#f2x

OFCC my comfort character hehe

+ Cartoon 💕

As a trans masc nonbinary person (more specifically, boyflux) who’s now 11 months on HRT, sometimes people respond in unexpected & validating ways.

One of those ways is when they assume we are or ask if we’re transitioning the other direction.

By this I mean, we use he/they pronouns, but sometimes I wear a skirt or dress with a masc-coded shirt & button up or flannel. Every now and again I reverse it, pants and a flannel/button up but with a glittery or fem-coded shirt or sweater. Because why not, & because it no longer makes me dysphoric, & because why do clothes have to have a gender (they don’t).

Usually when we do this (mostly full beard, mustache filling in, typically-masc face shape), people passive aggressively ‘sir’ or he/him us, because they assume trans fem instead.

I’m not saying this as in, I won’t correct them or I want to speak over trans fem people and trans women. I do correct them if it’s safe to do so (appointments) or walk away if it’s not safe.

Today we had a new person at our therapy office tentatively ask if we’re trans fem (using outdated language, “are you, y’know...male to female”, but—), and that was oddly affirming because today our gender is wibbly wobbly, not quite man (man is on the horizon, in sight but not here on the ship— we’re floating on the ocean in a massive ship as this....pirate-but-fae magic-type vague category of ‘mixed gender vibe’ person).

It’s still uncomfortable sometimes. But it’s also affirming on the nonbinary vibes of our gender identity & validates the intentionally androgynous presentation we sometimes go for.

Ideally we just...wouldn’t get misgendered & people would be respectful & ask for pronouns/name instead. But if they’re gonna be rude & try to misgender us, it can sometimes be affirming if they get the direction wrong.

~~~

Just curious:

Whether they yell at me, whether they purposely misgender me, whether they tell me I’m not *really* trans, whether they say they accept me but won't gender me correctly, or say they can't accept me...

It's always one of the 5 same reasons.

(1) They find me attractive as a femme presenting person / woman, so they want to force me to present in a way that’s appealing to them.

(2) They find me attractive as a masculine presenting person, but are in denial that they could ever find a man attractive, so they pretend I’m a “tomboy” instead so they don’t have to admit they aren’t as hetero as they thought they were.

(3) They believe all men / masculine people are inherently violent, s-xual predators, hypers-xual, etc. who objectify women, & because I'm not violent, don't objectify women, & am not even straight (I'm ace-demiro) then I must not be a man at all....because I'm a different kind of man that they deny exists.

(4) They believe nonbinary people are a different kind of woman, not a different spectrum/category of people. Instead of working on their misunderstanding, they categorize me as “woman adjacent”, instead of man adjacent (which is what I am), & they refuse to listen when I tell them not all nonbinary people are woman adjacent or a subcategory of woman.

(5) They don't believe nonbinary people exist, & assume based on the shape of my body that I must be a woman (I have a 4D cup that I can only bind down to ~B cup at best, so I still have a noticeable chest).

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And for the 2% cishet women who won't accept me, it's also one of two reasons.

(1) They (somewhat ironically) feel safe around me, but are convinced all masculine people & men are violent s-xual predators....so they think I must be a woman, since I'm not threatening, violent, or flirting with them against their will (harassment).

(2) They find me attractive when I present masculine, so they assume I must be a cis man (because they believe they are, or they actually are, “straight”/hetero). If they find out I'm trans, they think they must be not straight anymore (because transphobia + g*n*tals & assumptions about how heteros-xuality works) because I'm a different kind of man than they think they're allowed to be attracted to.

(3) They find me attractive as a femme presenting person because they're LGBT/queer, so they try to force me to be a woman (because I'm a different kind of person than they're usually attracted to, or because they believe they're only attracted to women & don't want to question again).

(4) They believe nonbinary people are a different kind of woman, not a different spectrum/category of people. Instead of working on their misunderstanding, they categorize me as “woman adjacent”, instead of man adjacent (which is what I am), & they refuse to listen when I tell them not all nonbinary people are woman adjacent or a subcategory of woman.

(5) They don't believe nonbinary people exist, & assume based on the shape of my body that I must be a woman (My body has a DDDD cup (no that's not a typo, & not an invitation to harass me/us) that I can only bind down to ~B cup at best, so I still have a noticeable chest).

~~

98% of the time, honestly, it's “but I think you're s-xually appealing, but because I believe I'm only attracted to women, then you can't be a man”.

~~

Anyway, being nonbinary (& trans in general) is exhausting.

((gender questioning journey share, here we go! & as always, hate will be blocked & deleted - I respect you're a human person but I don't give you authority over my identity & journey to experiencing the happiest life I can.))

I'm at the point in my journey with gender where I can comfortably say “eh, I dunno what I am but I'm not a girl”.

I started off desperate for a label. I wanted to name it, understand it, see my experience in words. I wanted to say I was genderfluid, then nonbinary, then a transman, then....

I’m masculine and agender. That's all I know. ¿Demiboy? Maybe. ¿Bigender? Maybe. ¿Nonbinary? Definitely.

¿Do I feel masculine? Yea, sort of. I’m a man—my own perception of one, for sure.

¿Do I feel like a genderless void entity floating timelessly in existence, somehow existing inside this weird lil meatsuit powered by an electrified muscle that sort of holds my soul with shapes I don't like that can't capture the endless void that is me? Also yes.

¿Do I have a *set* label for it? No. But I'm okay with that.

I’m me. I’m nonbinary. My pronouns are he/him and they/them, & honestly some other pronouns (xey/xem, fae/faer) kinda make me feel good too.

The only thing I know for sure about my gender is that my feminine energy does not align with what I feel to be woman/girl identity (what I feel in my soul to be woman vs feminine - it's more of a, feminine is not woman, there are masc women & feminine men & androgynous people that mix both, I don't feel woman or girl in my soul but I do feel something feminine & nurturing and creative).

Feminine is a bendy loopy energy that just is, and everyone has a little of it. But woman doesn’t align with me. She/her does not align with me. Honestly I dissociate/depersonalize every single time someone calls me ma’am or refers to me as she/her.

And I’m okay with that.

And I’m okay with that.

¿Why is this a big deal?

....I questioned if I was truly cis when I was six years old, fifteen, seventeen, & went ‘nah I love the power swoosh & twirly of dresses & people tell me I'm feminine so I can't be anything but Girl™, Woman™, She/Her™’. I was one of the people who noticed it young & put it off as a problem for another day.

So when I allowed myself to genuinely question, to experiment, to feel gender euphoria....

I was nineteen, going on twenty.

I am now turning twenty-two in less than a month (Nov 19). And it has taken this long to know who I am & be ready for HRT.

I was 19 when I said ‘okay, maybe I need to actually work through this’. I got a therapist and talked about my feelings and presentation and...and she diagnosed gender dysphoria with confidence. And I knew I was right all along. But ¿what, then, was I?

((note - that's not to say everyone needs a diagnosis, or that dysphoria is the only way to know. I was insecure needing validation to really deeply question. A diagnosis set my questioning free. There are other ways to know too 💖.))

I wanted a set label. I wanted something I could throw out to the world, I am me, this is me, please send someone who will accept me.

It took three years to get here.

Three years. And now I feel comfortable saying ‘I don't know the right label, nonbinary is a fuzzy category and I know my perception of gender is affected by my ADHD & autism, but I am comfortable just being me.’

I’m finally here.

It’s self tolerance at the least, but it feels more like self acceptance and self love, or the beginning steps of it.

And I’m so proud.

So for anyone else who felt like I did...

You don't need a label. They probably won't get it anyway.

Be you. Take up space, make that space your own. Present how you want, transition the way you want, command respect, and learn to put your foot down when people don’t “respect” your pronouns & fuzzy identity.

You are already good enough. You are already strong enough, and soft enough. You may not be in a safe place to figure it all out yet, but you’ll get here too.

I am nonbinary. I want he/they.

& the people who love me & respect me won’t demand me to change. I can have grace & acceptance for the time it takes them to learn, & still not tolerate demands for change or simplicity.

I am allowed to have feminine energy without being a girl. I am allowed to have masculine energy without being completely a man. I am allowed to be nonbinary. And so are you.

I am allowed to unbecome what I was forced to be, and become who I wanted to be from the start. You can unbecome who they forced you to be and build a new you too.

So wherever you may be in your self love journey, healing journey, self acceptance journey, & nonbinary journey, know that I see you and you are already valid enough even if they don't see you yet.

And (as a multiplicity system) we’ve finally found a name for the body that we can all agree on too: Stardust.

Let us reintroduce ourselves to the world now that we've gotten this far: We are Stardust (the Void Galaxy is absolutely still acceptable, we love our system name), & our pronouns are he/they. We are transmasc nonbinary.

XETF/XE2F or XTF/X2F (xenoic-to-female): a trans* folk who considers shemself as transitioning from xenogender to female.