I need help with my gender identity. I'm not confused about some things, but I'm really confused about others. I would just like help, please...
My dad and stepmom have known for the past 1-2 years that I have a very strong masculine side to me and a pretty weak feminine side. In the past 5-6 months, I have been wearing more masculine looking clothes(and clothes that are actually made for boys) and I got rid of/gave away almost all my "girly" clothes+shoes, so I could express my true self a lot more and feel more comfortable/happy with myself. I wanna talk to my parents about how I have thoughts about maybe being trans, but I'm not positive that's what I want. I feel like I'll be more comfortable and happy being myself if I was trans, but I also don't want to do anything to change myself physically, at least not right now, in case I'm just over thinking me being genderqueer or even me simply just being a tomboy. I've been thinking about names I would want to try out to see if I feel right with them, and some of my friends have called me them to help, but I didn't feel myself with a couple of them so I went back to my birth name. I researched my name and found out that it's actually most common for males to have, but since it's the name of a very well-known female it is mostly considered to be a female name---which is why I don't like it. I also don't know how my parents will react to all this. I've brought up binders with them in the past and how I want one to see if that helps with finding myself or not and all they said was okay, but we haven't talked about it since then or looked into getting one. I don't know what I should or shouldn't do/think.
Exploration irl is how i've done most of my progression. I would ask again about the binder. Mine's an underworks binder, beware if you buy from them to buy a size up from your measurements cause they're small for the size. I bought one size up from my measured size. You can play around with names on here, there's a thread dedicated to it. Another thing is, you can also practice introducing yourself aloud in the mirror with names you want to try out. Like i said, more and more i'm realizing that when you are figuring yourself out there is only so much you can figure out in your head. A lot of it is about action. Trying things you've always wanted to try (for me it was wearing mens clothes, getting a haircut, buying men's hygiene products, experimenting with packing, and buying a binder), picking out a new name, stuff like that. The longer it goes on the more likely it is you're some kind of trans, i think.