

Love and lust can take many forms and can flow in many directions. I feel lucky every day to be with someone I love this much – no matter what or who they are, what I call them, what they wear, or how they fuck me.

A Femme Lady in a Bulldog Chest Harness

Kate Sloan

It’s funny how your fashion choices can sometimes reflect an identity you haven’t even realized is yours yet. Take, for example, the pal of mine who delighted in dressing “like a lesbian” before she even knew she was queer, or my genderfluid beau who rocked Oxfords and bowties while still squarely identifying as a girl, or even my rock-star little brother who picked up a punk flair before ever picking up a drumstick. I feel this way about kinky aesthetics: they bounced around my brain long before I realized I was kinky, and maybe that means those kinks were there all along.

See, when it comes to kink, I was a relatively late bloomer. I believed I was vanilla many years into my sexual career – perhaps due to inexperience and a lack of self-knowledge, or perhaps because I was dating people who just didn’t bring my power-exchange proclivities to the surface. I was 23 by the time I seriously tried on the “submissive” label – and even then, it was tentative, theoretical. Black leather crept into my aesthetic before it progressed into my fantasies. I wore a collar and harness boots for how they looked and not how they could be used to fuck or submit. I blended leather-scented cologne with my femmier perfumes to add a kinky kick to my sillage.

I hadn’t given much thought to this history until last summer, when a vanilla-leaning femme friend asked me, in hushed tones, whether I thought it was “appropriative of kink culture” for her to wear a collar purely decoratively. I think in her case, borrowing from BDSM fashion was a subtle nod to that subculture – while when I did it, it was a cry to be noticed and welcomed by a community to which I somehow already knew I belonged. (A dominant boyfriend of mine once bemoaned this mismatch: “Now that places like Forever 21 are selling collars, I never know who to flirt with anymore!”)

Once I’d thoroughly explored my interests in collars and cuffs, I started to feel that familiar femme longing toward leather chest harnesses. These are traditionally associated with gay male culture and specifically with puppy play: a handler can attach a leash to his pup’s harness and tug him around. Do some Googling on bulldog-style harnesses and you’ll see plenty of references to how “masculine” they are, because of how they highlight a broad, brawny chest. I own a feminine-as-hell chest harness, too, but somehow I kept returning with aching curiosity to the classic look of a black leather bulldog harness. So I asked Spectrum Boutique to send me the one they carry, and tried it on with timid titillation.

It’s clear that this type of harness is not designed for people with boobs. It presses down on the tops of mine in a vaguely restrictive manner, and doesn’t even push them together for bonus cleavage. It yearns to stretch across flat expanses, but instead, I make it traverse my cushy curves. The effect is distinctly gender-weird when I clasp it over my girly dresses or thin crop tops.

But much of kink is about tiptoeing (or leaping, or pirouetting) into territory you daren’t explore in your everyday life. Within the confines of kink, I can be a little girl, a kitten, a Victorian housewife seeking treatment for her hysteria. Gender lines can be blurred and pushed; see, for example, the QueerPorn scene where cis women Tina Horn and Dylan Ryan call each other “Sir” and “boy” and flagrantly exercise their “vibrant gender imaginations.” See, too, the scene I did with my Sir last month where I painted his mouth with orange lipstick, called him my good pretty boy, and slid my pink glittery cock into his ass. Messing with gender through kink isn’t always imbued with humiliation, in the manner of the businessman forced to wear silk panties that belie his brash confidence; sometimes that gender-defiance is just exploration, experimentation, play. It can be another tool in your toolbox, like a paddle or a butt plug or – yes – a chest harness.

Whether I’m wearing this harness in or out of the bedroom, I feel like I’m flagging as the sex-weirdo I am – someone willing to try edgy acts, subvert norms, fight for the freedom to fuck howsoever I please. Visible markers of sexual identity, like this chest harness or the bi pride sticker on my notebook or the collar around my neck, help me stick out in a world that wants me silent and submissive (in the not-so-fun way). These sartorial signals are often extra important to people whose sexualities are systemically erased: queer femmes, for example, or bisexual folks, or disabled folks, among many other groups. Older queers sometimes mock younger ones for plastering themselves in rainbow flags, just as some seasoned kinksters scoff at “dilettantes” who load up on leather after watching their first Fifty Shades flick – but we shouldn’t tamp out these tentative explorations just because they seem surface-level. Sometimes these loud costumes are the lost shouts of a hidden identity, blooming into view.

 

Thanks to Spectrum Boutique for sending me the lovely Bruiser bulldog harness to try out! It’s available in three different sizes, to fit chests ranging from 36″ to 48″. Check out Spectrum’s wide selection of BDSM wearables if you’re craving more of the “kinky aesthetic” in your life!