#deconstructinggender

I’m starting to realize a divide here that is meaningless. These terms merely define how gender is aligned at birth… but in in the trans* community, it has become a resounding “us vs. them.”

This is wrong. I know several cis males and females whos’ gender views are just as mutable as the trans community. They perview their own identity as being as gender mutible as transpersons do.

I know my own identity as a woman, therefore I am trans. But… BUT, I want to be a semi-masculine woman.

WHY can’t there be cispersons who want to dress, appear, or adopt feminine/masculine aspects without being considered a component of being *queer*? Why isn’t it a general principle that we can just accept gender as fluid and mutible, regardless of birth designation?

Why are we still enforcing us vs. them? We are all human. We change over time. Our gender and sexuality changes over time. We adapt. We are all still human.

I am a feminine man who feels that they don’t want to be a man.

(My gender identity is that of a transgender woman.)

I am a person that wants to dress as any gender in public.

I am a person that wants to appear as a masculine or feminine woman.

(My gender expression is that of a genderfluid person; from tomboy to femme.)

I am consciously adopting the trappings of a female woman.

(I am femme.)

I am totally keeping my nickname as either gender.

I’ve felt like a boy and I have been treated like a boy. I grew up with three brothers. We played GI Joe; We played in the mud; We played video games; I was among rough-housers; We were in cub scouts. My sisters were 11+ years after, so I had no common interests by age difference. I was never influenced by an out-of-family female. I was a Navy brat… We moved too much for me to develop any permanent bonds outside.

Even though I’m a “man,” I feel like a girl… Not a woman. I never had adolescent experiences like a girl. Dressing up; Wearing a bra; Makeup - I feel uninitiated, like I’m less than a woman.

From hour to hour I do shift…. but not in gender. It’s about how much I think about my gender and care to think about it. If I’m distracted, I think little of it. I wonder, after a time of that, if it is really a thing… That triggers more thought, an hour later I can’t stop thinking about it… and if I dwell too long, I become depressed or have a panic attack.

This is a fairly common comment on the internet. It even has invaded my own mind as a form of doubt.

I didn’t want to know I was transgender. I didn’t want to accept that I was transgender… It was subconsciously there. All this time there were signs it was there…

I was ignorant. I was afraid of what transgender was.

Once I hit this breaking point in how I felt about it, I had to find out… I looked up other mental problems… because I thought it could be something else. I was trying to find out why I felt off all these years. I looked up schizophrenia… I looked up bipolar disorder. None of these things fit. None of it matched.

I tripped upon gender dysphoria. It seemed to click. I dug deeper… and I still didn’t want to believe it. I wanted to be "normal." Deep down, all these years, all this time, I knew I wasn’t.

This map isn't all there is to gender identity and expression, but it did provide me with 2 things.

1. To parse out identity from expression helped me hone in on why I felt confused about gender. My identity is solidly transgender female. My expression on the other hand...

2. It gave me neat little boxes to point at and say, “that's who I am, and what I want to be.”