Sometimes I Have No Idea What My Gender Is
And I don’t know if I’ll ever figure it out
The only thing I know for sure about my gender is that I’m not a cisgender woman.
Other than that, thinking about my gender sometimes turns me into a big knotted ball of confusion.
Ever since I can remember, I have always felt I was “not like other girls.” It was only until a few years ago, when I learned about the existence of nonbinary individuals, that I started to not consider myself a girl at all.
I prefer to think of myself as an amorphous, genderless blob, but unfortunately, people won’t really ever see me that way. Because of my breasts, people will always see me as a woman, even though that’s the last thing I want to be perceived as.
There were actually a couple of periods in my life where I thought I was a transgender male.
At the time, I was so fed up and dysphoric at being referred to as a female that I went in the complete opposite direction.
Even though I knew that there’s absolutely nothing wrong with being trans, I felt this unspeakable shame deep down inside. As a result, I never told anyone about these feelings until years later.
But I still never quite identified fully as a man. It still didn’t feel right.
Nowadays, I identify as nonbinary. It’s a good way to describe how my gender fits outside of the typical boxes of male and female.
I am biologically female and still identify as such. I guess you could say I’m a woman-aligned non-binary person.
I think of this mainly in how I express my attraction to the different genders. When I see a beautiful woman, for instance, my first thought isn’t “oh, she’s so pretty!” It’s usually, “Holy shit, I’m so gay.”
I don’t have those kinds of thoughts when I see an attractive man. I usually just think about how hot he is.
So, I guess if I HAD to pick one of the two “main” genders, I would be a woman.
But I wouldn't exactly be happy about it.
It still doesn’t encapsulate who I really am. Again, I want to be seen as someone outside of the typical gender boxes.
Honestly, I don’t think this gender confusion is ever going to dissipate. I think part of me is always going to be befuddled when I think about how I want to express myself.
I still experience dysphoria when someone calls me a woman, “miss,” “ma’am,” their daughter or sister or niece, or any variation of being referred to as someone feminine.
On the other hand, a wave of gender euphoria washes over me when I hear my girlfriend refer to me with “they/them” pronouns. She is the only person I am out to about my pronouns (as she is also trans and understands my dysphoria completely). Well, unless you count all of my lovely readers, of course!
I’ve experimented with using “he/him” pronouns and going by a more masculine name, but something about that didn’t feel quite right either. So, for the time being, I think I’ll stick with “they/them.”
Discovering the existence of nonbinary people was the most euphoria-inducing thing I have ever accomplished. I guess that means I’m nonbinary, but I’m still not entirely sure. I might end up changing my mind someday and realizing I’m actually a man or a woman.
And for right now, I think I’m okay with that.
