I have never really questioned my gender. I just accepted that gender was a thing that I had, and considered myself a cisgender woman. Then something hit me yesterday. The thing is, I don't know how I feel about my gender and how to figure that out. Here is what I have been thinking about: 1. I hate being labeled as feminine or masculine. I just do. Again, I don't think that necessarily means anything. I just don't understand the big deal. I don't like makeup, but I don't hate it. I wear it when it is expected of me to wear it. 2. One day a few years ago, I finally overca me my fear of being judged for a certain fashion choice I wanted to make: I bought and wore suspenders and a bow tie. Again, I don't think either should be a gendered thing. But something about it made me incredibly happy. No article of clothing makes me more happy than a nice shirt and a bowtie. My every day outfits are pretty plain. Not overtly "feminine" or "masculine." 3. I am a geek. One of my dreams is to go to a comic convention and dress up as people that I really like. The thing is, all of the characters and let's players I want to dress up as are men. I love everything about their outfits. I don't really pay attention to how I dress on a regular basis, but dressing up as people I look up to makes me feel incredibly happy. Lots of cisgender women dress like male characters(I think anyways). 4 In terms of my body, I feel indifferent to it. I like it sometimes. Othertimes, I don't think about it a lot. How do I understand my gender? Am I reading too much into it? How do I go about exploring who I am? I am really confused by all of this. ---------- Post added 7th May 2016 at 06:45 PM ---------- Also, for whatever it's worth, I told my friend of seven years about what I was feeling, and he admitted that he figured I would eventually question my gender.
From what you wrote, it is hard to tell but there is nothing really that points strongly to you not being cisgender. However, The question is, what is driving you to question your gender, is it purely because of non conforming gender expression or is there something deeper that is driving you in this direction. Maybe an inner sense of extreme discomfort or a feeling of wrongness that has followed you around since puberty or earlier that connects with your body and being perceived as female by others or maybe a feeling as if you are wearing a mask of a woman, a feeling of fakeness that you can't seem to get rid of. Outside of that, many of us simply know through intuition. Trans children spontaneously say that they are girls not boys or vice versa, others start praying one night that they would wake up as girls or boys. It is a part of who we are and we usually know that something is wrong during puberty or earlier. Many don't understand what these actions really mean at the time, I prayed to wake up as a girl but it just happened and I continued believing that I am a boy and never questioned what it meant on a deeper level. Everyone else saw me as a boy and expected me to act as one so I assumed that I had no choice and went on to suffer for years assuming that it was how everyone else experienced life, lost, alone and disconnected from my body. A deep emptiness that followed me around that I couldn't understand. When I tried to connect to being male, I felt an inner anguish and shame about who I was and felt a need to escape and numb myself. I didn't think I was ugly or have any body image issues, it was just an overall sense of loss associated with being born in a male body. This is my subjective experiences and others experience it differently, but in general, it is something that we feel and know instinctively. I often think of it as something that is encoded at the core of my being and it effects how I experience the world and how I connect with others and myself. I hope this helped, (*hug*) Eveline
I'm curious about exactly what caused you to question your gender and why your friend thought you would question your gender. However, other than that, nothing you have described is unusual for a cis woman. Generally, I find that most cis people don't really have a strong feeling or sense of gender. If you're fine being a woman, you probably are one. (It's also important to distinguish between discomfort/disconnect with being a woman because of being trans and discomfort/disconnect with being a woman because of experiencing misogyny or not relating to stereotypical femininity. Most women aren't 100% comfortable being women because misogyny is everywhere and it makes it hard to feel completely okay being female/feminine.)
Thank you for sharing your experience. It does help. And to answer your questions, I am not really sure why I have started questioning all of this. I feel like I need to think about it more, but the discomfort that I have felt has come from feeling like I was missing whatever it means to be a girl/woman. Everyone around me seems to get it, and I don't get it. I also feel incredibly uncomfortable when I am dressed up and am called beautiful.It is a confusing thought process for me. I do wonder if I am non binary but maybe I am just over analysing.
I'm told I have an androgynous personality, I like many guy things and I get rather excited over menswear at times but yeah, as you said, my gender has always seemed pretty irrelevant to this. My best friend of six years likes to joke at me that I should "go trans" which I think is just ridiculous - I don't want to be a man or anything else... not that I would mind I don't think but I like things how they are. He's also the one who says i have an "androgynous personality". Sometimes I wish I was less curvy for a more androgynous look in my clothes, sometimes I get dressed and think I look like an overgrown 12 year old boy so I get really annoyed at my little round face. But generally I am indifferent and I'm sort of proud of my impressive boobage, lol. Yeah, don't listen to weird shit your friends say. If it ain't broke don't fix it. You can be cis and do all this stuff. Not that I know what your gender is though - if there's something more to it then yeah you could be non-binary in some way. But from what you said, I think we're in the same camp.
I don't understand gender either, and I'm in the same camp too For the most part, I simply don't care, I'm a chronical tomboy but will dress up every once in a while. I'm a geek, I like to dress like a guy, I relate to guys better. My take on that is... there is a couple of separate things. There is the general gender feeling, who you are at your core. There is how you identify. There is how you actually behave - your gender expression. There what expression you want (including dress, body, interests etc). They don't have to match up. You might feel happy or unhappy about this. There is no rule.
On the nerd front, cross play (gender bent cosplay) is totally a thing! It's actually celebrated and lots of con goers give you extra compliments. At DragonCon last year, my simplest costume was Mal from Firefly (with suspenders) and I lost track of how many times people took my picture. Go for it!
