I'm in my late forties, bi-gender and bisexual/pansexual. It took until my late thirties to realize I was bisexual, and I've only started getting a handle on my gender situation recently ... so for a while I was pretty disappointed in myself that I took so long to figure out who I was. The other day, though, I realized that there were good reasons it took me so long. I don't think it makes it a good thing that understanding myself was so delayed, but I start to realize that I'm not oblivious and self-denying: I've just had other priorities. First, awareness about QUILTBAG concerns and especially trans concerns has really blossomed in recent years. As for the term "bi-gender," I don't know how recently it was coined, but even now it's rarely used and understood by only a small percentage of people. So in a sense, my gender identity had to catch up to me just as I had to catch up to it. Maybe even more importantly, it suddenly occurred to me that it was only last year that I stopped being a full-time parent, much of it as a single parent. I think it would have been very hard on my son for me to be exploring my gender and sexuality while trying to raise him full-time, and that would be true regardless of whether I tried to keep it as a secret from him or to include him. Before my son was born, I was in a bad marriage with someone who would almost certainly have been very unkind to me about my identity if I had been advanced enough to understand it myself, so the last time I really had freedom to explore my identity was in my early twenties, when I really was completely clueless and had not idea of what I was. Like I say, it doesn't mean that misunderstanding my identity for most of my life is a good thing, but at least it also means that my failing to get that far is kind of understandable. Has anyone else here had being a parent impact on understanding yourself?
similar situation for me, 20+ years of a bad marriage, single parent, hiding things when i was young.... my son is 18 and very accepting of my gender, and sexuality, and my biggest supporter. now that he's grown, i can explore, and in the not too distant future transition.
My story's a bit different to yours, but yeah, being a parent, in a bad relationship and generally busy with life meant that I was *completely* out of touch with myself for most of my twenties. That stuff can be so all-consuming that it's surprisingly easy to lose yourself in it. In my case, I'd known I was into women before we got together (and I'd been honest about that from the start), but once I was with him I had my blinders on and wasn't thinking about other possibilities. It was actually quite shocking to me how quickly and forcefully the feelings for women were once we split up. As for the gender stuff, I definitely would have figured that out a lot earlier if I'd known it was a thing. I didn't even know it was possible to be non-binary until about 3 years ago.
Right? That's why I was so relieved and happy to learn the word "bi-gender." Suddenly instead of some unclassifiable thing that didn't fit, I could describe what I was and feel like there were other people out there who were like me.
