I'm sorry for the extreme length of this post. I just have to get all of this out. I originally tried to post this over at Genderfork, but I don't think it worked? Well, if something similar happens to pop up there, that's why. Feel free to skip to the tl;dr if you like. I'm a few years over 30. I was assigned male at birth and have lived my whole life as male, without having ever thought much about it. I've never identified well with other men, though, nor did I attach very much importance to my male identity. The place society allots for men is... not a place for me. But hey, lots of men don't fit into those stifling gender norms, that doesn't mean anything on its own. I also cringe a bit when people call me sir or mister, or especially a "man", but I always just chalked that up to the fact that I still don't feel like a grownup. I'm usually okay with softer terms like "guy" or "dude." I've long been interested in gender-related topics, but a little over a year ago I was mulling over the nature of gender itself and realized that I had no real understanding of what gender is or what it means to a person. Did I truly have a masculine gender identity? If so, how would I know? And if not, then what was I? Is my gender experience of just not thinking about it similar to most peoples' - or do most people have a strong internal sense of their gender? And wouldn't you know it, as soon as I put my gender identity under a microscope, it started to look different, and I discovered my feminine side. I don't think anything has really "changed" about me since before I started questioning, really. I am mostly gynosexual and gynoromantic (new words I've learned...), but in the back of my mind I always felt like I didn't see women quite the way the men around me seemed to. For me, it was more like fascination than anything else. Now with these thoughts at the forefront, I think I understand: when I notice attractive women, I'm actually jealous. Jealous of her curves and soft skin and gorgeous makeup, her long silky hair versus my Captain Picard look, the crystalline voice I will never have, and the adorable summer outfit I could never get away with. I want to have those things for myself, and everything else as well. I don't just want to wear a dress while still feeling like a guy; I want to be, and be seen by others, as a woman. It feels kind of like nostalgia, actually, a sort of dull longing in my chest for things I know I can't have. Yet... that's only on some days. Other days, those feelings don't surface. I go about my day thinking little of the body that I'm in. It gets me around, and that's good enough, and I don't spare much of a thought to which gender I'm feeling today - because on those days, my gender doesn't clash with the rest of my world. In fact, in recent years I've taken a bit better care of my appearance, put more effort into how I dress (admittedly in part because my new job has a dress code) - and I found that I can actually look and feel great in my masculine presentation, when I make an effort. Though to be honest, the word 'masculine' still sounds totally inappropriate for me. I guess because society rarely uses that word out loud without a lot of loaded gendernormative BS behind it. There are other things, too, little character traits and pieces of my past that make more sense through this new lens. Just as one example, I've noticed that other people tend to be very attached to their gender identity, and are often offended if misgendered, even in online spaces where we're all just text. Men especially seem eager to establish early on that they're definitely men, especially if they're running a female avatar in an online game or something like that. I on the other hand am pretty indifferent to pronouns - he or she, I don't care which, in fact I kinda like when there's no consensus. I rarely directly state my gender unless asked, and in general I'd rather not be asked. Until lately I'd have responded "male" or "I'm a guy," or just ignored the question, depending on my mood. Now I guess I'd respond that it's a work in a progress. Another example is that I feel I can relate so much better to female characters in fiction. A male character is just someone I watch; a female character is someone I could be. In particular, I love computer games, and in recent years I've slowly gotten to the point where only female characters feel right. Playing as male characters often makes me somehow uncomfortable. In public and most definitely at work, I always present as masculine, and I do have a beard, which my masculine side loves. On my more feminine days, I tend to be a bit more on edge, distracted, uncomfortable, especially in the bathroom. It's not severe. I can function and I can hide it, I just don't like it. These are the days when I notice other women the most. On those days, I hate the beard. I started experimenting privately with feminine clothing and makeup on my more feminine days - at least, what little I've been able to collect, when so much as browsing them in public terrifies me. I found that they help soothe me. I feel more like myself, like I'm actually expressing the me that I want to show to the world on those days. I know that clothing and other superficial things don't define my gender identity, and I know that women don't always put on the stereotypical feminine presentation (my mother never does and except for one time I can remember, never has), and I know that there's nothing inherently more feminine about a skirt than a pair of pants. It's all arbitrary; the only reason I see painting my nails as feminine is because society has drilled it into my brain. That's not it, though. I don't just throw on a skirt and delicate sandals 'cause they're part of the rotation. I feel different, and that makes me want to dress different to match. And when I don't feel different, I wake up and throw on my old clothes without a care in the world. At worst, I might wake up embarrassed that I'm still wearing nail polish, and hastily scrub it off because why in the world am I wearing nail polish? Even at my most feminine, though, I'm not sure I feel strongly like a woman. Just... closer to a woman than a man. Since I can never know what somebody else is feeling, there's no way I can look at a cis person and think "Today, I feel just like they do every day." I don't think I'm transgender, at least not at this point. I don't know if I'd want to commit fully to being a woman at all times. I've researched and tried to understand what all this means, and my research points me to some variant of genderqueer or gender fluid. I could also be gender neutral with just some shifts in how I feel like presenting... I'm not sure if there's a difference. Hoping for a little insight from fiction, I pulled some novels about gender fluidity, and the characters' thoughts put much of what I was feeling into words... or maybe I'm just transposing my feelings into those words, because I want so badly for someone to relate to in this. But I'm conflicted. I am constantly beating myself up because all of this questioning and confusion and distress seems insincere. Just because I can read myself into a fictional character or a definition posted on a web site doesn't mean much. Isn't gender fluidity fairly rare? Who am I to presume that my stumbling curiosity puts me in that rare category, when so many other people are totally certain of themselves? What real weight does my introspection have after only a year or so, when others have struggled for so much longer to understand themselves? What right do I have to insinuate myself as part of a community where many people have suffered far worse than a little confusion? Am I just a rich brat playing dressup in the isolated safety of HIS apartment? How will I know if the extremely feminine presentation I sometimes want to show the world really suits me, if I'm too frightened to actually try it? And while I know not everyone gets dysphoria - does not getting it make it more likely that I'm just making it all up out of nothing? Or is that discomfort I feel actually dysphoria, just a mild form of it? People talk about having panic attacks from dysphoria - do I really have the right to use the same word? And biggest of all, if this is actually real and not just totally normal cis guy questioning, then why now? Shouldn't I have understood these things about myself much earlier in life? I've lived thirty years without questioning my identity. Was I just complacent, or did I have it right the first time? I've tentatively discussed some of this with a couple of my friends; they were supportive and encouraged me to understand myself, but they can't help me much with these questions. With one, I think I overshared my feelings and spooked her. After that, I was totally mortified for weeks, and was determined to shove all this into a deep dark hole and never think about it again. That worked for a few months, and after a while I was satisfied that it was just a questioning phase, that I had correctly concluded that I had no true feminine gender identity and that burying that facade was the right thing to do. If my feminine identity started to surface, I swallowed it and made it go away. But after a while I couldn't do that anymore, and it all came flooding back, stronger than ever. tl;dr I wish I could snap my fingers and transform myself between woman and man as I please. I hate that I'm stuck with just one body, whether it be male or female, when I really want two. I guess the core of what I've been grappling with is this: how do I know when I'm no longer just "questioning" and actually have the answer? How do I know when I'm being honest with myself? How do I separate the gender I want to present as from the gender that I actually feel, or from the sex of my body? And how do I know if I'm just telling myself what I want to believe... when I don't even KNOW what I want to believe? I feel like a stupid spoiled child posting this, but I need to talk to someone and just spill everything out. If you actually read all of that, thank you so, so much for listening.
