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Understanding My Gender

I expect that understanding and accepting oneself is always a complicated journey. That journey becomes more complicated if your identity exists outside of the conventional social norms. The idea of finding yourself sounds like a cliché, but it rings true to my experiences. It took me a long time to really find myself.

When I first started to learn about transgender people, really learn about them, it brought up some questions for me. Before that I had a certain cultural awareness of the idea of sex change operations. Bad jokes and poor representation were all around me. None of it ever really challenged my perception of myself. Even when I first heard the phrase "LGBT" and looked up what the T stood for, I still didn't have any real context for what that actually was. I remember getting into Veronica Mars and being really excited that there was an episode where Veronica reunites someone with their father, who had "become" a woman. I still thought of it in those terms, a man becoming a woman. I didn't really understand, but something about seeing it represented, not as a joke, made me really happy. It was a few years after that when I really started learning, late December of 2014 as I recall, and that's when I started to question myself. I had led the kind of life that, when I started to genuinely learn about transgender people, I had to ask myself: "Am I this? Why am I not this?"

In the short term I decided that it must just be a side-effect of binary gender roles, causing confusion in people. "Why should liking dresses and pretty things suddenly mean you're not a man? You can be a man and like so-called 'girly' things." I still adamantly believe that you can, in fact, be a man and like so-called "girly" things, but I've also gained a deeper respect for the complexities of gender. It was a Tumblr post (big surprise when I follow a bunch of compassionate amateur sociologists) that got me to understand what transgender actually meant. The person said something to the effect of: "Don't try to imagine what it would be like for you to want to change your gender. Imagine that you're the gender you are, but you look so much like the other one that everyone mistakes you for it and tries to force you to dress and act a certain way because of it." That's the sentiment that finally got things to start clicking into place for me.

I was assigned the gender of male at birth. I took their word for it, by and large. Male-bodied is how I describe myself these days, if pressed to make a statement about my biological sex. Though, to be honest, the topic causes a bit of discomfort. Nonbinary is who I am inside, though I've only shared this with Twitter and Tumblr so far. I haven't worked up the courage to tell my mother and I don't want to tell anyone else in my personal life before I tell her.

If you look at me though, without knowing what I feel inside, you'll see a man. One day I hope to find the strength to wear a dress, mostly because I want to feel pretty, but also to at least make some feeble challenge to that preconceived notion people have when they look at me. However, I'm not there yet.

The first time I looked at Kaitlyn Alexander, I saw a woman. I didn't know that there was anything else to see. Man and woman were the only categories I had for humans and they seemed to embody more traits that are socially associated with femininity than masculinity, so I assumed that they were a woman. Kaitlyn is a relevant part of my journey of self-discovery, of course, but we'll come back to that.

The first time I looked at myself, I saw a boy. I'm sure I had already been told I was a boy. I'm not even certain that I had a solid concept of what girl meant at that time, let alone anything outside of those binary categories. With only two options on the table, boy seemed to be the right option. It was a label that matched my body and it's what everyone said I was anyway. Even though boy never felt like quite the right fit, I had no grounds for assuming that I was anything else. I wasn't a girl, so I must be a boy.

I was a boy who liked Power Rangers, Wrestling, and Dragonball Z. I was a boy who dismantled my toys and swapped their body parts around. I was a boy who...yeah I'm hard pressed to think of very many conventionally "masculine" things that aren't toxic. I definitely absorbed some of that and pretending otherwise would be an exercise in erasure and misrepresentation. However, even in my ignorant youth, I tried not to let it completely define me the way it did for many of my male peers. Ultimately anyone passive will find themselves following the dominant social script; it takes an active effort to overcome that kind of programming. I was a boy though, as far as I knew. I never felt very strongly about it, as if being a boy was anything important to me, but I was a boy.

I was a boy who liked the Pink Power Ranger almost as much as the Green one. I was a boy who watched Sailor Moon before school in the mornings...and joined a Sailor Moon fan club...and drew Sailor Moon fan art...and got Sailor Moon Barbie-style dolls...and Sailor Moon action figures...and Sailor Moon wands...and Sailor Moon curtains...and Sailor Moon sheets. I was a boy who played with an Easy Bake Oven. I was a boy who, in addition to thinking Britney Spears was pretty, also enjoyed her music. I was a boy who liked tiger lilies, carnations, daisies, and morning glories. I was a boy who never quite understood other boys and men, though I frequently tried to imitate them.

I was a boy who found it so much easier to connect with female characters in fiction. I often found myself gravitating toward the women in my favorite stories. It didn't matter if they were physically strong, emotionally strong, active, passive, crybabies, competent, book smart, street smart, outspoken, timid, anxious, confident, loners, nerds, badasses, tomboys, or girly-girls...I found something to love in so many of them. From a young age, through my teen years, and onward into adulthood...it remains true to this day that it's easier for me to connect with female characters. I remember more recently when I completely failed to connect with Beau Swann even though I saw myself in Bella.

According to my mother, I was a boy who had vagina envy. I've forgotten much of the earliest parts of my life, but my mother recently reminded me of this. For context: My mother was very open and honest about educating my brother and I. She penned and illustrated three books about bodies, though she never has published them. One for age four, one for age eight, and one for age twelve. The first book was basically just the proper names of body parts, don't let anyone touch you here without permission, and don't touch anyone else there without permission. (And it's a good thing she did teach us all of that or we might never have known how to articulate the abuse that was happening to us.)

Anyway, that's the context around the story that when I first learned about vaginas, I was apparently jealous that I didn't have one. My mother told me that story just recently, shortly after I'd privately embraced the nonbinary label. When she told me that, I laughed the strangest laugh I have ever heard myself laugh. I'd completely forgotten about that, but it fit so perfectly with the self I was discovering and it was a relief to be reminded that I am who I always was.

As I said before, I still believe that you can like all of those things, have those preferences, have those experiences, and still be a boy. I had a supportive single mother who instilled a deeper understanding of that in me than most people who are socialized as male will ever get. Boys can like flowers, dresses, Sailor Moon, and pink. The question of gender hits something deeper than those kinds of preferences. If you're a boy, then you're still a boy when you play with dolls or put on make up. If you're a boy, there's nothing that can make you less of a boy. If you're a girl, there's nothing that can make you less of a girl. If you're another gender, there's nothing that can make you less either. This remains true no matter what your body looks like. You are who you are and nothing can touch that, no matter what other people try to attach to you.

It took me a long time to figure out I wasn't a boy. Part of that was because I knew I wasn't a girl. Part of that was because I knew that I could like Sailor Moon and still be a boy. Liking pink wasn't evidence that I wasn't a boy; it was just evidence that I liked pink. Seeing myself in female characters wasn't evidence that I wasn't a boy; it was just evidence of being able to relate and empathize with female characters. Wanting to reject toxic masculinity wasn't evidence that I wasn't a boy; it was just evidence that I could learn to recognize my own poor behavior and want to improve myself. Boys are often stunted in those areas due to how they're socialized, but they're capable of all of that. None of that meant that I wasn't a boy. I never felt like my body was wrong, but there was still something about being called "boy, man, he, him, his..." None of those words ever felt like quite the right label for me.

"Who needs labels anyway? Just exist." I lived in that headspace for a little while. Not labeling oneself is a valid choice, of course. Life leaves plenty of room for things like flexibility, fluidity, and mystery. For me though, I didn't care about the labels because I didn't see one that accurately reflected me. You might say that in the present I've identified myself with the non-label lables. There's an element of truth in that, but my labels are at least equal parts about who I am as who I'm not.

Demiboy was the first step for me, the first thing I ever called myself other than male. Here's a good time to bring Kaitlyn Alexander back into things. Seeing them and their character LaFontaine, hearing they/them/their used as singular pronouns for the first time in my life, that was something that definitely created a shift in my world view. This was around the same time that I was learning more about transgender identities. Early-to-mid 2015, I'd estimate. I had watched Carmilla, but LaF being called "them" didn't come up much in the first season of the show. Fandom was where I was seeing those pronouns and getting confused. Once I understood, I was immediately enchanted. I'd been learning about transgender people, wrestling with the concept that "boy" had never felt quite right, and sincerely asking myself: "Why am I not a woman?"

As soon as I understood that they, them, and their were being used as singular gender pronouns, I knew in my heart that those were what I wanted to be called. I was still hesitant to let go of "boy" though. Boy was what I had been told I was from the day I was born. I looked at Kaitlyn and asked myself: "Am I really what they are?" Kaitlyn has a neutral sort of appearance, not quite androgyny, but still a certain neutrality of presentation. This was a contrast to what looked like a man in my mirror. Additionally, I was still hung up on binary concepts. Kaitlyn had physical traits that I'd been taught to associate with femininity and I had masculine traits. How could I be the same thing that they were if our bodies were so different?

So when I was reading up on different gender identities, I eventually found my way to "demiboy." Partially identifying as a boy and partially identifying as something else (or nothing else.) It seemed like the best option. If I wasn't a girl and I wasn't what Kaitlyn was, then part-boy seemed like the option to go with. I never made a big announcement, just quietly added "demiboy" to my Tumblr bio and started casually using they/them/their when the opportunity presented itself. "Well, as someone who wishes they had the courage to wear a dress, I totally understand that point..."

When you struggle with anxiety, you often find yourself rehearsing conversations, even if you're unlikely to ever have them. I imagined being asked what pronouns I should be called as a demiboy. "Well, my heart says 'they,' but my head says 'shut up ya stupid special snowflake!' So...they/he, I guess." I considered putting "they/he" in my bio next to "demiboy," but I decided against it. I knew that "they" was the right fit for me, but I didn't want to make waves or trouble anyone who just wanted to look at my body and say "he." I told myself that if someone asked, I would answer, but I didn’t want to be a bother about it. How could I ask others to stop seeing a boy when I saw one in the mirror half the time?

The thing about the internet though, is that people don't generally see your body if you're not sharing it. Bio blurbs are often overlooked. I post about many things, but I post a lot about feminism, Sailor Moon, LGBT+ issues, Carmilla, The Legend of Korra, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Girl Meets World, mental health issues, and trying to have a general empathy for everyone. I suppose it makes sense that people would assume someone who posts about those things would be a woman.

It wasn't much of a comment. Something along the lines of "her blog is so organized." I knew I couldn't let people assume I was a woman. I didn't want to misrepresent myself or intrude on a space that didn't belong to me. At first I was just going to reblog the post with the comment "*their" and leave it at that. Something in me told me that I needed to explain it better than that. I ended up explaining it in the tags.

#I feel like a lot a of people probably make this assumption based on the content here #at first I told myself it shouldn't really matter what people think and I don't need to correct them #but then I thought I don't want to misrepresent myself by omission #I also don't want to be a bother about it though #y'all can call me whatever you like really #but for the record I use they/them/their when making reference to myself #she/her/hers are lovely pronouns #but those pronouns are not me #I'm not a part of that sisterhood and I don't feel comfortable about encroaching on it #calling me she doesn't insult me personally #(in fact I kind of see it as a compliment) #but I think of it as insulting to the many she's out there #and especially so to people who want to be called she but can't get their loved ones to recognize their identity as valid #tl;dr I am not a she

It was in that moment that I finally made my peace with the fact that I was also not a he. He isn't only the wrong word because it's not who I am, but it's an insult to the few remaining good men on this planet. (I'm not fussed about insulting the assholes, but there are a handful of men who actually honor the name.) I'm no more a part of the male brotherhood than the female sisterhood. Calling me "he" is particularly insulting to the men who were born looking so much like women that their loved ones won't recognize their identity as valid. That's when I really began to understand that I am who I am, even if I look so much like something else that people mistake me for it.

I immediately changed my bio from "demiboy" to "nonbinary." I still wrestled with it for a while, even after that. Again, I made no announcements, just the quiet changing of terms in a bio blurb that most people wouldn't even notice. I was more confident than ever that I wasn't a boy, but I still needed to be 100% sure of what I was. My mind was preoccupied with the most visible nonbinary person in my life: Kaitlyn Alexander again. The question remained: "Am I really what they are?" Could their seemingly feminine body and my masculine body really house the same type of soul?

It was also important to me that I wasn't just looking to distance from myself from men so that when men did awful things I could throw up my hands and go "hey not me." It remains important to me that I take ownership of the way male privilege has affected my life.

Passing privilege is another term I learned through Tumblr. It's a discussion that often centers around bisexuality. The argument is that bisexual people pass for straight and are privileged because their bisexuality is overlooked. The counterargument is that passing privilege is actually erasure. When a gay person is assumed to be straight, it's erasing their identity, but when a bi person is assumed to be straight, suddenly it's passing privilege. When a gay person doesn't advertise their orientation, they're closeted, but when a bi person doesn't advertise their orientation, suddenly they're hiding it for the privileges.

Passing privilege or erasure? I'm sure mileage varies from identity to identity and from person to person. I do think that my situation is very different from a bisexual situation. Being treated like a straight person is something that can happen to gay people too. Being treated like a man is something that does not happen for people who look like women. There are privileges I have access to that others do not ever get to claim and so the conversation around those privileges is altered by that. As I said before, mileage varies. Based on my experiences though, I'd say it's a bit of both. In my situation, it's passing privilege and erasure. It's an Invisibility Cloak and it ultimately serves both functions. From my perspective, being the victim of erasure and the beneficiary of privilege are not mutually exclusive concepts.

On the one hand, people can look right at me and not see me, which burns me up inside. I can't be loved if I can't be seen and that is a painful way to live a life. However, when people can't see what's different about me, they assume I'm the same and they treat me differently because of it. It doesn't matter if I'm a man or not because when it's a man's face, a man's voice, and a man's broad shoulders that they're interacting with, they're going to treat me like one. They're more likely to take me seriously, less likely to try and assault me. Even someone who knew that both Kaitlyn Alexander I were nonbinary would still treat the two of us differently, to say nothing of someone who didn't know. Looking like a man impacts how people see me. Being raised and socialized as male impacts how I see people, especially when you consider all of the toxic baggage that has become so pervasively linked with being male.

So, in all of my soul-searching, I needed to feel certain that I wasn't just looking to excuse myself from discussions about male privilege or alleviate my guilt. It's important for me to not deny that male privilege, the male gaze, and toxic masculinity have all shaped me as a person. I was a slut-shaming, entitled, Nice Guy™ when I was in school. My foolhardy quest to find my "better half" took precedence over the feelings of others in a way that it never would have done if I had been socialized as female. That social programming still impacts my thoughts and to deny its presence would only make it easier for me to fall into toxic behavior. I'm the beneficiary of male privilege whether I'm a boy or not and I want to always be mindful of that.

Beyond that, I felt like I needed to be able to pin down why I wasn't a boy. I knew that "he" felt wrong, but I still wanted to be able to quantify why it felt wrong.

Just a few days ago I saw a post that really made sense to me. Someone had asked why pronouns mattered, why people got so bent out of shape over such a small stimulus. This person's reply spoke of a process referred to as Chinese Water Torture, where a person is restrained and tiny drops of water hit their forehead over and over again. A drop of water is nothing. Several drops of water are easy enough to deal with. Even thousands of drops in succession is an experience that a person can endure and get through. It's when the drops are unending, when you're restrained and unable to control them, that every person has a breaking point. They pointed out that the perception which casts an "oversensitive" person as reacting outlandishly to such a small stimulus as one drop of water ignores the thousands of drops that came before, ignores the fact that the drops are unending, and ignores the restraints that prevent them from getting away.

The metaphor really spoke to me, but there's a further component to consider. If the drops start falling as soon as you are born...if they are a constant factor in your life and you've never known or seen anything different...then you just accept them as an inevitable fact of life.

My whole life I've been sprinkled with "he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he..." and even though I never really wanted it, I never imagined that there was any other option. I looked at other people being pelted with "she, she, she, she, she, she, she, she..." and that wasn't me either so there was never any call to trade my drops for hers. Everyone around me was always being hit by "he's" and "she's." Some seemed more comfortable with it than others, some traded one for the other, but everybody had to have one of the two dripping on them all the time. As far as I knew, it was an inevitable part of the human condition. That's why my world view shifted so dramatically the first time I ever heard a "they" drip onto someone's head. I knew right away that their drops were the ones that fit me too, even before I thought about the particulars.

This, in my estimation, is where the trans-binary experience diverges slightly from the nonbinary experience. I'm sure it's always difficult to accept yourself, to come to terms with the idea that you're not what everyone is telling you that you are. However, when you're in a stream of unwanted "he" and you can look over to see someone swimming in a pool of "she," you can reasonably conclude that her experience is the one better suited to yourself. All of the trans-binary people whose stories I've heard say they knew at a very young age, even if they went on to repress it for a long time after that. I felt vaguely out of place in the label "boy," but I was well into adulthood before I encountered an identity that felt right. I can't even imagine how much more difficult it would have been to find my way outside of the binary if there had not been others out there to light the path.

Eventually, in all of my introspection, I hit the realization that quantifying why "he" made me uncomfortable was beside the point. The fact that it made me uncomfortable was the point. The reason I'm not a boy is because I'm not a boy. Being called a boy from the moment I was born couldn't make me into a boy any more than liking Sailor Moon could turn a boy into a girl. People calling me a boy because I was born with a certain body doesn't make it any truer for me than it does for a transgender girl. Calling a cisgender girl a boy wouldn't make her one and calling a nonbinary person a boy can't make them one either. I am who I always have been and I've found a label that goes with it now.

My most enduring spiritual belief is that I am one. As C.S. Lewis once put it: "You don't have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body." I have believed for as long as I can remember that I am something beyond my body, something beyond the neurons, chemicals, and hormones. Those things impact me in many ways, but the essence of who I am is something deeper. Philosophers and religious people tend to refer to this concept as a spirit or a soul. I've come to understand that my soul does not fit into the archaic binary social categories we call gender. I can no longer stand to suppress or mutilate my spirit, shaping it into a peg so that it can fit into some hole that was made by and for someone else. I believe that all spirits differ, one to another, but mine is made of different stuff than the spirits of men and women. It would be a dishonor, to my spirit and to all of theirs, to wedge myself into either of their spaces. I am something else. I have always been something else. No social structure can change that. No spirit can be constrained indefinitely.

When Kaitlyn Alexander put up their slam poem "X Marks the Spot," I finally knew that they and I were the same, that our spirits were made from the same type of stuff. It was like hearing my own thoughts in someone else's voice. "The first time I breathed in that thought, I was far too old to be redefining myself... I'm not trapped in a body I hate, just wrapped up in language that doesn't relate to the way my skin hangs on my bones. ... I never felt like we were speaking the same language until someone said 'they' instead. ... I never knew what it was like to fly until I let myself breathe in."

Accepting myself, loving myself, has never been an easy thing for me, but coming to understand this part of myself has made the task a little less difficult. I've never felt more whole than when I stopped clinging to the idea of what I thought I was supposed to be. I've never felt more confident than when I stopped pretending I was. I've never felt more accepted than when I started to accept myself. I never felt free until I recognized my shackles. I never felt like I fit until I realized that I didn't.

I spent a lot of my youth feeling like I was missing something. At the time I interpreted it as a need to find my other half, my better half. I devoted a lot of my time to obsessing over the idea of romance (and found much more happiness and fulfillment when I left that idea alone.) I would have told you back then that I was too smart to be influenced by the media, but I danced to the beat of their drum without even realizing it. I internalized the messages while swearing that I wasn't paying them any mind. My conscious mind rejected what my subconscious was absorbing, little recognizing the conflict that was brewing.

I was always trying to imitate: Trying to imitate men because I didn't understand what actually drove them, trying to imitate extroverts because I didn't understand how those social butterflies actually functioned, and trying to imitate heterosexual romance because I didn't understand what actually made those relationships work. I felt like all of those were tasks that I was supposed to succeed at, so accepting that those things aren't for everyone, accepting that there are other paths through life, has been very difficult for me.

On all fronts, it's been hard not to think of myself as having failed, as having given up on something that works for everyone else. It's been difficult to let go of the idea that maybe if I just worked harder, I could figure out how to be a man, how to be an extrovert, how to be a heterosexual. I internalized the idea that being those three things is supposed to be success and anything else is failure. I've talked about this a bit in relation to asexuality before. Accepting myself as an asexual requires giving up on something that I thought I was supposed to succeed at. Accepting myself as an introvert requires giving up on something that I thought I was supposed to succeed at. Accepting myself as nonbinary requires giving up on something that I thought I was supposed to succeed at. (And don't even get me started on my inferiority complex or the person in my life who has succeeded at all three of those things among many others.)

Yet somehow, even past the feelings of failure and inferiority, giving up on those three things has brought me more inner peace than pursuing them ever did. It's a different feeling from the easy laziness that comes from quitting; I know what that feels like too. This is the sigh of relief, the contentment of learning to let go and move on. I felt like I needed to find my better half, but it turned out that my better half was myself, that I had kept part of myself hidden away, that I was whole by myself. I remember hearing in my youth that I should learn to accept myself and dismissing it as a meaningless platitude. I thought I knew myself and it was just life that I needed to figure out, but figuring out myself has brought a new measure of order to life's chaos.

Clichés don't just happen out of nowhere. There's a reason that people so often talk about finding yourself and learning to love yourself. My life isn't sunshine and rainbows - I've got a whole mess of psychological baggage - and yet accepting myself, letting go of what I thought I was supposed to be, has been such an important step for me.

When I think about giving advice, I usually go with: Critical thinking, compassion, and communication. Socially, those are probably the best tools human beings have. On the personal level: Find yourself and learn to love yourself. In all things: Don't try to force something that isn't working. Learn how to let go and move forward.

If you can apply and teach all of those things then you will find yourself on the path to peace, at which point you need only continue putting one foot in front of the other.

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