#YOU HEARD OF ASSIGNED GENDER AT BIRTH NOW I BRING YOU ASSIGNED NONBINARY IN COLLEGE LMAO
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How did you figure out you're aromantic?
Oh, god, what a short question for such a long process, hahaha. First off, didn't figure it out until recently, age 27, but here was the approximate (and very truncated in the amount of internal conflict and introspection involved) step-by-step process:
Figured out I was queer in high school because I felt the same way about women as I did about men! Spent about 5 years thinking I was bisexual.
Figured out that I'm not actually attracted to men when I read a post describing the experience of compulsory heterosexuality and related with it intensely, which was a very freeing experience. Spent 6 years thinking I was a (nonbinary) lesbian!
Hooked up at parties a couple of times out of curiosity and then took up my best friend's offer to fuck and realized that I got the same amount of skin-crawling distaste about that as I did about sexual contact with men, thus realizing I was ace.
Let that domino tip over into the, "Actually, identifying as gay has for a long time given me the same anxiety as I used to feel when I thought I'd have to date a man, and also I'm 27 years old and have never, ever actually wanted to date another human being. When people ask me what my ideal partner is like, I start listing off ways in which they should not bother me or demand my time or be part of my life. Maybe I just don't want... anyone." domino, and the subsequent "I'M FREE!! (from trying to date women)" euphoria was identical to the "I'M FREE!! (from trying to date men)" euphoria, so.
That's where I'm at!
I'm a generally introspective person, but I'm also really great at gaslighting myself into ignoring my own discomfort, so largely it's been, haha, a diagnosis of exclusion. First I excluded men, then the discomfort with women grew large enough that I was able to exclude them as well. Reading about other people's experiences and realizing where they paralleled my own was immensely helpful! So was being close friends with a very poly person who slowly and fully unintentionally changed my perspective on how I view relationships in a very poly-and-relationship-anarchy-as-default way, which incidentally is extremely compatible with aroace queerplatonic ideals and definitely softened me up to be ready to accept that particular realization.
Also, please let this be a sign that just because you identify with one "thing" doesn't mean that you're committing to it forever! <3
#ask#personal#Anonymous#hilariously enough the gender thing was way easier#I basically tripped into it by accident by gleefully ���âhidingââ my pronouns from people for a long time#until I hit social circles that just fully assumed that meant that I was nonbinary and I was like âoh... I can DO that?â#YOU HEARD OF ASSIGNED GENDER AT BIRTH NOW I BRING YOU ASSIGNED NONBINARY IN COLLEGE LMAO#sexuality#aroace#aro#hope this helped anon! everyone's journey is different#there are a lot of things I can look back on that were Definite Signs#including amusingly me thinking the concept of aromanticism was STUPID because âwhat they are describing is just what EVERYONE is likeâ
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Hi, would it be ok for me to ask how did you know you were non-binary? I'm questioning and would like to get some opinions, but no pressure to answer if this is too personal!!
So I got this ask months back, and with everything that has gone on with my health I wasnât able to answer it... so I donât know if the person who sent this will even see it, but since itâs pride month I figured it was a good time to get to the queer/questioning asks that have been languishing in my poor ask box/drafts...
First of all, I donât mind questions like this; if I ever find an ask too personal Iâll usually just ignore it, but something like this I think is important especially since NB is such a... underrepresented concept, for lack of a better word, so sometimes that lack of exposure plus the very broad nature of the label can make the whole questioning process confusing and stressful.
Honestly, for a looong time I had no idea I wasnât cis.
I didnât know that you could be anything other than male and female; I grew up in pretty conservative Latin American immigrant family, Catholic, so the idea of homosexuality was bad enough, lol.
I was very involved in the (then called) âGay/Straightâ alliance back in high school, as we had quite a few gay and lesbian students and teachers. I had mostly queer friends, but even binary transgender people werenât... as prominent back then. Ofc they existed, but I didnât have as much exposure in HS, and I went to a catholic college where many gay students had to essentially be closetedâfor example, (openly) gay men werenât technically allowed in fraternities. I loved my school, but some of its views on women and LGBTQ+ people were pretty dark age stuff, so again I had no idea that gender was a broader spectrum than simply male/female, cis or trans.
As far back as at least around early puberty, I created a kind of alter ego. A character opposite my birth sex, who was unlike any other I ever created and who has stayed with me my whole life. They helped me survive my childhood/adolescence. They felt very much âmeâ and yet werenât simply the person I was in actuality made into the opposite gender. More like the aspects of my self/identity I knew subconsciously.
Often, when I fantasized, I would put myself into their role. Imagine being the other gender, what their body would feel like, what sex would be like. Iâd ask friends i was comfortable with about what it felt like to be the opposite gender. I felt I needed to know so that I could âfeelâ it too. So I could truly imagine being a gender other than my own, with different parts, different secondary sex characteristics.
Yet at the same time, I felt comfortable enough with my birth sex that I explained these moments away. I was just thinking like a writer. Curious, bc thatâs my nature. I never thought I could be trans because despite the power of these feelings, the sometimes intense longing I felt to be other than I was, the thought of completely changing my body, abandoning my assigned gender, felt horrible. Like I would be losing part of myself.
I first heard the term nonbinary during Pride. I had never encountered this before, and being who I am immediately looked it up. I was floored. Gender was a spectrum? You could be both male and female??
I felt like I had been hit by lightning.
I immediately reflected on a lifetime of âqueerâ thoughts. About my alter ego and how I had clung so tightly to them, how often I fantasized about having parts I didnât have (without necessarily wanting to take away parts that I already did). How I went through phases where I dressed very masculine in some points of my life and very feminine in others. How I related so strongly to certain characters over others, and other past experiences that I had always managed to discard or shelve away in âcomfortableâ boxes.
And I reflected on how I had always had this... shame about these thoughts and feelings, this fear that they made me a âfreak,â which might be why I had always been so quick to file them away with safe labels.
Discovering that I wasnât alone was liberating. I read about and spoke to people who identified as NB, and often found they had a similar thoughts and experiences growing up as I did, and that helped cement in my mind, without a doubt, that I was also nonbinary, that I wasnât purely male or female, but both.
Iâve suffered with depression my entire life, and am likely bipolar (something my current therapist agrees with, though I havenât been formally diagnosed for various reasons). And once I opened my eyes and began questioning, I discovered that a significant part of my depression was actually tied to my gender dysphoria.
Exploring my gender identity in various ways, and finally accepting that I am NB/gender fluid has made me much more content.
Now, ofc there is no one way to be non-binary. So just bc my experience doesnât align with what youâre feeling, doesnât mean youâre not NB yourself.
Some people donât feel any gender at all, and wish they didnât have any secondary sex characteristics. Some want to be purely androgynous. Some feel mostly one binary gender or another, but maybe not âfullyâ male or female. Some feel a mix of both, and some shift between two or more genders.
For me, I feel like Iâm always partly male and partly female, though sometimes one is more dominant than the other. Sometimes Iâll have gender dysphoria so bad that looking at cis bodies can be very upsetting, or the feeling of âmissingâ parts I feel I have/should have is so intense itâs almost all I can think about. Yet other times I feel pretty âstable.â Sometimes I feel like Iâm thinking a lot about my gender and my presentation and others I barley think about it at all, I just âam.â
I feel freer now that I have shifted names and pronouns. Like Iâm finally accepting my full self.
A huge part of why I enjoy playing Animal Crossing so much is bc I can indulge my gender fluidity by playing with how I dress my character... it brings me a lot of peace I canât always get IRL.
I hope whoever reads this finds this helpful, original anon or anyone who might be wondering if they may be NB or not.
Feel free to send other asks if youâd like, or if you know me you can DM me and we can talk privately. đ
Happy Pride đłď¸âđ
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Making it Divine
Gender dysphoria. Body dysmorphia. These are terms thrown around in the trans community, on the internet, by friends. But what is it? Gender dysphoria is defined by Wikipedia, bastion of common knowledge, as âthe distress a person feels due to a mismatch between their gender identity and their sex assigned at birth.â But what does this look like? What does it feel like? Who is gender dysphoria, and how do I know if weâve met?
Conceivably, gender is the interaction between the human soul, the essence of a person, and their physical body, the body with which they can move about and interact with the world. You may not believe that the soul exists apart from the body, though I do. Perhaps then, this definition will not fit you, your experience. I think thatâs fine. I can only speak from what I know, how I walk through the world. The soul, then, would in some sense be genderless. How can the essence of a person have a gender? Every society creates their own gender roles, their own performance of humanity to which people can subscribe or not, and every society is so wondrously different. If we all come from the same source, then who we are must grow from that interaction between the essence of our humanity, that spark of commonality, and the body and space in which we grow up.
That body, then, though it can be betrayal, is still intimately important. Even if we ultimately must modify it for it to be the home to house our personhood, that gap between who we are and what is ascribed to us, perhaps that is gender dysphoria.
I remember, before my body changed and left my personhood behind, or perhaps a better way of thinking about it is, in the time before my body got out ahead of me, when I was a child, no one could tell my gender. Most, upon seeing me, thought I was a boy. I knew this was wrong, and was vehement in my rejection of it, to the point that at 7 my parents got me a shirt that said, âyes Iâm a girl, and yes I could kick your butt.â I loved that shirt. It spoke of my strength, and it used a bad word. Although I also remember some secret part of me falling at ���girl.â I remember fighting boys in pre-K to prove that I could, that I wasnât weak. I remember when I suddenlyâŚhad breasts. I donât remember when they grew, although I do remember being taught to hate my body. A teacher calling me smelly, annoying, bad. A body that was changing, becoming abysmal, at the same time I was beginning to doubt myself on a fundamental level, to doubt my knowledge of who I was because my body was disagreeing with me so loudly.
And the only coping mechanism I knew of was eating. Eat my way to happiness, coasting high on the serotonin of processed sugar stuffed into my mouth when no one was looking. Climbing a chair to secretly eat years-old candy canes no one remembered, because it was the only thing in the house. I needed it. To feel good. To feel anything but hate. And as my chest grew, I grew too, hiding a womanhood I never wanted, never should have had, seeking control over my body the only way I knew how. And then later, many years later, when I was fearful and in a different place, far from home, doing the opposite. Starving myself, seeking control in the only way I ever could over this body: through food.
But I still wasnât aware of the gap. Couldnât see it. Didnât realize it was there. Not in my first year of high school, when I changed my name to SJ. To be cooler. (to have a less gendered name.) Not in my last year of high school, when I got a breast reduction. Because of my back pain. (to have smaller breasts, to hide them.) Not when I came out to myself as nonbinary my second year of college, but didnât really tell anyone and didnât change my pronouns. (itâs easier this way - no one really has to know.) Not when I came out to my family. (well, nothing really has to change.) Not when I wanted to start using they/them pronouns. (well, a little change). Not when I held my chest in everyday to see what I would look like without breasts at all. (but I donât need a binder â thatâs too far.) Until one day, it wasnât. And I knew I needed surgery, I needed to regain control of this body that had grown and held me lovingly, but ultimately was not enough to hold my humanity, my essence. Or rather to be the right reflection of who I am, to be the person I see walking through the world, though it was already perfect.
I didnât know. I didnât have the words for the hatred I felt, for why I hid my chest. Fpr the gap between who I am and the form I have now. Why I feel uncomfortable giving hugs, feeling my breasts pressed against me. Or wearing swimsuits. Or feeling my chest move when I run. Or jump. Or do anything goofy. Why I donât want to participate in sports, though I love them, because my body feels weak, with a moving chest that I am always absurdly aware of, that holds me back without my even knowing why or how. For the way I sit hunched over, hiding them. For the clothes I pick, and what I feel confident in. For my favorite part of my chest being the flat place between my breasts, where I can feel my ribs, where I can pretend it is flat all the way across. For the way I hate my lovers touching my breasts, and the way I pretend I donât because I think I should.
I didnât know that this IS the gap, made manifest in my bones and in my flesh. Not in my mind or in my soul, those pieces of me that know who I am without words, knowing beyond understanding, past my own mind, into my deepest part. No, this gap between who I am and the body that holds me is in that body itself. That beautiful body, which does so much. So much more than it means to, I think. A programming that no mind strength can overcome, a natural process, that perhaps, if gender is a society writing on a body, would not bother me in another place and time. That perhaps didnât bother me in another place and time. But which does bother me. Every time I move, see myself, silence myself when I want to be loud, still myself when I want to run and bounce the gap is made manifest. That gap between my self and my body, which sits boldly on my chest.
I am not a man. And frankly, I have no interest in it, though men are wonderful creatures. But neither am I a woman, despite what a stranger looking at me might think. Even as a child, I knew that word was not the right fit for me. My father, who saw my self-hatred and mistook its roots, would always try to gender me, push me lovingly into the safe boxes society had built for him, worried that I was flailing because I was weird, but perhaps could be fixed with his understandings. âYouâre turning into a beautiful, young woman.â âYouâre almost a young woman.â âWhat a brilliant, young woman you are.â I remember resisting, saying I am not a young woman. I donât want to be a young woman. He would smile, or frown, or get angry. He thought he understood. He did not. âBut you are.â Beyond my control, a body assigned to me and a gender that came with it, and who I was didnât matter beyond the form I had.
He was wrong. He didnât mean to be cruel, confirming something about myself by which I was trapped, that I hated and because I didnât know why I hated, turned that hatred inward. He would never try to hurt me, I know that. My body remembers though, that he did.
My mother, for her part, viewed this choice, to reject my breasts, as to reject motherhood. âSo, you wonât be a mother,â she said when I told her. She doesnât remember this now, claims that I âheard her say thatâ because thatâs âwhat I thought she meant.âBecause though she said it, itâs not what she meant. But she said it. I remember. My bones do too. I do not reject parenthood, motherhood, fatherhood. I want to raise children. Or perhaps not, if the world ends, but either way these ruined breasts of mine would not give up milk. And they are mine, not my childrenâs. She would never try to hurt me, I know that.
My sister views it asâŚperplexing. Confusing. Beyond comprehension. She cannot fathom a life without breasts. But she is, of course, a woman.
As for my brother, I do not know what he thinks.
For me, this is crossing that gap, building a bridge across my personhood, is a movement towards myself, a hand extended to me. If my body is a house it is haunted by the ghost of a young girl and the ghost of a young boy. And the girl is loud, and must constantly come out to greet the guests, and be beat by the world for being so obnoxious. She doesnât want to be the first one out the door. The young man, he is quiet. He wants to step forward, but no one ever sees him. He is golden, and silent. This is my way of opening the door to him as well, inviting him out into the light, to dance, and be merry with those who visit the house.
To be comfortable, and see my essence reflected in my body, reflected by my world. So that when I am called she, my body does not against my will confirm a title I did not earn and did not want. So that my bones will know, as my heart and mind do, of who I am and who I always was. So that together this skin and flesh of mine can rewrite stories and memories, bring that boyish light out of my childhood and into my present, for that little tomboy, a type of neither boy nor girl, can come back out and play. And play in boyâs clothes and girlâs clothes, my clothes, without confirming anything about me but that I occupy space between. A sacred space. For what is beyond humanity, what is the sacred, but beings beyond gender, a creature that being neither man nor woman, and understanding neither of what one is, is able to be themselves completely and wonderfully? And those beings too, upon seeing the tools which they were given, recognizing that this gift was given in error, and in occupying their place as men and women, refine that space, redesign it, make it more and greater, make it sacred. Those who intimately understand gender, in a way I cannot and never have, and become their highest selves, in beauty. What are trans people, but a taking of this construct called gender and making it divine?
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