I want to introduce what me and my friends often call "80s gender" to you guys. I'm transgender myself and my wife is nonbinary, so this topic means a lot to me.
Back in the 80s, in the new wave/goth scene, there were a ton of men who went beyond prettyboy androgyny. Some adamantly were men who wore makeup, dresses, etc. Some openly, in interviews, talked about how they considered themselves neither a man nor a woman. This wasn't uncommon. A few artists I adore, by today's standards, would be considered trans women- wore nothing but full-time "girl" outfits, went by a "girl" name, talked about how their goal was to pass as woman basically, et cetera. Although straight men sometimes did the androgyny thing, this mostly overlapped with the gay/bi community.
Even outside the new wave/goth/post punk scene I adore and know a lot about, five minutes of queer history will tell you that in the 20th century, the line between "drag queen" and "full time drag queen" with "trans woman" or "genderqueer" was often thin, and "girl who preferred to dress as a man for social issue reasons" and "butch lesbian" and "trans man" were also incredibly thin.
There's a loooot of argument these days with "no, that's not a trans man! that's a butch lesbian!" or "he's not nonbinary, he's just gay!" I see a TON of stressed out teenagers and 20-somethings on reddit getting really upset over microlabels and "I can't figure out if I'm a trans man or a trans masc nonbinary afab person," and I feel that, and a common concern I see amoung my nonbinary friends and community is "am I nonbinary, or do I just like the androgynous look, or do I just feel super isolated from traditional feminine gender social roles and expectations?" And it's incredibly hard to figure this out or pin it down. Remember all the discourse too over he/him lesbians, if nonbinary people can consider themselves lesbian, etc etc....because I remember all that.
So here's something people need to remember. Sometimes it's impossible to sort things into boxes because gender and sexuality and queerness are NOT simple and straightforward and they do NOT fit into little boxes, a lot of the time! If you find a label that works for you, and that makes you happy, by all means, I support it I'm happy to call myself a bisexual transman and find a community that way. Nothing inherently wrong with labels.
But it's really important to remember that for much of our history, all those lines between genders and sexualities and labels were incredibly blurred. It's OKAY if you can't figure out "am I a feminine gay man, am I a drag queen, or am I trans?" or "am I a butch lesbian, nonbinary, ftm...? like I see people stressing over all the time. It's okay to just go fuck it, I've got a case of what I affectionately like to call "80s gender," the distinction between these labels is hard for me to figure out and that's fine because every single personal experience is not the same and it's hard to manifest into words and neat groupings sometimes.
You can just be queer. Or, if you dislike that word, you can call yourself whatever. You don't even need a label.
This goes too for who's "allowed" to do stuff. You're allowed to wear a binder or makeup or a corset or a wig or hrt or get breasts or get facial surgery or whatever you want to adjust your appearance, you don't need to have a solid and neat "trans" label to do so. You can just do that. It's okay. I see so many people angsting over "I hate having breasts but I don't identify as a trans man what do I do?" you can be any gender you want and get top surgery or wear a binder I aint gonna gatekeep!!
While I'm going off I'd like to add that it's actually super harmful to dedicate what "makes" you trans or not. I'm trans. I still love makeup and I don't bind (I'd love top surgery but I can't right now). People get pissed at me over this. I've had a ton of lgbt club members and friends and etc who know me as "friends" decide they're going to call me they/them no matter how often I tell them "actually, I use he/him" because, in their eyes, I don't qualify as a proper ftm, I only qualify to the nonbinary tier. This is just such bullshit. Same thing happened to my friend who is a trans woman, openly, and her gender constantly got "corrected" by those woke, lgbt circles because she didn't SEEM trans enough. And my heart breaks for every young queer kid I meet who has such pain over what they're "allowed" to do without coming out or picking a label first. Like oh my god people can exist without fitting into specific boxes. It's okay. It's literally okay not everything needs to be sorted and categorized.
Anyways I guess my point here is I think a lot of people would be a lot less worried and stressed and etc if we started accepting that gender isn't as neat and easy as people want it to be!!
Distinctions between labels aren't always clear and that's perfectly fine, and we need to remember that. Please.
