#for the record i'm not sold on the idea that you Must have dysphoria i'm just speaking to my experience with it

[theclaravoyant]

I've been questioning my gender too lately and I just want to know what made you realise you're NB? I'm struggling to figure mine out. Xxx

No worries, I am happy to help!

The story of it all got a little long so my key tips/bits of info I picked up are:

Try to start from a position of gender neutrality. Ask yourself, if I had not been assigned this gender at birth, what would I be?

Remember that dysphoria is about discomfort and disconnect; it does not have to be a strong, aggressive, instantly recognisable experience, and you may be surprised when you reflect how it shows up in you.

Accept flexibility and not-knowing on your journey. Don’t be afraid to try things out and see what sticks.

Familiarise yourself with a wide range of gender diverse experiences. This will give you things you can relate to and identify with, which will help you navigate the waters of gender identity. This has been extremely helpful for me as I have heard some experiences that very much resonate with me, and that more than anything has given me the confidence to explore my identity and to come out.

That’s the short version of my advice, but there’s a bit more detail and explanation below the cut. I am super happy to give more examples and things like that, or explain/clarify, etc, but this should get the ball rolling :D

First of all, a couple of years ago when I was basically introduced to the concept of trans people and gender questioning (rather than the ‘always knowing’ narrative), and I was contemplating my sexuality at the same time, I decided I might as well question my gender as well. However it was soon clear to me that I was/am not a man or trans-masculine, because basically it sort of… didn’t make sense to me on an intimate level, Like, I understood the concept of being trans, but the being a man part I could never imagine or grasp. I didn’t want a penis, I didn’t want he/him pronouns, but on another level a bit more intimate than that… It’s a bit hard to explain, but basically I went “could I be a man? probably not? cool”.

At that time I had not heard of nonbinary people and though over the years I became more aware of nonbinary genders and such, I always thought of it like “I’ve questioned my gender already, it’s time to question my sexuality now”. I didn’t revisit my gender questioning with this new information until a few months ago. When I did, it was in the wake of several things - for example, the exclusion of trans & nb people in debates about marriage equality going on in my country last year made me much more aware of them as a people, as a community, as well as their issues, relationships etc. Seeing trans people in media, and my first nb person! (Syd from ODAAT), also helped, because it normalised those experiences and started to make them part of my life. Syd was also an example of a nonbinary person who ID’d as gay and was in a relationship with a woman, so this showed me that I could still be who I am essentially, and still potentially be nonbinary. So there was this rep and these resources and awareness slowly sort of trickling in and piling up, and then earlier this year I had a very interesting conversation with a colleague from Amnesty International, where I am quite involved.

This conversation with this colleague was in the context of an LGBTQI+ allyship workshop. We had stickers on which we wrote our name and pronouns and this colleague hadn’t written anything under pronouns. Since she was fairly high up I wanted to get her to participate more fully in the exercise and I was all “fill out those pronouns babe!” (paraphrased) and she shrugged and said “I don’t really have pronouns. I don’t mind, I’ll go by any.” Later in this exercise, we were asked to think about and express where we fell on a spectrum of sexuality and a spectrum of gender.

I asked my colleague about what she had said regarding the pronoun thing and she explained in a little more detail using terms and phrases such as:

I don’t feel like a woman.

I don’t identify with women / as a Rights Holder for women’s rights (at Amnesty, RH basically means a community member as opposed to an ally of that community)

I don’t really care about my gender.

I found these sorts of sentiments really strongly related to me, except that I did care about gender. I wanted an answer to why I felt this way, this disconnect with womanhood, and that’s what (re)ignited my questioning process. I found that a lot of nb people, especially those somewhat aligned with their gender assigned at birth, expressed similar sentiments, including Rebecca Sugar, a creator of Stephen Universe (which I don’t watch, I just stumbled across a video clip recently of SDCC where she says):

I like both she/her and they/them. I am fine with being perceived as a woman, but it’s not something I really identify with internally, which is why I’ve been hesitant to talk about it, but I think that the characters in the show have been a really wonderful way to express myself because I think, like, many of the Gems, they don’t mind being seen as women, and it’s sort of part of their experience, but it’s not something they really think about, about themselves. That’s very much how I feel.

This was RIGHT on the money for me. So my first main bit of advice would be, search for those experiences and don’t be too willing to disregard experiences that gel with you. They mean something. Other things I found incredibly valuable to my questioning process include:

Start from a position of gender neutrality. Similar to removing heteronormativity when we are questioning sexuality, this can be difficult to do or even conceptualise, but it might be worth trying to start from a place of, “if I had not been assigned this gender at birth, what would I be?” I found that my experience of questioning my sexuality gave me good practice in this regard, as I sort of found that I was just ID’ing as a woman because that’s what I always had been, just as many people ID as straight because they just sort of… are, or haven’t had the resources to recognise they’re not yet.

For me an example of this is pronouns. My mother and I were talking about gender neutral pronouns (in general), and she told me she found them weird and dehumanising whereas I was completely fine with them. However, what she was describing sounds very much like feeling misgendered, including how I would feel if someone were to refer to me with he/him; I would want instinctively to correct the person speaking. Mum would also feel that with “they/them”. I would not. 

Learn/Remember that dysphoria isn’t always as dramatic or traumatic as ‘popular’ trans narratives make it out to be. It is not always a very strong, clear, sometimes violent experience, like “I need x body parts or I’ll become depressed”. It was not like that for me at all and for a long time I thought I did not experience dysphoria at all, but I do - it’s just that it’s more in the sense of a disconnect with the identity of “woman”. Dysphoria is about discomfort with your perceived or assigned gender. It’s up to you to explore that relationship and that discomfort - eg are you comfortable with your name, your pronouns, your presentation and/or expected presentation? If not, what would you prefer? If you would prefer something associated with the “opposite” gender, you may shift further around the scale than I did. If there is a disconnect, but it’s harder to find something to connect to, then you may be more in the neutral space.

Familiarise yourself with a range of gender diverse experiences. There is no “one way” to be nonbinary, and familiarising myself with a wider range of these experiences helped me to understand that nb isn’t necessarily a third gender of sorts, it’s more like, the space between / beyond / outside “male” and “female”. From there it can then be used as a gender identity, or there are more specific ID labels for you to explore. I felt swamped by the specific labels, but I am quite comfortable with the general one. You may prefer to go hunting for a specific one that matches your experience more closely/specifically. Either way, seeking out nonbinary people - whether online or irl - helps you find something and say “that sounds like me! I feel that!” and that’s what it’s all about.

Don’t worry too much about the trolls. It is hard to explore being nonbinary in a world where people from one side or the other are likely to attack for being too special, too political, etc etc. It’s especially hard in terms of the questioning process, if you don’t have a strong sense of dysphoria and/or euphoria guiding you to the right answers. However, it’s important to remember some important things during the questioning process to help you focus on the questioning itself and not the response to the questioning, which can scare you off (and which, I believe, is what was keeping me from coming out). For example:

You can’t fail at identifying as a gender, even if that gender is the one you were assigned at birth, and you don’t have to pick one and be stuck with it for life. You can change genders 50 times if you have to to find the one that suits you best.

Changing your gender doesn’t have to change everything you are. You don’t have to change your name or pronouns or your body, or even your sexuality (though you might have a different relationship with that too) just because you ID as something where people might tend to do that.

Don’t be afraid of being ‘political’ - eg I’m concerned that if/when I come out, people are going to say “is this because you’re gay?” “is this because of your uterus/child having problems?” etc to which many people will answer ‘no’ but to which my answer is actually ‘I don’t know, and I don’t care.’ People should respect you anyway, and you know who you are better than they do. Your gender isn’t defined by your name, pronouns, clothes, hobbies, or anything, but those things - and your relationships with them - can definitely help (and complicate!) this journey.

If you are not sure where exactly you fit, perhaps try out a broad label and work out your place within it as you go. For example, I identified as “wlw” loooong before I found my relationship with terms like gay, lesbian, queer and so on. Nonbinary or genderqueer can be broad labels if you’d like to sit with them for a little while and see what comes to you. Sometimes “well, I’m not x” is the best you can do, and from there just sort of see what happens.

Some blogs you might find helpful to check out include @nonbinaryresource @genderfluidsupport and @nonbinary-suggestions. They often have asks etc in which people describe their gender experiences and look for terms and such.

Again, feel free to ask me any questions, I’m a pretty open book, but I hope this has given you a little help for now!

Much love & good luck~ Clara