Thinking about gender
Someone wrote…
I have found myself thinking about gender a lot lately. Over the past few years I have gradually eschewed certain things that I once saw as a part of growing up. Shaving, bras and make up are things I looked forward to with earnest, but now don’t fit with my gender. Binding is something I have wanted to do for so long — and I have tried the two sports bra thing — but it is bloody uncomfortable and restricts what shirts I wear.
I am not cis — but I don’t feel genderqueer or androgynous enough to identify otherwise. I get read as female which is okay but sometimes I would like to be read as male or not read at all.
Sometimes it feels like this is all in my head and I’m simply spending too much time thinking about gender. But I know I am not cis.
I feel only the most infinitesimal dysphoria but having a flat chest would please me.
Maybe I should eschew labels and just identify as me.
What’s your experience?
Category: your voice 6 comments »
May 20th, 2013 at 3:44 pm |
Feeling the same way, just acknowledging it to myself after fifty plus years. I like your idea of identifying as me. Me sounds good. Just me, only me.
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May 23rd, 2013 at 9:03 pm |
Is is incredibly validating to have my statement posted. To me it says: yes this thing you are describing can mean genderqueer if you want it to. It says all we know about you is what you wrote about your gender and we accept you as one of us, the non-binary. It says these things you’re feeling are real, not your imagination becoming hyperbolic.
It says hey, feel free to be whoever you want. If that person is genderqueer, then welcome to community.
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May 25th, 2013 at 5:39 pm |
There is no “You must be this androgynous to enter” sign. There are people who don’t appear androgynous at all who have non-binary identities. And frankly, when I first started identifying as a genderqueer, I didn’t have any dysphoria and wasn’t sure if I wanted to bind. Now that I’ve settled into my actual gender, I’ve realized that I do have social dysphoria and do want to bind sometimes (and I might want to go on a low dose of T briefly). So if you’re anything like me, it could be that you’re so used to being perceived as female that you feel powerless about it and feel like it doesn’t matter. If so, this could change over time.
Either way, you could be agender or genderfluid (but of course, only you can decide what fits best or whether you should use labels at all).
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NB replied:
May 25th, 2013 at 5:46 pm
“Now that I’ve settled into my actual gender” doesn’t sound right. What I meant to say was that my image of myself changed. My gender has always been non-binary; I just didn’t know it for most of my life, and that was the problem. I just knew I felt different. It takes time to change your image of yourself to something that actually fully reflects you, leaving all the societally-imposed bullshit behind (or as much of it as possible).
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May 26th, 2013 at 8:09 am |
Thank you for sharing, I feel very similarly but didn’t know how to put it into words…
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May 30th, 2013 at 1:48 am |
So very much how I feel too, except I’m coming from assigned-male end/side of things.
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