I'm having a lot of trouble figuring out what my gender is, and I was wondering if there are any terms that describe how I feel/what my gender is? Sorry in advance for how long this is π₯²
I'm fine with the way I physically am. I'm fine with my sex characteristics. I don't particularly like calling them female sex characteristics. Feminine doesn't feel quite right either, though. Mentally, emotionally, socially, there is just something deeply wrong and flat about calling myself nothing more than a girl, a woman, feminine, etc. Feminine only barely comes close. My "femininity" doesn't come from the binary. No intersections really, because "feminine" just barely describes it. I don't feel a lack of gender or particularly neutral. I don't think my gender is itself ambiguous or beyond the concept of gender entirely, I think I just genuinely don't have the right words to put a name to it yet. It's not that I feel faintly feminine or even faintly gendered either. I feel fully "feminine," and it isn't subtle. It's just really frustrating because it's not in a midbinary or "-aligned" way.
It's weird because dysphoria is typically defined as distress because one's anatomical sex doesn't match their gender identity. But for me it feels like my socially prescribed gender doesn't match my *being*. Like I can't even say it doesn't match my sex OR my internal sense of gender identity, because those feel intertwined to me. Instead, the way the world perceives me doesn't match who I am, but I don't have the words to describe who I am exactly.
At best, I feel "feminine" in the way that there are impossible colors. My gender is an anomaly that a mind cannot comprehend and thus chooses a word that barely encapsulates it. It's like I'm "feminine" but in the same way one would meet some ambiguous alien being that is so far outside the norm that the only thing they can do is make an educated guess and say "...I guess.......feminine???"
(Also, for the record because I know there are alterhuman genders, I still feel human, my gender is just a goddamn mess for me to describe.)
Well, feminine can mean whatever you want it to mean. If it's not a binary experience for you, if it's proximal to the idea of femininity, if it's partially feminine, you can still call it feminine.
However, there are definitely abinary femininities out there. You describe an experience that's not binary, neutral, ambiguous, or genderless. That's definitely within the realm of outherinity.
Ainemine is outherinity that's comparable to femininity.
Something like femprox could work, if the definition would point toward femininity (not womanhood.) It's one of those terms that conflates the two concepts.
I'm not really sure beyond some of these suggestions. I think it would help to do some introspection to figure out what you want femininity to mean for you. You can just be feminine, despite any other aspects of your gender.
Edit: I was reminded that there's faenine, which is abinary femininity.