Man! I feel like a...um...

Hello everyone, pleased to meet you all

About this time two years ago I had a major identity crisis. I questioned everything from my sexual orientation to my gender, and at the end of all my questioning I decided I was a straight, somewhat feminine cisgender gentleman. Fine. Everything was okay in the land of Hats, with a few insecurities still left to work out. However, ever since then, from time to time something triggers an aftershock and I'm back to square one.

I do know that I've never exactly fitted into society's male box in terms of interests and behaviours and things, but there's nothing I can do. I can suppress it to an extent, but ultimately I'm just not a hypermasculine person and never will be, and the more I try to hide this the unhappier I am. I have asked some of my friends how I come across to them. The consensus seems to be "Somewhat feminine but not overly so, and happy with your level of masculinity and not fitting into society's box. You just are." A few people have had their gaydars triggered by this. I've certainly disagreed with some aspects of masculinity since I was a child, but that probably doesn't mean much in the grand scheme of things. Sometimes I think if I were female it would at least lend some credence to the way I am, but I don't think that in itself makes me female. Sometimes I think to myself, "All the pointers are there. I must be the most effeminate, obviously gay straight guy anyone knows." I don't think people would be entirely surprised if I announced I wasn't entirely straight. What they'd say if I announced I wasn't a man is anyone's guess.

There is definitely a certain amount of fear involved. Fear that if I take the straight cisgender route I will never be truly happy. Fear if I take the feminine man route I'll continue to have aftershocks and shake-ups and never be happy. Fear that if I take the non-binary route that I'll never be happy. Terror that I'm actually a girl and have to deal with my whole world being turned upside-down and having to form a new identity from scratch, having tried so hard all my life to fit in with others and build an identity out of what I've got so far. Finally, I am afraid that I'll pick a route which is not cisgender and find out later than in fact I am and having to do the embarrassing thing of announcing to everyone that I'm just an average guy after all. But the reality is, I have to choose one of these routes. I can't sit in limbo forever and I'm getting tired of not having a solid answer.

I know I'm panicking, but I don't know what to do. It's like I've got this voice in my head which varies from inaudible to nagging saying, "Remember TV tropes' definition of a glass closet? That's what you're in. Everyone can see it except you. You're too feminine inside to be a man. You're hiding it well because you can't accept it. Go on, admit it: you're a girl."

 

I'll certainly give it a go. One of the things I've been doing is thinking about it from the other end: if I'd been brought up as a girl, would I have cared or felt wrong? And honestly I don't know. I can't tell if I've previously identified as a boy because I am one inside, or because society tells me I must be because I have a male physique and was brought up as one. I'm inclined to think the latter explanation is correct.

 

Thank you for all your replies and suggestions. I realised this evening, while thinking about what to write in the "sudden envy" thread, that I was starting to answer my own questions in doing so. It seems gender expression and gender roles have an interesting effect on my internal sense of gender.

For me it's been rather a mixed affair. As a young boy I loved the idea of wearing top hats and looking posh and things like that (I'm still very much a romantic at heart). However, I've never appreciated the social separation which comes with gender roles. I remember when I was about nine and my brother and I were the only boys in our ballet class. Of course it didn't matter much at that age - we'd all been going to school together since we were three anyway. But then one week it came to the end of the class and the teacher caught herself in the middle of "Curtsy to Miss___" and said to us, "Ah no, you're boys. You bow." From then on we would bow to the pianist first, and then the girls would curtsy to her afterwards. It sucked - whilst the novelty of bowing instead was fun, internally I could feel the gears grinding. I'd always done a curtsy with everyone else. Why was that being changed now? I felt excluded from their group, and purely in movement terms, a curtsy felt nicer, more natural and less abrupt. So of course I bowed to her face and as soon as her back was turned...:lol: Thinking back it was the first solid example of "If girls can do it, why can't I?" and that thought has recurred many, many times.

While I was at school it seemed I was never quite manly enough - I liked songs by Shania Twain and Britney Spears, my mind wasn't on dating every girl I put my eyes on, I'd enjoyed ballet and if it weren't for being at boarding school I would've continued, I didn't like playing soccer (our national sport) at all until quite late and I'm still not a big fan today, although the one sport in P.E. I really DID enjoy was indoor hockey, sliding a puck along the floor, which we rarely played. I loved cooking, and still do. Thankfully I was liked and accepted by girls and boys equally and I did have three close friends, but I was never going to be the ultra macho guys most of my classmates were trying to be. And as an adult, I dislike the fact that my sex STILL places limitations on me. I've noticed that my sense of gender is a little bit situational, if that makes sense. It's kind of as if my feelings of gender, if that's what they are, are determined by external factors. At ballet, for example (I took it up again three years ago) I don't have to wear the social mask of being a man because nobody there knows me from outside the class. It's the one place I can be myself. I don't feel particularly masculine or feminine when dancing because, at my level of technique at least, it's not gendered. But if I'm dressed up in a suit and tie then I do feel more male because that's how I'm expected to be.

Currently, I am frustrated at the local university's netball club. At the start of this week I had the urge to learn how to play, even though I think I only ever did in one P.E lesson when I was 14 and would be starting from scratch. As far as I can tell, the uni club is the only club where total beginners can join. They're also the biggest club in the area. And all of the members are girls. The thing is, I'm not interested in playing in a mixed team or an all-male team or indeed as a guy. There's going to be "too much testosterone", shall we say, going around. If I were on a girls-only team, then I would feel female, not male. If someone said to me tomorrow, "You can join but you realise you'll have to wear a netball dress or skirt" I'd be like, "Fine, done, where can I get one?" And I know that's not a fetish or something because I'm not, and never have been, a cross-dresser. It just doesn't appeal. But I know the management would never accept what I say, or they would find an obvious argument that held more apparent weight.

I don't know what that makes me as I haven't heard of any other people feeling the same. I suspect the situational aspect is partially disguising my true gender and making it harder for me to determine. Still, it's progress at least.

 

Ugh. Can't find the edit button to shorten the novella above. Tldr: my feeling of gender appears to determined somewhat by outside factors. More introspection required.