#drunkpost

A tomboy or a butch aren't any less female because they don't believe in gender roles. It's just another way of expressing femininity. Same with cis dudes who like to shave their legs or paint their nails or wear dresses. You can wear a beard and a dress and still be as much of a man as that dude in the Yank Tank with testosterone poisoning and a shitton of misogynistic tattoos.

I get misgendered as nonbinary all the time. I have no idea how - the gender stereotype of enbies is androgyny, which I know is not true, but many people do and yet despite my lowkey and sometimes highkey femme appearance many people use "they" as my pronouns despite being told otherwise. The majority of my friends are trans not because they're my people, but because my cis+ ass is more comfortable around people who play with gender than those who don't. I am a gender expat; I am a guest in their space, but I will never be a native, and yet I'm more comfortable around them than the cis because the cis are so fucking obsessed with the binary and gender roles.

It doesn't help that when I changed my name I changed it to a gender neutral one. One of my friends pointedly made a remark that they were happy that I "get to experience gender euphoria in that way." When I told my psychiatrist about my name change he immediately jumped on the "closeted enby in denial" train that has been following me ever since; he made a long speech about gender fluidity and how I shouldn't take it personally that my family may struggle to adapt to the change. When I told him I was cis, he just smiled. My therapist still uses they/them pronouns for me despite being explicitly told not to. Never mind that I've been questioning my gender for well over a decade; it's hard not to when you're a gender expat and surrounded by people who question their gender all the time. never mind that the answer always is, and always shall remain, "still cis."

I'm not saying my poor widdle cis ass suffers the same oppression as trans folk. If that's what you take away from this you're not paying attention.

The truth is that my femininity is understated. Anonymous. It's never been a loud and in-your-face hot pink and barbie flavoured experience. Just because cis female is a single category doesn't mean that cis female is so rigidly defined. It's loud and in-your-face hot pink. It's Barbie. It's also oil and grime and cars, and loud and opinionated and argumentative, as much as soft and delicate and compliant. It's pink and frilly, but it's also blue and dirty. It's cis men in drag and cis women who have never worn a skirt in their life, and everything in between. It seems like I run into a lot of people for whom gender isn't an experience or lens or point of view, it's interest and fashion sense. Or someone's name. I'm seen as less of a woman for my chosen name and people tell me that's okay, not everyone is female! I just say, it's not okay because of that, it's okay because it's okay not to be your idea of what a woman is.

I met a man called Harriet* once. He wasn't any less a man. His wit was acerbic, and he always fronted comments on his name with sarcasm and "yeah, laugh now, get it out of your system." And yet he never changed it. He wasn't less a man for having a traditionally female name. I'm not any less a woman for having a nonbinary one. Just because male and female are opposites doesn't mean they should never touch for the cis.

I don't fit into the '50s box of "you're female, therefore you should wear a dress." Neither do I fit into the '20s box of "you wear a dress, so you must be female." The truth is that gender roles and expectations are just as baffling for people who are nonconforming as for people who are, and that we'll never be truly free of the gender binary as long as we adhere to it. And the truth is that even if you think you don't adhere to that binary, it's so ingrained in your subconscious and our society you almost certainly do. My friends who not-so-secretly think I'm a closeted enby in denial are as much adhering to it as some idiot who thinks my vagina means I should wear a dress and poo out babies.

Being nonbinary is a spectrum. But so is being male or female. You'll never break out of a black or white binary until you realise that it doesn't exist - not even for cis people. We can't truly break out of the binary until we realise that it doesn't exist for ANYONE.

You either believe in the gender binary or you don't. And if you believe that cis people have certain experiences or present in certain ways, if you believe that binary trans people adhere to those same standards, you believe in the gender binary. No matter what you say. You can claim until you're blue in the face that you don't believe in the binary, but if you're shoving other people in the box of what binary means, you are lying.