Struggling with Gender Identity During Quarantine? You’re Not the Only One
There aren’t as many expectations to perform as your assigned gender these days.
Last week, I decided to shave my armpits. It had been several weeks since I’d last done it, and with the temperature regularly reaching more than 100 degrees Fahrenheit here in Texas, I was sweatin’ like a queer in church. To minimize the risk that I’d smell truly godawful, I chose to shave.
I figured it wouldn’t be weird. After all, a cisgender ex-boyfriend of mine used to shave his armpits on a regular basis to minimize body odor. As a nonbinary transmasculine person, I thought I could go either way when it came to armpit hair.
I hadn’t realized what a disaster it would turn out to be.
After I got out of the shower and glimpsed at my newly hairless armpits in the mirror, I was struck with an intense wave of gender dysphoria. I hadn’t felt such a powerful disconnect from my physical appearance since before I got my shoulder-length hair cut boy-short.
Maybe it was because I was raised to believe that in order to be feminine enough to be attractive, I had to give the impression that not a single hair had ever grown in that area. Maybe my subconscious interpreted the act of shaving as too feminine and triggered the dysphoria.
One thing’s for sure: I don’t plan on shaving my armpit hair ever again.
After that fiasco, I spent the rest of the day in a depressive state. To make matters worse, it was a Saturday, so I didn’t have work to distract myself from my thoughts. For the entire day, my mind was plagued with Bad Gender Feelings.
For the past few years, I’ve identified as nonbinary but had no desire to change my name or medically transition by taking hormones or undergoing surgery. But for the past few days, I started wondering whether I want to physically transition, adopt a more masculine-sounding name, or even start identifying as a trans man.
I started getting dysphoric about aspects of myself that had never given me dysphoria before, like my breasts. They’re so obnoxiously large that people are almost always going to read me as a woman. But I started seriously considering binding my breasts for the first time.
As a plus-size person, however, binding would be especially difficult for me. Thinner people may be able to find binders easily or even wear a sports bra or two to achieve a flat chest, but it’s harder to find a binder that would fit me. I get the feeling that my chest would never lie completely flat, and I would never be seen as masculine unless I got top surgery.
So, for the first time, I’m actually considering it.
I’ve also been struggling with my sexual orientation in these past few weeks. I’ve identified as a nonbinary lesbian for a while now, but recently I’ve found myself experiencing some sort of attraction to men.
Now, I don’t know if that attraction is legitimate or not. In fact, I don’t even know if it’s actual attraction at all. It could very well be the desire to look like a certain man rather than wanting to be with him.
Still, my identity has come into question this summer. I’m not quite sure how to classify myself anymore.
I understand that I don’t necessarily have to label my gender or sexual orientation. But labels are important to me. They help me identify with a community of people like me.
That’s why I wish I could just know for sure exactly who I am. I wish some magical gender fairy godmother or even God Themself could come down and just tell me what I am. Trying to figure it out by myself has just been a confusing, messy process.
Fortunately, I’m not alone in this struggle. During the past few months of quarantine, I’ve seen multiple people online realize they’re trans. In particular, I’ve seen a lot of people who previously identified as women come out as nonbinary.
I thought it was a bit of a strange coincidence until I saw this tweet:
This person appears to have deleted their Twitter account, but I’m so glad I saw this post when I did. It perfectly put into words something I’d noticed but never consciously considered.
When you really think about it, gender is primarily a social performance that only really comes into play when you’re around other people. If you’re stuck at home all day, you don’t have to put on that performance to the same degree. Other people don’t perceive your physical appearance, and the gender tied to it, nearly as often.
So, when someone finally does gender you (a grocery store employee calling you “sir” or “ma’am,” for example), it may seem strange if who you really are doesn’t quite match the way people perceive you. You might not have noticed this before, as you may have been used to constant misgendering, but now that it happens less often, you have more time to think about how it affects you.
I think this is particularly true for people who were assigned female at birth. Femininity is much more of a performance than masculinity is. It often requires much more effort to be read as feminine than masculine (styling your hair, putting on makeup, shaving body hair, etc.).
When you’re staying home all day and no longer feel socially pressured to exert this effort to alter your natural appearance, you might realize that you don’t genuinely enjoy performing all those tasks. You may come to terms with the fact that you only did all that because society expected you to.
From there, you might realize that you don’t quite feel comfortable being perceived as the gender that was thrust upon you when you were born.
And that’s okay.
It’s perfectly normal to feel a bit weird or scared at the realization that you might not be cisgender. I know I did. In fact, I felt so strange that I kept my identity a secret for years, even from my closest friends.
But now that I’m out to most of the important people in my life, I feel more at peace than I’ve ever been.
Everyone’s gender journey is different. Everyone takes a different amount of time to fully come to terms with who they are. Remember that there’s no rush or pressure to change your identity. Take all the time you need to figure yourself out.
