That wasn’t a description of a model, though, it was a description of an actual experience. @LearnedCoward was saying that they actually don’t know what they are feeling at all. I’ve had that experience too. Like I said, I sometimes think about my behaviour objectively and think, “Oh, if I’m behaving that way, it’s probably motivated by feeling this way” even though I’m totally unaware I’m feeling that. We might be extreme cases, but tons of people end up getting into very emotional states without realizing what feelings they are feeling, especially when the real feeling is hungry or tired.
There’s a question of identity here, what is the “me” that doesn’t know what “I” am feeling? I think we’re talking about a conscious experience. If you are afraid you are going to get a rush of adrenaline that will affect you in numerous ways, but you won’t necessarily notice that it happened. But the defining and labeling helps us have conscious awareness of our feelings.
You can’t not have emotions, but you can not experience your emotions.
The way I interpret it, emotions happen spontaneously. But I very much doubt that they really represent states. States seem like a way of trying to quantize something in constant flux in hopes of narrowing it down to a model which can be labeled and so communicated to others.
Not unlike the other constant confusion humans experience with regards to symbolizing from real phenomena. Yes it probably exists, but it is itself not the name, category, associations etc one attributes to it. Same as other cases of map =/= territory, menu =/= meal, but people get even more confused when abstracting about subjective experiences than they do apparently external ones.
People especially in Western and colonial cultures seem to reflexively identify with their emotions. It is even apparent in the language where people are more likely to say “I am happy” rather than “I experience impressions of happiness”, or some such thing. In dharmic cultures I think emotions are framed as sort of cognitive effluvia. Not unlike how you can tell a lot of very significant things about a person from analysis of their urine - yet most people don’t identify with being their urine - it is just a necessary process which occurs.
Many people I have met have expressed discomfort or even visceral outrage that I can feel deeply, and yet not be very concerned about the content of what I feel, to have no preference of feeling a certain way.
I literally don’t know how I would respond – the fact that I don’t feel a strong identity now doesn’t mean that I wouldn’t feel very different in a different body. Alexithymia adds another counfounding factor – it’s not like you don’t have feelings, they just seem less accessible. In some ways, I’m comforted by the fact that it seems relatively common for autistic people to feel this way – I may be missing something, but many people in my context do too.
To a large extent, your quality of life would depend on many things other than dysphoria. Would you pass? Would it be a switch to another body where your hormones are balanced? Dysphoria isn’t constant either, and it can relate to hormones so I have no idea how I would feel if that’s what happened.
Another issue is that the experience of autism can be worse for women (particularly those with high functioning autism who have more awareness of how they’re different), since there’s a much greater expectation on them to be emotionally intelligent and socially active. The suicide rate is 9 times higher for adults with HFA than those without it – and the rate is higher for women than for men. So even if I could physically pass and had no gender dysphoria, this would not mean that all would be well.
Actually the emotions-urine metaphor helps me explain this a lot better. A person who lacks any of the physical sensations to let them know when they have to urinate or even that they do urinate might end up sitting in urine all day, which isn’t necessarily very good for them.
You can have whatever model of identity/cognition/emotions you want, but the model is the map and the territory is the actual people who have actual experiences, some of which are an experience of being unaware of, unable to access, or alienated from their emotions.
Not sure if this ties into what you’re saying, but:
I’ve had chemically induced anger before, where I think any rational, external person would say I was getting really angry over a lot of things that otherwise wouldn’t have phased me due to a change in my medications. That’s not what it felt like though. What it felt like was that I was the same person, and all of a sudden there were so many more infuriating things happening.
Since then I’ve noticed a lot more how my view of the world gets defined by my emotions at the time, rather than vice versa.
I am frustrated about the rationalizations behind why I am denied attendance at a kink event this month. They could have simply taken some responsibility for their own preferences and said “We just don’t like you, Popo! Go away!” which would have IMO been a crap reason, but at least honest. Instead the organizer explained that I shouldn’t go because it is for dykes and queers… which is precisely WHY I wanted to go in the first place. It takes something which can be a very inclusive category and turns it into something cliqueish and divisive. And this was only a few weeks after I was getting fed up with the BBS here and the weird situation of a regular trying to out me as being not queer simply because they don’t like me or my opinions.
I have heard of many instances of a person who is gay, trans, queer, or kink being outed by others whilst denying it themselves, but I have never encountered anybody else who is open about it being often denied by others.
That would be why. The LGBT movement is mostly about gay men, and to a lesser extent lesbians. Bisexual erasure is a very real thing, pansexuals get written off, and trans people are just now starting to be accepted. As someone who is more asexual than sexual, I don’t feel entirely welcome in the LGBT community. Hopefully this will change
But, that’s exactly why I thought that I should be there!
I agree that these are all real trends which many of us have had to deal with. But this event is all about bi, pan, and trans. It aims to be very inclusive and largely succeeds, based upon word of mouth and having attended once. But they seemed to be suggesting that I am a gay man, and would be better off going to an event for “other” gay men. But that’s not my situation.
In some ways it seems to unintentionally reenforce heteronormative gender roles. If you look like you were AFAB you can look as butch as you like, and it’s cool, And if you look like you were AMAB you can look as femme as you choose. But this still relies upon standards for recognizing biological sex and aspirations towards a stereotyped gender representation/performance. You can be a certain way - provided that they can tell what you are subverting. Likewise fluidity and queerness are much easier to accept from someone who appears more traditionally androgynous.
I feel like I need to run an ice cream truck, but all I have is a tank. And no matter how I paint it, and no matter what music I play, everybody runs in terror once it rolls into their neighborhood. Some gossip, some run, some shoot at it - but nobody is brave enough to come up and sample how good the damn ice cream is.
I hear that! I don’t take it personally, but I am so jaded that I am too accustomed to not feeling welcome anywhere, and that is not good for several reasons. Most acutely in me hoping to know how to minimize my imposition upon others.
Seconded. A week ago I was headed to a queer club night, standing in the back alley with a few friends. Some gay guys come along to chat, they ask me,"Gay or straight?"
me:"heh umm well. Do I have to choose…"
guys:"Oh, she’s shy. You’re shy"
me: “OK…”
So I suppose if you don’t categorise yourself immediately in the way people expect, they feel obliged to do it for you…
