#nonbinary confusion

[timefighter]

I recently came to realize that I'm nonbinary (afab) and I have some thoughts about my feeling towards being a 'woman' vs being enby.

It's really strange because I feel like such a large part of my identity has been associated with being a feminist and even though I know that my gender doesn't change that, it's still very complicated for me. I feel like I'm not allowed to relate to issues that directly affect women, even though I am still affected by those very same issues. I want to read authors like Simone de Beuvoir and Sylvia Plath, but I fear that my interest in the issues they discuss somehow invalidates my gender. I have been so intertwined with these issues, that it feels like if I come out, I will have to give all of that up.

I'm also worried that reading and doing stuff like that is more feminine in a way that feels uncomfortable to me now. I dont want people to assume my gender based solely on what media I consume or the things I'm passionate about. I still am angry about the injustices that women face, but I feel as if I cant be as angry as I was without sacrificing a part of myself.

[flame-shadow]

genderbending confuses me. maybe it's because i have such a detached perspective on gender in general, but it feels like more than gender is being swapped when people do genderbends.

youtube recced me a video discussing genderbending and i figured i'd give a listen to try to understand better, but i just came away more confused. gender isn't sex, right? gender isn't tied to the physical body, right? so when people do gender bent designs (for binary genders anyway), why do they always change the physical body? why does the everything change instead of just the gender? and the video and comments brought up that genderbending a trans character should keep them trans in some way, which like, fine, but in the case of binary that means you're still swapping the sex at birth. right?? so it's still tied to more than gender.

my idea of genderbending is just. here's the character. and now here's the same character with different pronouns because if nothing else has changed then nothing else is going to change? i don't get the appeal. just call it a redesign if you're gonna redo the whole design?

[get-it-off]

More gender confusion time.

I know I'm non binary. I know I'm fem leaning. I know I want to use they/them pronouns. I know I'm allowed to feel girly or masc without that changing my gender.

So why do I feel, for lack of a better word, wrong about my pronouns? Like, sometimes I still wanna be she/her but if I do that people will ignore the other part of my identity??? They just won't use they/them? I want both but it just seems like I cant have it...

[get-it-off]

Ok, so, pronoun decision confusion......

Go!

So Im non-binary, have that in my first post so no surprise there. Specifically demigirl (again nothing new) so I prefer the pronouns she/them.

The confusion is coming in because lately, at work, whenever I'm refered to with female pronouns it rubs me the wrong way. Now thankfully my workplace is super accepting, in fact in the interview process I was like "look I'm queer and I'm not gonna hide it". All my coworkers have treated my identities as a normal thing. No "when did you decide..." "Why are you..." Nothing even vaguely queerphobic. It's been great. So it's not that I'm afraid of saying "hey can you use they/them pronouns for me?" Because I know they would change their pronoun use without hesitation.

It's more of a, "am I lying to myself?" Thing. Or..... Ugh it's a bit confusing to even try to explain. I think it's more of a relationship dependant thing. Like, with my close friends and people I care about, I have no issue if they use female pronouns with me. Sometimes yes, I do prefer they/them, but if the use she/her it never insults me or makes me feel bad. But with people I'm not really close to, I feel like more of a they than a she.

I'm going to tell my coworkers that I prefer they/them because that would make me more comfortable at work.

I think I want the end goal to be the people in my life using she/them interchangeably. But I don't know if that's going to happen. And I don't want to just stick to one "set" of pronouns (she/her or they/them) because that's not who I am. I'm both. It just fluctuates. It's all just so confusing....