#genderexpansive

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Coming out can feel like a burden sometimes. 

Choosing who to tell, how to tell them, whether it's safe or not. It's exhausting, and it starts to feel like work or labor…all the uncertainty. 

That's why I like the term ‘letting in’ instead of coming out. It sort of flips the script. Coming out, to me, feels like you have to push yourself out into the world and decide whether you're ready to come out to a specific person (or everyone all at once!) and whether they're ready to receive what you have to say.

Letting in, to me, is like deciding who I'm okay with getting to see this vulnerable side of myself, with this part of myself that I might still be exploring or not totally sure about. 

It might feel like a distinction without a difference to some people. If you still want to use the term coming out or if you prefer letting in; 

or maybe for some people you're talking about coming out to, 

and other people you're letting them in to see the vulnerable side of yourself…

…you don't owe disclosure to anyone. 

I identify as an androgyne, meaning I experience my gender as a mixture of feminine and masculine. But since my experience of androgyne is gender expansive, instead of being located at a single point at the middle of the gender spectrum grid, my gender occupies a large portion of the grid simultaneously:

The way I interpret it is that an expansive gender has a central focus point on the gender spectrum grid, but it also includes an expanded adjacent area. Since my gender's focus point of androgyne is in the center of the grid, a circle happens to be a convenient shape to express my experience of expansiveness. Someone who is a gender expansive demigirl might draw their expanded area as a half circle. Of course the expanded area could be any shape, (and or course regardless of how it is drawn, this is just a 2D representation of gender which is a multidimensional experience for many of us!)

Anyway, this explanation may sound a bit confusing, but I recently came across the following description of gender expansive fluidity that sums it up so much better:

From the Podcast "Let's Talk Gender S2:E6", by Meaghan / Ray (Link below):

"The third category is a gender expansive experience. People with this type of gender have one gender, but it encompasses a wide range on the gender spectrum. They may choose to present one aspect of their gender at a time, or embody a variety of components at once. They may appear to have a gender fluid identity, when in actuallity their gender is stable but expansive."

Quote from Meaghan / Ray. (Thanks for putting it so succinctly Meaghan / Ray!) Their podcast can be found here:

Gender-expansiveness: An umbrella term sometimes used to describe people who expand notions of gender expression and identity beyond perceived or expected societal gender norms. Gender-expansive people feel that they exist between genders, as on a spectrum, or beyond the notion of the man/woman binary paradigm.

BAZZI wasn’t lying when he said we all just want to be somebody!

Continuing to give money to big businesses and corporations only makes the wealthiest people more wealthy. Those wealthy people hold all the power and are making decisions for OUR bodies, OUR identities, and OUR lives with no regard to what we have to say.

Join the Vulgar V Team in the movement to spread the wealth-fuck giving rich people who don’t give a damn about your voice, ANY of your money. Together, we can give people who have been historically silenced voices. Spend your money at small businesses, locally owned businesses, start up businesses, and businesses owned by people who have been historically oppressed! ✊🏽