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Non binary folks, how did you know?

Discussion in 'Gender Identity and Expression' started by rave, Dec 3, 2015.

  1. rave

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    How did you know that you weren't just a gender non-conforming cis person?
    People think I must just be a butch lesbian, but that doesn't feel right & it's difficult to explain why.
     
  2. Hi!

    To be honest I think it differs per person. For me, I always felt like my biological gender (so my body) wasn't the same as the way I felt. But I didn't want to have a male body either. So I just assumed I was some weird person who was overreacting when my body started to shows it's female stuff.

    Of course just ignoring this didn't work and I started to learn more about non-binary genders. I won't tell you all of the steps I've made in this progress, but at some point I realised I might not be entirely female. But I didn't want to be male either.

    It's difficult to explain but when people ask me about my gender, I tell them I do not feel like I am a woman, but don't want to be a man either. People usually don't ask much after that. But lately I had some 'discussion' with one of my friends. She said that gender is a weird construct, because when do you feel like a woman? Or like a man? When I paint my nails I might feel feminine but that's just because society made up some rules about what's masculine and what's feminine. When I wear dresses I can still feel 100% masculine, I just like to wear a dress.

    So to get back to your question, when someone would ask me if I'm just a butch lesbian, I would say no, because I'm not a woman. I'm not a woman, neither am I a man. And give them some time to think about it. It's not easy to change your whole view on something like gender when you've never heard about anything besides man and woman.

    I hope this is a good answer to your question. :wink:
     
  3. rave

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    What a wonderful answer! Thank you for taking the time to construct it.

    I am feeling you on the "social construct" thing! A lot of the dysphoria I experience is social in nature; it bothers me that other people think I am a girl more than my body bothers me when I am alone. I am coming to believe that gender is social & is not essential, & that is RADICALLY deviant from how I was raised to view gender
     
  4. obsequious

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    This is a really neat question :slight_smile:

    Although just thinking about where to start answering has me a little confused :confused: Well, guess I'll just brainstorm...

    When I was younger, I never understood the difference between the genders. At school the guys would have their groups, the girls would have theirs, and I'd often drift between the two. I remember even at a young age feeling out of place with everyone calling me by assigned gender pronouns, or treating me like my assigned gender... There was often a strange feeling of wondering why I wasn't more like the opposite sex, or more like the same. I just didn't really fit in anywhere, but also fit in everywhere. I was pretty young when I became uncomfortable wearing heavily gendered clothes and this carried on until high school, although by then the pressures to conform, bullying, etc. outweighed my discomfort.

    Puberty hit, and my body developed in a slow sort of way that made it look feminine and boyish. I'd often get teased for this (yeah, our grade was awesome), but I actually thought it was pretty great. I didn't want to look like the people who were my sex, going through such rapid and big changes. My thoughts, that is, the voice of my thoughts were always neutral. I had a couple of boyfriends, but dumped them because they saw me as my assigned gender and I couldn't really deal (one of them wasn't really a nice guy anyway), I was more dating them because everyone else was dating. Had a serious crush on two of my friends who I never dated, because one was straight and one was not, but swung the other way. This brought a lot of frustration and confusion about. Simultaneously, I felt like both genders, leaning towards masculine, but also none. But I was being perceived, had always been perceived so differently. I had pretty bad depression, avoided talking to people, even my friends. Had no idea what was going on with me, but felt like I was literally trapped and claustrophobic. I left school early, for other reasons as well.

    Started a serious relationship and work. So much work and study, so that I didn't have time to think about things anymore. But what should have felt like a straight relationship felt not straight as anything. My partner was bi, so I think that was the only reason I could stay. Then the relationship turned abusive, and I left. After this, I went through a whole cycle of depression, dysphoria, anxiety, and feeling okayish. I started dressing how I wanted for the first time, and let me be myself. It wasn't until I started admitting to myself that I was bi that I started looking for LGBT support online after. That led me to coming across trans things. It was only because of that that I was able to recognise everything I'd experienced in the past as dysphoria. For a while, I wondered if I was trans, falling in the opposite binary. I do sometimes get strong body dysphoria. But I didn't think that it would make me any happier. In fact, the problems would probably be the same. I don't know if the label I have now accurately represents the gender that I am, but for a while I tried to find the right label and kind of gave up. Genderfluid, bigender, are probably other words that could describe me, but they have a nuance of polarity that I don't experience. Anyway...

    How did I know it wasn't all just being non-conforming? Because I get intense social, body, and internal dysphoria. I'm not really sure how to explain it outside of experience... I guess it's like asking any cis gendered person why they feel cis. Don't know. I do think that gender non-conforming people do rock, though :icon_bigg It's definitely sparking a good sort of change.
     
  5. rave

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    Oh my goodness, thank you for taking the time to write that all out! I like what you said about fitting everywhere, yet no where.

    Also. This. This seems SO OBVIOUS now that you said it, but I have not been able to come up with such a succinct way of putting it. Thank you so much!
     
  6. obsequious

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    Haha, no worries :icon_bigg Surprised (but glad) my rambling helped.
     
  7. Oddsocks

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    I honestly couldn't say. I still debate whether I 'know' at all to this day! But realistically, I know that checking the Other box feels like the right thing for me to be doing if one is there, and that even if I have reservations about the syntax of it (not with other people, just for me) I feel like the singular they is the most technically correct pronoun for me.

    I know that being described as a girl feels...close, but not quite correct. If I'd been allowed to pick my features on the character select screen of life, I'd have done things to make my appearance more outwardly neutral.

    It's kind of complicated because I have no plans to pursue HRT, dysphoria is a once-in-a-blue-moon experience (and I'm glad for that - I just get a kind of benign dissonance), but the fact is that while I wouldn't call myself a trans person, I'm pretty certain at this point I'm not a cis woman either.

    So yeah. I dunno?
     
  8. plant

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    This is a great conversation question, and I apologize if my response sounds a like I'm word vomiting, or if I repeat anything an above poster already said.

    Basically I started to become extremely uncomfortable when people referred to me with gendered pronouns. This upset me because I didn't really feel like a girl, and I didn't feel like a boy, I just wanted to be referred to as a person. I felt uncomfortable in clothing that would society would consider to be female (dresses, skirts, etc.). When people ask questions, I basically just try and help people understand my gender in simple terms. Being non binary has definitely allowed to learn more about the concept of gender and allowed me to be more comfortable in my own skin.
     
  9. GenderSciFi

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    I can answer that quite clearly: I know I'm not just a gender-non-conforing cis person because I was never that gender-non-conforming before I realized it would make me feel better to present as more masculine. Ok, I did some kinds of stuff that's associated with men, but what can you say, I live in a quite liberal environment... So it was never considered non-conforming.

    As a teenager, I was really uncomfortable with having to be a girl, but I didn't know anything else. The l idea that I could be a transguy never came to my mind though. Cause I'm not, I guess ;-) :lol:
    Then, after 10 years of more or less successfully trying to be a normal woman (I have this intense thing where I want to be nice and normal, until suddenly I don't), I started feeling very uncomfortable with it again.
    I just started out by saying I wasn't a woman, and words like trans*, non-binary, genderqueer or agender came to me later...
    Same problems, though. When I explain it, first people tend to think I'm a transman, that shocks them a lot, because they don't see me like that at all. Then I try to calm them down and do more justice to myself by saying I'm not a man either, and that mine is not the classical stuck-in-the-wrong-body-trans story. Then they usually stop taking me seriously at all and laugh at my pronouns :icon_sad:
    The way I can talk about it greatly influences how people react to my transness. I might be asked matter-of-factly if I want a penis, or I might be asked: "But you're not planning any surgeries, right? Cause that's those transsexuals." I'm sick and tired of having to explain...
    Sorry, that got a bit OT

    =)
     
  10. littleraven

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    I had plenty of dysphoria when I was younger. I didn't want to be a boy or feel I was a boy though. Among only girls, I feel like I'm the odd one. I feel like I'm disguised as a female. Girl doesn't seem like a word to define me. I'm like a gray blob studying human life. XD When I was really young, I thought I was a boy in a girl's body. I'm accepting of any pronoun (and I have been called a boy before). Though, I think the most accurate is they/their.
     
  11. SnowshoeGeek

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    I was not really raised as a girl, that is, I was not put in frilly clothes, I was allowed to be curious and go off by myself a lot, and I had math and science crammed into me. I can't compare it to a gendered upbringing, because I don't know what that would look like. I only know when I go to a store with clothing or toy sections, I marvel at the pink cuteness versus the blue functionality. And feel grateful that no one pushed me in either direction. I played with my plastic horses and rubber dinosaurs in my Barbie Winnebago and then went out to catch lizards in the field.

    If I'd been forced to digest femininity and steered away from masculinity, I'm guessing I'd be dysphoric as hell. I only knew there was a name for not relating to either gender after joining this site. So now looking back on my life, I think, ha! I'll bet people have been plenty perplexed by me for a long time and I never even knew it! :grin:
     
  12. AgenderMoose

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    This whole discovery thing for me happened during the summer this year, so I still remember it rather well. Here we gooo.

    One fine day, I was struck with dysphoria. I'd never really felt it before, I just kind of thought that avoiding clothes labeled as more "feminine" was just a personality trait and that self esteem issues with my body was normal for a girl. Then I realized I just felt wrong. I thought my body didn't match me anymore. So then I started thinking "Am I trans?" I thought about it, but then realized that being a guy didn't feel right either. That's when I started to get frustrated.

    I'm thankful I knew about nonbinary genders otherwise I probably would've been lost for even longer. So, I started looking into those. Agender seemed to fit the most, but at the same time I had my "doubts". When I'd ask myself "Am I agender?", my mind would respond with "No, I don't wanna say that because someone might think that I'm a liar and just want attention". This is when I decided my best bet: Consult my best friend.

    My best friend is a transwoman, so I figured she'd know a lot more about these feelings than I did. I discussed my feelings about it and she said "Well, you might just be. I totally understand those feelings, that's how I felt. I can't tell you what you are, though. You've gotta find out for yourself". So, I took her advice, and I looked a bit more into it. I talked to myself about it (sometimes that's the best way to get points across), and I concluded "Yes. I am agender. This is me". I told my friend and she was happy that I had found my identity. I was also veeery excited. Since then, I've been a lot more accepting of my choices and whatnot, and I've taken some steps into making myself appear the way I want to so I can feel more comfortable in my body.
     
  13. Lacybi

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    Well I've always wanted to be a boy but more so that I could fit in than anything else. From the age of 4 to 12 I was the only 'girl' and I despised being treated differently than the guys. With my best friend I was 'the guy' - I'm stronger, braver etc. But I still love dolls and dressing up - that's the only time I choose to wear a dress and excessive jewellery. I like eyeliner and a necklace or bracelet or a pair of earrings, nothing flashy though. I prefer guys over girls most of the time although most of my friends are actually girls.
    In the words of one of my friends - to be honest boys feel like a different species, but for me so do girls. I just don't get why racing around a field after a ball is fun or why anyone would choose to lather their face in makeup. What exactly is the point of looking fake tan and mascara? One makes you look orange and if you've got dark hair then your eyelashes are dark anyway so why bother?
     
    #13 Lacybi, Dec 6, 2015
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  14. YinYang

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    I always felt meh towards my body. I recently started having dysphoria towards my breasts, but my genitals where just... meh. I really don't care and I have thought about how it would feel to have a penis. It didn't exactly feel 'right' like how some trans people describe thinking about having opposite sex organs, but I wasn't totally appalled by the idea. To be honest, the most interesting part to me was how it would feel to be able to pee standing up :lol: As for my clothing style, I just wear what I like. Minecraft shirt from the men's section? Buy it. My Little Pony shirt from the girl's section? Buy it. I also sometimes like painting my nails and growing them, but I also like them to be short and bare. I love writing, which apparently is a female trait, but I'm not afraid to get my hands dirty outside. I guess I always just felt in the middle of female and male.
     
  15. Romin

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    I actually used to be fine with being percieved as a cisgender female who presents masculine. It made me feel anxious and uncomfortable when someone would percieve me as male, because that is not what I am. I didn't really have a huge problem with it, there was just this disconnect with that person from the moment they acknowledged me as male, because I wasn't. For a long time, everyone percieved me as male because I was adamant about keeping my hair controlled and trimmed regularly.

    Recently, I've gotten more lax about cutting it and have begun to be percieved as female more often when I am out in public. What caught me off guard about these interactions, however, is that I reacted the same way to being percieved as female as I did when someone thought I was male. It was eye-opening.

    I still identify as a butch lesbian, but also understand that my gender is more complicated than that, so I also identify as Non-binary.

    It's a difficult journey to discover who you are sometimes, but I wish you luck!
     
  16. DemiLiHue

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    I... (Doesn't even know if e's genderqueer)

    ...when I was little I hated to be misgendered by a boy. Now I think it was because I hated the idea of being a boy. I have never really felt like a boy, but... I kinda didn't fit the feminine gender either. So I get the definition tomboy, and stuck with it. But then I abandoned it because I really didn't like to be labeled as tom-boy. I guess that I don't rlly care about female pronouns... Maybe because I AM actually a girl, but maybe because... I've been using them all my life Also, I felt really good with this "having boobs" thing, in fact I was really happy. But, now I'm questioning if it was because I loved how boobs looked in women. (I'm pan and I like boobs lol) but recently I've felt quite disconnected with my body. After days of gender dysphoria I thought: "hey. AGENDER" and I was like "hm it could actually work" it also came to my mind the idea of binding, and I really would like to, I think I'd look beautiful that way!! And I was like super exited about the whole "agender" and "looking androgynous" thing! I still am.

    So that's my story lol!

    But, genderqueers, does my story sound queer to you? Or am I just confused/want something new/bored of being a girl?
    Thanks for your time
     
  17. Okay so I want to add a few things to the comments if yall don't mind :slight_smile:

    First of all, I noticed that most people define 'being agender/genderqueer/genderless' as 'liking both female things and male things'. For example, you like to paint your nails but at the same time you like to get your hands dirty. I'm not saying this is wrong, not at all, but I do not feel like it defines being genderqueer. (I'm sorry if I offend anyone by saying this, I'm trying not to, just sharing my thoughts). I think painting your nails doesn't make you any more of a girl or any less of a boy. It's just a concept society made up. But wearing make up doesn't make you a girl, just like playing football or not shaving your legs makes you a boy. It makes you a person who likes something that's not stereotypical to them. Just like liking maths does not make me Asian and tanning does not make me exotic. I know I might be destroying some thought by this, so again, I'm sorry.

    Being gender non-conforming is more than just not being a girly-girl or a boyish-boy. It's feeling like your body does not belong to you. Or feeling you don't belong to any group. It's not knowing which bathroom to take because you feel uncomfortable using either. And it's feeling like the words 'lady', 'men', 'boy' or 'sister' do not belong to you.

    Again, I hope I didn't offend anyone. These are just my thoughts about it and I felt like sharing them.
     
  18. DemiLiHue

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    I totally agree!! Couldn't have said it better :eusa_clap
    Still, a genderqueer person can also feel that way
     
  19. obsequious

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    Yep.
     
  20. IDont Say Aboot

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    Hmm... I'm waiting for my toast to cook so why the heck not?

    When I was really little (classic start)... I acted really boyish. And I'm amab. But I continued to have many mannerisms of a little boy, even until age 14 (i.e. acting like I thought kissing was gross, acting like I didn't care about clean or grossness... a lot of acting!).
    But I think the reason for that was that I had a very gendered upbringing. Boys do this, girls do that, you're a boy. I didn't really question that.
    But also I had been kind of transphobic for most of my life (I thought that they were weird) until a couple of my friends proved me wrong (fortunately!).
    So after that, I became a lot more truthful about myself, and recently I thought that I was really a girl, then i thought that I wasn't trans*, then (and still) I thought that I am agender.
    Now I am fairly sure that I know what made me think I was a girl or a boy. I thought that I was a girl because I felt so different than how society expected me to be, and I thought that I had to be a guy because of how society expected me to be. But f*** society, let's all be whoever we really are!

    hope this helped (*hug*) (Actually, I hope all of the above people helped and you didn't need this...)
     
    #20 IDont Say Aboot, Dec 8, 2015
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