I’ve recently begun going through a bit of a personal renaissance regarding my gender, and I realized my numbers-focused brain needs something to quantify gender identity, both for myself and so I can better understand others. I also just don’t like socially-constructed labels, at least for myself.
So, using the Kinsey Scale of Sexuality as inspiration, and with input from good friends, I made up my own Gender Identity Scale.
- Three axes: X, Y, and Z
- X: Man (not necessarily masculinity), 0 to 6
- Y: Woman (not necessarily femininity), 0 to 6
- Z: Fluidity, 0 to 2
- X and Y axes’ numbers go from
0 - not part of my identityto6 - strongly identify as - Z axis’s numbers go from
0 - non-fluidto2 - always changing
Example: The average cis-man is 6,0,0, the average cis-woman is 0,6,0, and a “balanced” nonbinary person might be 3,3,1, or 0,0,0, or 6,6,2…
Personally, I think I’m about a 3,2,1 - I don’t have a strong connection to either base gender, but being biologically male, I do identify a bit more as a man. I also feel that I’m somewhat gender-fluid, but not entirely so. I honestly don’t fully understand gender fluidity yet, so the Z-axis may require some tweaking.
Does this make sense? Can you use this to accurately quantify your own gender identity? I wanna know!
Exactly that, yes. I used to think of myself as a 100% man who just has some feminine qualities, until I had a mind-and-eye-opening experience that helped me to better understand myself. But I know there are plenty of men who present as feminine, yet still identify as men.
And I’m a trans woman, yet I have no connection to femininity.
It’s a performance I can do, and sometimes even enjoy, but I have no sense of it being related to who I am
Ya, I am a man that doesn’t mind being seen as feminine sometimes. I’ve never thought of myself as a woman or wished I was a woman, but I have wished people cared less about gender and presentation.
That’s been exactly my concern, too. It’s why I never considered my own gender past my birth sex. That being said, I’ve wished throughout my life that I could switch from man to woman and back, but never thought of it as more than fantasy until I had a life-changing experience a few days ago.
I still wish people didn’t care so much about it, which is why I like using a numerical scale; it removes the social construct of labels and their myriad implications/connotations, and allows us to just use simple, universally-understood numbers.