Profile: Lyd
You can call me… Lyd.
I identify as… inside: Androgynous, mostly Masculine. Outside: Ranging between Femme and Ungendered (depends on the day). I have a woman’s body btw.
As far as third-person pronouns go, … they call me “She.” I’d much rather be called “He.” Or even better, something in between!!
I’m attracted to… Men, Androgynous, Trans, …
When people talk about me, I want them to… Focus on personality/character/values etc, rather than gender and gender-related issues (e.g., judge attitudes based on gendered expectations).
I want people to understand… that expectations based on gender is discrimination.
Ultimately, my ideal would be a society that doesn’t care about gender – everybody would be free to express themselves, and identifying with both genders would be normal/naturally accepted.
For me, the gender binary is the worst weapon for human segregation, because it’s deeply rooted in our (Western?) society, so that most of the time we don’t notice it. But it’s there, and it discriminates, it dehumanizes.
About Lyd
I was born and raised in a loving and kind of strict Christian family. They were expecting a boy, and a “girl” came… and the funny thing is, my personality was always more similar to my dad’s – we think kind of alike… Anyway, in their religion, the gender binary is strongly enforced. My parents have responsibilities in church, and so they had to give the example as well. I was raised to be feminine, always wear skirts/dresses, be nice etc. I learnt to dress and act in a socially conforming way. But it always felt like suffocation. I couldn’t be myself, I knew I wouldn’t be accepted, and I disagreed with oh so many things. Eventually, I got brave (and fed up, and informed) enough to start rebelling in my late teens, and slowly worked on living my life freely (from tradition and religion conformity). I’m almost thirty now, and I can say I’m finally (almost) me, living and expressing my real self. I can even say what I really think, most of the time (especially if there’s no family member around – I’m still afraid of shocking or hurting them… damn it).
I have a Tumblr account (lyd-way2freedom.tumblr.com), soon I’ll add a recent photo of myself.
» Define yourself. «
Category: profiles 3 comments »
April 6th, 2013 at 12:42 pm |
>especially if there’s no family member around – I’m still afraid of shocking or hurting them…
This right here is ruining my life. I don’t know if it’s something they drilled into me, or some psychological need for approval which emerged by itself, but it’s ridiculous. I can’t live my life to their irrational expectations.
[Reply]
April 6th, 2013 at 3:56 pm |
I grew up in a similar situation but on the other side of the coin (male bodied, gender fluid but lean more towards the feminine side)
I was always very afraid of hurting my parents, my mom especially because we’ve always had a pretty close relationship and she is hyper-emotional. She cried alot when I moved away to college because she was attached to the idea of me as ‘her little boy’.. so you can probably imagine how she took it when she found out that I don’t identify as a boy, and that what she treasured was torture to me.
I had no idea how to express that to her in words really, so I told her I was coming over to discuss something serious and showed up presenting as a woman. It wasn’t until I spoke that she realized it was me and not my sister (people have always said we look like twins.. little did they know)
So.. yeah. There was shock, there was pain. Its been a couple of years now and it still causes her pain, both due to her religious beliefs and the tenuous family situation due to my step-dad/step-brothers not being very accepting.
But I’m still close with all of my family, and yeah its awkward at times and painful at times, and I hate to see others experience pain in reaction to me.. but I have no regrets because I know that I am not the cause of their pain. Their pain is caused by their own attachment to certain ideas, it is not based on reality, but rather on the failure of reality to comply with how they believe it should be.
Of course, that doesn’t make the pain any less real.. but to live life based on expectations and preconceptions (yours or anyone elses) is just setting yourself up for pain. I spent far too many years living that way myself before I gave up on trying to control how things should be.
[Reply]
tigr replied:
April 7th, 2013 at 12:41 am
Thank you for sharing, it was really good to read this. Need to remember this!
[Reply]