This is a post about why I'm currently considering myself to be nonbinary, but it's not a post about gender.
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It’s about 90% of the elementary school girls wanting to sit on the grass and talk about boys, and me still not understanding why even now, in my mid 30s.
It’s about ‘girls books’ that were all about friendship drama and worrying about menstruating, and how these were framed as universal concerns. My only friends were a pair of male cousins and we mostly cared about how our Lego ninjas’ castle infiltration was going. (The options were limited in my small library in the mid-90s.)
It’s about the ‘wild’, ‘disobedient’, and 'hyper' kids in the books I grew up with being so much better behaved than me, even on my best day, that I’d puzzle over it for weeks. Maybe if my parents were stricter I would be able to follow instructions easier? Maybe I was one of the mean kids in those books? Why was nobody in books like me?
It’s about the revulsion I feel when I think about ‘romantic’ gestures. Remembering my mom getting flowers from someone at church, and my aunt getting upset when I laughed about how she wouldn’t like them. MY MOM IS ALLERGIC TO FLOWERS, but a person who had nothing to do with the situation got offended that I didn’t consider them a thoughtful and nice gift. It makes me feel nauseous thinking about how I’m ‘supposed’ to think things that I don’t want and can’t use are loving gifts, just because society decided they were.
It's about people wanting me to already know their social conventions, and feeling like they are doing SO MUCH WORK when they make allowances for my mistakes, but thinking that learning anything about how I like to communicate is asking far too much of them.
It's about trying to make friends as a teen, and all the guys getting upset or weird when it became clear that wasn't code for dating.
It's about makeup giving me rashes, and my hair being done up giving me headaches.
It’s about women in lingerie in ads, and how I wore a headscarf for a year in reaction to how that made me feel.
It's about learning biblical gender roles, and getting really excited about the idea of protection and love in return for submission. And then finding out I like the BDSM understanding of protection and submission a lot more than I like the church's. That the person I love doesn't have the skill to protect me in ways that make submission safe.
It’s about having noise and light sensitivities, but being expected to enjoy crowded weddings.
It’s about people acting disgusted when I get too loud. Or excited. Or happy. Or interested.
It's about 'body language experts' that ""explain"" what various gestures mean, and it's about that month when my husband believed them and told me I was wrong about what I felt.
It's about definitions of 'womanhood' and 'humanity' that contain things that exclude me. And learning how to be okay with being the exception this time. And eventually getting so used to being the exception that I can no longer connect to the concept at all.
It's about only reading fantasy, now, because an elf's experience isn't supposed to be relatable.
It’s about learning that ‘I actually wanted’ things I didn’t want, and I was ‘unreasonable’ when I said no, and I was being ‘too sensitive’ when things physically or emotionally hurt.
It’s about being ADHD and aroace and weird in far too many ways; in a culture that seems to consider that to be willful rebellion and disrespect.
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I don’t know how to be a woman. I don’t know how to feel good about being a woman. I don't feel I can fulfill the roles and dynamics associated with femininity. I can't present myself in the expected ways, and I don't really want to. In isolation, 'woman' feels like an accurate description. But than I think of OTHER people considering me a woman, and having the right to define what that means, and I just can't.
I need a break from considering myself female, so I can figure out how to do it in a way that doesn’t break me.
I want to learn how to interact with other people in a way that are less exhausting and painful. Engage on my own terms, and disengage if those terms aren’t fulfilled. Protect my own boundaries with strangers and acquaintances - people I don’t expect to make allowances for me. Not by demanding things of them, but by only offering myself on certain terms.
I don't want to ask anything about anyone else. I'm tired of it being about them. I want to ask things of myself. Ask for respect, and care. Figure out what that would actually look like. I want to process and let go of my self-hatred and feelings of being 'designed wrong'.
I've heard the terms 'acegender' and 'neurogender'. They don't excite me, but I recognize that's part of what's going on. Having ADHD gets in the way of performing womanhood to the point that it becomes hard to separate them. And some much of femaleness is defined in relation to being a part of a heterosexual romantic couple. I've got the man, but that hasn't helped me decode the mysteries of romantic and sexual attraction. The baffling concept of men having some sort of allure that women lack, of being a different category.
But, like my marriage isn't about my lack of attraction (it's about the choice I made to love him, and the decade plus of commitment we've had to each other), being nonbinary isn't about my lack of understanding of and ability to perform womanhood. It's about choosing to love myself, and recognizing that I've internalized enough harmful beliefs that I can't healthily identify as female right now.
Asexualgender or acegender, is a gender where one's asexual identity affects their genders or is quite literally their gender!
Check these outs! (♡)(♡)
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STRIPES && MEANINGS ᶻz﹒﹒﹪﹒﹒＞0☆
The overall gradient represent the ace spectrum && gender spectrum!
In order: 1. Ones sexuality affecting one's gender 2. Non-conformity 3. Being ace(gender) in some shape way or form 4. asexuality, being asexual, ace spectrum, etc! 5. Nonbinary umbrella 6. Pride, queerness! 7. Ones gender affecting one's gender.
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IMAGES IDS ᶻz﹒﹒﹪﹒﹒＞0☆
Rectangular flag with stripes that are, in order: Pastel purple, Light Fuchsia-purple, Dark Magenta, Very dark purple, Dark Magenta, Light Fuchsia-purple, Pastel purple.
Icons are 1. Saori Idaka and 2. Saki Izumo From d4dj!
