Not "androgynous" enough?

[Hui]

I identify as non-binary (demigirl, to be precise) for around a year now and I am personally much more comfortable with the thought of seeing myself as half-female, half-agender instead of just female, but I ran into a few problems because of it. It seems like people always assume non-binary people present themselves in an androgynous way, meaning having short hair and dressing in a more masculine style. Now, I am not like that at all, in fact, I really like to dress girly, i.e. wearing "feminine" colors like purple and pink, and it seems like people have a hard time understanding why I don't just identify as a cis-woman since that's the way I present myself. Isn't gender presentation different to gender identity? I know that they mostly overlap, but my gender dysphoria has much more to do with my body than anything else. No matter how girly I dress, I still try to make my breasts look as small as possible, the same for my hips or any other "feminine" proportions I have. I am actually glad I lost my former hourglass shape after gaining weight around my waist. I also think my dysphoria is another, though small, reason for being anxious about anything sex-related, since I feel so uncomfortable with my female anatomy. However, everytime I try to explain it to people, they just shrug it off, with only a few exceptions. Appearently, most people don't understand that non-binary people don't have to look androgynous to be non-binary. It seems like tumblr snowflakes tainted the general understanding of non-binary individuals so much that we're mostly just laughed at and treated as special snowflakes, when in fact, we might experience huge levels of gender dysphoria which just doesn't translate to the way we dress. The sad thing is, I see other, more androgynous-presenting non-binaries being much more accepted as what they are than people like me who present themselves more feminine or masculine.

 

Any other feminine/masculine presenting non-binaries here that have been in similar situations? What are your experiences and what are good ways to explain it to cis-gender people to stop them from thinking you're just looking for attention?

[Guest]

3 hours ago, Hui said:

It seems like people always assume non-binary people present themselves in an androgynous way, meaning having short hair and dressing in a more masculine style.

I think people who are non-binary (but not agender) probably are more likely to dress in an androgynous way since they are somewhere between male and female. Agender is the absence of gender so a person who is agender probably wouldn't be any more likely to have a sense of style that leans more androgynous than male or female. I am mostly agender and I prefer clothing that would be labeled as feminine for myself. But honestly, gender expression is separate from gender and pink was once considered a masculine color. It's all nonsense, so just dress however you want.

 

Edit: This was my 10,666th post

[Dr. Beat]

I'm relatively sure I'm nonbinary in some way, but I just dress how I want to. Societal expectations and gender norms are stupid, including those assigned by others to those on the nonbinary spectrum. I have long hair and a more feminine body shape, but I wear suits rather than dresses and don't use makeup. My normal clothes are usually just along the lines of a dorky t-shirt and jeans. I don't particularly think I want to look masculine or feminine. I just want to look like me. Admittedly I'm not on board with having a larger chest or hips because it makes it easier for people to sexualize me in some way. Gender presentation is definitely different to gender identity. You're nonbinary no matter what you wear. Unfortunately there will always be some people who want to gatekeep or refuse to try to understand. I always just tell people that I identify as me instead of a specific gender.  

[Hui]

As for me, I've also noticed it often helps when I tell people I identify as a demigirl besides my non-binary identity, it seems to make it easier for people to understand as to why I present myself feminine. There I thought identifying myself as non-binary could free me from stupid gender expectations, but it seems like non-binary is no different in that regard.

[Mezzo Forte]

I recall a post on social media that compared non-binary gender expression to legendary pokemon. Masc-presenting pokemon like Entei? Still genderless. More femme-presenting ones like Celebi? Still genderless. More androgynous presentating like Suicune? Still genderless. 

 

Go figure that I always really liked Entei’s design, as that social media post ended up kind of explaining my relationship to my gender, even if I didn’t know it at the time. I’m transmasculine, but present myself in a relatively binary way. I find androgyny beautiful, but I don’t feel like it would suit my aesthetic. I spent a while just painting myself as a feminine man, but I’ve started feeling some dissonance (possibly dysphoria) when hearing strangers refer to me as a “man” at all. When offered opportunities to list my pronouns, I always list “He/They” but that’s about as much chance I get to express my non-binariness, but I don’t think anyone has used “they/them” to refer to me even when I list that as an option. Guess it’s easier for folks to just think of me as he/him. Some folks have insisted that I’m just a feminine guy, but I don’t really click with more explicitly femme expression, and the dissonance over being called a “man” is telling me that there’s more at play here.

[Hui]

Pronouns are another reason why people are often fast to assume I couldn't be non-binary. I prefer being referred to as she/her, since I am so used to it. They/them is fine as well, but it doesn't feel as right as she/her. They often think I can't be non-binary because I prefer female pronouns, even though my dysphoria mostly stems from feelings, not from words. In fact, the only gendered word I really have a problem with is the word "woman", which makes me highly uncomfortable when people use it while referring to me. However, at the end of the day, the pronoun problem only comes up while talking to english-speaking people online, since the only gender-neutral pronoun existing in my mother language is only used towards inanimate objects, like "it" is in English, so I don't really run into this issue in real life.

[Rynn]

3 hours ago, Mezzo Forte said:

I recall a post on social media that compared non-binary gender expression to legendary pokemon. Masc-presenting pokemon like Entei? Still genderless. More femme-presenting ones like Celebi? Still genderless. More androgynous presentating like Suicune? Still genderless. 

 

Go figure that I always really liked Entei’s design

Haha this is probably just coincidence, but suicune was always my favorite legendary pokemon! (And yay for androgynous presentation)

[Barbio]

I feel ya, demi-sister. I'm not particularly dysphoric about my body in general, but there are days when I'll try to dress and act more androgynous and think that I'm pulling it off pretty well, then I'll go out in public and feel like a failure when strangers call me "that lady".

 

"You can't change others; you can only change yourself." <- Yeah, I don't think whoever came up with that quote had people like us in mind. OTL

 

I'm looking into getting a couple of custom-made buttons to pin to my outfits, one that has my pronouns ("she/her/they/them"), and another that says something to the effect of "Please call me 'person', not 'woman/lady'." I know that it will take a massive culture shake-up before we can get to the point in our society where people can look at you and not automatically assume your gender, so in the meantime... gentle reminders like that are the best that I've got.

[Janus the Fox]

I like to think that my goal is rather the opposite to an Androgyne appearance, it’s difficult to determine what’s male and femal to avoid both.  There’s never an ‘enough’ criteria with any part of a gender to me though.

[A Cool Fool]

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[PoeciMeta]

As an agender, I do get dysphoria from my gendered body parts, and social dysphoria as well, but I try not to think of clothes as gendered - and I certainly don't think of mine as representative of my gender. I've always worn both boys' and girls' clothes anyway. I do want to be androgynous enough to confuse people on my gender though *smirk*. Ideally, I could wear just what I want without gendered implications, and still confuse people even if that happens to be feminine clothes one day. 

[DarkStormyKnight]

Yeah I'm non-binary and feel the frustration of not being "androgynous" enough. I think part of the reason why I cut off my hair was because I wasn't to look less feminine haha. I don't know, I don't have great tips, I just try to dress and look in a way that's most comfortable for me and remember that I have nothing to prove to everyone else.  

[KoiFishShoes]

On 11/23/2019 at 12:24 AM, Dr. Beat said:

I'm relatively sure I'm nonbinary in some way, but I just dress how I want to.

Same. Since I limit my IRL spaces due to introversion and some physical/mental health limitations, I have the privilege of rarely being outside of spaces where I can dress how I want safely. If I do decide I am genderflux, I'll really just be putting a label on what I do already vs giving myself permission to dress or behave differently.

[Albine]

Excellent point you bring up you can ID yourself as you want without dressing a specific way. I guess I consider myself NB though being  AMAB that had breast augmentation and still dresses as a male to a point