It’s just really .... I don’t know how to explain to others the feeling of growing up and being sorted into “girl” but everybody knows you’re not. Everybody knows you’re not. The ostracization you face because you are viably not “girl” by their standards is incredible. And then there’s the whole “my junk doesn’t even look like anybody else’s does” issue too. Like always being able to look in your pants and for me like... there’s a dangling thing there. I have always known inherently that what I am is not “female”, I have never been treated like someone who fits in the idea of what “female” can be as a whole. It’s that sweet sweet biological essentialism... it’s the core of so much ideology that leads to nothing but pain.
I don’t understand “womanhood”, and I never will, and I never have been a woman, and I never will be a woman. And frankly I don’t want to understand “womanhood” as some people define it, because it’s painful, and because I know too many women who are excluded by the definitions people give of “womanhood” and that’s too painful for me, too. I hate that more than anything, watching the people I love be excluded from things they have a right to exist in. It’s fine if people kick me out because I’m Rose or whatever but I can’t fucking stand it when my friends are in pain because of it.
But there is a little catch to this all. I do understand “girlhood”, but only specifically “other”. I don’t know how to explain this in a way that people who don’t have that like untapped schizo shit going on will get. It’s like. Girl (other). Or rather, other (girl). Weird girls, fucked up girls, girls who aren’t real, girls who are real but were manufactured. Girls who are .... psychic glittering death machines. Girls who were made. Girl as a machine? Machine girl? Like "girl” but in transhumanistic senses. Girl but wrong. Tumblr girl. Psych ward girls. Crazy girls. You know? I don’t consider it the main thing that I understand as an identity or experience. And it absolutely isn’t something that’s along the lines of cisgender concepts at all, because it literally is about being other, it literally is about being outside the ranges of what is “acceptable” but still having to be (or wanting to be) (or being) a “Girl”. It’s the broadest abstract ranges of what “girl” can be. For me this kind of girl is made and constructed and given a learning manual that it has to read through. I don’t know lol. This was something I experienced greatly when I was younger and still a child, before I lived as a boy for some time as a teen. And then again when I had to transition back to femininity.
I identify as Italian (gay). My gender and sexuality are fluid. I identify now as an intersex man. I don’t really necessarily consider myself multigender including this - like, girl (other) isn’t really a Gender I Have, but a Gender I’ve Experienced Deeply And Can Experience Again. I don’t even really consider myself bigender; though I do joke about being a nonbinary man and then like, nothing, non-aligned, null, void. The manhood I have experienced my whole adult life is based off of a standard of manhood that is literally best summed up as what a malewife is. It’s actually shockingly close to butch identity, too. It’s in that fine little niche. Lately sometimes I’ve been getting comfortable referring to myself in butch, but I need to clarify that when I say I’m butch I mean this in the most gender neutral of ways, in the “I’m not a lesbian anymore” way but in the “the femboy in my house that lives there doesn’t want to do any of the house repair work, the gnc gay man who’s my girlfriend and deadbeat husband (jokingly) doesn’t want to do it either, and the straight guy who is also gnc doesn’t want to do it and frankly I don’t care to make him, so I might as well do it anyways”.
For me the whole malewife thing is serious. My standard of manhood is influenced by my father, who basically did... most of the wife duties except give birth and nurse a child, which my mother did poorly anyways. And my father was not exactly happy about it, but he has a strong sense of responsibility for his family in terms of what their necessities need to have. That’s the kind of manhood I grew up understanding. Cooking, cleaning, taking care of house and home, protecting one’s family, making sure they’re fed, etc. etc. ... and my god, the vanity. My father isn’t the Italian one (lol) but he was vain and he made a point of looking good. The way my father expressed his self as a man is something I grew up admiring deeply. He wasn’t ... fruity, but he was still apparently vain enough that my mother would speculate as to whether he was gay or not while she was busy destroying her own marriage (and life, family, etc.). I appreciated his aesthetics, his sense of responsibility, and his taking care of the home. To combine the breadwinner and housemaker responsibilities into one. I was like, fuck yes! Maximum fucking power!
So that comes down to me. I was already being raised half as a son by my father, also the wrong kind of “boy” because of how he treated me - calling me a sissy, a faggot, making fun of me for acting like a girl at times (...???) but also never enforcing standards of womanhood on me, whether he understood it or not innately. That was a sort of freedom. He was okay with me being whatever the fuck I was, as long as I didn’t put too many words to it. Of course that’s not to say he’s not transphobic or whatever... but he’s always going to have to live with the fact that I am what I am. And I don’t think he has it in me to completely disown me.
I can’t really necessarily identify as butch 100% because I still identify as femme. I literally present as femme. I wear skirts and dresses and I enjoy how I look wearing them. I appreciate the feminine figure on myself. I enjoy performing an exquisitve, luxurious, rich femininity that’s beyond anybody’s reach, golden hued and brilliant. But I will do the dirty jobs too so to speak. I’ll go butch if it’s needed. And frankly, part of my femininity that I’ve accepted about myself will always try to be entwined with my masculinity anyways. Like a butchy femme. Or a femme-y butch. I don’t like “futch” though. And I’ll never be able to disentwine it from my intersex experiences. Hence why I am.... intergender
















