Wow, uh... I don't know what I've missed, exactly, but having skimmed through the last couple of pages I have to say I'm probably really really glad I missed it.
So, I've been wanting to talk about something, and maybe it doesn't really belong in this thread, but at the very least you guys are mostly people I wouldn't mind discussing it with and anything to shift the topic to something hopefully productive.
It's like this - a while ago, I was thought of by at least a few people the forum as a girl (thanks to a humorous mafia thread). I'm actually a guy, technically, but I didn't discourage it. I didn't actively lie about it or try to deceive anyone, but I actually liked being thought of that way, treated that way, because at least for a little while, while I was reading responses, I could see myself that way. And it was nice.
Now, I don't have any problem being a guy, and no real desire to become a girl, but it was nice to feel like a girl somewhere, to be treated like one. To think of myself as one for a while. But eventually, of course, most people realized I was a guy (not too hard to figure out really, and it is the default, so in absence of my reinforcing things to the contrary...), and of course I realized once people know that, even if you ask them to, they're probably not going to think of you as a girl when they post any more. I mean, I feel like because of it I understand a small part of the difficulties a trans-person faces : to know other people won't see you the way they want you to, the suspicion that even if they got them to call you by the desired pronoun they would still "think" of you as the other gender, and that's important somehow.
But I miss it. I miss feeling a bit feminine, I miss not feeling like a guy for a little while. Do people think actively portraying myself as female in a sort of situation like that would be dishonest? If, say, I were on a different forum, would it be alright to "be a girl"? Would it be insulting to actual women on the internet? Or is an internet id really what you make it, and if you see yourself as something and act like it, you are it (for the defined scope, at least)?
I don't know, it feels like it would be a sensitive issue, and I don't really understand why but I feel like it would be. I don't feel like I'd be lying, I may not have the real life experiences that go into being a woman so maybe I wouldn't be a normal woman, but I would feel like within the confines of the environment I would be... but I feel like if it came out that I took on a different gender identity on a different forum, people would feel like I was just pretending and...
Uh, I don't know. I just know I've wanted to make this post for a while and never really been confident enough too or felt like this wasn't the right place, but since it deals with issues of gender identity maybe it was? And every attempt always came out this sloppy, so I figured what the hell... Sometimes I just want to be a girl for a while, and I feel guilty about it like the desire alone is enough to somehow diminish its meaning... and then I wish that it didn't have any meaning. In my ideal society gender labels would be something we chose, indistinct from physical sex, that we could take on or off at will.
Eh, maybe I'm just a weirdo. :/