You sound like my twin. If I remember from some of your earlier articles, we’re even the same age. The only difference is that nobody ever calls me anything but a man, except for my trans friends — and that’s because I asked them to switch. Part of that is my hair, which is still short (I’m trying to grow it out, but it still looks like a guy’s style) and receding significantly. Maybe after more time on hormones and a few laser treatments people’s perceptions will change. You’ll have to teach me your secrets for causing confusion without much feminine presentation :)

It’s heartening to know people like you are out there, so thank you. It’s not so much that I don’t fit inside the binary, but that whatever I’m feeling, it doesn’t seem like a strong identity, which is the common thread among all trans women’s experience — feeling like women. I want my body to change, but the idea of calling myself a woman feels fake, and that causes me to doubt why I’m doing any of this.

Medium is kind of exploding lately with this argument about whether trans women are really women, and it’s a bit othering. From both sides. It plays into my “not trans enough” fears and makes me want to retreat to a position of “I’m just a man who likes estrogen.”