i never know how to write these posts bc half the shit i say is like. someone else has done that sorta thing better so ig ill just do personal experience, just giving some persepctive on it all.
when i was younger, i was told i had a deeper voice for a girl, and that made me feel very happy. i didnt understand it, but that small rebellion felt nice. when i talk about this experience, people tell me how they had to have lied to me, that i dont sound like a man at all. i dont even have a particularly deep voice, theyd tell me, and even if these outweigh the one time i was told i sound masculine, i like to believe in the deep voice comment. i was not born a man, but in ways i became one
when i got blood tested, i was told i have a higher build up of t in my body (which id later learn was what they were supposed to tell me was my diagnosis, which i know better than to name online rn lol) and no matter how bad it was, i did like that idea. im unsure if i remember it right, but i believe i was told at a later point i had too much estrogen. again, i dont remember that one well, but the testerone thing stuck out to me. in a way, i got to mimic being a man
i have told people on specific blogs to use specific pronouns for me. nobody in my real life does more than use she/her on me, because any/all translates to my appearances. it translated to my online life to, because pronouns and names i wanted to test were often not used in favor of familiar ones. i dont understand how i feel about it/its, how i feel about neos, not even they/them. i choose to let people see me as a woman, because in many ways, i wasnt going to be a man
i dont want to get rid of my chest. i wear dresses and skirts more than pants. im a girlfriend, im sapphic, im a twin sister, older sister, younger sister, and i built up my femininity. i am not trans fem in a typical sense, but in many ways, i started as a man
embracing feminity was difficult. its the reason im bigender, and sometimes i worry im holding myself back from being myself- that maybe im a confused trans man. i wonder it sometimes, but i am not myself without being a woman, nor do i get to stop being a man. i chose to be both, i started as either. i sometimes say trans neutral, but thats to make myself simple. i have always been a woman, i have always been a man
for a project, i talked with multiple genderqueer people. i interviewed them, their views on gender and expressing it. multiple of them felt disconnected from binary gender. they would not be a man, they would not be a woman
im not really out to the public. i dont know if i ever can be. i am not palitable, i dont know where i fit on many labels, especially in the conversations of discrimination right now. im the ones you can ignore, because the intersections of my identity arent easy to define on a scale. i have the privilege to be somewhere that my identity is more accepted, but ive still faced misogyny and other forms of discrimination. if i tell a guy joke-asking me out that im a man, he jumps to the "im gay" excuse. every way i can scream about my identity, i have to do in the purposeful outfit choices i do, as if im a character to be analyzed with the symbolism of her pants, what it meant when he wore the dress. im visible in my queerness, by choice and by force, im always asked my pronouns. ive confused people on calls before on if im a girl or not, and it brings me joy, but i still remember the times where someone gets insulted for getting it "wrong", where when i was in a dress boys made fun of their friend for calling me a guy. where another girl on a call with a siblings friends called the other one stupid for not being able to tell im a guy. how i told people im bigender and i still am only ever the daughter. in many ways, i can be nothing but a woman mistaken for a man, or someone whos visibly just not cis
i cannot separate being trans from any part of my identity. i am a man in a womans body, and i am a woman who is nothing more to the public eye. "nonbinary" does not begin to describe me. i am a collection of experiences, and i am just another person waking up each day. i dont belong in many conversations, because i am the strawman, imagined woman, fake person, made up to be flung at each other. i am a non-passing trans woman, i am a too-well-passing cis man, im nothing to anything that can hold substance. i have fully transitioned and not even begun. i will be nothing in manys eyes. to the conversations of who belongs to what part of a transmisogynist society, i am confused. i dont know if im visible as a trans woman, i dont know if i can be a woman to many. yet, nobody sees me as a man, and its been made clear to me for a long long while. i am not an experience to relate to or box, and i will not speak over my sisters when they use this framework- i understand its uses, but its flaws seem to claw at me. am i allowed to say that? do i really understand this and this? for every time i find myself in the audience as i crawl off the stage, i am not a gender recognizable, not a person but a gender, and i am not real
silence and resilience, that seems to work best. but my siblings, friends, and other community members, how can they fit here? when trans fem has became another word to mean trans woman, do we have something for someone like my friend over there, who is not a trans woman but is no cis man? if i ignore the feminity in my transition, can i be a trans masc still, when i am not just a man? nonbinary is a wider term because the binary is ever so small. i am nonbinary because i embody the binary and more. what flavor of trans do i have to be to listen? its whats gotten me: if trans fem cannot include identities like mine, with people who are masculine, and vise versa, a term set to mean trans woman with some small radius of inclusion, what is its use? why use trans masc to mean trans men only? why use trans fem to mean trans woman only? its nothing new, truly, ive heard it from people who are more complicated and less complicated than me. we arent the binary, and we are all of it. we are none, we are some, we are in between, nothing, everything, people, not people, closeted, open, proud, ashamed, scared, fearless, we are alive, alive, alive, alive. how can i be alive if you wont look at us? we are not trans men or women, but can you call it cis if we cant look "gender neutral"? to do that we are seen, to be that i am invisible. i am not relevant enough to a conversation, and i am ally and the supported alike
i hate the word transandrophobia, and i hate the word transmisandry. i am not hated for being a man. it might make me seen better if i was. i am hated because i am not enough of a man. im not enough of anything of the sort. yet, i hold dislike for the tme/tma labels. i respect their usage, and i will fight for people to understand them better, but i am not transmisogyny impacted because nobody can see me as a woman, or trans. i would link the argument ive seen on how everyone is impacted by transmisogyny in a transmisogynist society, but this is an amount of my thoughts. maybe i understand it all wrong, that im spouting transphobic propaganda. this isnt meant to be anything that makes sense, because i dont. all im asking is think of something you cant understand- not just something thats not binary, but an out-the-typical-binary experience you cant understand at all. what do they look like? im out there. im fem and masc and both and none. am i not there yet? am i so hard to consider? im invisible and yet too visible. i want to be thought of when we have the hard conversations, of privilege. you cant say one part of our group is exempt or non-exempt, because itll have to be based on visible appearances. of course, i suspect that the usage of certain labels is vaguer then intended, but it never feels like it. i dont face transmisogyny because im not a trans woman, i dont face transemasculation/antitransmasculinity because im not a trans man. i dont face misogyny because im not cis, i dont face transphobia because im not trans. i am nothing but a forgotten word
i am an indescribable shape of all-encompassing mass, and i am nothing to the world
defend my community like you mean it, like we are trans and not of a binary. remember our voices, and share our joys. dont forget us when we are nothing
