They/Them: Help me find a higher level understanding

[paradiseengineering]

Hi there *whatever pronouns you prefer*:)

I meet and see a lot of people that use pronouns like they/them, they/she, he/they, theirs (or even fae or ze). I was getting a piercing the other day and when filling out the info form, the list of pronouns to choose from was very long. I applied for a vipassana retreat the same day and could just choose either male or female.

I respect it and its none of my business what concepts people personally identify as. But it is still sometimes a bit hard for me to wrap my mind around, and its a part of me that feels slightly confused by it. I would like to understand this from a higher perspective (like stage yellow or turquoise, I am at stage green, and am in no way enlightened).

I have been on dates with "people with vaginas" that to me look like "cute alt girls" and call themselves "queer" and "they/them", and they also just date men. I have guy friends who have switched pronouns to "he/they". When i ask why, they say it is  because they feel like they dont fit into traditional "gender norms" or that they are equally masculine and feminine or that they like to switch between being dominant and submissive in the bedroom. 

I have no problem with calling people what they would like to be called, but I sometimes struggle a bit to understand it. I am also a bit afraid to ask too much, since it seem pretty personal for them. Im just curious and would like to understand it at a deeper level. Maybe i´m just overthinking.

Edited Sunday at 11:09 PM by paradiseengineering

[aurum]

Gender identity cannot be rigidly defined when you deeply look into it.

So yes, some people may identify in alt ways.

Whether that’s harmful or not is a different question.

[LordFall]

Have you had any mystical experiences? When I had mine I identified with all of reality moreso than just my male identity. I love being a male and fucking women( and men ) and I thank God that I incarnated as such but ultimately I see mysef as a will and spirit more than a male. Male and female are just biological realities of natural selection to increase survival rates. Life was never created as just male and female, plenty of asexual self reproducing entities even alive today.

Me and a roommate I had a few years ago had a threesome with this girl who identified as genderfluid. She would change voices between masculine and girly. It was pretty bizarre but I'm generally a fan of novel experiences so I enjoyed it. 

Technically all religious people don't even believe in gender themselves since they claim to mostly identify with the soul and spiritual life over the materialistic realm. They are quite shallow in their thinking and don't even think about that when chastizing LGBTQ people. They are mostly cowards just scared of the way religion threatens you towards eternal doom if you do not comply to their beliefs. As well as they have cognitive dissonance since for a lot of people deep complicated thoughts are painful and they rather just keep things simple.

This leads us straight to cultural homogenization, monocultarilism, patriarchy, status and power. Throughout most of human history what mostly mattered was power that you shared with your close group. As we learn in spiral dynamics, as civilization evolves we've had a deeper identification with our group structures and for our species as a whole. Not that long ago it was considered mainstream norm that other races other than yours were the enemy and subhuman. Before the concept of a state that was a real reality that the people that you encountered you were very likely to engage in mortal combat with. There was no room to tolerate those different than yourself.

As we get towards the nation state and now multi state unions like the EU, we collectively unite more and more to the fact that identity is not really necessary to your security anymore. You see how the US still fiercly rejects that as the #1 super power today and so does china as the #2. When you are at the top you don't really benefit from compromises and actually lose a lot of power from doing so. In 2026 we have more room for alternative identities like Peter Thiel and Sam Altman some of the most powerful americans are openly gay men. It's pretty interesting to see how that conflicts with the massive christian nationalistic bloc that composes the other part of the republican party.

Ultimately it will evolve towards radical acceptance because there are massive downsides towards rejecting alternative identities and by definition that makes you unconscious. If you truly embraced yourself as God as we do in non-duality or even as an actually absolutely powerful person you would not fear other identites as they would just be different fascets of reality you get to enjoy that cannot harm you. That's how I look at it so ultimately I'm greedy enough to accept all of reality(let's say most, I'm not quite fully enlightened yet) and will take women with boobs and pussy, trans women, femboys, etc whatever you got for me I'll take it. I expanded my horizons and fucked a dude that was not feminine at all the other day and literally a bald chubby masculine man and that was not particularly what I like in my partners but it was ultimately enjoyable. 

It's quite uncomfortable to stretch your boundaries in this fashion and I understand why most humans are not there yet but it's quite fun I promise! It also requires a lot of self-esteem as most of society will find you strange but you have to value your own opinion of yourself other that of others. 

Edited Sunday at 11:21 PM by LordFall

[Elliott]

Gender "he, she, him, her", not sex(penis vagina, male female), gender is made up. Shes wear makeup and clean, hes do boxing and don't wear makeup.

Some vagina people like to box and not wear makeup, some penis people like to wear makeup and clean, and every variation in between, so he/she is an antiquated pronoun, unless you want to force traditional gender roles.

People have different hormone receptors in their brain that create untraditional characteristics. No two men have the same receptors nor two women,  people are not black and white.

Edited yesterday at 12:08 AM by Elliott

[paradiseengineering]

35 minutes ago, Elliott said:

Gender "he, she, him, her", not sex(penis vagina, male female), gender is made up. Shes wear makeup and clean, hes do boxing and don't wear makeup.

Some vagina people like to box and not wear makeup, some penis people like to wear makeup and clean, and every variation in between, so he/she is an antiquated pronoun, unless you want to force traditional gender roles.

People have different hormone receptors in their brain that create untraditional characteristics.

Ok thanks this made it much more clear to me!

In my native language we only have one word for "gender", in english it makes so much more sense when you separate the words "gender" and "sex". Myself for example am a very feminine man that mostly like vagina-people, and I dont fit into traditional "gender roles".  but I see now that being diffrent "gender" wouldn't automatically mean that deny the sex you have. I got those two mixed up. 

I am doing a non binary quiz now and one question is: "I feel that my gender does not fit neatly into the categories of man or woman." - How does one feel ones gender? When I was little I was curious if I was a boy or a girl and my mom said boy and I was like "OK I have penis so thats what I thought". And never really questioned it later. 

Edited 23 hours ago by paradiseengineering

[paradiseengineering]

1 hour ago, LordFall said:

Have you had any mystical experiences? When I had mine I identified with all of reality moreso than just my male identity. I love being a male and fucking women( and men ) and I thank God that I incarnated as such but ultimately I see mysef as a will and spirit more than a male. Male and female are just biological realities of natural selection to increase survival rates. Life was never created as just male and female, plenty of asexual self reproducing entities even alive today.

Me and a roommate I had a few years ago had a threesome with this girl who identified as genderfluid. She would change voices between masculine and girly. It was pretty bizarre but I'm generally a fan of novel experiences so I enjoyed it. 

Technically all religious people don't even believe in gender themselves since they claim to mostly identify with the soul and spiritual life over the materialistic realm. They are quite shallow in their thinking and don't even think about that when chastizing LGBTQ people. They are mostly cowards just scared of the way religion threatens you towards eternal doom if you do not comply to their beliefs. As well as they have cognitive dissonance since for a lot of people deep complicated thoughts are painful and they rather just keep things simple.

This leads us straight to cultural homogenization, monocultarilism, patriarchy, status and power. Throughout most of human history what mostly mattered was power that you shared with your close group. As we learn in spiral dynamics, as civilization evolves we've had a deeper identification with our group structures and for our species as a whole. Not that long ago it was considered mainstream norm that other races other than yours were the enemy and subhuman. Before the concept of a state that was a real reality that the people that you encountered you were very likely to engage in mortal combat with. There was no room to tolerate those different than yourself.

As we get towards the nation state and now multi state unions like the EU, we collectively unite more and more to the fact that identity is not really necessary to your security anymore. You see how the US still fiercly rejects that as the #1 super power today and so does china as the #2. When you are at the top you don't really benefit from compromises and actually lose a lot of power from doing so. In 2026 we have more room for alternative identities like Peter Thiel and Sam Altman some of the most powerful americans are openly gay men. It's pretty interesting to see how that conflicts with the massive christian nationalistic bloc that composes the other part of the republican party.

Ultimately it will evolve towards radical acceptance because there are massive downsides towards rejecting alternative identities and by definition that makes you unconscious. If you truly embraced yourself as God as we do in non-duality or even as an actually absolutely powerful person you would not fear other identites as they would just be different fascets of reality you get to enjoy that cannot harm you. That's how I look at it so ultimately I'm greedy enough to accept all of reality(let's say most, I'm not quite fully enlightened yet) and will take women with boobs and pussy, trans women, femboys, etc whatever you got for me I'll take it. I expanded my horizons and fucked a dude that was not feminine at all the other day and literally a bald chubby masculine man and that was not particularly what I like in my partners but it was ultimately enjoyable. 

It's quite uncomfortable to stretch your boundaries in this fashion and I understand why most humans are not there yet but it's quite fun I promise! It also requires a lot of self-esteem as most of society will find you strange but you have to value your own opinion of yourself other that of others. 

Thanks! Ive done moderate doses of lsd and mushrooms but I have not have had full blown ego death. Cool to hear about your experiences too. I am trying to expand my horizons, my one experience with a dude was not something I was into, but I am also open to change my mind. Went on a date with a trans girl not long ago and it was nice.

Edited yesterday at 12:33 AM by paradiseengineering

[LordFall]

For sure! Ego death is cool but scary. I recommend looking up grounding mechanisms before you go deeper into that path, they are ignored a bit here but important. Trans people are interesting, I had a trans girl I was working with almost a decade ago now but I didn't really have the balls(no pun intended) to go through with it at that time so we were just friends and sexted a bit but ended at that. It was interesting because at first she presented like a dude and had a guy name and then slowly transitionned and started taking hormones so I could see the transformation. It's cool I'm a big fan of boobs so the fact that one can take hormones and grow them clearly is a sign of great scientific culmination by the human race. Big w. 

 

[Yimpa]

Sirvival/Conforma’amty

[paradiseengineering]

1 hour ago, Yimpa said:

Sirvival/Conforma’amty

You mean that people use these pronouns out of survival and conformity?

My chair uses it/that pronouns now.

--------------------------------------------------

I also just learned that gender, sex and pronouns are 3 diffrent things, independent from each other. Before this I thought this was just one thing called "gender". So that made things much more clear to me.  

Using this system it might turn out that I am actually non-binary myself, using he/him pronouns and male being my sex. 

Edited 8 hours ago by paradiseengineering

[Yimpa]

51 minutes ago, paradiseengineering said:

You mean that people use these pronouns out of survival and conformity?

That’s one way to look at it. And it’s not exclusive to the LGBT community. Even conservatives with their rigid ideas of male and female, man and woman and what each of their roles are.

With that said, I feel much more aligned as a female, she/her pronouns. Being born and raised a boy and a man in a religious upbringing was hell for me, literally. I was forced to be something I am not. And was given conversation therapy at age 17 in a pathetic attempt to set me straight, which made me even more dysfunctional than I already was.

I won’t go into details about how bad I got into dysfunctional territory, since they are disturbing and some outright illegal. I was lucky to not end up in jail with a permanent record. 

I traded hell survival to a much more values based and aligned survival starting at age 25 with, you guessed it, psychedelic therapy . Took me 8 years to undo the conversation therapy damage with psychedelics that opened the door to healing, and another 4 to process deeply in therapy.

Similar to the amount of years Trumps in office, and undoing the damage. Survival, survival, sirvival.

(edit: sorry for the confusing timeline. i’m not good at math)

Edited 8 hours ago by Yimpa

[Elliott]

19 minutes ago, paradiseengineering said:

You mean that people use these pronouns out of survival and conformity?

My chair uses it/that pronouns now.

--------------------------------------------------

I also just learned that gender, sex and pronouns are 3 diffrent things, independent from each other. Before this I thought this was just one thing called "gender". So that made things much more clear to me.  

Using this system it might turn out that I am actually non-binary myself, using he/him pronouns and male being my sex. 

I'm a straight cis "traditonal" male and I think he/her is ignorant. They/them is what's appropriate for everyone, in my opinion.

It's amusing to me, conservatives rag about Gay Pride as being focused on publicly showing sexuality, but their pronouns are rooted in sex, sexuality, it's from the utility of knowing who to have sex with. "He Her" are for identifying people for having sex. It's crude, archaic and perverted(unsurprising).

Edited 8 hours ago by Elliott