#actuallyintergender

I don’t understand “womanhood”, and I never will, and I never have been a woman, and I never will be a woman. And frankly I don’t want to understand “womanhood” as some people define it, because it’s painful, and because I know too many women who are excluded by the definitions people give of “womanhood” and that’s too painful for me, too. I hate that more than anything, watching the people I love be excluded from things they have a right to exist in. It’s fine if people kick me out because I’m Rose or whatever but I can’t fucking stand it when my friends are in pain because of it. 

But there is a little catch to this all. I do understand “girlhood”, but only specifically “other”. I don’t know how to explain this in a way that people who don’t have that like untapped schizo shit going on will get. It’s like. Girl (other). Or rather, other (girl). Weird girls, fucked up girls, girls who aren’t real, girls who are real but were manufactured. Girls who are .... psychic glittering death machines. Girls who were made. Girl as a machine? Machine girl? Like "girl” but in transhumanistic senses. Girl but wrong. Tumblr girl. Psych ward girls. Crazy girls. You know? I don’t consider it the main thing that I understand as an identity or experience. And it absolutely isn’t something that’s along the lines of cisgender concepts at all, because it literally is about being other, it literally is about being outside the ranges of what is “acceptable” but still having to be (or wanting to be) (or being) a “Girl”. It’s the broadest abstract ranges of what “girl” can be. For me this kind of girl is made and constructed and given a learning manual that it has to read through. I don’t know lol. This was something I experienced greatly when I was younger and still a child, before I lived as a boy for some time as a teen. And then again when I had to transition back to femininity. 

I identify as Italian (gay). My gender and sexuality are fluid. I identify now as an intersex man. I don’t really necessarily consider myself multigender including this - like, girl (other) isn’t really a Gender I Have, but a Gender I’ve Experienced Deeply And Can Experience Again. I don’t even really consider myself bigender; though I do joke about being a nonbinary man and then like, nothing, non-aligned, null, void. The manhood I have experienced my whole adult life is based off of a standard of manhood that is literally best summed up as what a malewife is. It’s actually shockingly close to butch identity, too. It’s in that fine little niche. Lately sometimes I’ve been getting comfortable referring to myself in butch, but I need to clarify that when I say I’m butch I mean this in the most gender neutral of ways, in the “I’m not a lesbian anymore” way but in the “the femboy in my house that lives there doesn’t want to do any of the house repair work, the gnc gay man who’s my girlfriend and deadbeat husband (jokingly) doesn’t want to do it either, and the straight guy who is also gnc doesn’t want to do it and frankly I don’t care to make him, so I might as well do it anyways”. 

For me the whole malewife thing is serious. My standard of manhood is influenced by my father, who basically did... most of the wife duties except give birth and nurse a child, which my mother did poorly anyways. And my father was not exactly happy about it, but he has a strong sense of responsibility for his family in terms of what their necessities need to have. That’s the kind of manhood I grew up understanding. Cooking, cleaning, taking care of house and home, protecting one’s family, making sure they’re fed, etc. etc. ... and my god, the vanity. My father isn’t the Italian one (lol) but he was vain and he made a point of looking good. The way my father expressed his self as a man is something I grew up admiring deeply. He wasn’t ... fruity, but he was still apparently vain enough that my mother would speculate as to whether he was gay or not while she was busy destroying her own marriage (and life, family, etc.). I appreciated his aesthetics, his sense of responsibility, and his taking care of the home. To combine the breadwinner and housemaker responsibilities into one. I was like, fuck yes! Maximum fucking power! 

So that comes down to me. I was already being raised half as a son by my father, also the wrong kind of “boy” because of how he treated me - calling me a sissy, a faggot, making fun of me for acting like a girl at times (...???) but also never enforcing standards of womanhood on me, whether he understood it or not innately. That was a sort of freedom. He was okay with me being whatever the fuck I was, as long as I didn’t put too many words to it. Of course that’s not to say he’s not transphobic or whatever... but he’s always going to have to live with the fact that I am what I am. And I don’t think he has it in me to completely disown me. 

Both of my parents, I feel, have always had this knowledge that I’m intersex, or at least not a “usual” child. I’ve never been held to like... dyadic afab gender roles or anything, ever. Not even by peers. 

I wasn’t allowed girlhood/womanhood by her. The definition is too narrow. And by radfem definitions, if you aren’t in that narrow space, you’re a man. It’s binary like that. And if you’re a man, you’re evil and irredeemable. Asides from my father not really raising me with gender or holding me to a (general definition: like that used in legal documents?) man’s expectations, the way I learned gender inherent was just... different. I could never be a woman and I wasn’t allowed to be one anyways. You can either be an evil not-girl (a man) and try to be more of a woman (which you can’t, and the definition is always changing to exclude you) or you can be a man and accept that you’re evil and irredeemable and all sorts of stuff. 

Although the way my father handled gender was very neutral. I don’t know how to say it. I’ve talked a bit about how my father was.......... well basically the concept of a “malewife”? without the online fetishistic nonsense associated with it; the idea that a man is absolutely responsible for cooking, cleaning, maintaining home, maintaining family. And for me, despite my father dropping the ball a lot - I still learned that emotional nurture is required as a part of that, too. My mother never did that for me. Well, my mother was drawn to ideologies that, as Stevie said, are progressive but give her an advantage no matter what because she’s into power tripping... but for my father, I found freedom in being able to have a manhood Like That. It was everything I wanted about being a person and being responsible and still having the space to care for others intrinsically. That is the kind of manhood I got. 

That made my mother really, really, really fucking angry! 

You have to understand that that woman was never taking care of anybody at all. She simply did not have the capacity to. She did not truly care about others out of the goodness of her heart - only self-serving narcissism. She wanted to butter herself up to look good. She could not cook. She never cleaned. She never nurtured or protected us or managed the household. She was like... exhaustingly incompetent. And she’d get furious at you if you took over that role for her to get anything done, because that’s HER role, she’s a WOMAN, and a MOTHER, and that’s HER JOB, so don’t you try to ACT THE PARENT. 

Happy TDOV!!! Here’s some pictures of me spanning from 2016 to this year. Fun fact! These pictures are ALSO chronological!

I’ll never forget learning that I could be nonbinary in 2013. I’ve never truly felt like either a man or a woman, but I’ve wanted to abuse those binary words that held me down for as long as I can remember. I’ve always hated terminology like that. 

Finding out I was intersex was another big thing for me - if I’m being honest, finding out I was intersex made me more comfortable with myself. Not just as a nonbinary person, but as a person overall - finally, some answers, finally, some lenience, finally, some explanations as to why binary genders never really sat right with me ever since I was a child. 

What is a woman? What is a man? What do those words mean when you grow up a son, but become defined as a woman the minute you begin to fail? 

My intergender experience is unique to me, but shares traits with many intergender people. My intergender experience is non-binary and trans-gender as a default, and knowing that, I’ve been able to experiment more happily with myself more often, with more fondness for the results.