u/logielle

"Epiphany ping pong" -- the act of treating one's most recent insights as final singular solutions to a given problem repeatedly, downplaying the framing of finality as it repeats.

It's like when you're trying to solve a math problem and aren't sure how to simplify an equation. You think X might work, and in fact you have a feeling that it will work so well that you think this will solve the entire problem and you'll finally be free of your boring homework. But you implement it, and it turns out that you still have some work to do, or perhaps that X was a flawed idea all along and you have to backtrack. So you try Y, again feeling that this will solve the problem once and for all, but it doesn't quite work either. So you try Z, again feeling the same way. Repeat this n times, and you had an epic experience of sheer epiphany ping pong.

Another common example would be if you have an argument that claims X and Y, and someone feeds it to an LLM. Perhaps due to your phrasing, the LLM generated a summary that represented your argument as only claiming X. That person shows you the LLM result as a gotcha and you point out that you also claimed Y, but perhaps you didn't explicitly elucidate the relationship between X and Y in your response. They feed your response back to the LLM once again, returning to you with a result that now implies you claimed only Y all along, reading "Aha! So they're not saying X. They're saying Y! That's a fine distinction and I totally missed it! Thanks for the clarification!" So you correct this again. But now it turns to "Aha! So it's not really even Y! It's [a rephrasing of X that doesn't sound like X superficially]!" Repeat n times, and the LLM simulated an epiphany ping pong.

If you explain it at all.

In my case, I've only managed to keep mainstraights puzzled or skeptical. I avoid terms like "masc," "fem," "androgynous," etc. I might describe specific traits, aesthetics, mannerisms, ways of being, etc I've seen in actual women I liked, and I'd often get hit with "women can't be like that."

Among queer people I tend to interact with outside of this community, it's a coin flip. But the positive responses tend to be very positive. "OMG!! You're so real for this bestie. A woman should impregnate you!!" Truly wonderful <3

I sometimes see some people saying that they'd like to be more masculine (as a woman) or more feminine (as a man), and may even think of themselves as such, questioning if they're "really" GNC because their current presentation doesn't quite match that. Similarly, I've seen some men label themselves androgynous instead of feminine, not because they genuinely want to be more androgynous, but because they fear discrimination and harassment if they were to present more feminine. This is not to say that androgyny is somehow "less GNC" by itself, just that androgyny as compromise or proxy and androgyny for its own sake can be being quite different.

In a society that expects everyone to be either a woman or a man, and every woman to be conventionally feminine and every man to be conventionally masculine, many of us are unsurprisingly constrained by external circumstances and pressures and may find it harder to express our true selves. It's not that I've personally let those constrains deter me from expressing myself more freely, and to some extent, it's not really even practical for me to suppress every aspect of my gender non-conformity (e.g. deeply ingrained mannerisms). However, the very fact that I see the consequences first-hand, almost every day, makes it almost obvious for me as to why someone might make their gender non-conformity less visible, whether as an instinctive response to social pressure and discrimination, strategy, being in earlier stages of exploration, uncertainty, etc.

I do believe that whenever possible, it's best to not suppress yourself within a repressive status quo. At the same time, I don't think everyone's situation is the same, nor that the process of coming out would be identical for everyone. It's ultimately up to you to explore yourself and decide what and how much of it you wish to express to the world.

In any case, I don't think an appearance of "more" conformity means you are "less" non-conforming. You're not "less" GNC simply because you fear assault if you wear "women's clothes" in public. You're not "less" GNC simply because you're a teenage girl and your parents won't buy you that suit nor let you cut your hair short. The very fact that you might want those things, especially if persistently, might mean that your relationship to your gender doesn't quite conform to societies norms... wait... not conforming to gender norms... isn't that just gender non-conforming? Yes.

There's a difference between doing GNC things and being GNC, and so it's possible to be a feminine man who is conscripted into the military and is forced to present more masculine, while still being a feminine man, because that presentation isn't telling you that much about the person, just their circumstances. Ultimately, my point is that while more mainstream discussions of GNC are often about external presentation, it'd mischaracterize many of our experiences to assume that such presentation exists in a vacuum. You shouldn't have to wait for ideal circumstances before being able to recognize your unique relationship to your gender.