What does it mean to be gender fluid?

Can you be a man one day and a woman the next? Yes, you can! It’s called being gender fluid.

By: Sandhya Raghavan | | Updated: May 10, 2017 3:54 pm

Anything we do that deviates from being unladylike or unmanly is immediately pointed out and frowned upon. For example, actor Ranveer Singh is ridiculed when he dresses up in feminine clothes; and Twitter goes berserk spinning memes and countless jokes around him. Caitly Jenner also had to face a lot of backlash for her decision to come out as a woman. We are all conditioned to demarcate what we consider feminine from the masculine, and we find any deviation unsettling. You may have often heard comments like That s not how a lady sits! or You are too emotional for a boy! Isn t it unfair that our gender dictates most things in our life? It influences the way we dress, the career choices we make, the way we conduct our relationships and how we express ourselves. Right from the day we were born, each of us is categorised as either male or female based on our genitalia. And just by virtue of our gender alone, we are judged by the world. Also Read - Are you an only child? Here are some amazing facts about growing up without siblings

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But is gender this simple? No, in fact, it is a rather complex idea that we oversimplify as female and male. Gender is not a prison that we stay confined to all our lives. It is in fact fluid in nature, which means we don t have to feel entirely like a man or like a woman. Some days, you could feel like a woman and the other days, you could be a man. There is also a possibility that you don t feel like either! This is called being gender fluid, and it challenges the notion that a person has only one gender, irrespective of whether he or she has a penis or a vagina. Also Read - Fool-proof hacks to improve your attention

What are the characteristics of gender fluid people?

According to Kirstin Cronn-Mills who wrote the book, Transgender Lives: Complex Stories, Complex Voices, a gender fluid person does not commit to a single gender all their lives. They may feel like a female at a point in time and a male at any other. The characteristics of a gender fluid person include:

Having two or more genders (bigender, trigender and pangender)

Having no gender at all.

Feeling overlapped between genders.

Using gender neutral pronouns like they instead of he and she to refer to themselves and others like them. Gender fluid people also use lesser-known neutral pronouns like one , ze , sie and hir.

Using the title Mx. Instead of Mr. And Mrs.

Using gender neutral names instead of gendered ones.

Krishu is what people refer to as a Tomboy . The 20 years old does not identify as a female or a male. It s a concept both my mom and my dad fail to understand. And I had a difficult time as a child telling them that I don t want to wear the clothes that they selected for me, she adds.

Today Krishu is surer of their gender and sexuality. Identifying as a gender fluid person, Krishu wants to set an example for others who are frightened of social consequences of embracing their gender identity. Here s to hoping that more people in the future realise that social constructs like gender and identity are not rigid concepts and people like Krishu no longer have to fear social ostracism to live the lives they always wanted.

Image source: Shutterstock

Published : May 9, 2017 3:01 pm | Updated:May 10, 2017 3:54 pm

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