Wow, okay so this post just articulated something for me that I've been wrestling with for a few months at least.
I have always hated the narrative that bisexuality is a 'stepping stone' to a 'real' queer identity (ie high school bi girl turned college lesbian, etc), while accepting that for some people, that is their path. My issue is with the assumption that everyone in the quote unquote middle position is necessarily not finished with their journey.
A similar narrative exists around nonbinary people: a stepping stone to being 'really trans', a kind of self-deceit, a non-serious identity people can just interpret however they feel most comfortable. And I will admit I have a huge chip on my shouder about this, it's the reason I never came out to my parents or at work and why I hardly ever introduce myself with pronouns. I'd rather not know if someone is going to disappoint me in this regard.
Despite my reluctance to be confrontational about it, every insinuation of the immateriality of nonbinary-ness made me dig in harder. It felt necessary to hold the line, at least internally, against the idea I was simply 'trans-lite' or a snowflake, etc etc.
And that all made it really, really difficult to recognize and then admit when things did change for me. Which is so silly, because my overarching gender identity has always been genderfluid, just a really slow moving fluid, and if I can understand that my childhood and my young womanhood and then my non-binary young adulthood, with a little wiggliness in my preferred presentation along the way, was all part of that same continuum... why was it so hard to acknowledge another shift happening?
Well, precisely because I was deeply resistant to anything that would 'prove' I was just secretly ftm this whooollleeee time and I lacked the courage or self-knowledge to see it. This is not the first time in my life I have considered if I am a guy, but it is the first time the answer is pretty uncomplicatedly "Yes". Which, yay, exciting!
But I definitely waded through so much more mind gunk than necessary to get here, bc every time I tried to think about it my reflexes would parry me like, "you dont have to be a man to be trans" and "i can have a similar experience to someone and describe it differently". These aren't untrue statements, either, it's just the intensity with which I trained myself to fall back on them as a result of our culture not treating nonbinary people right ended up holding me back.
In closing, I do still conceptualize myself under the nonbinary umbrella, specifically the genderfluid zone, with a slow rolling fluid that has, at current, sloshed around to the "man" area. I'm sure it will keep moving, slowly, throughout my life, but that is a future transition to worry about. Who knows how far down the line it will be, anyway? But I can say this: I don't consider myself "ftm" and not just bc I find the concept of agab intersexist, but bc the proper term would be more like "nbtm" or "ctftnbtm" if you wanna really get down to it.
So, he/him please, though he/they is sitting okay too, and please donate to crips for esims for gaza in lieu of flowers :)
















