How fluid is gender for most people?

These people like the aesthetics of men, but they don't actually want to be men. Gender expression is not the same thing as gender identity. Just in general don't take TikTok comments as gospel in regards to your identity.

Gender is not fluid for the vast majority of people unless you’re genderfluid. Expression is more fluid for many.

I don’t really think a girl wanting her eyeliner to look like guyliner is dysphoria or an indicator of them being trans. I don’t think they’d wanna live as men (for the majority of the commenters at least). Being a man is not an aesthetic. Hope this makes sense lol I’m sleep deprived

Edit: forgot to add, that’s online, not real life!

generally i dont use tiktok as a litmus test for my own identity. or at all

Gender envy and being trans aren't the same thing and gender envy and fluidity also aren't the same thing.

Most people would have some sort of crush or idealised person of the opposite gender. Someone where they're like "If I was that gender, I'd wanna be this person". That doesn't indicate being trans or fluid, that's just a person using their imagination, thinking what that could be like etc.

I think for trans people, that can be how they realize something's up, when fantasising about that becomes a really big thing and starts feeling better than your actual reality. But it goes further from there (at least that was the case for me). I realized I didn't want to be someone else, I wanted to be me and me happens to be a dude.

IMO a lot of women who say they wish they could do “x thing in a guy way”either mean they wish they could do it without misogyny, or wish they could do it without it being the norm for them and be edgy and different, example the guyliner thing. These women don’t actually want to be men wearing eyeliner. They want to wear eyeliner and give off the vibes men do when they wear eyeliner (different, boundary breaking, dgaf, etc) which to me I think is usually either about misogyny or gender roles/societal implications for gender expression. But that’s just my two cents 🤷‍♂️ Gender expression is fluid for everybody but a lot of stuff just comes back to stuff like this in my personal opinion

Tiktok is pretty bad for trans people. I avoid it.

I think gender presentation is pretty fluid for a lot of people, but that doesn't mean their gender identity is also fluid. There are many, many people who are not trans but enjoy cross-dressing, drag, being a tomboy or a femboy or butch or androgynous or whatever else.

It sounds like you’re still new and maybe a little shaky in your trans identity, so other people having similar but different experiences is making you really uneasy. I suspect this experience is the reason for like 90% of trans and queer community bickering (not saying you’re picking a fight, or anything, just that this type of distress is really common). There’s all different kinds of people in the world who have all different kinds of gender feelings. Sometimes other people’s gender stuff will directly clash with yours, and you’ll be like, wait, then what the heck does that make me??? The important thing is to focus on what brings you joy, and what you think might bring you joy tomorrow and five years from now. If identifying as a man and/or socially transitioning and/or medically transitioning are on the list of things that bring you peace and joy, then congratulations! You are trans, regardless of how your feelings about eyeliner compare to cis women’s feelings about eyeliner.

How to know if your desire to be another gender is intense enough to warrant transitioning: If you believe you would be happier living as a gender other than the one you were assigned at birth, congrats, you are “trans enough”. It’s the only requirement for being trans.

Another thing that helps me reassure myself is that when I’m doubting whether I’m “actually trans,” I tend to be very scared of the idea that I may not be. Not just scared of detransitioning because it would be awkward and difficult, but scared of having to go back to being a girl. Cis women aren’t usually scared of having to live as women for the rest of their lives. Doesn’t typically induce existential dread in them lol. (Or if it does, it’s more like a fear of having to live as woman in a patriarchal society. Would you wanna be a woman in barbieworld?)

I feel like sometimes when cis women make comments like this trans folks react different from when cis men do. Like why is the immediate assumption that those cis (as far as we know) guys might be eggs but, cis (as far as we know) women making comments like these instantly make trans guys doubt themselves?

I've come to have a problem with the term "gender envy", especially when used by cis people. It's made to mean something more like "aesthetic envy". They like and desire aesthetics, not gender.

I'm honestly so tired of cis people taking trans terms and watering them down to fit their whims. They don't understand what it means to be trans, therefore they do not understand the things thar come with it - gender envy, gender dysphoria, gender euphoria. They all just think they denote something superficial and cosmetic.

Stop using tiktok

My theory is that a lot more people than we realize could be categorized as non-binary by definition, but they don’t feel the need to transition socially or medically. They don’t feel particularly connected to their assigned gender but don’t experience strong dysphoria either

A lot of that would be down to misogyny unfortunately. Girls wanting to be feminine in the way guys can be feminine, so they aren’t as sexualised, it’s very common and doesn’t mean they’re trans.

If it makes you feel any better, my gender identity is very solidly binary male. And I still feel envious about women. I’ve been surrounded by strong, independent, wicked smart women my whole life. I’ve always wanted to be graceful like my aunt, or witty and bitchy like my grandma, or pretty like my sister, or motherly like my cousin, pull off giant hoop earrings like my best friend, etc etc etc. I wish I could be a woman, but I’m just not. I can still do all of those things. But it doesn’t make me a woman. And I wouldn’t want to be a woman just so I can do those things.

I’m pretty sure it’s not gender envy and that they are just thirsty for twink white men with messy black hair.

Also yeah wearing an eyeliner will make you more feminine cause it’s traditionally a feminine thing. I don’t understand what they mean but “just looking like a girl”. Men who wear it don’t look more masculine imo

....Roderick Heffley, as in Diary of a Wimpy Kid, or....?

Also I think everyone's a little bit fluid, because the way society constructs gender is truly something else. If you cut the world in half and say "this half is blue, this half is pink, blue people have to stay in the blue zone and pink people have to stay in the pink zone", and someone likes any other colour than the one they're supposed to? They wind up being fluid by default.

Do you just want to look like a specific man/men or do you want to actually be a man? These women don’t actually want to live as men, they just find specific men attractive and wish they could emulate that. It’s like a man saying “damn, I wish I looked good in women’s underwear” vs a trans woman actually wanting to live as and be a woman, who also looks good in women’s underwear. Both of them want to look good in women’s underwear but for different reasons.

i have no idea what's going on there but try to remember that the tiktok algorithm is suuuuper specific, and great at finding people who share very specific experiences. as for what i know, I've met very few cis people who have a fluid gender expression, but that's it, expression. if you want a beard and balls you're not a woman

cis people love misusing terminology that does not in anyway apply to them at all. get off of tiktok

Ok token gender-fluid guy who hangs out here for medical information to answer this question

The answer is, more people are fluid in expression and aesthetics. Not gender.

I’d say that there’s probably the same amount of gender-fluid people as there are binary trans people. Maybe slightly more or less but yeah.

Also I’d say it’s more socially acceptable to want to be more masculine cause of tomboys and stuff. Wanting guyliner is werid in cis people’s eyes, but not as werid as a guy wanting kardashian makeup styles yk?

Also some of these women might be more on like the demigirl spectrum or something like that as well. Point is, this isnt an easy question to answer and trying to use tiktok to gauge that isn’t the best.

Some people spend way too much time looking at themselves, taking selfies. However, that’s not a lot to go on. I’d probably paint my nails (I like color) if it didn’t drastically increase my chances of being misgendered. If I were a cis male, I wouldn’t worry about it; but I’m not, so I don’t do it. Am I feminine? Not really. Am I girl? F—- no

I'm genderfluid. I have an obvious male side and a female side. I just want my body to be a blank slate I can add bits to when I'm feeling more one than the other. I got top surgery to help with that but I am not taking any T.

1. It's tiktok.
2. It's tiktok.
3. That is all.

I think it's fairly common for people to be curious about their gender, want to be able to present more androgynously/masculinely/femininely than they currently do, or envy what they perceive as benefits associated with being another gender. I don't think that most people experience this persistently to the extent that they seriously consider that they're trans or want to transition.

The thing is, with comments like these, you're only seeing a small sliver of those people. Some of them might be trans men and non-binary people whose eggs haven't cracked. Some of them might be cis women who enjoy having an androgynous or masculine aesthetic, and these guys embody aspects of how they would like to look. Some of them might be women who have some internalized misogyny. This example is something that could apply to a lot of people for different reasons.

And I think for most trans people, there are a lot of factors involved that point in the same direction, and their exploration of their gender has helped confirm what feels right and what doesn't.

Look at it this way. I’m a trans guy but I do like to wear make up sometimes and do sometimes like to wear a dress. I still feel and know I am a man when I do these things. Those things are merely expressions or outfits, but they are not my gender. That’s how I know im not gender fluid, I’m gender nonconforming instead. I can be envious of how hot a woman looks in a dress but I can be just as envious of a guy wearing a dress. If they are both pulling it off better than me that can cause envy, but both times it does not affect my gender.

It's not trans to want to be a tomboy (as in to have boyish traits while still identifying as a girl) nor is it to want to borrow some elements of someone's look or attitude of the opposite gender. The two people mentioned have looks that could work for tomboyish looks as well.

Some of the commenters could also straight-up be trans and not realize it or be in denial, or maybe have some of the symptoms but not enough to want to transition.

Lastly, some could also have been commenting in a way specifically meant to undercut transgender people's experiences. Like when people come out to their moms who retort with things like "I didn't like my boobs when they grew in either- it's normal to not want to be a girl! Therefore you're not trans".

Ultimately the only thing that matters is to live your best life. Doesn't matter if there are cis women out there with the same symptoms or not- if they're happy being women and you're not living your best life without transitioning, then transitioning is the right answer for you. Personally I'm a binary guy- I can understand why some people would want to be women and see some of the drawbacks of being a man, but I don't want to be a woman.

For me its not fluid atvall

There's a difference between wanting to look like a hot guy and wanting to go and live your life as a man. Most trans men (not all) just want to live a typical life as your average man. Some men can want to look like particularly attractive women, typically celebrities but they wouldn't act on it because they don't actually want to be, or feel like they are a woman.

Alot of people want to be that particular celebrity that they are idolising rather than the male version of themselves, I feel like that's (one of) the difference between cis people idolising a celebrity and an actual transgender person.

You have got to consider gender roles and misogyny, alot of women didnt like doing feminine things bc of how society treats women. many women are most likely saying "men get praised for wearing eyeliner but for me it is expected for me to be feminine so the joy of gender expression is taken from me"

I think as trans men we kinda forget that cis women are still held down by misogyny and we can relate to the same thibg but the reasons why we relate are vastly different (for example mulan for trans men is seen as a transgender metaphor, whereas for cis women mulan is about misogyny. both are still about escaping what society forces onto people who are afab)

I think some of this has to do more with gender expression rather than gender identity. We still lack some of the language to really explain how these things feel so we use comparison. Plus you can feel like expressing a more “feminine” or “masculine” side from day to day. Again, that varies between people. Gender identity isn’t as fluid for people but can be for some.

Some of those people may resonate with the Tik Tok because they actually have some level of dysphoria. Severity of gender dysphoria can vary greatly.

Gender envy is a thing in of itself. So is gender curiosity. Like my wife is a femme woman but has wondered what it would be like to have a penis, especially when she was sexual with women.

Some of the woman may find that they like the overall aesthetic of a particular makeup style on a man. They are envious bc that style will look different on them as a woman.

Misogyny might also play a role here as women are impacted by it daily.

There are some questions/visualizations you could ask yourself. Like when I’m 80yrs old do I see myself as a man? Woman? Nonbinary? Have I had surgeries? Is my voice deeper? Is my name different? Etc. There are no right or wrong answers it’s just meant to help get a better sense of yourself.

i dont think any of my "trans indicators" are exclusive of how some cis women might feel and still be cis. it was what helped keep the denial train going as long as it had .. ("well, some cis women also feel this way") but at the end of the day its the amount of "indicators" (sure, some cis women might say/feel similarly about 3-4 things, but i have dozens and dozens at this point) and my contextualization of them that matters ..

Does it ultimately matter? Even if the majority of people in a society are trans some day? So what? Society changes. Gender is a social construct. Maybe one day being trans will be that simple a desire for most people and they will or wont feel the need to act on it. Maybe we are making most people realize that anyone can be fluid if they want to be. Maybe it’s ok to have choices

I think that it's kinda hard to answer that from inside the house lol. To me, I don't see how gender could not be fluid because I experience a (limited) level of gender fluidity. I'm also pansexual, and to be real I just can't imagine how everyone around me isn't at least somewhat pan. However, I know everyone experiences attraction differently logically.

What I'm saying is, sometimes when we are used to our own experiences it's easy to forget that some people really don't relate! Some people really are cis, just like there are lots of different kinds of trans people out there. But, if everyone really was somewhat genderfluid, that wouldn't make you or I any less trans. <3

Gender is heavily influenced by culture, history, and lots of other things like psychology and socialization. What's important is what you identify as, here and now, in this moment in time. It is valid because YOU identify that way, full stop. And if you aren't sure then thats perfectly fine as well.

This used to fuck me up too, but then I realized that a trans guy IS a guy, while a cis woman who has gender envy is... just a cis woman who has gender envy.

I'll explain this a bit better: women who say they wish they were boys don't actually FEEL like boys. They wish they felt like boys, you know? While a trans guy is someone who truly FEELS like a boy. He might wish he was a cis guy, sure, but he still knows that he's a guy. Regardless of physical appearance, a guy is a guy because he knows he's a guy. Not because he wants to look like a man (although that might be part of it).

I'm a trans guy, but sometimes I catch myself wishing I was a woman. Not because I wish I looked a certain way, but because I feel like there are a lot of cool experiences I'll never have because I'm a guy. This happens when I watch those aesthetic tiktok videos with pretty pinterest pics of girls and a caption that says "sisterhood" or some shit. Does this mean I'm a woman? Absolutely fucking not. I'm 2 years on T and 1 year post op and happier than I've ever been. I love being a guy and I love masculinity. I love looking masc and being treated like all the other guys. I am 100% a man. But it's only human to sometimes wonder what it would be like to experience different things. Or to look at a different aesthetic and think "wow I kinda wish I could try that out".

Those women are probably experiencing something similar. Masculinity is cute! which is why some women have very masculine styles, identify as butch, etc... Doesn't necessarily make them trans. Unless they feel like men, they're just women who enjoy masculinity.

A ton of people in those comments are probably young and likely trans or gnc in some way. The other part is just wishing for the ability to express gender free of stereotypes or expectations. They want to be seen as individuals. Maybe wear eyeliner in an artistic way that is appreciated as such, not just expected because they’re a woman. Or much more simply, we can’t forget that technically cis women can desire androgyny or even masculinity and find their natural features to be barriers to that look. I’ve always said that two people could feel the exact same way, and only one of them might care to identify as nonbinary. Because labels are ultimately tools to communicate. Watching that video you might start questioning your gender all over again, but just remember what you want to communicate to the world and yourself. And that your labels can change. In social media it’s easy to find all these checklists about what is and isn’t ______. At the end of the day a lot of those women are feeling that way and are still totally fine being women. It sounds like you definitely depart from them in that “woman” does not feel like home to you.

Just because they’re describing it very well doesn’t mean they actually understand it. I can describe the Black American experience all day and that doesn’t mean I understand it. If you’re having gender dysphoria you in some way do not identify with the gender you were assigned at birth, it’s all a spectrum and cis people can make approximations of what they think that means possibly even convincingly so but that doesn’t mean they know what they’re talking about.

Isn’t that just regular envy? Like maybe these women want to dress a certain way. Gender envy is envy mixed with dysphoria and it’s definitely not a fun feeling, so I doubt they’d be posting about it otherwise

Sometimes I feel more masculine. Sometimes I feel more feminine. For example: one day feeling more feminine so I dress to match what I felt. Was more emotional(like stereotypical pregnant lady emotional) at certain goings-ons in tv, music or ads. The next, I could feel more masculine and not be emotional at the drop of a dime. Sometimes I want to be with a man to make me feel more like a woman, sometimes I want to be with a woman to make me feel more like a man. 🤷

just like how bi/pan as the default sexuality makes sense to me, people generally being nonbinary also makes sense. that people tend to fall in the in between rather than outliers. obviously i have no proof but it just seems logical lol

I think of it as a gender slide! I started off fem and as I slid down the slide, I started to be more androgynous than a little more down the slide I became masc!

And you know sometimes you wanna ride the slide again so you climb, but it a little more into androgyny and slide back down into masc. And sometimes I get way higher into fem again and slide back down.

Idk if that makes sense, but thats the best way I can explain it for me 😰

Every post i see about tiktok and the topic of gender in here just makes me think a lot of us would be better off staying far away from the app. Promise you'll do a lot better without it. I know how it feels to be made uncertain of who you are and how damaging it can be to your self esteem, considering my ocd tends to get stuck on it when it comes up.

But in my honest opinion, set aside homophobia and transphobia and both of these things will find the lines blurry rather than the rigid steps we've had drilled into us. Im gonna make this comparison to straightness and gayness here: bicuriousity is a lot more common and normal than we think. A fully completely rigid straight person is actually pretty uncommon i think. We werent designed for that rigidity. I think this applies to gender identity too. It doesnt mean nothing about you honestly, it just is the nature of these things being a spectrum as we say, but with it so ingrained to be opposite we have a hard time incorporating the people closer to straightness and cisness in that spectrum. I dont blame us for that, its them that act like theyre a bubble away from queerness afterall. But id say you just focus on yourself. Calling yourself a man makes you happier, living and navigating the world seeing yourself as one makes you happier, and thats the important thing. These cis women would probably feel disgust at the thought of navigating the world like that. Its kind of similar to when you hand them the hypothetical of how theyd feel if they woke up and spent one day the opposite gender, most would happily engage because its just hypothetical to them. Of course, unfortunately, there is always maybe maybe not here, but to any of that you just have to trust yourself. Being a man now is what makes you feel better in yourself, so this is what you should put faith in. Just have some faith in yourself i guess.

I’m very late to this post but think I can help, because I decided 15 years ago or so that I was invalid because of shit like this and did not transition, also because I was prioritizing my career and had already missed my chance to be stealth in my career by not transitioning during college.

Yes, I wanted to look like the punky androgynous guy icons of the day. I wanted to wear eyeliner as a guy. I wanted to try out being a man for a day. I thought I was a lesbian (I’m bisexual) because the closest I thought I could get to what I wanted was a butch presentation.

All of my online friends were transgender and I spent hours every week researching transition. I had unresolved trauma around men that made me hate my own true gender. I desperately wanted to have a penis. I wished I could be a trans woman, so that I wouldn’t have to change anything about my life and my feminism (I am still a feminist for the record) but secretly I would have the correct genitals. I decided which type of top surgery and which type of bottom surgery I “would have” had if I was a trans man, which of course I “knew” I wasn’t.

I told NO ONE except my trans friends. I would never comment on my main account that I wanted to look like a man (many trans men test the waters this way, that’s not unusual, heck half these women could be trans.)

In the last years before I transitioned, I wore makeup every day for the first time in my life and desperately tried to be a woman and literally started posting online as an ally who turned out not to be trans but is an example of why questioning is safe and healthy to do.

I find transphobia to be unbearable to listen to and always have.

Now I’ve been on T for one year and the idea of quitting is unthinkable.

Anyway, I’m sure people have described gender dysphoria to you at length. But these are some of the strange ways I behaved and strange thought patterns I had as a “cis woman.”

Things that would have indicated I might be a woman after all: I did not want to transition because it was too hard and I would lose my family and relationship, that’s it, that’s my evidence of womanhood, lol. If they said in many ways they enjoy being a woman, well, they could still be non-binary or genderfluid but yeah probably not trans men.

You’re the only one who knows what it is like to be you. Trust yourself.

Gender isn’t fluid (except for people who are actually gender fluid.) gender EXPRESSION is fluid.

I feel like everyone has some fluidity, but it's not to the extent of being gender fluid or trans. Maybe more like the aesthetic thing other people mentioned, but also sometimes it's like, "I'm so attracted to this person, I kinda want to be them", if that makes sense.

Not sure But I think more than most people think

I feel like a lot of people lean more nonbinary than they realise.

My boyfriend specifically considers himself a cis man, but after talking to him, he's more gender apathetic/agender, he just doesn't care enough and he's comfortable being percieved as a man so he considers himself a man

I feel a lot of cis people fall into this category, where they dont get dysphoric about being percieved as their agab, so they dont consider that they can expand beyond that.

However gender often isn't fluid, its more the expression thats fluid

Personally I identify as a cis woman but I feel that my gender has 100% been assigned to me from the outside. I feel like I am a woman because I've been treated my whole life like one, and that's coloured so many of my life experiences that it's become my identity. A lot about being a woman sucks, but being identified as one luckily never felt like it bothered me too much luckily, so I assume that means I'm not trans. But that experience feels pretty "fluid" to me in that I don't feel like any of the gender stuff is internal or inherent to me, it's just like what I've been given by the world. Pretty sure if I had been treated like a boy I'd feel like one right now and be happy with that.

To be fair I'm autistic though and I think people talk about "autigender" being a thing. 🤷🏻‍♀️

Gender is as fluid as we want it to be but these tiktoks are not an indicator. Keep in mind as well, people mimic what they read online. They read gender envy, they think it means 'I wanna look like you so bad /aesthetic'

For reference on how fluid gender can be, just for fun my family took a gender test. I got ftm obvi, my brothers all got cis male except one got gender non-conforming, my nonbinary sibling got genderfluid and is now in a gender crisis (identity pending now lol), and my mother got transmasculine.

Considering that gender is socially constructed and cultures have different ideals and different ideas of gender, it's very likely that gender is fluid for literally everyone. It's like a spectrum because there is no universally predetermined binary or something. Even sex isn't binary. So its likely that every person has some variation in their gender expression and identity. My mother is a cis woman, who is very comfortable in her identity. Yet her gender expression is much more masculine than that of a partner of mine, who is nonbinary but likes to present themselves as very feminine in presentation and behaviour. Additionally I also think there would be higher rates of gender identities beyond the binary if there wasn't social stigma and the fear of discrimination. I haven't made any attempts to transition and it took me ages to realise I'm not cis because 1. I didn't have the resources to know there are other identities than cis. 2. I needed time to accept that being trans was a normal part of nature. 3. Realising the binary isn't real either made me question everything because I still like some aspects of femininity and 4. There are people all around me who would do horrible things to me for living within my comfortable identity. Gender is fluid in that it changes throughout life, even for cis people on the binary. This doesn't mean you're not trans. Imagine this: You're on an island and noone else is there. Noone will see you and you're 100 percent sure that the only people you'll see in your life are loved ones who will fully accept you. Also this is the only life you have. There is nothing after it. If you die that's it. One chance to be happy and comfortable in your body. Who would you be? What would you want to look like and behave like? Best option is to write this down and look at it again in a month. You'll realise some things in that time likely and have a fresh view on what you wrote. Historically there have always been people who identified with different parts of different gender identities. And we've used sexual attraction as a marker for gender sometimes. This is important because there are HUGE implications in sexual attraction due to power dynamics etc. That's why feminine men are often still seen as gay even though they might not be gay and just like to express themselves that way. Expression ≠ identity. What you identify with SHOULD be entirely up to you. Sadly it isn't yet because of a lack of information. Sorry for the long rant. Its an important topic to me that I've been struggling with for years. I've identified as gender fluid, trans, nonbinary nd gender queer in the past. And that might change again in the future as I deconstruct my own fear and shame about not conforming by social standards for identity.

Comparison is the thief of joy, friend. How other people experience their gender is irrelevant to how you experience your own. Do not look to other people to define what being trans means to you, look within yourself. What do YOU want from life? Who do YOU want to be? How do YOU envision yourself in five, ten, fifty years?

On top of that, consider that* transitioning is a lifelong process. You have years to figure it out; you don't need to answer all your questions about your identity today. Take it one step at a time and see where life leads you.

Here's the thing: sometimes two people can have the same feelings about gender and interpret them two different ways, and as long as both of them are happy, neither of them are wrong.