#i enjoy pride because then my gender and presentation are just *queer* and i dont need to worry about boxes

[fantastic-mr-corvid]

last years pride i had a sexuality crisis and this year a few days later im having a gender one. fuck.

[the-queer-look]

Write your way free

For many of us, especially the transgender members of our community, we’re in a constant state of flux about our identities. Our sense of self is heavily impacted by the media that we consume, and by those that we surround ourselves with. Our sense of what it means to be in the LGBTQIA+ community also changes along with us. We absorb stereotypes from media, we absorb the identities of our friends, we find that there is no one set expression of our community, but a multi facetted, ever changing riot of colours as vivid as our flag.

- K

Name: Jesse

Age: 28

Occupation: Copywriter

Area of Study: Bachelor of Arts, Partway through a Masters of Writing

Location: Petersham

Gender: Transgender Male

I am Transgender, which took a bit of coming to terms with after having identified as a lesbian for so much of my life. Initially I knew that I was attracted to women, and I struggled a bit with realising that that was different to everyone else. When I was little I thought that everyone felt the same way, but it was a secret that no one spoke about.

One of the things that I struggled with a little bit in my mid twenties to now was the idea that I was no longer Gay, and I was actually straight, due to the transgender thing, because being gay had been a part of my identity for so long. The loss of community that I’ve felt since then has been more and more present in my life because I know that I fit into a very basic idea of gender presentation, so once I do get to a point where I start passing, I feel like I’ll be intruding upon the queer community, because I’m just some straight guy.

Which is one of the reasons I’ve been feeling better about moving towards more open communities, such as Unicorns, rather than stuff that’s just targeted towards gay women, I feel less comfortable in those spaces now.

I always remember identifying more with guys, and feeling that I had been put together wrong, even before I had heard about concepts of being transgender. It got hammered out of me through childhood, and I learnt to put those feelings away for a long time, until sometime in my mid twenties, when I became more aware about transgender people, and had a serious think about where all of these feelings were rooted inside me.

The difficult thing was that when I became aware of my dysphoria, it made me more aware of the limitations of what I could wear that would look good with my body. I’d always dressed quite masculine, but I was now dealing with the fact that if I wanted to wear mens clothes, clothes that I actually liked and enjoyed, they just wouldn’t fit with my body and the way that my body is built.

Binding was never something that I loved because if anything it just felt like a more intense bra and I couldn’t breathe as well, which would give me anxiety because… well I couldn’t breathe… even while binding, it didn’t feel good enough to make clothes fit naturally, so getting top surgery really helped with that, and even just being able to put on a shirt and have it sit properly feels right.

Queerness and partying are all so tied up so heavily in sexual liberation that there’s a sense, when being at an lgbtqia+ party to just… wear less clothing. Not a promiscuity thing, but a nod to the fact that queer rights are inherently tied up in sexual liberation – persecution of the community has always been because of an individual’s sexual preference. You can’t escape that link to sexuality, which is why when we’re in party mode, which the CisHet community would see at pride parades and stuff, there’s that idea that we’re all promiscuous and sexually charged, when it’s more about recognising that freedom to express our sexuality.

The need to dress that way of course doesn’t reflect what we would feel comfortable wearing day to day, for me especially. it’s a costume that we put on to recognise that sort of cultural heritage.

A lot of inter LGBT fashion stereotypes, I feel, have been perpetuated as a sort of uniform that we can adhere to. Especially for younger lgbt people who arent properly a part of the community yet. I remember being younger and looking up all of the things that were stereotypically gay, like Shane in the L word always wearing converse. So I bought converse, and all of the stereotypical gay stuff, so that I could flag to other people what my identity was, without straight people being as aware of, but queer people might click onto and recognise me.

As I’ve gotten older, I feel that I’ve moved away from those stereotypes. I feel that It happens with everybody who’s been in the community for a while. Your only ideas of queerness dont come from the media, they come from the people around you, making it easier to find yourself and be yourself, rather than following the two dimensional characters that they give us.

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[scribbleheaded]

So we've been thinking about gender a lot and heres the general consensus:

We overall identify as genderfluid when we are acting as a collective. This fits the shifts that come with switches and allows for all the range of gender expressions and attitudes from within the system. It's kinda like how we collectively identify as bisexual even though individual parts may identify as lesbian, gay, or ace. Bisexual just sums up our general behavior the best and until more recently it also summed up our primary hosts sexuality. But I'll get into that conflict later. None of us really like generalizing our sexuality or gender but we've found it to be the best solution for talking about these things without disclosing the DID. People close to us can know about it but the average peer or acquaintance needs a summary that excludes the DID details.

I individually identify as bigender. It's a label that has stuck out to me and it fits better than anything else. I'm a man and a woman at once. And everything in between and every combo of the two. And I'm something else entirely. But im definitely definitively both, so I like the label bigender. Plus then I'm bi²

On a similar note, I really want to use neopronouns but I dont really have accepting people in my life to try them with right now. But if anyone on here wants to send me asks or help me try out pronouns I'm really wanting to see how xe/xem and hy/hym and ve/vem feel. I also have been going by Dylan irl instead of Delaney but Dylan is also a name of a part which complicates things. I'd like a name that's just mine, but until I find one, I identify most strongly with our names Dylan and Delaney. I also like to be referred to as Syd when Syd and I are piloting together.

Syds gender hasn't really changed as they are still solidly agender. But they've been really enjoying our collective shift to exploring more masc presentation. And I feel like thought their feelings or presentation havent changed, directly labeling themselves as agender has been a positive shift forward with regards to accepting ourselves. I sense a lot of joy in exploring gender from the tweens and teens, and that has made the hard work of accepting this part of ourselves a lot more rewarding.

And then there's Dylan. Shes an interesting part. She is very connected with womanhood but only as it applies to loving women. Shes butch and shes a prince but as a woman. Her gender is complicated but very close to Dyke in nature. Dyke, it goes without saying, defines her gender as Dyke. Dylan and Dyke have been stepping up a lot in the hole Molly left last fall in maintaining our external real world life. They're a great help to me honestly but it's a shift in how we live our life which has created problems. I know Molly and Rachel don't like the idea of taking the risk of being super out and proud of being genderweird and into women, but I dont think hiding our identity really saved us any pain in the past. There is definitely conflict there though. So many conversations about sexuality and gender and safety. And monogamy. I'm so tired of the arguments about monogamy. Its exhausting to listen to.

It's hard to balence all of our wants sometimes. Sometimes I feel like I hear tumblr discourse just repeated in my brain. Someone is angry because they feel Dylan and Dyke leaning into their attraction to women and rejecting other parts attraction to men is perpetuating our collective internalized biphobia. This part argues that Dylan and Dyke are a reaction of our continued feeling from our highschool gsa that we weren't valid for loving women if we were still attracted to men, this is our internalized biphobia no doubt. From the opposite end though, I hear Dylan argue that their acceptance of their lesbianism is an expression of our system working through our trauma and internalized homophobia. It's an expression of love for our love of women despite our mothers abuse and despite all those who made us feel wrong, dirty, predatory or a freak for being attracted to women. I think they're both right. I know parts of us feel like we aren't valid in our attraction to women unless we reject our attraction to men, but I also know that Dyke and Dylan being proud lesbians really has helped us in our healing process from the bullying and abuse we endured over our attraction to women. I'm not sure what the answer is, but I hope we can hit a point when our attraction to people doesn't make us feel ashamed and like we have to choose one part of ourself over another.

That of course gets into the monogamy discourse inside but I think we need to sort through it more before sharing. In any case it was enlightening to write all of this down. And this isnt even going into the trans masculine parts feelings on gender or sexuality which is a whole can of worms that the more conventional ANPs (apparently normal parts) are still processing. Many of us dont feel like we can publically claim those parts of our identity because we are so often perceived as a woman and since so many of us are connected with womanhood. But we have strong connections with manhood too and sometimes I wish I could express pride or even just less shame around those parts and feelings. I've seen other bigender people speak on being both mlm and wlw and that's been enlightening to see and hits very close to our expirences. I'm hoping more exposure to more queer communities will help us feel more comfortable with this. Something to work on. I'm excited to explore my gender presentation and actually tell people to use they/them and Mx. this upcoming semester though. I'm excited to publically claim the more masculine parts of myself and actually lean into being genderweird.

Anyway thanks for reading this far and like if you read it all if you want. Also plz dont add to our internal discourse. The arguments inside are more than enough lol

[colorisbyshe]

so my sister's planning on marching at our city's pride (we have it in august idk why) w/ her bf and a sign saying smth like 'a gay couple' bc they're both bi and like ??? im rly mad. like you're lgbt by all means take part but idk as a lesbian i feel like you really dont need to be presenting urselves as a 'gay' couple when you're m/f? it just seems so shitty to me &she's calling me biphobic but? tbfh we don't need to be centring m/f relationships in our movement. am i being petty like idfk

Why not call themselves a “bi couple” because uhhhh like? WHEN gay couple IS applied to bi people, a. all bi people complain all the time about it but b. it’s to refer to a same gender couple. The assumption/commentary to come out of that is for people to assume they’re both the same gender, effectively misgendering one/the both of them?

And like if they’re trying to perpetuate bi pride… why not say “a bi couple?” Why not celebrate bisexuality?

I don’t understand bisexual people, ESPECIALLY bisexual people in m/f relationships, who co-opt gayness as a way to flaunt… how proud they are to not be gay.

Like there’s a dialogue to be had about bisexual people calling themselves/their feelings gay in certain contexts and the range of how appropriate it is (ie it’s appropriate for a bisexual lady to say ‘i’m so gay for [insert other lady]’ but is not approrpiate for a bisexual lady to call herself gay for dating a man).

People need to realize that associating gayness with ANYTHING other than same/similar gender attraction LITERALLY puts gay people at risk because the boundary of “no, I will never be attracted to the same gender” is taken away from them.

And like… bi people realize this. And they know it’s fucked up. And they don’t ever jokingly call themselves “so straight” but they DO enjoy the relative (underline/bold/48 size font the word “relative” here) privilege of being in an m/f relationship should they ever be in one.

I’m so fucking tired of bisexual people being homophobic. I’m so tired of bisexuals in m/f relationships ESPECIALLY being homophobic. Like? I love being bisexual but like… can we all fucking admit men dating women and vise versa isn’t radical, it isn’t queer, it isn’t special. It’s mundane. Yes, you’re still valid and bi.

But no one is obligate dto give you a fucking cookie for your fucking generic ass white picket fence relationships. Gay people don’t owe you that. Even other bi people don’t owe you that.

Just talk about how pride you are to be bi but realize that like… while you can’t and shouldn’t be shunned from LGBT spaces for being in an m/f relationships, bragging about it to gay people isn’t going to be met with anything other than apathy and rightfully so.