Suddenly realizing I'm non-binary, and feeling fake about it
Nov 18, 2020 14:58:06 GMT
Post by ihavenoidea on Nov 18, 2020 14:58:06 GMT
I struggle a lot with my gender identity lately and I think I am non binary. Yet, nothing predisposed me to that and I have no “matching” memory of it in my childhood memory.
Sorry in advance for the upcoming long text and for the eventual grammar mistakes, I am not fluent in English.
If you don't feel like reading the whole text (which I totally understand), bold sentences are a summary.
(I’m AFAB) As a child, I have never felt different from other girls because of my gender. Admittedly I wasn’t overly feminine and felt better in shorts than in skirts or dresses, but the wearing a dress never repelled me. I have always played with girls in the playground, boys were stupid for me. Gender mattered to me, I would have been offended if someone called me boy, and never “felt different” when it came to being a girl.
In the end of middle school and the beginning of high school (between 13 and 16 roughly), I started considering my feminity, as many young girls do I suppose, as something to be watched and consumed by male gaze rather than something I had the choice to perform or not. Having big boobs, small waist, wearing slim jeans and tight tops, overly sexualized, wanting to be the classy chic woman successful but not too much. I shaved at a very young age, wanted to wear padded bras, was desperately seeking to be hot.
On the other hand, I always said I was a feminist, but that is off-topic.
In the last 6 months I started question all of that stuff, and partially stopped shaving and hardly never wear a bra. Yet, I felt comfortable doing it because I knew that some men find it hot. Weird, I know. Anyway, in August, I finally put the words on another feeling I had since middle school: I liked girls. I identified first as bisexual but then the more I was thinking I was attracted to girls, non-binary people and trans men, the more cis boys disgusted me in every way possible. I now identify as queer, and my sexuality is for everyone except for cis men I was desperately seeking approbation from.
I didn’t tell the story of my sexuality for the sake of telling it. In fact, realizing I didn’t care about men’s opinion anymore was truly liberating. I started dressing in baggy clothes, shaved my hair, started doing kind of extravagant makeup. I can almost exactly date the day I realized I wanted to look more androgynous, but I was still wonderfully happy with being a woman. But that didn’t last much.
Since a fortnight ago, I feel awkward about being seen as a girl. I started feeling weird when teachers (I am a senior) parted the class into the girls’ group and the boys’ group (for instance in PE), not because I wanted to be a boy, but rather because I find it stupid and pointless to sort people because of their gender. Sometimes, when I was talking with my friends, I felt disconnected of reality because I was conscious of the fact that they see me as a cis woman. I keep repeating myself that I only want to look androgynous. But I truly question my gender now, and since I started thinking about the idea of not being cisgender, I feel confused but I have the impression that I’m putting my finger on a huge part of myself deeply buried in my subconscious.
Now, I can’t stop imagining myself breastless in front of the mirror, but I never felt like this before genuinely questioning my gender? I saw a YouTube video from a non-binary folk that advised us to try out different names for myself. I searched for androgynous names on Google, and found Charlie. I immediately loved it, and now I can’t stop thinking about being called this way, and my “real” name feels weird? And all of this happened all of a sudden? I am so deeply confused that it happened so quickly. It wasn’t like that literally a month ago?
I never felt anxious about my gender when I was a child, but now being entirely a woman feels remote. Sometimes, I feel quite close to being one but never completely, and most of the time I fancy being truly genderless. Can this just be a phase, even though I don’t want to go back to being cisgender, even though it would be so much easier? Am I just confused and faking it? When I mean faking it, I mostly talk about hating more and more my breast and my name after realizing I may not be a cis woman.
Last thing, I know the word non-binary for a long time and has not manifested interest for it until recently. Thus, it knew that non-binary people existed, this is not because of ignorance that I didn’t realized I may be non-binary earlier.
In a nutshell, I feel so fake about this because it happened so abruptly.
I think you got the main idea of what I was saying. Anyway, I listed what felt weird to me on a daily basis, if you want to learn more about my situation, but you can as well stop here if you want to answer this thread. So:
- When I shaved my head, I felt free. I was tired of my hair because I saw it as something very feminine and wanted to explore how I felt myself without it (but didn’t expect such a massive existential crisis). And contrary to my breast, I could get rid of it easily.
- Once my mom told me that I didn’t look like a girl from behind (which was something bad for her), and I had to hid the fact that I was euphoric.
- In English, I want to try out “they/them” pronouns, but in my native language (French), the neutral pronoun feels weird to me and I think I prefer the equivalent of “she”.
- Writing in general is very gendered in French, and no matter what pronoun or agreement I use, it feels strange. But I have to write, I mean I have to choose how to talk about myself when I write lol.
- Lately, I see the feminist movement differently, but I can’t really explain why or how. Maybe it is because I am remote from the heteronormative feminism that is a huge part of the movement.
- I want to try out the binder, but I feel very self-centered, as if I was taking advantage of the trans movement when I shouldn’t.
If you made it this far, thank you so much. Seriously. This means a lot to me.
Sorry in advance for the upcoming long text and for the eventual grammar mistakes, I am not fluent in English.
If you don't feel like reading the whole text (which I totally understand), bold sentences are a summary.
(I’m AFAB) As a child, I have never felt different from other girls because of my gender. Admittedly I wasn’t overly feminine and felt better in shorts than in skirts or dresses, but the wearing a dress never repelled me. I have always played with girls in the playground, boys were stupid for me. Gender mattered to me, I would have been offended if someone called me boy, and never “felt different” when it came to being a girl.
In the end of middle school and the beginning of high school (between 13 and 16 roughly), I started considering my feminity, as many young girls do I suppose, as something to be watched and consumed by male gaze rather than something I had the choice to perform or not. Having big boobs, small waist, wearing slim jeans and tight tops, overly sexualized, wanting to be the classy chic woman successful but not too much. I shaved at a very young age, wanted to wear padded bras, was desperately seeking to be hot.
On the other hand, I always said I was a feminist, but that is off-topic.
In the last 6 months I started question all of that stuff, and partially stopped shaving and hardly never wear a bra. Yet, I felt comfortable doing it because I knew that some men find it hot. Weird, I know. Anyway, in August, I finally put the words on another feeling I had since middle school: I liked girls. I identified first as bisexual but then the more I was thinking I was attracted to girls, non-binary people and trans men, the more cis boys disgusted me in every way possible. I now identify as queer, and my sexuality is for everyone except for cis men I was desperately seeking approbation from.
I didn’t tell the story of my sexuality for the sake of telling it. In fact, realizing I didn’t care about men’s opinion anymore was truly liberating. I started dressing in baggy clothes, shaved my hair, started doing kind of extravagant makeup. I can almost exactly date the day I realized I wanted to look more androgynous, but I was still wonderfully happy with being a woman. But that didn’t last much.
Since a fortnight ago, I feel awkward about being seen as a girl. I started feeling weird when teachers (I am a senior) parted the class into the girls’ group and the boys’ group (for instance in PE), not because I wanted to be a boy, but rather because I find it stupid and pointless to sort people because of their gender. Sometimes, when I was talking with my friends, I felt disconnected of reality because I was conscious of the fact that they see me as a cis woman. I keep repeating myself that I only want to look androgynous. But I truly question my gender now, and since I started thinking about the idea of not being cisgender, I feel confused but I have the impression that I’m putting my finger on a huge part of myself deeply buried in my subconscious.
Now, I can’t stop imagining myself breastless in front of the mirror, but I never felt like this before genuinely questioning my gender? I saw a YouTube video from a non-binary folk that advised us to try out different names for myself. I searched for androgynous names on Google, and found Charlie. I immediately loved it, and now I can’t stop thinking about being called this way, and my “real” name feels weird? And all of this happened all of a sudden? I am so deeply confused that it happened so quickly. It wasn’t like that literally a month ago?
I never felt anxious about my gender when I was a child, but now being entirely a woman feels remote. Sometimes, I feel quite close to being one but never completely, and most of the time I fancy being truly genderless. Can this just be a phase, even though I don’t want to go back to being cisgender, even though it would be so much easier? Am I just confused and faking it? When I mean faking it, I mostly talk about hating more and more my breast and my name after realizing I may not be a cis woman.
Last thing, I know the word non-binary for a long time and has not manifested interest for it until recently. Thus, it knew that non-binary people existed, this is not because of ignorance that I didn’t realized I may be non-binary earlier.
In a nutshell, I feel so fake about this because it happened so abruptly.
I think you got the main idea of what I was saying. Anyway, I listed what felt weird to me on a daily basis, if you want to learn more about my situation, but you can as well stop here if you want to answer this thread. So:
- When I shaved my head, I felt free. I was tired of my hair because I saw it as something very feminine and wanted to explore how I felt myself without it (but didn’t expect such a massive existential crisis). And contrary to my breast, I could get rid of it easily.
- Once my mom told me that I didn’t look like a girl from behind (which was something bad for her), and I had to hid the fact that I was euphoric.
- In English, I want to try out “they/them” pronouns, but in my native language (French), the neutral pronoun feels weird to me and I think I prefer the equivalent of “she”.
- Writing in general is very gendered in French, and no matter what pronoun or agreement I use, it feels strange. But I have to write, I mean I have to choose how to talk about myself when I write lol.
- Lately, I see the feminist movement differently, but I can’t really explain why or how. Maybe it is because I am remote from the heteronormative feminism that is a huge part of the movement.
- I want to try out the binder, but I feel very self-centered, as if I was taking advantage of the trans movement when I shouldn’t.
If you made it this far, thank you so much. Seriously. This means a lot to me.
