#(= gender fluctuates between nb and girl but never masculine)

[transgenderteensurvivalguide]

Can my alignment with womanhood fluctuate? I like to just call myself non binary, but would there be a specific label for that? For going to unaligned to woman aligned?

Lee says:

Your alignment with womanhood can defs fluctuate, yeah!

I’m not sure if I know of a term for going from unaligned to woman-aligned though, the terms I’ve heard of are more like these two: 

Genderflux means your gender moves between genderlessness and genderedness, and it doesn’t specify what that gendered part is so it could be agender or female.

Girlflux means a similar thing, moving from genderlessness to womanness. 

That doesn’t mean there isn’t a word out there for you, but an alignment fluctuation term just isn’t coming to my mind right now. Hopefully the followers will have some ideas!

Followers, does anyone have a more gender identity specific label that matches what anon’s trying to describe, going to unaligned to woman aligned?

Followers say:

noodles-07 said: You could be genderfae! That basically means genderfluid but only between female and gender non-conforming!

apassingshadow said: Demigirl maybe? I personally use demiboy for myself because I am nb, but I am also drawn to masculinity and manhood without being comfortable calling myself an outright man

theorangedead said: I consider myself a demifluid demiboy, and I feel kind of similar (tho I’m also not big on alignment terminology). I also am fine with nonbinary boy, transmasculine nonbinary, trans demiguy, etc. You can just go with what feels right for you.

never-quote-the-raven said: Note on demi genders: If you don’t like the focus on the binary aspects of demi-girl/demi-boy. Demigender is an option alongside demi nb genders (like demi-agender)Or if its the connotation of girl/boy then demi-female/demi-male and demi-feminine/demi-masculine are also valid!

[lgbt-askthetics]

OK SO: thanks to james I now have 2 potential words to describe my gender(tysm this shit has been confusing me so much) do you think you could tty describing the difference between bigenderfluid and genderfae/faun?(assuming ofc the 2 genders are nb and girl/boy respectively)

Woah nice!!!!! I’m glad I could help!!

Bigenderfluid- Having two genders, and being fluid between them. The two genders can be any.

Genderfae- A form of genderfluidity that never encompasses feeling male or masculine.

Genderfaun- A form of genderfluidity that never encompasses feeling female or feminine.

So with Bigenderfluid, you’d only have two genders, and fluctuate between them. (those genders could be anything, so yeah they could be enby and girl, enby and boy, or girl and boy, etc.)

With Genderfae, you’d have many genders, but none of them would be masculine or male.

And with Genderfaun, you’d also have many genders, but none of them would be feminine or female.

[kanedadry]

Ah yes time to sum up my week-weekend mini crisis (lmao it’s been going on a while) because this has basically become my main blog now

So being in either the mlm or wlw communities here on tumblr, as an lgbtq+ individual, seems like a lot of fun! And it’s human nature to want to find somewhere where we fit in. I’d love to have a band of mutuals that I can reblog all this stuff and memes and ask prompts about (the mlm/wlw stuff, I mean). But really? I’m starting to think, no matter how much I may want to, I don’t really...fit in either? Not to say I’m ~just too special and unique~ to, not at all, just. I don’t feel like a girl who’s attracted to girls. However, I don’t feel like I can always call myself a boy who’s attracted to boys. 

For past context, I used to identify as trans mlm for a good three years or so, up until rather recently. Now, I jokingly refer to myself as “Bi-Squared”, since I’m bi and bigender. That gender identity actually stuck out to me when I first started questioning, but I pushed it aside due to internalized conflict. Now, I’m actually quite comfortable with it! The best way I can describe how it feels to me personally is, between “boy” and “girl”, I feel like I’m a bit of both, but not entirely either. And it fluctuates on different days (though, some days I wonder if I’m still more effeminately-trans masculine?). 

But here’s where my issue now is. I feel like it’s the bisexuality/romanitc orientation that fluctuates, too. 

And it fucking sucks 

Because?? I never really had to face the Bi Crisis(tm) head on until now, now that I legitimately realize that yes, I actually want to date multiple genders. And now the stereotype of the confused/indecisive bi that will flake out on you is...something I’m scared about filling. Because that’s not me at all, hell I’m still on the ace/aro spectrum somewhere, so I barely date, despite being the Biggest Fucking Romantic who really, really wants to. 

It’s just that LITERALLY depending on the day, I’ll wanna date a girl, as a feminine nb, or I’ll wanna date a girl as a cute boy who will treat her right (there’s an emoji I’d put here but I’m not on mobile so). But then sometimes, I really, really wanna date a boy...but I could never really see myself dating a boy as a girl? In other words, the wlw label never really seemed to fit me, like the mlm one did, but now I don’t feel like I can really fit into that either?

So maybe I’m just. “Bi-Squared” after all, and nothing more complicated. Like. Ok?? If anyone has any words/advice/ to give, I’m all ears. WOW this was longer than anticipated sORRY.

[fire-fira]

hi this is a really random question but how did you first figure out that you weren't a guy or girl? I've been feeling a bit confused about my gender recently so do you have any... tips, I guess? idk

My case is one of the weirder ones I think, but I’ve had plenty of others tell me about their own experiences, so I’ll tell you about mine and then what I know of various others’ (because I think those others’ might be more helpful for you).

And since this is a long post I’m putting it all under the cut so I don’t bog down anyone’s dash.

Me:

So in my case some things to know are that I’m hyperlexic (which makes me freakishly gifted with language and writing systems) and that as a result I was WAY too smart as a kid, and the fact that I figured out I wasn’t a guy or a girl when I was four. Also, on my fourth birthday it was like someone threw the switch on my awareness: one moment I might as well have not consciously existed, and the next I did (like I said, weird).

On top of that, my family on my mom’s side (the side I grew up with) is predominantly women (to the point where for a large portion of my life there were only two guys– my grandpa and one of my cousins– to six women and girls and then me). Also, all of the women in my mom’s side of the family are women who are strong-willed, capable, and never really bought into the usual gender stereotypes, so I grew up in a social environment without a lot of gender-stereotyping.

So whenever I heard my family referring to me as ‘she’ and ‘her’ and it just felt wrong, I literally went through the thought process (at age four keep in mind) of ‘This doesn’t sound right. Why are they calling me that? They must think I’m a girl.’ And that led to a whole long round of questioning if I was a girl or if I was just a different type of girl than any of them, and even had me briefly thinking about and dismissing the idea that my ‘problem’ with being a girl might have been because of that ‘girls can’t do ____’ attitude that so many people/other kids had– with the end conclusion that whatever I was I was NOT a girl. So next logical question was ‘I’m not a girl, does that make me a boy?’ And when I looked at other people, my family, what I saw in books and on TV, all I felt was ‘Nope. I’m not that either.’

So fun thing for me, though I had the logical assumption that if I wasn’t a girl or a guy that that must mean there were others out there like me, at the same time since I didn’t see any examples of anyone non-binary I assumed that if I told anyone that everyone else would think I was ‘insane’ and have me committed to an asylum and that I would never be let out. (0 out of 10, would not recommend being in that head-space.) I didn’t tell anyone outright that I wasn’t a woman or man until literally my last day of high school– and then only to one person– and I didn’t start being more open about it until I really started doing research when I was about 23.

I don’t know how helpful my past is on that count, but there it is.

Others:

Some others I’ve talked to have had a sense their whole lives that something was off, and others didn’t even think about it because they assumed their discomfort was ‘normal’ and that everyone experienced it until they met someone who was visibly out and non-binary (in my experience usually me), and a lot of the time they didn’t know they even had an option to been seen as anything but their assigned gender until they saw it was possible. There is no right or wrong time to realize that you might be something other than the gender you were assigned at birth. The big thing is what it feels like internally.

Some people I’ve met are like me: they’ve known their whole lives (that they can remember), but when they didn’t see any recognition they tried to bury it– sometimes to the point of forcing themselves to temporarily believe for a long time that they were only the genders they were assigned at birth. Learning about non-binary genders, meeting someone who is non-binary and out, and doing some thorough self-questioning as to their sense of their own genders are all things that have helped them.

Others have felt mildly uncomfortable with how they’ve been referred to the majority of their lives (and the discomfort can vary in intensity), but since they were so rooted in their own lived experiences and gender is something that just doesn’t get coherently talked about a lot they just assumed that everyone experienced the same discomfort. I’ve heard at least two or three people admit that they had thought that ‘No woman likes being a woman,’ or ‘No man likes being a man’, ‘Every woman wants to be a man or something else, that’s normal’ or ‘Every man wants to be a woman or something else, that’s normal,’ until somehow it came up and they said something of the sort in conversation only to find out that others they talked to didn’t experience that at all. In other instances it has taken some people meeting and talking with someone non-binary and hearing them talk about their experiences in order for some things to click.

And then there are those who didn’t know it was an option. They had their feelings, they realized at various points in their lives that something didn’t feel right, but they figured no one would care (or that no one would accept it, or that others would just assume they were trying to be ‘special’, etc.) and so there was no point in pursuing it– until either they got fed up with lying or (again) they learned about non-binary genders or met someone who was non-binary and out.

So, some things to keep in mind:

All gender is, is your internal sense of being a woman, man, or something else– even when you strip away the concepts of femininity and masculinity. If something clicks and gives you the sense of ‘This is what I am,’ and it feels 100% right to you, then that’s what you are.

It’s possible to be a feminine man or a masculine woman.

It’s possible to have a feminine or masculine gender without being a woman or a man. (Juxera is a good example of a feminine gender. I can’t recall off the top of my head a term for an equivalent masculine gender.)

It is possible for your gender to change over time. There are loads of instances of people who started out as 100% one gender and over time their gender shifted to something else later in life for an extended span, and then after a time it shifted again. If that’s something you’ve experienced there’s nothing wrong with that.

It is possible for a person to have multiple genders going on at the same time. It’s also possible for a person to have multiple genders that fluidly shift depending on the day and situation. (I have one genderfluid friend who rotates between woman, man, and a non-binary gender with occasional sliding-scale gender-placements somewhere between two of the primary genders they has– woman/NB, NB/man, man/woman. In one really weird instance they had a day where they was equally woman and man simultaneously, when normally if two genders are going on at once then one of them will be more at the forefront– like 70% guy and 30% woman as one example.)

It’s possible for a person’s internal sense of gender to fluctuate in intensity. Some days a person’s sense of their gender might be at 100%, other days it might be at 0%, and at still other times it could be at 30%, 45%, 73%, etc.

It’s also possible for someone to have a stable sense of being some percentage of the gender they were assigned at birth and some percentage of another gender (in which case demigirl, demiboy, or demigender are appropriate terms).

It’s also possible to experience an absence of gender, because agender/lacking-any-gender is also a thing.

And it’s also possible to have a gender that essentially consists of ‘???? I have no damn clue what my gender is.’

Do some research, see if anything makes sense to you. Question yourself and go with what feels right. Trust your internal sense of who you are; because ultimately the only one who can tell you what your gender is deep down is you.

A couple blogs that might help with learning about and investigating non-binary gender identities are these two: @nonbinaryresource​ and @nonbinaryconfess. Both of them are really good about answering questions too, and I’ve actually learned a lot about other non-binary genders that I didn’t know about. (I’d be careful about going through the non-binary tags just in case there are any nasty enby-phobes posting in the tags.)

And if all else fails and you want someone to talk to, my messenger and inbox are always open. n.n