I know, for lots of reasons I won’t go into, that I’m nonbinary. I’m neither a man nor a woman.
For more reasons I won’t go into, I present as a woman and I pass.
Judith Butler says gender is performative. It is only made real by action and does not exist ontologically prior to action. By this logic, I am a woman (to everyone who I don’t explicitly tell I’m nonbinary).
Experiencing womanhood in this way makes me feel closer to womanhood. I am, more and more frequently, describing myself as “a woman” in conversation, even though I’m not one.
Is my (internal) gender shifting towards “woman” because society has put me in that box because of the way I look, and I have found comfort in the box? Or was my nonbinary identity simply a way to cope with a transition into woman? Which is “true and good” and which is “society’s evil external influence”?
That is a stupid question. Remember Butler said there is no ontological truth in gender.
There’s only action.
Whatever I am— I mean, whatever I make myself, I fucking love being trans.