What does being pangender mean to you?

Every gender is an orange segment, and I’ve taken the whole orange.

How does it feel to be pangender?

I’m like impossible to misgender; no part of my wardrobe causes dysphoria (though still I have some ugly clothes left, but they genuinely don’t fit)

What are your thoughts on the concept of gender?

It’s one of those thing where “why should it exist?” but also I’m glad I have one (er, several!) to help conceptualize myself with. I guess I just wish people would be less dogmatic about the whole thing.

Do you think society as a whole would function differently if no one was assigned a gender at birth?

Sorta? I mean, AGAB still has a good success rate even with the most generous estimate of the prevalence of identifying as trans, and that’s genuinely helpful for cis people, I expect. I think a more nuanced change would be allowing kids (and adults) to change their identity label (and get appropriate medical treatment without much fuss; like how it’s normal for people to just have nicknames, or just change their hair/clothing style, or move residences, and nobody makes it out to be an existential threat.

Have you ever doubted the existence of gender?

No

What are your genders?

Woman, demigirl, catgender, agender, gender non-conforming man, faerie gender, genderqueer, and like ~4 more xenogenders that I find hard to describe

Are you any gender more often than others? Or prefer being a certain gender over others?

My top three are probably, in order: woman, demigirl, agender. Catgender and some to the other xenogenders are much more marginal

Do you generally experience being all genders at once? Or is it generally one gender at a time with no control over when they manifest?

It can be several genders at once, but which ones are present does change over time, and often quite rapidly. That said, I do have marginal control over it: e.g. spending a couple days prepping to present masc before going on a road trip will make it more likely that the more femme-aligned genders won’t be expressed accidentally.

Is it simple as identifying as all genders simultaneously? Or are the identities different personas?

Ha! Well, I also consider myself (ourselves?) plural, so I wouldn’t say “personas” as much as “people”. (Plurality is the a state where multiple people share the same body; this can include dissociative identity disorder, but also non-disordered forms of being more than one) It’s not like there is a 1-to-1 correspondence between headmates and genders, but we each have our own relationship with gender. Often for simplicity (and in this interview), we just describe ourselves as genderfluid, since pangender is less well-recognized, and there’s a huge stigma around plurality.

Do you consider yourself gender-fluid?

Yep

Do you consider yourself non-binary?

Yep

Do you consider yourself transgender?

Yep

Do you plan on transitioning in any way? Name change, pronouns, surgery etc…

Yeah, I’m going “all the way”: bottom surgery is still getting set up, and I have to make a decision about identity paperwork, but social transition, presentation, and HRT are all either complete or underway.

What are your preferred pronouns and how did you decide?

“Any/all” XD I genuinely would love to be surprised by a pronouns one day, but I’ve actually seen and considered way more pronouns than anyone else around me: they/she/he/plural they/it/ze/xem/nya/fae/kit/saur. I don’t advertise it to the masses, but I even think joke (or “joke”) pronouns (nor/mal, or wrrr/brrr) are pretty funny, and if someone wants to put in the work and learn to use them correctly, I’d be most amused!

As for deciding, before we realized we’re plural, it just felt right. That is, no pronoun felt wrong. Now that we’ve also realized our plurality, it’s also a very functional thing: we can switch pretty rapidly, and it’s too much work to keep track of, so we all just roll with it.

How strict are you with making sure people use your preferred pronouns and how vital are they to easing dysphoria?

N/A; pretty hard to be strict when literally all the pronouns are good. Although, it _is_ pretty weird to be called he/him when I’m feeling very femme, presenting with a miniskirt, breasts, high voice, &c; _if_ I notice (which is like, 50/50 chances), I might giggle a bit.

How soon after meeting someone do you explain your gender identity and ask them to use your preferred pronouns?

For strangers, I often forget, because it’s not like they can make a mistake. Among people I expect to be meeting a lot, I get it out of the way up-front (I dunno, first couple hours of interaction I guess?).

What are your thoughts on dead naming?

For my part, my given name isn’t so much dead as asleep. For people who do have deadnames, though, I hate it when people deadname. I wish I could take every deadname (and deadpronoun) I know and just forget them; it’d make it easier not to slip up and accidentally make them uncomfy.

What is your preferred honorific?

Mx

How would you describe your sexual orientation?

Most of us are asexual, often sex-favorable. At least one of us leans more towards pansexual. Regardless, the other person’s gender plays no role in my attraction or desire.

Did understanding your gender change your understanding of your sexuality?

Not exactly. What happened is that we knew we were asexual, but the pansexual one became host (the person most commonly in control of the body), and that confused us until we realized about the plurality.

Are you monogamous or non-monogamous?

Well, if we’re talking about counting people: polyamorous, as many of us will get involved in an external relationship. If we’re counting bodies, though: I’d say I lean monogamous, but I’m open to polyamory.

Hmmm, just btw monogamous/polygamous literally means “one woman/many women,” which is a male-centric hetero-normative perspective that I’m not too happy to use myself, even though I know what is meant.

What is your gender expression?

Femme-leaning. It’s not like I don’t have days where I wear jeans and a cavalry jacket, but most of the time I’m grabbing a skirt or dress out of my wardrobe.

Do you feel dysphoria? What is dysphoria like for you?

Yeah, I got the bottom dysphoria bad… It’s strange because my brain hid it from us so well, that we really didn’t notice it at first, but slowly we realized that the eyes were avoiding looking at my junk in the shower, and then what unrecognized feelings were causing the avoidance. Most of the time when I do catch sight of it, it’s either an instant “blegh!” or else by mind just doesn’t conceptualize its existence and ends up in my memory as a blur.

There are things that I didn’t realize were dysphoria until after I realized I’m trans. It’s too much to enumerate, but it boils down to not being comfortable in highly-gendered spaces, be they male or female.

How often do you have doubts about being pangender?

Less and less often. Honestly, the signs are so obvious in retrospect that I have to bow to their logic and accept that I was never really just a man.

How did you first discover pangender?

One of the gender wikis, after a many-day intensive search.

How did you come to realise that you were pangender?

Pangender is kinda just a “close enough” label. Realizing I’m trans happend because of a witty bit of dialogue in a webcomic that included the phrase “gender non-committal”; after reading it, I couldn’t stop smiling for three days, and then it dawned on me that I felt the term described me. The first night after realizing, it was like I could see sparkles in my eyes!

How did it change how you lived your life, if it did at all?

Wheeeeeee transition is expensive………

But really, I occupy space now instead of trying to minimize myself; I no longer have the insecurity of trying to seem more like a man to avoid being called out on it; I’m much more confident in social situations where I would have tried to escape before; we actually have discovered our personal styles; where I had cared nothing for my place in history, I now feel connected to all the people who came before me to make it safer for me to be open, and all the people that will come after me that I could help by normalizing being all sorts of minority.

How long have you identified as pangender?

13 months

Have societal pressures ever made you question/suppress your pangender identity?

Question? No. Supress? Yeah, I didn’t come out to work until the last minute before my boobs came in. All it takes is one malicious person to play politics, and I’d be out of a dream job, and I’m not in the sort of place where I can emotionally handle that, at least not healthily.

Why do you think it’s difficult for some people to grasp the concept of pangender?

Yeah; I really only use that terminology in trans circles. The mainstream is barely able to understand something as simple as the gender spectrum, and when they do get it, they still think of non-binary as a third gender, rather than an umbrella term covering a multitude of identities.

How did you start to come to terms with your pangender identity?

I started reading up on al the terminology, I consumed a lot of OneTopicAtATime’s videos to get a less clinical feel of it all. I was ravenous to learn.

What was the moment where you fully came to terms with your pangender identity?

My first physical experiment: I wrapped my bedsheet around me as a skirt, took video, and watched it back. It was inevitable at that point: I _had_ to be able to wear skirts at least around the house. And I just kept experimenting to find what felt right.

Has your understanding of pangender shifted since you first learned about it?

Not especially. But then again, I find it easier than many to understand definitions through simple reading.

What are things about pangender you wish people understood better?

Well, I’d start with just having the word in mainstream vocabulary at all. It’s even more rare among language at-large than pansexual, but really not any more complex.

Inside trans circles, it can sometimes be misunderstood to be appropriative. The logic is that “pan” means all, and so pangender would include feeling genders that are part of a closed practice or community (Two-spirit, Mahu, various neurogenders, &c). In reality, pangender just means “loads of genders” (which makes sense; it’s not like you can enumerate a spectrum, or literally contain infinite gender feels inside a finite brain); the only people who use pangender to appropriate are the people who would appropriate anyway.

Have you come out as pangender? If yes, how did you come out?

Yes. I pretty much always started with “I’ve got some news. So, it turns out I’m non-binary,” and from there I just gauged people’s reactions to determine how much detail to go into.

How did you decide who to tell and who do you tell now when meeting new people?

It was basically a matter of whoever was closest to me got to hear first, with the one exception that I was super nervous and decided to come out to a friend who is the most accepting person I know.

I tell new people really only when I expect to meet them again, or if they seem like they’d find it interesting.

How did people react to your coming out?

Really well, actually, for which I couldn’t be more thankful. It ranged from having interesting conversations about me, or the trans experience in general, to being just unquestioningly happy for me, to (at “worst”) basically just recognizing it doesn’t change much and moving on.

What’s the hardest part about coming out?

Whenever there is a power dynamic, anxiety goes through the roof. I live with my parents: anxious. I rely on my job for income: anxious. You can have guesses about how things will go, but when it comes down to it, you can’t simply predict the outcome, and it’s a big leap of faith that I know doesn’t always work out.

What is dating and finding a romantic partner like?

I’m real skittish about intimacy with cishets. There’s no guarantee, but I feel much more comfy in trans spaces, because it seems that trans people get gender in a way that cis people never have to. Bisexual people are also comfy to approach, because gender is definitionally so much less of a deal-breaker when it comes to intimacy.

What are your thoughts on dating apps?

Never used them.

How has being pangender affected your relationships?

Bold of you to assume I have had relationshipS, plural! I met my girlfriend after coming out, I laid all the weird stuff on the table our first conversation, and she was super accepting, so that really built confidence to pursue the relationship further.

I guess being open about my strangeness is a good way to filter out the toxicity. After all, I only _need_ to find one person, if that.

What is it like filling legal forms about gender?

“Dang. I’m not here again. What are they actually looking for?” What a pain.

What is it like using public restrooms?

Most people are chill. At this point I lean so femme though, that I’ve made men question if they’re in the right restroom. So far, the women who have reacted poorly didn’t really let me see it, though I did get no-so-subtly stalked around a gas station by one woman.

Does sexism affect your life in any way?

Not directly yet, but I definitely feel less safe when I’m alone, or after dark. I’ve only recently come out at work though (haven’t been in the office to wear a dress), so I’m waiting to the other shoe to drop there.

What are your thoughts on having kids? Do you plan to have kids someday?

I’ve never wanted kids. I can barely keep a pet, I don’t want to carelessly neglect a human child under my care.

If you were to have kids someday, what would you like them to refer you as?

“Zaza” is good for a dada/mama analogue. Not sure about a mom/dad analogue, but “parent” seems to be a good analogue for mother/father.

Have you ever being forced to pick a gender?

Other than on forms? No, that language hasn’t come up.

That said, I so sometimes try to pass as a woman or man instead of what I actually feel, just so I don’t have to deal with garbage. I’m not exactly proud of that.

What are your thoughts on skoliosexuality (attraction to any gender or nongender that isn’t cisgender)?

Never heard of it, but I could see it. Y’know, t4t is a thing; I don’t especially care about the cause of people’s orientations.

Do you consider yourself to be part of the LGBTQIA+ community?

Yes

Do you identify as queer? If not, how do you identify?

yes

Are you religious? If so, how does your faith and queerness work together?

Ehhhhh. Officially, but I’ve never felt more secular —or witchy— than I do now.

How do you think your experiences through life may or may not have influenced/shaped your pangender identity?

Well, I’d say the pangender came about as a result of being plural. However, all the hosts we’ve had have turned out to have femme-aligned genders. I wouldn’t be surprised if I would have been a “plain old” singlet trans woman if cisnormativity weren’t a thing. But as it is, my best hypothesis is that the long distress of having my gender suppressed cause me to be plural, which led me to pangender/genderfluid, even though I discovered those aspects in the opposite order.

How do you feel about how pangender is perceived in the LGBTQIA+ community?

I’ve seen the term called a microlabel (even though I wouldn’t think pangender is overly-specific, no more than pansexual). I think that speaks to its relative obscurity, which strikes me as strange. Like, in a way, pangender is a clear opposite to agender, where bigender would only be opposite if one restricts their view to the man-woman spectrum — i.e. ignoring genders unrelated to manhood and womanhood.

Have you experienced discrimination in the LGBTQIA+ community?

Not beyond secondhand reports of some sort of twitter discourse.

What bothers you in the LGBTQIA+ community?

Sometimes we end up attacking each other for out identities: the victimized sometimes become the victimizers. It’s not the bulk of the community, but it’s enough to hurt people in very tangible ways.

Have you ever been to a pride parade? How did it go?

Yes, I went to my first pride this year. I enjoyed it very much, and was awed and comforted by the turn out, but I also was _way_ overstimulated.

Do you agree that pride month is necessary?

Yes

What are your thoughts about “ally” being added to the LGBTQIA+ acronym?

An ally can stop being an ally whenever you want. The rest of us can’t just stop being who we are. Allies are as much a part of the community as a rich kid who plays homeless for the experience, but always has a house to run back to when the going gets tough. That is to say, not at all. And no matter what, you better not be trying to displace asexual, aromantic, and agender; that would make you not-an-ally, ‘cuz that’s phobic.

What are your thoughts on labels?

They are descriptive tools. Use them if they are helpful to you, but you don’t need to feel pressured to use any, and definitely don’t let a word constrain you.

I do wish there was better organization of labels, though. There are loads of relationships between them, especially microlabels, that just aren’t presented in the oft-recommended wikis. Then again, it’s a difficult job to do once you start including more than the spectra between man/woman/agender.

How has having the pangender label benefited you?

It was my first handle I got for describing myself in a recognizable way beyond non-binary. It was a good approximation at the time, and I might still be saying it to others today if it were better-known.

How do you feel about representation of pangender in media?

What representation?

What would you like to say to people who question pangender as a gender identity?

You see this stone on the ground? *kick it a little* Seems real to me. Kinda like my gender. Of course, you can’t feel the reality of it like this stone, but only because you can’t read my mind. So, do you really wanna call me a liar?

Do you think that some of the misconceptions comes from the idea that gender and sex are the same thing?

It’s not exactly pangender-specific, but yes.

A kid asks if you are a boy or a girl, respond.

Yes. Or maybe no? I’m both, and a bunch of other genders, too.

How do you deal with people who are curious about your pangender identity?

A pet name I apparently had as a young child was “the little professor”; that has carried though into adulthood. I love learning, and I love sharing what I’ve learned.

How do you deal with unfair/mean comments?

Act calm and confident and logical, and frame them as the weirdo. Or… sometimes it’s just too brief an interaction to bother with anything.

What was the most difficult moment in your life surrounding being pangender?

So far, the anxiety of having to supress, and later come out at work was really stressful. My next big issue is the anxiety of choosing a surgeon; I basically only get one shot at this, and I don’t want it going sideways.

What pangender stereotypes do you not relate to?

There are stereotypes? I haven’t heard them.

What are the most annoying things people have said to you about being pangender?

So far, it hasn’t been so much things people have said. I got vibes from one person I came out to that was like “why are you wasting my time with this shit?” Another very pointedly “sir”d me going through a door, despite my consciously very femme presentation. That stalker is the most distressing thing, even though she said _nothing_ to me.

What are things to NOT say to a pangender person?

Usual transphobic or enbyphobic stuff.

What would you like to say to anyone who is pangender or wondering if they are?

If they know they are, I wanna compare notes. If they’re questioning, I’d love to share my experiences and feelings if it would help them with gaining a better perspective to understand themselves.

How involved would you say you are with the pangender community?

Keyboard clicker, but I try to be responsive

What are things you love about being pangender, or being part of the pangender community?

The chill, the nonchalance of it all. Lots of common transphobia just doesn’t affect us. Stuff like pronouns: you can’t use the wrong one, so you can’t hurt us with them.

How often do you meet other pangender people?

Irl, never to my knowledge. Online, I mean, I’ve sought out those spaces, but they aren’t as active as other communities.

Do you think sexuality , romantic attraction and gender identity are things that people are born with, influenced by upbringing, or both?

I think it’s primarily innate, though upbringing will assuredly alter its expression. And y’know, sometimes identities are reported to change later in life, so unless someone is born with a countdown timer to identity crisis, I doubt it can be entirely something you’re born with, just primarily.

What’s it like being queer in your country/society?

Legal battles for equal access, and you never know who is suddenly gonna get all offended — or dangerous. But, if you’re savvy and able, there are definitely spaces where you can just relax and exist, especially in more urban areas.

How have you been subjected to queerphobia?

I was already getting called “gay” at age 6, before I’d ever heard anything about it.

What would you like to say to queerphobic people?

Would you just stop? Why are you spending all this energy on hate? Don’t you have things to do with your life that you enjoy? Is it insecurity? Plain hungry for power? Are you in denial about your own identity? (That happens a surprising amount!) If you stand before your creator and have to answer “have you loved everyone you’ve come across like you love yourself?” how can you answer that? Will your god listen to your contorted rationalizations, or just judge you plain and simple?

How can people be better allies to pangender people?

I have a hard time answering that. For my part, it’s just “take me at my word about my feelings”, but I also make sure to state the main practical points (name/pronouns) when I come out.

What are your thoughts on queer-baiting?

It manipulative, plain and simple. Queer people are no more immune to the evil that is marketing than anyone else.