Sunday, October 17, 2021

The gender thing

It's been two days, and my head is still spinning. I spend my time switching between forgetting it / hiding from it, pondering / crying about it, and just a general feeling of freaking out. No, not the "being turned on by some women" part. Yes, I'm queer. Yes, that's really weird, but no it doesn't really freak me out as much. It's the gender thing. THAT is what's freaking me out. 

For a "cis" woman, I counted myself as relatively well-informed on lgbt+ topics. I follow a few lgbt+ sites on Facebook, read up on anti-lgbt+ legislation that gets mentioned in media, try to use the correct pronouns for trans people and generally try not to behave like an entitled ass. For example, I was more well-informed on gay history, and much more accepting of trans people than my lesbian co-worker. But there's SO much more out there that I just DID NOT KNOW. Why? Because I'm not the first person to go through this, so obviously there are words to describe these things. And I want the words. Words help shape and define thoughts, and right now my thoughts feel like mush. I need more clarity than this. 

Like I mentioned in my previous post, I met with Foodie at a BDSM party tonight. We played and cuddled, which was nice, but the most important thing we did was TALK. I felt like they saw right through me. Saw through my dissembling, my evations, saw the things I didn't want to admit to. They are non-binary and have thus been through this exact process not long ago. (And they've also been on TikTok and other queer social media spaces for years.) So they have those words that I was missing. For example: Gender crisis. That is: A sudden / abrupt /unexpected questioning of one's gender. I'm having a gender crisis. 

Yesterday, I went to a store that sell men's clothing, and I tried on parts of a suit. And whilst I couldn't make it fit properly, I still LOVED how I looked in a man's shirt from the mid chest up. I felt powerful, I felt beautiful, I felt sexy.. Sexier than I've felt in women's clothing in a long, long, long time. I looked myself in the mirror, at it looked RIGHT. I looked in a way I WANTED to look. And that's gender euphoria, Foodie told me. 

My immediate reaction was to completely dismiss this. Gender euphoria (the opposite of dysphoria) is something trans people experience, not cis p.... oh.. right. Damn. I'm not cis. And therefore, by definition, I am trans... And THAT idea is going to take me a long fucking while to get comfortable with. "Genderqueer", "genderfluid", these are terms I've been batting around in my head for a couple of days.. I won't say they feel comfortable, but at least they don't feel completely foreign. "Non-binary" is a term I'm even less comfortable with. I don't really know why NB would be harder than genderqueer, but it is. "Trans", though.. That's.. Hard. 

Why? I think it's like with the term "bisexual". I feel like I don't "deserve" it. Because I can pass as cis, because I'm not interested in doing any sort of medical transition, because I'm not a transman.. Because I feel I have it really easy, compared to all those people out there who struggle with discrimination, crippling dysphoria, harassment and other issues. So basically, I don't feel I have a right to the term "trans", because someone else out there are worse off than I am... 

.... Yeah, that doesn't really make sense. Trans is the opposite of cis. If you don't feel like the gender you were assigned at birth, you're trans. Period.

.... It's still really difficult, though. I can't logic this. My emotions won't let me. 

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