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Do any other non-binary people feel like this?

Discussion in 'Gender Identity and Expression' started by Nightdream, Dec 18, 2021.

  1. Nightdream

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    Hello, everyone. Not sure if my old posts are still around, but I remember they existed and were pretty embarrassing considering I couldn't tell the difference between gender expression and gender identity at the time. Still, years later I came to see myself as a trans man again. I came out to very few people I knew irl and online as well. However, I started to feel like I was ignoring part of myself while doing so. It felt good to have people finally seeing me as a man which was something that was destroying me on the inside because people only see me as my AGAB.

    After taking some time to analyse how I thought of myself as a child, however, I just kinda noticed that I really believed I was intersex, but I failed to prove that to other people since my body looked a lot like you'd expect a binary body to be. I was less than 10 years old at the time. I didn't always have a word for that, I just didn't think I was my AGAB at the time and even now that I have been considering physically transitioning I can tell I'd be more comfortable in a more androgynous-looking body.

    I'm not even taking in consideration my gender expression here since I'm pretty sure that'd vary a lot depending on my mood at the time, but I was wondering if any other non-binary people felt like this. As if transitioning from one binary to the other didn't feel comfortable, yet living as cisgender didn't seem to be desirable either. I'm pretty sure I'd feel better being seen as more of a man than a woman though, in case I had to pass as one gender or the other.
     
  2. Jakebusman

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    To me as a Non Binary and feel like both/neither I too have a problem with gender expresson
     
  3. MStream

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    Hi @Nightdream . I have some experience that sounds like it might be similar, but I think you'd be able to tell better whether it really applies to you.

    I was AMAB and grew up feeling pulled toward femaleness some of the time and comfortable understanding myself as male the rest of the time. Because my assigned gender sometimes felt comfortable, I never seriously considered that I might be a binary trans person, but I also never felt fully cis and ended up just trying to force myself to conform to cisness but never feeling right doing that.

    When I first learned about nonbinary gender identity, I associated that with androgyny (I had much too limited an idea of what nonbinary really meant), so I never considered that I was nonbinary either, until I stumbled across a brief mention of bi-gender identity (mixing or shuttling between two different gender identities) and realized immediately that was what I was: nonbinary and switching male/female bi-gender. When I describe my gender, I usually just say "bi-gender".

    It's not a very convenient gender identity in terms of presentation, because the body I would feel most comfortable with changes back and forth. So far, I've decided not to go the surgery route, since any changes I made to feel more comfortable when I'm female would make me feel less comfortable when I'm male (and ultimately I'm more comfortable padding than binding, at least for now). Still, it's like any gender identity: the thing that works for me is committing to it and then expressing it to the best of my ability, trying not to be too concerned that the expression will never be anything like perfect.
     
    #3 MStream, Dec 29, 2021
    Last edited: Dec 29, 2021
  4. Mihael

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    I kind of relate, having been in the opposite situation. I believed I was nonbinary, because I don't want to use hormones (simply because it's a large intervention) and don't really need to have surgery - my chest is small. Being perceived as nonbinary didn't really sit well with me. Exactly what you said - I didn't feel like it was me or like it drove my point home.