Melting

Someone wrote…

I’m a male-bodied human who has been wearing about 75% women’s clothes for about 9 months. For the most part, my tastes are pretty ambiguously gendered. (If I could have it my way-and I know, I can-I would be a tomboy-ish female.) So nobody really even recognizes what I’m doing so far. There’s one girl at work who always comments on the way I dress, and the other day she said, “Oh my gosh, WHERE do you shop?? You know, I just want to be you…but like, a girl version.” I just froze for a few seconds, thinking, “Yeah, you and me both.”

And then pretty much felt like just melting all over the floor.

What’s your experience?

And what are you thinking about gender right now?


Posted by on September 6th, 2014 at 08:00 am

Category: your voice 5 comments »

5 Responses to “Melting”

  1. Monster

    It’s so awful that we have to live in a place where someone so well meaning can make what we see as such a vital mistake. And we usually can’t correct them because there’s just so many complications.

    Why do we have to either pretend in front of strangers, or come out to strangers? All the time.

    Just thoughts.

    Good luck, though. I know the feeling, the melting feeling.

    :)

    [Reply]

  2. fireball

    That is sad. I can relate though…one of my coworkers once said “you’d make an ugly woman.” they told me that was good since that meant I was such a good looking guy. then they looked surprised when I looked a bit offended.

    [Reply]

  3. Hanssen

    [OP] Thanks. To be fair tho, I was expressing it as more of a positive, or I guess bittersweet, feeling than straight up negative. It was really nice to be ‘seen’ for once, however unintentional and indirect.

    I kinda froze up at the time and didn’t know how to respond to her. I wanted to tell her all about it. I wanted to diffuse it with a joke. I wanted to deny all of it. So I didn’t really say anything. But then I sent her an email and told her where the clothes were from (all women’s lines) and more or less came out. :)

    [Reply]

  4. Angelus Lupus

    I totally identify with this. I’ve been adding female clothing to my wardrobe, but it’s mainly jeans and long-sleeved tops. I rarely (if ever) identify with my dmab body, but the problem with being a tomboy is that no-one ever recognises the feminine aspect of it.
    It’s particularly bad on those days where my fluid gender and sexuality land me at tomboy lesbian with high dysphoria. (lately I’ve also been agender and bi, and ok/meh with my body)

    [Reply]

  5. Anon, I guess

    Hey Hanssen, I hear you. Flip it: I’m female-bodied, female-presenting (without trying too hard), and very quietly boy-identified/genderqueer. So once in a while I get these glimmers of recognition (which even includes, like, someone referring to me as male and then apologising profusely) and it’s like: oh my god, yes, THANK YOU, you don’t even know.

    [Reply]


Leave a Reply


Can I show your picture? If you have a Gravatar associated with this email address, it will be displayed as your photo. If not, I'll just put a picture of a fork next to your comment. Everybody likes forks.

Be nice. Judgmental comments will be quietly deleted and blacklisted. There's plenty of room for those elsewhere on the web.

For legal reasons, you must be age 13 or older to post a comment on Genderfork.

You can use some HTML tags for formatting, e.g. <em>...</em> for emphasis (italics) or <strong>...</strong> for strong emphasis (bold) or <a href="http://(url)">...</a> for links.


Back to top