#comingoutvee

[comingoutvee-blog]

One of the harder things I've had to deal with when I realized that I wasn't specifically Male was coming out to my wife and explaining what my non-binary-ness meant to me. I was so afraid that because she considered herself specifically straight that it would mean that she'd stop being attracted to me if I wasn't the Man™ that she had fallen in love with and married.

That wasn't the case, and hoo boy was that a load off my shoulders. It was really difficult though, because nobody I knew had come out to me and my only real exposure to people coming out was from tv and movies. But I had openly gay friends, maybe they could give me advice? Nah, neither of the ones I was close enough to to talk to about this before talking to my wife about it had come out, they'd been outed.

So I played it by ear, told my wife that I needed to talk with her and we sat down and hashed out whatever the fuck gender was with eachother and went from there.

She still teases me about some of my 12 year old girl fashion sense, but it's all in good fun.

[comingoutvee-blog]

I might have figured out when I was a teenager that when I was more interested in dressing up in my sister's clothes than I was in finding a date or that I really liked the way a dress feels when you spin around in it, that maybe I was different than I was lead to believe. But I'm pretty sure that I just chalked that up to being weird. I was a teenager and everything felt weird and I had no real exposure to anyone in LGBT circles or certainly wasn't aware of it if I were.

I never really grew out of it, but always kept it a secret, people in my world looked down on people who wore the wrong gendered clothing as deviants. (Heck, my grandmother would talk about how controversial it was when women started wearing trousers as a common thing, and that while she liked the practicality of them for herself, she remembered thinking how wrong it seemed)

I had enough things to deal with as a teen without the added stress of my family or friends finding out I wore "girl's" clothes in secret to feel pretty. I was a kid with autism taking care of his schizophrenic mother and his lower functioning autistic little brother. I struggled in school, despite getting good grades on tests and I spent every other weekend in the next state over with my father and the more neurotypical side of my family.

I also liked putting on make-up when I was home alone. My sister's stockpile was all I had to work with, though looking back, using her make-up without permission or wearing her clothes in the same manner was not the most moral course of action and I wish that I hadn't teenage brained the whole thing and done it like it was a.dirty little secret. I wonder if she'd have helped me get some stuff of my own... Or if I would have wound up in therapy.

Oh well.

[comingoutvee-blog]

So another fun part of coming out non-binary is that I work in a group home that requires all male staff. My work is very important to me and I am the best at what I do by a decent margin. I also know the guys I work with well enough that all new employees train under me regardless of what shift they're going to be working. I haven't quite worked there for two years yet.

There is a risk that if I come out to my employers that I'll be moved or lose my job or something of the like. It's especially risky because said employers took about a year and a half to talk to me about me letting them know that I'm autistic and when they eventually did they did so in panic mode.

Plus they're a Catholic non-profit, and they have a good history of being understanding about things and treating people as people. /sarcasm

I haven't come out as of the time I'm posting this, but hopefully I'll either move to a position or employer that I'd feel safer doing so.

[comingoutvee-blog]

Look...

Gender is bullshit.

I don't make the rules, I don't even know who makes the rules, but whoever is making the rules is someone I don't agree with.

Divisions of people based on arbitrary things that just as many people of one section has in common as don't have in common. And the big question is why.

Be the you you wish to be, for whatever reason you wish to be it, but I'm not going to let someone's shitty rules dictate who I am or how I wanna be.