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WO[man]

Discussion in 'Gender Identity and Expression' started by Crisalide, Dec 16, 2016.

  1. Crisalide

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    I don't know. Maybe I'm just a woman. But I can't seriously and calmly ask myself "and if I were just a woman" because I start feeling nausea (physical nausea) and repulsion. Someday I wanna try to "feel like a woman for a day", like pretending to myself that I'm cis. Maybe this will all disappear, maybe I'm a gender role rebel, or a weird kind of feminist. Maybe I love freedom from aestethical worries (hair a bit messed up, no nail polish, baggy clothes, wide movements). Maybe I'm a normal cold-hearted woman who chooses career over family and love. Maybe I'm a woman who doesn't absolutely want to be curvy (curvy is beautiful, but is… uhm… "humiliating" if applied to me. I feel lucky for not being curvy). Maybe I'm a woman who desires the voice of a man (seriously. Which cisgender female would desire so much a man's voice? Lol). A woman who would like to "live at least one day as a man" (why?). A woman who thinks: "One day, I'll be a father" (what? D:slight_smile:.
    I really must question my questioning: doubt is my lifelong mission. I must doubt myself. It is necessary for a serious search for the truth.
    I must live for an hour telling myself: "I am cis. I am fully female. I am a woman." But the idea hurts. I don't event want to feel like a woman. Not even for an hour. Not even if there were a magic that makes me be born again as cis.
    "Female" doesn't bother me that much; "fully female" and "femme" do.
    "Woman" does.
    "Male" is… not true.
    "Boy"… almost offensive.
    "Girl": no.
    "Man"… sense of brotherhood; but… I'm not a true man.
    "Androgyne": "partially male and partially female" is ok, but then someone will assume "partially man and partially woman" and NO please don't say the word "woman" ugh >.<
    "Agender"… no, I am a mush made of genders, nothing but the opposite of that.
    "Genderfluid": no, "the thing" (that mush, the melted ice cream) doesn't change. I guess.

    My manners are so feminine, but I dance (and try to sing) as a male.
    I like makeup, but when I put it on me, I soon want to remove it because I "need freedom". Or it looks wrong on my face because I have bushy eyebrows like those of a guy (and I love them *^*).
    I absolutely don't want a muscular body, but I remember when I used to say two years ago: "Mum, I need to go on a diet and exercise to be less skinny and gain some muscles". (That makes me smile.) I'm underweight, but more fat would make me more curvy, so I always say: "to gain muscles" (if I had to choose, I would prefer "man a bit overweight" rather than "curvy woman", so my problem is not fat per se). And I have wide shoulders and like them so much and I've always looked at them in the mirror from any angle, smiling. Almost funny: there was this long-haired girl with make up and earrings who looked at the mirror like boys do when they seek signs of puberty.
    I like my hairy arms. Which woman likes her hairy arms? I envy women who have darker hair on arms than mine. Lol. I think: "It's ok that guys have darker hair. But girls! This is unfair."
    One night I was watching a documentary about transgender children. A transgender girl who was taking hormones said she was scared by the changes her body would have in puberty if she didn't take them. And I uttered: "Really? But why! If only I had those changes!". And then: "Wait. What did I just say. Wtf. Oh no. What. What…"
    But it's so weird, because I'm not a boy, I'm not a male. I feel some hope and warmth when I think: "man", but… it shouldn't be like that, come on. I'm not a true man.

    I am a female. I am a half-man. I like makeup. I will be a father. I'm a chocolate addict. I love ties.
    ("Dad, will you buy me a tie? Pleeease, buy me a tie" I used to say as a child, walking in front of shops, "If I were a man, I would wear ties every day, and different kinds of ties. No, women ties are-so-ug-ly.")
    I think of myself in the past as a girl. I write a diary with masculine endings and pronouns. As a child, I longed for puberty so I would have some breast finally. But I played with boys and proudly called myself a tomboy (and asked my dad for ties).
    Being born female is important to my identity. No, no, why does that sound so bitter right now.

    S…sorry, this was so long .
     
  2. EverDeer

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    If it at least gives you any kind of solace, a lot of the feelings that you have described really resonate with me and are definitely ones that I have felt in the past and thought about before I discovered that I was nonbinary. I was assigned female at birth, and much like you, I also wrestled with the idea for a long time that maybe what I was always naturally drawn to was me just trying to hard to be different and that I should just try and pretend to be a cis woman for a day to see if it came naturally to me and made me finally get over all of my "weirdness". But the truth is, I think if you're having to convince yourself that you need to learn to be cis, or that you have to try to feel that or "act it out"-- you're probably not cis. I tried to convince myself that I was "just a woman" for a long time, to learn to deal with feelings that I was convinced I was avoiding (when in actuality, I just was having them forced upon me all my life) but it also made me feel terrified and physically sick. I think that alone is the true telltale sign that your gut intuition is correct, and that you're not lying to yourself. You know what makes you uncomfortable, it just took until now to learn why- and that's okay. Being "forced" to fit in as a girl all my life has also made me repulsed by feminine things, other women, and has left me bitter, much like you've described. I am also ashamed that many of my mannerisms are so tell-tale feminine, it makes me feel like I'm somehow less of who I really am.

    Anyway, perhaps if all of the labels feel wrong to you and you're not agender, you're just another gender outside of all of those.

    Maverique - "a gender characterized by autonomy and inner conviction regarding a sense of self that is entirely independent of male/masculinity, female/femininity or anything which derives from the two while still being neither without gender nor of a neutral gender." Essentially, not man, woman, no gender, or all genders. Its own independent entity. Some people simply use non-binary to mean this too- a gender that lies outside of the binary. But if you just don't like labels, I'd say don't feel like you have to have one so much.

    Just know that your bitterness and your feelings are normal, and okay. Let them come and go as you experience them. Learn to observe them and let them happen, and then analyze them once they have gone. It sounds like you're in the midst of some confusion, but thats okay. Just know that its okay to still be connected to your previous identity even if you dislike it or know its not you-- its a journey to rewire your thoughts and allow yourself to be who you truly are-- for so long you're used to wearing a mask, you've convinced yourself its apart of you, and you're afraid since its all you have you might miss it when its gone. I went through that too, and at first I did miss a lot and was confused and felt "fake", but thats because society always told me I must be fake if I'm anything other than what I was "born as". Once I realized how I naturally am is okay, I felt free and like I belonged inside of myself.
     
  3. Crisalide

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    Thank you for your answer. :slight_smile:
    I think even cisgender males and females sometimes "learn" to behave coherently with their gender, the difference is that they 1) feel it's right to them (and don't feel pain/bitterness) 2) feel they have the right to do it (and don't feel they're doing something unproper in the eyes of some people). They learn femminity and masculinity since childhood and some acts at first attempt don't come that natural. So even "born as" is fake in some aspects.
    Because of this, I don't know how much "how naturally I am" is true. The mask is pasted to my face, maybe parts of this mask became skin actually and I can't tear them off. Maybe parts of this mask must stay there, maybe it's right to have a mask otherwise you rip your skin away and <disaster>.
    I can't find who I trully am. All of my self perception is a self thaught lesson. I think so probably after reading this: http://emptyclosets.com/forum/blogs/greatwhale/11530-performing-self.html
    It's about sexual orientation but… <details>. We can adapt it to other issues.

    I find "maverique" too far from me. I feel that parts of me are "female", parts are "male", parts are "mix" and parts are "nothing", all incoherently assembled. I take pieces from the binary and make a soup from them.
    Society slowly learns how to perceive and treat non-binary people, but I barely know how to perceive and treat myself lol.

    I'm happy that you found your path ^.^
    And… you're not less of who you are because of your mannerism. It's for the same reason that femminine men are not less men and masculine women are not less women.
    Anyway, I know that feeling. Like when I cross my legs and touch my hair and <<what are you doing lol>> and then spread my legs but it feels so fake so I sit in a rigid pose (like the Sphinx) without knowing what to do. A kind of agendered doll. Insert coin and it will dance. As you like: "female", "male"…
     
  4. EverDeer

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    I definitely relate to that last sentence as well. Its very hard to tell what is the real me even though I was taught it, and what isn't but I feel obligated to perform and have therefore convinced myself is the "real" me-- or maybe its just a force of habit that I haven't analyzed enough to have a different preference about. Or maybe I'm too scared to leave it behind me, so I just try and force myself to acknowledge it out of sake of it making my life / experience easier...

    Its taken me several years even so far, but I have begun to slowly pick away certain parts of that mask, and realize what parts are actually just my skin even though they're the same color as the mask, if that makes any sense. It takes a lot of time and is confusing. Its especially hard when all your life people have asked you why you act "fake" because of it, too. Early on, I was having to explain to my boyfriend how when I "mimic" his masculine behavior, its not because I'm suddenly trying to act like a different person for fun, but because I truly genuinely feel that way- its just the other half of me is so covered up in the well-played facade, its almost impossible for me to tell the difference too-- and sometimes I just succumb to it because its easier to deal with. I said, "you're a guy, you don't just stop feeling / acting like a "guy" when you're around other girls... but I guess I just act like a guy around guys, and a girl around girls because I relate to them both equally in those aspects." It makes sense logically in my brain, but its just kind of the hard to convey the analogy when most of the population doesn't share their attributes with more than one gender, even though its easy enough to understand how "guys act around other guys", etc. ...again, if that makes any sense at all... Obviously it has a little more to do with taught mannerisms and wanting to "fit in" to ease any disconnect with my identity rather than my identity itself, yet at the same time my only logic supporting that I must feel both is that I need to do that in order to cope and be content inside of myself-- and other people don't. Or, even if other people can learn and "mimc/act" its just that, acting, and it doesn't change how they feel inside- but for me, it does. So yeah, I guess what just proves it all to me is the fact that if cisgender people do feel comfortable enough in what they're taught-- or even if they don't, they still feel okay being associated with those in the same gender group as them-- and I don't, then that's what makes me how I am...
     
  5. Crisalide

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    My experience is complementary. I feel more masculine when I'm around females, more feminine when I'm around males. It's like I will never fit in.
    I don't know non-binary people in real life, only in virtual life: blogs, forums, ect. When I read what they say, I feel: "I'm like them". Maybe in a group of non binary people I would finally fit in. ^.^