How can I tell the difference between a more permanent gender change and being fluid? For a little over a year I have felt fairly masc. Femme stuff made me really uncomfortable and so I got rid of most of my more femme clothes. This past week I am suddenly less dysphoric and like some of the few femme things I have left?? And now wearing a shirt and tie feels odd even though thats what I have been wearing to work for months. How do I tell whats going on? What should I do? (May follow up later)
I know it’s not the quick answer you want, but I think the number one thing that’s going to help you sort this out is simply time.
Time to see if your feelings start fluctuating and changing again. Time to let yourself process these changes and see how you feel about them and interpret them after you’ve gotten more used to them. Time to see how you feel about thinking of your gender as fluid or thinking of it as more static. Time to just sort out how you’re feeling and what you need.
Time is also important because as we come to grips with different parts of our identity, we can develop different feelings and different triggers for dysphoria, etc. Not to mention the fact that dysphoria itself can naturally change over time and doesn’t always exist in the same manner for us. For example, realizing you’re trans often brings on a sudden influx of intense dysphoria that can last for a while as we process and accept. Anytime we learn something new or come to grips with something regarding our identity, it can really shift how we experience things relating to our gender. For example, I used to dress pretty androgynously but prefer getting read as a woman and hate being read as a man. Recently, I’ve felt equal frustration and fear and upset about being read as man or woman and am tending towards more typically masculine presentation since I’m more often read as a woman. Gender can be so confusing and frustrating!
Something else you can do is think about your gender in these two ways you’ve proposed (fluidity vs a permanent change) and see what reactions and feelings that brings up for you. Which one feels right to you? Which one makes you more comfortable? Which one are you drawn to as an explanation? Again, this will take time, though. A week is a pretty short amount of time to get used to this new aspect of your gender and suss out how you feel about it! Change, especially about our gender, can be pretty shocking, upsetting, frustrating, and/or confusing all at once.
If you feel comfortable exploring these new feelings, even just privately, I’d also suggest that. Hard to figure out what feelings mean to us if we don’t let ourselves explore what they really are - and what they could mean by us accepting them and playing with them.
Good luck, and feel free to follow up!
~Pluto
