#how a dear friend gave me unexpected gender euphoria

[frogofalltime]

it's funny but i don't really have a perception of Myself. like, i know what i'm wearing and i see myself from the outside in my memories and my dreams, but i can't picture what my face looks like. i don't know how my voice sounds. i'm not even sure what my body shape is, not really. i watch myself with eyes that do not know who i am. sometimes my reflection catches me off guard.

so last night my friend filmed me and @etherealspacejelly talking and sent it on our group chat, because the conversation was quite funny and bizarre. i had no idea we were being recorded; the video was a complete surprise. it felt so strange to watch it; when i opened the message i didn't even recognise myself at first. it took me a few seconds to realise, oh, this is a video of me. i looked so different to what my brain tells me i look like, and my voice sounded different to how i hear it in my head too. and the way my face was reacting to what robin was saying was really funny; i didn't know it did that. it was an uncanny experience.

but you know what was the most unexpected thing ? it gave me a wave of Gender Euphoria ! i felt very weird. i was walking around and around and robin asked me, are you okay dear, you are pacing, and i was like i don't know, i don't know, i'm not used to seeing myself like that, i'm not used to being perceived, i feel so strange. but afterwards i realised it was a Good feeling. i was happy ! i was so happy ! because i don't sound as high-pitched as dysphoria always made me believe i did, and i don't look that feminine after all. i think i always got so much gender envy from robin because he is handsome and androgynous in a way i never thought i could be. but now, after seeing myself from another perspective, i don't feel jealous anymore. because i am exactly what i always wanted to be, actually.

[river-witchery]

I've known I that I'm nonbinary for a while. Started figuring that out in college, which feels like a lifetime ago. I hadn't known my entire life, but that was more of a pebble than a pothole on my road to self-discovery. I went through a moment of "am I trans enough to call myself trans?" What a funny thought, looking back on it.

Coming to terms with being transmasc though? That was an entirely different thing. My gender felt weird. It felt queer. But masculine? No. I had no connection with masculinity. I felt just as uncomfortable with masculinity as I did femininity.

Or so I told myself—and others occassionally, when I wanted to emphasize my gender's queerness, its otherness, its void-like ambiguity; when I wanted to make sure they didn't just swap out one half of the binary for the other.

Looking back, I can tell something wasn't sitting right, something was nagging at the peripheral of my self-understanding. I remember finding a lot of comfort in butchness at this time. I am so thankful for butches for that safety in exploration, and the gentle nudging into queer masculinity.

But it wasn't really until dear friend of mine, new to my nonbinary-ness, began swapping the more feminine-coded compliments and titles for distinctly masculine ones���it wasn't really until then that my transmasculinity took root to blossom in me.

And you can spare me the essay; I can read my own words. "I wanted to make sure they didn't just swap out one half of the binary for the other." Hear me when I say that I could feel it in my soul that they did not do that. I could tell—and I know I am not the only one who can—when "handsome" was said queerly.

It is not a coincidence that I only give my full set of pronouns to those who I can trust to see the queerness in "he/him." I withhold those for my own safety, though in the process, I feel like I am withholding part of myself. Because the euphoria I get when I can be nonbinary, genderqueer, transmasculine, is like no other I have felt before.