Unsure
Someone wrote…
Everybody else I know, whether cis or trans, seems to know very strongly which gender they would like to be perceived as. I have no idea whether I’m happy being cis or whether my life would be better if I were to transition or express my gender confusion.
What’s your experience?
Posted by Emma on December 18th, 2011 at 08:00 am
Category: your voice 8 comments »
December 18th, 2011 at 12:58 pm |
Oh yes, that certainly is true for me as well!
The way I try to find an answer to that is to try. I’m doing experiments with going out as different genders and I’m planning to give myself an ambiguous name and ask some friends to call me different pronouns for a while to see how it will feel.
I probably have some priviledge here, living in a mostly queer-positive environment. But I think I can’t know what it will be like if I don’t try, so better find a way…
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December 18th, 2011 at 7:58 pm |
That’s how I feel most of the time… Sometimes it’s really freeing because I don’t feel like I am one or the other. But then there are times when it feels terribly confusing because it seems like something’s wrong with me for all my anxiety concerning gender. I often wonder why most other people don’t seem nearly as bothered by gender… I become torn between despising gender (wishing that there wasn’t so much pressure to have one and be generalized based on it), and wishing that gender was more explored and discussed so that confusion wouldn’t be so scary and thought of as “bad” or “defective” by most people.
I try to focus on just doing what feels right, even if if it looks strange or contradicting to others. I think of myself as a shapeshifter and I enjoy experimenting with my presentation :) My advice is to try things out and focus on how you feel more than how people around react.
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December 19th, 2011 at 12:02 pm |
I feel you, dear. Sometimes I would give pretty much anything to just have my gender settle as male or female and I don’t even care which – I just want an answer! I try to play around with it and most of the time it’s really okay, but sometimes it’s just too much uncertainty.
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December 19th, 2011 at 2:07 pm |
I’m also doing experiments with my gender. In secure spaces, I use masculine pronouns and in non-secure spaces (like university and so on) I’m still using the female ones. In spanish it’s even more difficult, because most of the adjetives also have a gender.
But it’s great just to experiment, know how I feel with each pronoun and with none of them (I always try to speak neutral about myself).
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December 19th, 2011 at 6:12 pm |
I was feeling in perpetual confusion for a year or two, and now things are settling into a weird state of uncertainty…It’s not that I’ve exactly pinned myself down into one box, but I still feel this greater sense of ease. I recommend just give yourself time and space and see what adventures happen from there :)
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December 19th, 2011 at 6:20 pm |
On the surface I identify at a cis-gendered female. However there have been many times that I’ve thought it might be nice to be male-bodied.
I also identify as an effeminate boy trapped in a girl’s body but generally okay with it.
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December 22nd, 2011 at 7:41 pm |
ay ay, I feel that too
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December 26th, 2011 at 11:07 pm |
I personally feel that you shouldn’t have to pick a gender to live as. I guess I chose to live as both.
Some days I live as “Kei” and I am fine with the female pronouns and treatment as dictated by my physical body, but other days I’m “Matt” and I bind and dress in male clothes and prefer to be referred to by male titles. Still other days I’m “Kei” but I am neutral and prefer no pronouns at all and I bind but wear feminine clothes (like dresses or skirts) or tight clothes but I bind and want to start to draw on facial hair with makeup so that I don’t look like a girl. I identify as a gender-neutral bigendered individual, so why should I pick just one to live my life as?
I think that the community seems to be comprised only of people who are certain of which gender they are and want to live as for a very basic reason. No one who is questioning their gender posts at the start of their questioning. I know I didn’t. At the beginning, you are typically just reading from the community’s websites. Maybe once your a little further on you’ll start asking for advice. Even so, no one posts until they’re at least a little more sure that they have a deviant gender identity. And I know, in my case, reading stories about the people who have already reached a conclusion about their gender (and are therefore a certainty of what gender they want to live as) definitely helped me learn to accept my own identity to the point that I feel that its tie for me to start posting and helping out other gender deviants. But I’d never have thought to reply or post anything when I was still on the seven year mark of actively questioning my gender. I’m on my eighth year now, and having reached college, I feel more free to express myself (though nothing about my support system has really changed) and having made it to this point, I feel ready to start giving back what I can to the community that helped me reach this point.
I really didn’t feel comfortable talking about at the beginning. I still have a ton of friends who think I’m just an eccentric and silly person. They think I’m just dressing differently and asking to be referred to differently as a game.
Even though I’m comfortable with myself and my method of gender expression, if people assume I’m just playing, I STILL don’t have the confidence to correct them.
It takes time to get the confidence to know what you want to live as. So don’t worry about it! It’ll come eventually. Just takes some time.
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