Non-binary? Demigirl? Fooling Myself?

[Mikonoda]

TL;DR version at the bottom.

 

I've been struggling a lot with gender identity lately. I've always identified as cis-female; I have no dysphoria with my body (beyond hating my period, and what uterus-owning person enjoys THAT experience?). From a young age I was labelled a tomboy, and embraced that identity. I had friends among both boys and girls, though I tended to enjoy playing Voltron and Transformers with the boys more than the dolls and teaparties the girls seemed to be encouraged to do. I was actively physical and have never had any dislike about getting dirty. I loved woodshop, took auto-shop in high school, despite a LOT of misogyny in that environment with the guys all assuming I would be squeamish or useless. I play Overwatch and other videogames usually associated with boys more than girls.

 

For my whole life, I've refused to wear makeup, do my hair beyond washing and brushing it out, use skin care products, shave my legs & underarms, etc. I wear almost exclusively t-shirts and jeans except when business attire is required, and then it's usually slacks and business casual shirts/sweaters. Yet when shopping, I'm inevitably drawn to feminine things; sparkly tops, floaty skirts, long dresses. I learned to do makeup and wigs for cosplay, and often pick ballgowns or other extremely feminine costumes to make, though I've done my share of crossplay good enough to have people mistake me for an actual male, and I enjoy that too. 

 

As I get older and learn to be less anxious of what others think about me, I feel like a lot of my rejection of feminine things in my daily life and appearance has been a struggle to get people to accept my supposedly 'male' personality aspects. Especially as a girl growing up in the eighties, it was hard to get the boys to take me seriously as a playmate if they saw me doing anything feminine at all. There's also the fact that I HATE conforming to society's expectations of what a girl 'should' be like, so I consciously rejected a lot of that. Plus, my anxiety seemed to come to the conclusion that it was better to be mocked for not doing my hair and makeup at all, rather than trying and looking bad in my initial efforts. If it was a choice not to conform by refusing to do the 'feminine' routines, that felt easier. 

 

I've caught myself wishing I had been born a boy so that I could wear the feminine things AND be challenging the social gender norms. Then I feel like that's being disrespectful to the male-bodied people who've had to overcome a lot of truly nasty social lashback in order to express themselves that way. I'm sure if I had been born male, my anxiety would have prevented me from being feminine at all, rather than giving me the freedom to do so. I've always been drawn to stories about trans people and have at times wondered if the draw is because I wanted to identify that way, but I'm definitely happy with my body as it is and have no particular desire to be physically male. 

 

I started encouraging people to use 'they/them' pronouns for me a few years ago, on the logic that I want everyone (myself included!) to get used to non-gender pronouns for others, especially before knowing what that person chooses as their pronouns. Now I'm exploring the possibility of being non-binary myself, though I still have no issues being gendered as 'she' instead. I think it's mostly the societal constraints placed upon the genders that I dislike, rather than a dislike of myself. I want the freedom to be who I am without having to worry about which gender that is. 

 

Weirdly, the more I explore the idea of being non-binary, the more I'm giving myself permission to be feminine. I've started wearing more dresses, am growing my hair out from the androgynous cut I've had for twenty years, using skin care and sometimes wearing lipstick and blowdrying my hair with product in it, though still very little. That then causes me to feel like I'm mis-representing myself as non-binary, though. Am I just appropriating the label and disrespecting the struggles of those who are more distressed by their gender issues? Or is it that I've rejected the feminine side of me for so long because I was trying to find a way to express being something between, and so now embracing my femininity is permissible because I have another way to be that in-between thing?

 

It feels strange to be going through this struggle in my forties. I embraced being pansexual in my late teens, didn't really have any kind of transition or acceptance phase even though I hadn't questioned my sexuality at all prior to university, and now I've been married to another woman for twenty years. I really don't understand when some people make the argument that being bisexual is 'just being on the fence' or similar bi-erasing sentiments. Now I'm seeing that same erasure aimed at non-binary gender issues. I had a long fight with a friend who claimed that non-binary people were trend-followers who are disrespectful of 'true' trans people. Yet I could not get her to understand that she was using the exact same arguments so often used against bisexuals, which was a concept she fully supported. 

 

I haven't even talked to my wife much about this, though she's one of the people who've encouraged me to explore whether my fascination with transpeople might be a sign that I had leanings that way myself, and she's heard me express things like wishing I had been born male so I could be a drag queen, etc. I'm not even sure what I'm looking for in terms of a response to this post, just that I've felt an increasing need to express all this and see what the reaction IS. Am I being disrespectful? Am I overthinking it all? Am I just looking for a trendy label of some kind? At what point are you 'allowed' to identify as non-binary? If I don't mind being gendered as female and don't have any particular need to be gendered as male at all, doesn't that mean I'm still really just a tomboy? (Or, as my teenage bullies would have put it, a girl too lazy to bother making herself look 'presentable'.)

 

I've had people tell me that I 'count' as queer because I'm married to another woman, but claim that a bisexual woman who marries a man isn't 'really' queer. Yet if I had chosen a male life partner, it wouldn't make me any less attracted to women or other gender expressions. It would, however, have meant that I wouldn't face the same daily experience as a member of a marginalized group, the homophobia living in a small rural community, having family members reject me and refuse to attend my wedding, etc. Calling myself non-binary feels a bit like that; not using the term wouldn't change who I am, but do I really have the right to put myself with those who face negative reactions that I rarely will? Especially since I'm not, in fact, entirely sure that I AM non-binary. 

 

Ran across the term 'demigirl' in researching all this, and I guess maybe that fits better? It doesn't really resonate with me but maybe that's just because it's a new concept to me. 

 

TL;DR version - what 'counts' as non-binary? Is straight up rejection of society's right to force us into roles based on our biological sex enough? Or do I have to actually experience discomfort with being considered female? Am I invalidating my own claim to be exploring non-binary identity by embracing my feminine side for the first time in my life?

[everywhere and nowhere]

I don't feel competent enough, but just one remark:

20 minutes ago, Mikonoda said:

I haven't even talked to my wife much about this, though she's one of the people who've encouraged me to explore whether my fascination with transpeople might be a sign that I had leanings that way myself, and she's heard me express things like wishing I had been born male so I could be a drag queen, etc.

But you can! There are AFAB drag queens, sometimes called "bio queens" or "faux queens", although many dislike these terms.

I happen to know one a little. I've talked to her at the Warsaw Equality Parade last year and she invited me to a dicussion about drag. As she showed it: perhaps she has it a little easier than guys, but anyway, it's the same kind of effort. An AFAB drag queen is not just "being herself" on stage, a drag queen presents a consciously exaggerated image of femininity.

She also said that she very much dislikes being treated as "a straight chick who is trying to stick to gay culture", particularly since she's a lesbian.

[Karst]

There's no single right way to be non-binary, any more than there's one right way to be a man or a woman.

[anisotrophic]

4 hours ago, Mikonoda said:

I have no dysphoria with my body (beyond hating my period, and what uterus-owning person enjoys THAT experience?)

I know right???

 

I want to say that dysphoria isn’t required: I’m physically transitioning at 40 and it’s great. I never felt physical dysphoria, I just... didn’t want to live the rest of my life as fully female. I want to experience being male/masculine too.

 

(it was such a pivotal revelation to me, to give myself permission to physically transition without dysphoria, without wanting to be 100% "male")

 

I think it’s fair to observe similar pressures around NB and bisexuality, regarding life lived & struggles faced (or not).

[Just Somebody]

I don't have time to address all those questions here again but I already did there and I believe this could help organize your thoughts:

 

TL;DR: gender identities like "man", "woman" and all the other infinite non-binary ones are just words/names/labels for sociocultural historical groups/categories of people built by people.

Your current gender identity is the name of the social group you feel comfortable, happy or represented being in (identify with) as in the moment.

 

If you still have any doubts,  just ask.

[PoeciMeta]

Dresses and makeup being feminine is just a trend. In another society, ornaments could be exclusive to men. I tend to see clothes as just clothes and not mind which gender norms society associates them with. As a trans AFAB, accepting myself as such made me more willing to wear feminine stuff, flowy skirts and gaudy hair ornaments, which is a lot of fun. 

[Eva River]

I don't know if you saw this during your research, but sometimes it can be useful to try on different labels to yourself in the mirror. As in, look at yourself in the mirror and say, "I'm a girl", "I'm nonbinary" etc. It can help to see which ones you're comfortable with, or which you're not. Maybe this will help a little, maybe not, either way I hope things go well for you