Is information security good? (by alaric)

One of the interesting things to have come from Edward Snowden's leaks of classified documents is that the American National Security Agency has been working to introduce flaws into the design and implementation of security technologies, in order to make it easier for them to break said security for their own ends.

There's been a lot of outrage about that. The argument for it is that the ready availability of strong security technology makes it easier for bad folks to conceal their crimes (and, worse, conceal the fact that they are planning such crimes, so they cannot be stopped in advance), so the NSA is right in acting to make sure people don't have strong security technology. However, even if we can trust the NSA (and that is far from certain) such vulnerabilities can be found by people we certainly can't trust: "cyber-criminals" intent on stealing our credit card details in order to rob us of our money, commercial competitors looking for strategic advantage, and so on.

There are also deeper issues that have been raised; this means that the NSA is covertly working to sabotage the products of US companies. Should they be allowed to do that? Can those companies now sue them for damages?

But I think that, at the heart of the debate over this, is an even deeper issue.

We have the NSA - the part of the US government officially responsible for information security - acting to subvert the information security available to US individuals and companies, on the grounds that it is harmful to the public if they have strong security. While on the other hand, we have individuals and companies striving for better security; working to make more secure products, choosing products that claim to provide security benefits, and so on.

This shows, to me, that there's a big unresolved question that US society as a whole - government and non-government together - needs to ask themselves: Is information security good? The government's official position seems to be that information security is harmful, as it makes it harder to provide a more general notion of security that is threatened by criminals, foreign governments, and terrorists; while everyone else's position seems to be that information security is good because they don't want information criminals and foreign governments stealing their secrets (terrorists don't seem to have cottoned to this trick yet) - and, maybe, because they don't want the government knowing ("stealing" is a contentious term here, as the government gets to define what "stealing" is) their secrets, too.

So before they can really debate whether the NSA's actions are justified or not, I think the US needs to step back and look at the bigger question: Should information security be a right, or not? If not, then they should just use legislation to stop companies and people from wasting resources trying to achieve it while other resources are being spent subverting it so they only receive an illusion thereof. That's just plain inefficient. And if information security is deemed good, then the NSA should be prevented from subverting it, and refocus its efforts on ways of doing its job without being able to break encryption; traffic analysis, meta-data analysis, exploiting specific installations of security systems where a threat is suspected, and so on are all time-honoured mechanisms that work even against well-educated adversaries that use encryption systems that the NSA hasn't been able to subvert.

Sorry Gromit We Are Not Going To Find You All – you’ve been Usurped by Chicken Run! (by sarah)

So this weekend was going to be the final drive to find Gromit in and around Bristol - we have enjoyed the trail muchly over the summer but then it just was not to be - instead I got asked a) to perform Saturday at 1 o'clock and b) there were some chickens avalible for rescuing/retiring from intensive commercial farming. Plus there is a possible chance of getting to talk to the allotment people on Sunday - so sadly and with a heavy heart no more Gromits 🙁

But still - CHICKENS!

The hen house that me and Alaric assembled last weekend was hefted into place Friday night after Thursday and Friday were spent burning rubbish (including that giant damn building bag of tree bits the previous people had left on the workshop roof and which was now dumped right were the back of the run needed to go!). My garden doesn't look pretty at the moment but it has been very productive!

This is going to be within the big fenced off area we will have the animals in most of the time though once they are settled they like the rabbit will get to bounce or flutter around the garden! But for now we have the chicken run and it even has a little ramp!

So anyway I went and watched poetry whilst Al and the girls went to pick up the supplies we needed such as feed and grit (for the chickens gullet - they have no teeth so they swallow stones to help grind their food up). Several people were coming to see me read/perform including Al and the girls but I ended up going on early and so they missed it - boo hiss! But on the other hand at least two radom shoppers stopped for the entirety of my 20 minute set 🙂 I always count that as a win!

Then we headed off to go and pick up our chickens from nearish Cirencester - it was a farm where the rescue chickens had been delivered that morning, whilst there Mary befriended the farm dog! So the fat hen has been called Doggie - as featured above.

On the way home I kept winding Alaric up with chicken impressions and Jean was convinced they were laying eggs in the book - we collected them in my old paper work boxes which were just the right size for two chickens each with handy air wholes - they kept the spare box we had bought just in case as they make such handy chicken carriers!

At home Jeany removed the leds (after cats had been turfed!), they all just sat there with half their feathers missing, not realising her was a chance for escape.

Jean's one is called Lilly after the fictional character Harry Potter's Mother.

The remaining two hens are being called after Chicken Scheme programmers - so we have Felix and Mario!

Well eventually when Alaric was applying the red mite powder Felix who was the first to stick her neck out of the box, looked around went 'my god what are you doing to me!' and fluttered out of the box - she was the only one to do so - then she promptly pooed on my shoe which was sitting by the back door!

We popped her back in the box and took them down to the chicken run!

Felix was the first one to work out there was a ramp and was busy bossing all the others about!

Initially they were only interested in all the grit and not the food or water. Mary is very happy there is a chick'n house and has learnt that they are not ducks! But mainly has been restrained from prodding and poking!

Lilly (Jean's chicken) is a bit dim and was found forlorn at the base of the ramp at bed time oblivious as to what at happened to the other chickens - I had to pick her up and put her in the hen house!

We got the chickens from The British Hen Trust and I was sad to see the state of the chickens - but this is nothing compared to how chickens used to be at the end of a commercial laying career and I think the commercial farmers need to be thanked for at least allowing them to be retired. I think the issue lays in the commercial pressures on the farmers - it's bizar that in a land were we end up with so much wasted food there are people struggling to feed their families and animals being forced to over produce :/ I myself have found times when we could not afford anything other than the cheapest eggs and sometimes not even that :/ I see how many get broken in the supermarkets too. I don't know how to solve the issue as I am privlaged to be able to keep the chickens.

Anyway we finally have our birds - no ducks yet - need to assess how much space the chickens actually need and how noisy etc... they are - especially as ducks take up more space! (Goes off and picks up her book on keeping urban bees).

The Best of Berries (by sarah)

That awkward moment when someone takes a photo of you picking berries along the foot path to town and you realise OMG! I've turned into a hippy! I'm not even just picking black berries but ones people give you funny looks over as they think they are poisonous (which they are if you don't cook them!). My top was not quiet tie dye but near enough and my baby had no trousers on whilst my eldest skipped about in a hand painted t-shirt - yep I'm one of those mums - also urban blackberrying - BEWARE THE CYCLISTS!

This was a post I put on facebook and some interesting things came out of it - for a start I had to qualify that I meant the Rowan berries as toxic unless cooked. But they are not very toxic as in it is something that builds up over time and can sometimes lead to liver (or maybe kidney failure) from what I've read. Anyway the chemical is broken down by temperature extremes so that is freezing and cooking. Which is why the old country lore is that you don't pick until after the first frost.

And the classic argument over elder berries and weather they are poisonous. Main issue being that ripe berries aren't but they have to be really ripe and that they just aren't very toxic again though the leaves and stems are. Again cooking brakes down the cyanid within (it is also in apple pips and various other things) - some people have developed a tolerance from eating them as a kid etc...

Then I was asked what I thought of berrying along busy roads - which is an interesting one - this was my response.

Ok when the petrol was all lead based it was a big problem but now it should be ok - some of the ones (berries I'd picked) today were from road sides - it helps that my friends did the soil surveys a few years back - only thing I would say is that they shouldn't be eaten directly from the bush still if from heavy roadsides as there will be dust on them but a quick wash should sort that out. (However be aware this is my opinion and I haven't seen any data for years).

Also unless you have a map of the UK with metal ions on it etc... you are going to struggle to know what is safe where anyway - there are areas of Wales for a start where heavy metals weather out of the soil and plants there should be avoided for human consumption - add in illegal human refuse dumps and so on... Somewhere may seem nice a pleasant - even have farm crops growing on it and really not be good at all.

But the risks are minimal anyway as it is build up that's the issue wand everyone eats from a wide variety of places these days.

Having said all this people swapped recipes for things, and then I found out that haw stones contain cyanid - but again the cooking will brake this down - but this lead me to think about the confusing wealth of info out there on edible plants etc... I have not found an actually study of this specifically to tell the public the exact risks of things - for a start a table of how much cyanid is on average in various foods and compares say free food to stuff like apples and almonds etc... Also people seem confused by cyanid groups verses cyanid itself which react very differently - if we cut everything with the groups in out of our diet we would quickly starve (if I remember my A'level chemistry correctly).

Also I have been freely dispensing information about blackberries to people who enquire whilst I am out and about and often on of a group will be really taken with the idea whilst another will have apoplexy about them being dirty etc... There is very little in the way of public knowledge about this stuff - have any tests actually ever been done I wonder? How dirty is a blackberry straight from the briar and what do the soil test etc... mean around the road sides.

In the wake of Jamie Olivers comments about food and poverty and people being silly for not knowing - it would make sense to have an education program, healthy eating reduces costs to the NHS and benefits etc... it is a long term thing. People are scared of food they haven't grown up with or don't want to squander tight budgets on culinary experiments that might go wrong or really just can't get the fresh fruit and veg from the shops but also do not feel safe or confident in going out and finding their own in case they poison their family - these are reasonable fears and so easily addressed.

Jamie has always had a big head but he's also got a big heart and has done a hell of a lot with the school dinners and stuff (I think he just needs to stop and have a little think again over what he is saying and step into others shoes for a bit), but you know he really shouldn't have too - we should have a Ministry of Food anyway :/

So if I was in charge what would I do?

Well I would have all school children out on wilderness trails learning identification of edibles or more importantly poisonous plants. I would have fruit trees planted along verges and in parks - I would get tests done to see exactly what impact traffic fumes etc have and if the levels of harmful things are too high I would look at traffic regulations and find ways to reduce those. I would have cook-ups at community centres and places so that people can come along and learn to cook for free etc...

I would have a government leaflet/website that told you all about were it legal to forage (in clear terms) and the risks set out (this is the risks not just the hazards) but I would include the same for processed and main stream farming foods. I would initiate more allotments and community orchards and let the public know the things exist!

Schools are starting to grow veg and stuff thanks to the super markets and there has been an upsurge in general homestedding activities but they are being seen as a very middle class thing as they tend to be the ones with the time and spare resources to plough into learning about these things. I am finding it very frustrating trying to get hold of an allotment and to be frank most of our shopping bill is fruit and veg and that is just wrong! It is stupid that processed foods cost more than fruit and veg fresh from the field/vine.

As one of my friends posted on FB recently - growing your own food has become a middle class want rather than a working class need - but the problem there is that it is really still a need for EVERYBODY regardless of income or age. I've been reading up on things like depression, stress, learning difficulties etc... all being helped by... well nature - yes I know it all sounds hippy but these are medical studies etc... I think it would need a lot of work though - most of those being pushed into poverty at the moment are households were both parents work (I know surprising isn't it?) and therefore they are not going to want the extra stress/time restraint on already tiring lives - but maybe allotment sharing could come into place or something like that.

You also need to make sure people know they can join these things and that they are not exclusive schemes - I remember some of the allotments near were we grew up were very particular about who they let on to the site etc...

I hear that high end offices in London are now installing gardens on their roofs were people can grown veg and even keep bees. I have hope and I am enjoying my blackberrying - I've received one jar of jam from a friend and the neighbour nabbed me yesterday to shyly ask if I would like some of her 'bramble' jam once it was cool.

Privacy (by alaric)

I have a looser attitude towards privacy than most people, but I have began to reconsider that lately.

Generally, I believed (and still do) that anything I do in public is pretty much exempt from privacy. I have no privacy objection to pervasive CCTV, because if I do anything in a public place, somebody could be watching me anyway. The fact that my enemies can now just consult massive archives of CCTV to find me rather than having to get somebody to follow me around isn't, in my view, a huge deal. Indeed, I quite like the idea of sousveillance, having my own recording of what happens around me. It might be inappropriate to be doing that in circumstances that the people around me consider "private", so I'd turn it off for their comfort when it seemed right to do so, but I would still assume that anything I do in the presence of other people is basically recorded to some extent - after all, it's in their memory, at least!

Likewise with monitoring my network traffic at my ISP; I have never had any illusion of privacy there. I encrypt traffic that matters, and accept that the existence and destination/origin of encrypted traffic might be used by my enemies for traffic analysis.

So, I didn't really have any objections to mass surveillance; I had far more objection to the facts that encryption is far from ubiquitous and that information security is not taught in schools. My feeling was that if I can't stop an enemy that doesn't abide by the law (eg, organised criminals) from performing traffic analysis on me, then I can't assume it's private; I can stop them reading my stuff or impersonating me by using public key cryptography, so as long as the law doesn't hinder that, I'm content.

As such, I always wished that Web browsers would just include some kind of unique user ID in the headers, ideally backing it up with a public-key signature of the entire HTTP request. Then we could dispense with session cookies, logins, and even things like OpenID; we'd just authenticate to our browser by supplying the keypair in some browser-dependent way, and then head out onto the secure-single-sign-on Web. There's no loss in privacy compared to the current status quo that people are happy to identify themselves to web sites with email addresses, but it'd be a whole lot simpler for users and for developers. And so that, basically, is the security model I developed for ARGON.

However, I am starting to change my mind.

I've always felt that the "hole" in my approach to privacy was that it depended on my own knowledge of security and my enlightened use of encryption; I wanted sufficient education to bring everyone to that level. Encryption tools are generally a bit clunky, but if more people wanted to use them, that would create demand for better tools (or, more pertinently, better integration into the tools they already use). I felt that if we could just get people to encrypt and sign their communications, and encrypt their storage, and use Tor for things where the cost is worth the protection against traffic analysis, everything would be fine.

However, what has made me start to change my mind is the move towards storing one's data on third-party servers. By which I mean, living your life through Facebook, or letting Google store your email and your documents. People are moving away from having a computer full of their stuff, and communicating semi-directly with their peer's computers, towards letting third parties hold all their stuff. Often third parties they don't pay money to and are in no contract with, so they have little or no leverage over.

It's easy to say that educating people in computer security would make them realise that's a bad idea, but I use many of these services despite not trusting them one bit; I do it because network effects force me to. I could run my own StatusNet server on my own hardware, but instead I use Twitter in order to make it easy for people to communicate with me. I use Facebook because it's the easiest way to keep up with my many peers that do, and sometimes because I am forced to; an organisation I am a member of uses a Facebook group for important announcements. Many people do not publish an email address, but instead require me to contact them through various third-party services.

In effect, we are being forced to hand our information to third parties, and to trust them with it. Variations on these services that store your information on hardware you control exist; variations on those services where you actually pay a service provider to store it on their hardware (in exchange for them looking after maintenance, amortizing up-front costs, and so on for you, and where they are more incentivised to keep your stuff secure so you trust them than to try and find ways to make money out of it) also exist.

But they are not popular, as the big "free" providers have the vast majority of the users, and the value of these services is in all your peers already being on them. Now that worries me.

I'd really like to see more push-back against this. If enough people used decentralised software like Diaspora or ran their own mail systems, then the network effects would benefit those, rather than centralised commercial outfits. Clearly, some large incentive needs to be found to push people over, and an unpleasant transition period where everyone needs to be on both. Eventually, organisations like Facebook, Twitter and Google would find themselves forced to interoperate with the decentralised protocol or lose their place in the market, and then would find themselves having to compete on points such as "privacy" when the same ease-of-use and functionality can be had elsewhere for little cost.

But, we need technical measures as well. Build sensible public-key infrastructure into the core of applications (including Web browsers). Ditch cookies, and replace them with explicit authentication: provide a system of public-key-signing HTTP requests as I suggest, but turn it off by default, and force web servers to request it with a status code, as is already done for HTTP authentication (not that that is used for web applications, alas). Let browsers seamlessly support multiple identities, and when a web site requests identification, let the user choose which identity to use; and then colour the border of the Web page according to the identity in use so they don't forget. And while providing identity management through that (controlled) mechanism, try as hard as possible to remove all other means of identification - don't send headers leaking lots of information about the user-agent and its capabilities and settings, and disallow Javascript from querying that sort of thing. Bundle Tor with browsers, so it can be turned on and off with the click of a button, as part of the "private browsing mode" found in many browsers.

I still don't think there's much point in trying to fix this with making information gathering and retention illegal (the recent PRISM scandals suggest that legitimate authorities will find ways to work around limitations on their information gathering, and organised criminals simply won't give a damn anyway); we need better technology that makes us anonymous by default and pseudonymous when we want to be. But there may be some value in legislation helping to break the stranglehold on the social software market held by big centralised organisations!

I'm updating the ARGON security model to work like this (not that that makes a difference to the Real World, mind...)

Gender (by alaric)

A friend on Twitter opined:

hey i am really confused abt my gender right now but not in a bad way i guess

— Budget Skeleton Arm (@corpsehands) July 17, 2013

Ahhh, gender; it's an interesting topic, and one I've felt like blabbering about for a while, so this seems like a good opportunity to do so!

There's a whole academic field of gender studies, and to start with, let me make this clear: I've never studied any of it. This blog post is purely my own thoughts on the matter, based on my own personal experience. I've not even read that Wikipedia page! So my amazing insights will probably just be a tiny subset of the corpus of knowledge held by proper gender academics. On the other hand, I am hoping that therefore my thoughts will be more accessible to normal people.

As I see it, gender is almost entirely a social concept, like "democracy" and "fashion".

Don't get me wrong, I have a penis, don't have significant breasts, have a deepish voice and get lots of stiff facial hair; I've fathered children; I'm undoubtedly biologically male (although I haven't had my chromosomes checked).

And I'm lucky in that I don't mind that. Some people feel very wrong in their bodies, and suffer greatly with the feeling of "being trapped in the wrong body". I sometimes feel something similar about the fact that I'm blind in my left eye (so, medical advances aside, will never know what it's like to perceive depth directly, and will always be rather poor at catching thrown objects), so I can relate somewhat to that being very unpleasant. Luckily, it's possible to have surgery to swap the bits around, which provides great relief; however, complications remain further up the stack - full legal recognition of a change in gender can be hard to obtain.

Anyway, being happy with my body's gender means I get to call myself a "cisgender male".

I'm not sure if I'd feel uncomfortable in a female body; my first thought is that it would probably be quite interesting. I'm honestly not certain if I'm not uncomfortable in my male body because I'm inherently male inside, or because I'm just easy-going about it. Perhaps if medical technology advances to the point where sex changes can be had on a whim and easily reversed later, I'll give it a try.

But there's more to being male than just having a willy. I'm also romantically and sexually attracted to women (It's handy that I'm consistent in both kinds of attraction; is this always the case? Do some people fall in love with members of one sex, but not want to have sex with them, and instead have sex with members of the other sex?). So I also get to call myself a "heterosexual cisgender male" (I'm white, able-bodied and educated, too; thanks for asking!).

And that, pretty much, is my actual gender.

However, I live in a society with a whole load of stereotypical ideas about other attributes I'm supposed to have because of the above. And, pretty much, I reject them all.

Yes, I'm a nerd; I like computers and maths and science fiction and engineering and metalwork. These are stereotypically male pursuits, but that's not why I like them; I'm just fortunate to have a bunch of interests that society doesn't consider wrong for my gender. My interest in making things extends to cooking, crochet, and sewing, as well, which are stereotypically female pursuits; but apart from the technical details, I don't see any fundamental difference between those fields and my other interests that should justify a gender divide. Cooking is largely applied chemistry combined with some construction skills. Sewing and crochet are just another means of making objects from materials, another technique alongside other such as casting metal or routing wood.

Society also says that, as a heterosexual male, I mustn't be affectionate with other men, and certainly not have sex with them. Well, I'm quite an affectionate person at heart, and I'll gladly hug whoever wants me to (one of the best things about having gay friends is that they'll warmly hug me without worrying that it "makes them gay"). And I'm not excited by the thought of sex with men, but that doesn't mean it repulses me, either; if a horny male male-fancying friend asked me to Do Them A Favour I'd give it a go, and I'd be rather intrigued to see what it was like. No big deal. I'm certainly not afraid that it would "make me gay".

Society certainly has ideas about how it's acceptable for me to dress. Although, in my society, it seems to be perfectly fine for females to dress just like males (perhaps with the exceptions of formal garb such as top hats and tails), the opposite is considered rather unusual; I'm not allowed to wear dresses and lipstick. Thankfully, I don't like make-up much (on myself or on others) so that doesn't bother me much, but I find being told I'm not allowed to wear a dress a bit annoying. I've no interest in the rather unpractical "pretty female clothing" that actual transvestites might want to wear, thankfully (as that would put me in opposition to society's expectations, which can be awkward), but I do hanker for a kilt. And when I get one, I'll wear it, even though it will attract occasional ridicule, because I'm not easily cowed.

More subtly, society seems to think that, as a male, I should generally be dominant and take charge of things. I quite like taking charge of things, but that's because I enjoy the challenge of problem-solving and helping a team of people to work together towards a common goal; it doesn't seem to involve my penis at all (although... it might be interesting if it did). I'm not particularly dominant, though; I think that the "macho" male stereotype of always being in charge and never "letting anyone push you around" is really just borne of insecurity, that to respect somebody's leadership is to "admit to being weaker than them". The strongest shouldn't be in charge. In general, the strongest should be out there doing stuff, while those better suited to planning are in charge. There is no shame in either position.

My daughter find this frustrating, too. She often complains that people tell her some things are "boy's things" and some things are "girl's things", which she finds limiting. She introduces herself to people as a "tomboy" as this justifies her being interested in both. When she seems concerned about people saying she can't do something because it's "for boys", I often ask her this simple (and tension-releasingly-amusing to a seven-year-old) litmus test question: "Ok, do you actually need a willy to do this thing/play with this toy?", and the answer is almost certainly going to be no.

So, what of my twitter-friend feeling confused about their gender?

I don't know exactly what they are going through. They look female in pictures, and have occasionally expressed a weak preference for a more masculine identity, but have generally spoken of gender non-comformity and confusion, so I'm going to hedge my bets and stick to the gender-neutral pronouns "them", "they", "their", etc for this blog post (and if they ask me to refer to them with any given set of pronouns, I will endeavor to do so (although the pedant in me would like to add that I restrict this offer to pronouns that (a) can fit into tweets and (b) only use characters on my keyboard and (c) do not break any local or international laws)).

But I have a suspicion that being confused about ones' gender is probably a consequence of social pressure. I've worked hard to reject the social pressures on me, and have concluded that I'm a heterosexual cisgender male, but I've also found that that's quite a "weak" alignment; it's not a huge part of me, it doesn't really define much about me that matters to people who aren't trying to have sex with me, and I don't see it as excluding me from anything.

However, I think that if I took the social stereotypes and stigma to heart, I might find myself a bit confused about why I don't seem to feel strongly about them in my own right. I might then "worry" that I was secretly gay or bisexual (as society would like to tell me that this is at least slightly wrong). However, even if I was a homosexual cisgender male, there's a stereotype for that in society that is now largely accepted (if still rather second-class), so if I was that way inclined, at least I'd see myself conforming to a standardised place in society.

But if I really didn't fit into any of the Standard Places, and I took society's expectations seriously, I can imagine myself feeling pretty confused. I can imagine myself thinking or feeling something along the lines of "I have observable trait A, which means I should also have trait B, but I don't. So what am I?".

And so, on the assumption that this is the problem facing them, I would encourage my confused twitter-friend to see if they can separate their own model of themselves - based PURELY upon objectively observing their own feelings and body - from social stereotypes. Find out who you are, and only once you're sure about that, worry about where you fit into social expectations of gender. And try to keep the worrying down because, really, it doesn't matter that much. Unfortunately, life can be awkward for people who buck social expectations; I hug male friends (and hope to wear a kilt) knowing that this will sometimes attract negative comments, because I can do so from a position of otherwise being secure in my life; indeed, to some people, the content of this blog post alone will mark me as INCURABLY FILTHY GAY. Somebody who is struggling to get by, and who faces a real risk of violence or other abuse if their community fails to accept them, may well have to wear masks for more of the day than I do. This is bad, and needs fixing, but we'll have to live with it for now.

But this is starting to lead towards a later tweet in the conversation that ensued:

@endofthepath ha oh god no i can't find anyone weird enough for me.

— Budget Skeleton Arm (@corpsehands) July 17, 2013

(in which they are suggesting that nobody will enter into a relationship with them).

NO. No no no. Dear God, no. I only know them from what they say on Twitter (although, to be fair, that is rather a lot), but the pictures they post of themselves look quite fanciable to my tastes, and the things they say have generally made me like and respect them; if I wasn't married and on a different continent and all that, I'd certainly like to ask them out (I probably wouldn't, but that's just because I'm stupidly shy about that sort of thing, alas...). Their "weird"ness, to me, comes across as "not being a boring conformist". And there's something I admire about somebody who has undergone the stress of realising that they "don't fit", but not let it destroy them - they come out stronger, and with a deeper understanding of reality. I'd definitely hug them if we met and they seemed to like that idea (regardless of what gender they looked on the outside, or felt like inside). To me, what they see as "weird" is attractive.

However, I understand they live in a rather conservative Christian community. This feeds my suspicion that the source of their confusion is, at least partly, having a strong conformist social expectation model shoved down their throat at every turn; and it also leads me to suspect that they feel very, very, alone in "being different", which is sad, and "locally true" in their community, but unrepresentative of the sheer breadth and depth of humanity out there in the larger world.

And so, I wish them luck in escaping the confines of their community, be it physically, or purely emotionally.

See also: wise words on "labels"

2019 UPDATE

I've decided to come back to this post and edit it. Not that I've changed in any way, but because I've learnt more about gender thanks to more trans people coming out and talking about their experiences, which has had two consequences:

1. A better description of me would be something along the lines of "agender heterosexual cissexual-male"; I don't have an innate feeling of gender, I have male sexual characteristics and don't feel any dysphoria about them (although I don't feel any euphoria about them either, it means no more to me than eye colour), and I'm attracted to people with female sexual characteristics (regardless of their gender).

2. When I wrote that, out trans people were a rarity in my circles, but it turns out this was because they were all closeted. That's changing now and lots are coming out, and talking of their feelings of having gender that doesn't match their sex! Now, when I wrote the above, I thought that gender was a purely social construct that I found mildly annoying because society's expectations of me only loosely fitted me, and trans people were people who happened to find it VERY annoying because society's expactations strongly didn't fit them. But statistically significant numbers of trans people reporting a feeling of innate gender can't be a coincidence; it must be a thing for at least some people.

That means I'm actually OFFICIALLY A BIT QUEER in being agender; reading up on this a bit (mainly, /r/agender on reddit), agender people have a self-image that seems very consistent with my self-image, but it seems like most agender people follow the same sort of path of self-discovery as trans people - complete with stressful coming-out experiences (I have opinions on that!). My story is entirely different...

I grew up as the only child of a single mother, so my household had no comparison between sexes/genders; the axis was "small child / adult parent", rather than any "mother / father" or "boy brother / girl sister" comparisons. My mother never implied any gender expectations of me; there was no "you should do this because you're a boy" or "you can't do that, it's for girls". I saw social expectations of gender in others, and in fiction in books and on TV, but whenever they were apparent, my mother was disdainful of it as sexism. I remember her fury when she and another parent were discussing their children's likely careers; I was very interested in science and technology so seemed set for a career in those fields (correct!) - and the other parent responded "Oh, of course [their daughter] won't amount to much, she's only a girl". I grew up in a world with a female Prime Minister and a female monarch; it seemed clear to me that people had physical sexes, but the idea that those sexes had relevance beyond their direct biological consequences was just a hold-over from a darker age, like racism and homophobia, still lingering in dark corners of humanity where forbidden jokes were quietly snickered but denounced in all public discourse. Grammatical gender in the English language, and gendered clothing expectations, were things that carried on through social inertia but would fade with time. To put those views - in hindsight, rather progressive for the 1980s - in perspective, we lived next door to a gay couple and a transvestite guy lived a few houses down the other way!

So the surprising revelation for me wasn't that I was agender, but that everyone else wasn't...

Of course, I base this position on other people's reported sense of gender, and this always comes from trans people; I don't think I've ever heard a cisgender person say "I feel totally and definitely male" or whatever. So perhaps - just perhaps - being cisgender is actually no more commonplace than being transgender; a small fraction of humanity have the misfortune to be innately gendered, and have a 50% chance of that gender matching their sex! 🙂