#recently came out as non-binary / agender to my mom

[the-crow-binary]

Currently entering my "no longer giving a fuck" era where I stop giving a fuck and accept to just be living my own experience and that others will live their own too and whether i agree with them or they agree with me doesn't matter.

It's scary and hard because I always cared a lot, even too much what other people thinks. Couldn't express my opinion without my voice shaking (if I even dared to). I've stopped myself from being and doing what I felt like being and doing because of it. It's tiring and I've got enough.

Whatever happens in my life will have no more meaning in death. So fuck it, I'll live the way that makes me feel good and free. I'll be the best person I can be for myself. And if it means some people will dislike me, attack me, ignore me for it, then so be it. I don't care, not anymore.

I am me, I exist, it's all that matters. That... and having fun with my existence. :)

[aroacephotographer]

I first came out as Trans/Non-Binary around the time my parents were going through divorce.

My mom had this weird controlling need to tell me what to do. And one thing she did was get me to hate my dad.

A byproduct of this was that it taught me to hate masculinity. That it’s toxic. Period.

But I’m completely wrong in that thinking. It took me about ten years of holding on to this weird complicated emotion of “my dad sucks, therefore masculinity is terrible.” It’s a false equivalent.

During my current bout of burnout I’ve been learning to let go of a lot of things that both parents taught me and that I clung onto. And this idea of masculinity that I grew up with was consistently a bad example.

So why can’t I be a good example? I recently came out as agender, and I read as masculine to anybody who doesn’t know me. And I consider myself trans femme.

But I should allow myself to try being masculine. And on my own terms. I know several people who show masculinity in their own way (among other traits, because we’re human).

So I think it would only be fair to my past self to show me how to live as authentically as possible. I tend to emulate people, especially those that I’m good friends with. But I don’t want to do that in this case. I want to figure out how I can be masculine (as well as feminine) and live every day freely.

[transenbyconfessions]

when someone is outright transphobic towards me, it hurts, it's terrifying, but it's at least simple, I think-- you're in danger and it's horrible and you feel unsafe and you know that.

but there's a specific.... grief, a mourning feeling, this sense of incomprehensible loss and isolation, that accompanies supportive transphobia. transphobia that's just... there as an undercurrent. i feel like i'm grieving and i feel unwanted and rejected for my identity and it feels like it's my fault. and i know it isn't, but it's... so hard to internalize.

so far my parents have been supportive of me and because of it i kind of trusted them. and my mom has been making an effort to learn, reading resources I've sent her to try and understand me, and i don't think she gets the non-binary thing very much but she's putting in that effort, she always genders me correctly and uses my new name, she's even helped me research local hrt clinics.

but lately I've been realizing that my dad.... actually might hate that I'm trans. When I came out to him he basically seemed neutral, like he didn't really care or thought it was normal. he says he doesn't understand what it feels like to have an internal sense of gender, and when I said that sounded like something an agender person would say and described it to him, he said, more or less "well that fits me sure, but isn't everyone?" which hurts because i have a really strong sense of gender now and it sounds like he thinks having a gender at all is delusional.

he's neurodivergent and old too so he has a hard time remembering things, and he always uses my deadname and pronouns and gendered titles associated with my agab because of this. he doesn't correct people either way but if he introduces me first it's always as my agab. I always read it as indifference/neglect/lack of care or emotional investment, but.... he was really against me transitioning, he thinks I should be grateful for the body I have, and the potential complications from medical treatment (which he sees as "unnecessary" or cosmetic basically) wouldn't be "worth it." to him.

i kind of....accepted all of this as just... side effects of his age or neurodivergence or of clearly not understanding gender at all. but recently... because my partner is trans and my partner's sister is trans and my dad recently said something that really crossed a line in my head...about how I've "changed" since I started to live with them a few years ago and how he didn't want me to make serious health decisions as part of a "trend". and a few times since then he's expressed gentle distain and distrust for my partner, especially when I try to explain things from my childhood that hurt me, he always says that's something that I think happened to me because of my partner's trauma.

and writing it all out like this it... it really does look transphobic. but he doesn't SEEM transphobic, he never "corrects" other people that use my right pronouns, he at least recognizes my real name, he understands that I want to transition and says it's my decision even if he disagrees with it. he doesn't intend to stop me or treat me worse for it or kick me out or stop financially supporting me or anything. so it feels weird to call him transphobic because he's...still so supportive? just... invalidating and not understanding.... so rather than scared or unsafe that's just this overwhelming grief. that i.... don't think he'll ever see me the way i am. i feel like i'm mourning my relationship with him. it feels alone.

[beviate]

I feel like I'm coming into a new arc of my gender journey that I will call.... my strange woman arc. Just thinking about a conversation I was having with some other trans people a few years ago and appearance in relation to identity and I commented that most choices I made in regards to my appearance were made due to comfort/sensory preferences, and it was more of a coincidence that those choices led me to a more androgynous appearance. And then I was talking to my mom a couple weeks ago, bc my sibling came out as trans and she had some questions, and she's often asked me if I myself was trans over the years as well. I never intended to include my mom in my journey with gender identity and I still don't, but it always bothered me a bit that she kept asking. Anyways, most recently she asked me if not shaving and having short hair was so I could look like a man, and it was kind of annoying to hear that because I am just allowing my body to exist as comfortably as I can. I hate that inaction can disqualify me from womanhood. Like not shaving and not doing makeup, and even keeping my hair short feels like less work than growing it out and caring for long hair. This is just how my body is naturally.

While my identification as non-binary/agender was true to the gender I was experiencing during those years, I wonder if it was still partially spurred on by the disconnect I felt to what womanhood was supposed to be. I think to some degree I felt like I was failing at being a woman, because I didn't perform, and that I could be more successful and comfortable performing as a nonbinary person. I don't look like the women in my life or in media, but I do fit many white skinny nonbinary stereotypes and that made me feel like there was a place for me, while womanhood alienated me. I don't fit my mom's idea of womanhood, I don't fit the media's, or even my own idea. But I'm beginning to understand how arbitrary and made-up all those standards are, and that I could be a woman simply because I am one, and that whatever I do or however I look is how a woman looks because I am one. Or something.

I'm still not wholly embracing of womanhood for myself, but I can see myself headed in that direction. I'm giving myself permission to feel these feelings and grow as a person. Or maybe this is a blip in my relationship with gender, I'll just have to wait and see and be kind to myself. I think it would be a wonderful thing to be a weird woman.

[mrpatrouiousachatz1993]

How to educate your kids about gender.

  When I first came out as a Trans Man, I was trying to figure away to teach my younger family members about gender identity and about Trans People. My little cousin Molly has been around transgender people ever since she was two years-old. However, when I told her I was a boy she would say “No you’re not”  but when I was in the mist of my transition she started calling me Patrouious or she would call me Pat, she would also constantly correct my family members when it came to my pronouns and remind them that my pronouns are He, Him, His. Guess how old she was when she started doing this? She was only 6 years-old. She was SIX when she started correcting family members my pronouns.  

   When my youngest sister was turning 8, I wrote her a book for her birthday that pretty much was me coming out to her. My father was against it because his belief was that I was going to “confuse the kid.”  If anything if anyone was confusing the child it was my father still calling me a she to her face after I was 2 years on testosterone and all my sister saw was my beard and was like “um you mean he?”  And you know what I remember telling my baby sister at a young age to explore gender and gender expression. 

My baby sister ever since she was 8 would break what society believed to be the “norm” in regard to gender. Some days she would wear a dress, some days she wore what people would call “boys clothing”, she even wanted to play soccer, and basketball just like I use to do. Her mom’s side of the family and our dad’s side of the family referred to her as a “girly tomboy”. Now me on the other hand I still refer to her as my sister unless she were to come out to me other wise. I do not like to assume that just because she expresses her gender in a more androgynous  way that she is automatically Genderqueer, Genderfluid, Non Binary, or even Agender. Recently she shaved one side of her head and has long hair on the other side and she loves it. She also has a nose piercing. Now that could just be the stage of a rebelling teenager,  it could be part of gender expression, or it could be both again I am not going to assume.

   A few years ago I got my now five year-old cousin the book “I am Jazz”. The story is based on a true story about a Transgender Girl name Jazz. The book was written by Jazz Jennings when she was a child about her journey as a transgender girl. She started her gender transition when she was two. I recently found out that her 3 year-old sister stole the book from her and my Uncle reads it to her every night. This kind of surprises me considering the 5 year old constantly brings up gender stereotypes and is very cisnormative. At the same time it warms my heart to know that every night my 3 year old cousin wants the children’s book Jazz Jennings wrote read to her every night. 

 I keep seeing things where people are saying allowing your kid to transition at a young age is “child abuse”, or even just exposing your child to the transgender community is “child abuse.” Let me just say one thing about that. I have worked with transgender kids before. The kids that I use to work with were between the ages of 8 and 15. Many of them knew their gender identity since they were two. Some of the kids I had were more fluid about gender. Some of the kids I had were fluid about gender but leaned more towards being Fem or Masc. Some of the kids I had have been on hormone blockers and waiting to start hormone therapy, and some of the kids I had were already on hormone therapy.  Here is the thing when it comes to kids and transitioning there are already medical guidelines from organizations like the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) . It is not recommended by WPATH for anyone under the age of 18 to get Gender Affirmative Surgeries. However, if they do want to get surgeries done the parent should give parental consent. When it comes to hormone blockers, it is not recommended to give children who are not near the ages of puberty or who are in the first stages of puberty to get the blockers. There is more I can go on about but then this post would be too long. Some Health Insurances also have guidelines when it comes to covering transgender health care. 

The best way to teach your children about gender, is to allow them to explore gender at a very young age. Let them play around with pronouns to see which pronouns fit them. Let them play around with names they want you to call them. Also stop using gender stereotypes of Pink is for girls, Blue is for boys. Stop gender labeling clothing and let them wear what they want to wear. If you got a kid who is assigned male at birth (AMAB) and the child wants to wear a dress and glitter shoes let them. If you got a child who is assigned female at birth (AFAB) and wants to wear a dress while playing in the mud with hot wheels let them. You got a kid who wants you to use gender neutral pronouns like they, them, theirs then use those pronouns. Validating your child’s wishes and respecting their wishes is what lowers the suicide rates of transgender and gender expansive youth. 

[decadentdollhouse]

oooo im very curious about your discovery of both your nonbinary identity and wiccan/witch interests... which came first and when did you first consider/realize them as possibilities? also do you find they interact with each other/influence expression w each other? (i dont know much about witch/wiccan stuff also, so sorry if this doesnt really make sense lol!!) just very interested in getting to know more about u!♥️

Thank you so much for this thoughtful ask!

For my spirituality, I got lucky in that I am a white American who did not grow up in a Christian household. My father is, but my mother is Wiccan, and given that my father was originally planning to graduate seminary school and become a priest, this was a point of mild contention.

Ultimately, my father is just concerned with wether or not someone is a good person, and that has nothing to do with spiritual beliefs, so my parents agreed that they would not raise me under any specific religion, but rather would do their best to introduce me to as many as possible and let me decide for myself what faith I would pursue.

I was always fascinated with my mom’s tarot and spell jars while I was growing up, but what really drew me to Wicca was the three fold law and the entirety of the universe is just a constant flow and conversion of energy, everything connected and dependent on another. I don’t follow any particular teaching and rather have been refining my views with new experiences and research, making something that really works for me.

On the subject of non-binary, well, that is an incredibly recent discovery, within the last 2 1/2 - 3 years? For the longest time, I thought I was cisgender just because I didn’t hate my gender in some violent way, and honestly I just didn’t really feel anything about it at all. So around the time I turned 20, I figured out that sounded a lot more like agender than cis, and I explored that for a while, before realizing that while I definitely wasn’t male or female, I definitely felt that I had an identifiable gender. The only logical conclusion from there is being non-binary! I’m still working out specifics and personal goals, but I’m comfortable with my identity at the moment!

As for how either has affected the other, I’m fairly certain the cosmic balance and general hippy ideas my mother raised me with had a lot to do with why it took me so long to recognize my gender identity: I had no functional social expectations of gender. Women could be loud and work hard labor and be the boss of the relationship. Men can be gentle and artistic and nurturing. There’s fashion differences, but I’ve literally never had the thought that ‘I can’t do x because I’m not the right gender’ unless it was barred by a law of some sort, like bathrooms and sports teams.

Now my gender is affecting my spirituality in that I need to rework a few spells, as there are many where the symbolism can be a bit too binary, but it doesn’t take too much tweaking. I’ve also taken more towards gnc spirits and deities in my worship and have been on the lookout for charms here and there to help me along in my dysphoria and euphoria times.

Sorry, this was a really mouthful! But thank you again for sending this ask Nonnie! 💜🌸

[writingindarkness]

We need to talk about my dad more often

I grew up thinking my dad was the most cool and open minded adult in my life. That’s the word I used most to describe him during my teenage years: open minded. My parents were divorced, I was always in conflict with my mom, and discussions with her side of the family always ended up in tears on my side because they were a bunch of conservater-ish snobs who thought teenage me was only yelling about socialism and inclusion because it was teenage me.

My dad was an artist and a socialist (he had a party card at some point), with cool friends and family members who treated me like an actual person rather than a naive child when we were arguing politics and when I talked about my life choices.

So yeah. My dad was the good guy.

Fast forward ten years later. I travel a lot but whenever I come home I go back to living with my dad, because I have a useless bachelor degree and the books I write are a couple galaxies away from paying any kind of rent.

I have figured out a way to communicate with my mum without it turning into a five acts drama, and she’s one of the few family members to whom I’ve come out as a non binary trans man. She says it’s okay.

She also says she’s not ready to call me by my chosen name and to use my pronouns, and really we should keep that between us, right?

Right. Room for improvement here, but I’m fairly certain I can get her there eventually.

My dad is one of the family members I know I cannot come out to. I’ll pass on the personal reasons and the reality of the kind of person my father truly is when you stop seeing him through the eyes of a teenager who’s being emotionally abused by the other side of the family. It’s that but it’s not just that.

My father recently pointed out in a kind of annoyed way that I was “becoming completely obsessed with that”-and by “that” he means... literally anything related to queerness. Queer people, queer fiction, queer community, you name it. Apparently I “talk about it all the time”. He didn’t tell me to stop talking about it or that it annoyed him, mind you.

(I should have answered “yes, and?” why the fuck didn’t I answer “yes, and?”!!)

My father recently sighed during an episode of a show we were watching when one of the characters came home and kissed their same sex partner hello. “That’s how it is, nowadays. They need to put that everywhere. They can’t make a show without it.” (I’m paraphrasing but I can’t remember him using actual words to talk about gay characters on tv.)

He didn’t turn the tv off. It was actually his second time watching the show, he wanted me to see it too. We went through the whole thing. There were more gay characters in the next season. We still watched it.

A few years ago a gay couple got married in the association my dad is part of. They asked my dad to give a speech. It was very emotional. The couple and all the guests all praised my dad for his speech.

Last year my dad had to go to Paris for work. The gay couple for whom he gave a speech at their wedding hosted him. When he came home, my dad cheerfully explained to me that although he likes them very much, he shall not stay at their place again in the future. You see, it made him kind of uncomfortable.

What he means by it wasn’t very clear.

I could go on and on. I brought new friends over recently. They’re a couple, and they’re both agender, both using the pronouns he/him. A has a beard. B presents more neutrally. My dad likes them a lot. He said so, unprompted, one evening. “They’re so nice, the friends you’ve brought over. I really like them.” He was being completely genuine about it. He sincerely likes them.

But he cannot, for the life of him, gender B correctly. He consistently misgenders them.

He does the same with the open trans woman in the show we’re currently watching.

So I keep postponing coming out to him.

Not because he might hurt me if I do. Not because he’s going to kick me out if I do. Not even because he’s transphobic. Because that’s the thing: my dad isn’t transphobic -I mean, of course he is, but not in the way most people imagine a transphobic person.

When you say transphobic you imagine a red faced trumpist getting someone arrested or worse, shooting them, for trying to use the bathroom.

You imagine a bigoted parent forcing their child through conversion therapy.

You imagine a smiling face who continues to gender their kid wrong and using their dead name, denying their identity.

Because those are the kind of transphobic parents we always talk about.

My dad doesn’t want queer people dead. My dad sincerely believes that queer people should be left the fuck alone to do whatever the fuck they want and be whatever the fuck they are. My dad doesn’t give much of a shit. He thought the assholes marching against gay mariage in France a few years back were a complete joke. If dead trans kids were something the news talked about sometimes, I’m pretty sure my dad would be very sorry about them. We would hear him rage about transphobic parents from time to time.

He’s not transphobic. He’s just stupid.

I’m fucking serious.

My mom has exactly as much internalized homophobia and transphobia as my dad. Like him, she believes we should have the same rights as everybody else and she doesn’t understand why we’re still being persecuted all over the world. But she doesn’t personally know any queer people except me, and being actually confronted with it makes her uncomfortable. Her first reaction was to ask me to keep it a secret. She doesn’t think she can use my new name and pronouns just yet -and is making zero effort to try and get used to it.

But she’s smart. She questions things. Now that she’s being confronted with the reality of having a queer relative, she’s wondering about it. About how it affects our relationship. About what to do and say so as not to damage said relationship.

She asks questions.

She fucking listens what I answer them.

My dad’s not smart enough to do that.

My dad cannot possibly have failed to notice that all my friends call me a different name than the one he uses when they come over, and that we all talk about me in a masculine way. He definitely noticed that I’m now wearing swim trunks when we go to the pool, and that I come home with men’s haircut.

But he didn’t ask, and he never will.

He doesn’t wonder what it means, what is happening, and how it affects our relationship.

He doesn’t want to know, because if he knew then he’d have to make an effort, to go out of his way to accommodate my feelings so as not to damage our relationship. And he doesn’t want to do that. So he’s pretending to be blind and deaf. It’s not his fault if he doesn’t know.

Queerness makes him uncomfortable, because it’s so foreign to him, and he’s not as open minded as I originally thought he was. He stops at that. It makes him uncomfortable, therefore he doesn’t want it. Neither on tv nor in his life. Granted, he won’t make any active effort to get rid of it -he continues watching shows in which there are gay people and he doesn’t cast people out of his life upon discovering that they’re queer.

He just pretends it isn’t there, because he’s too stupid to realize that it’s already damaging our relationship. He’s too stupid to realize that it’s narrowing his horizon.

He’s not queerphobic. He’s just dumb.

And we need to talk about dumb parents more.

TL;DR: some parents aren’t queerphobic, they’re just too stupid and lazy to get over their internalized queerphobia, and we should talk about it more cause I don’t know what to do.

[askanonbinary]

Mod Sock, would you be able to talk about advice you'd have for people discovering they're not cis/that they're non binary when they're not super young? I'm 22 and I've been questioning/trying to accept myself for a couple of years now and it feels like any online advice I find is geared towards people younger than me/who are in school. Do you have any words of wisdom you can lend to help me work through the questioning/wanting to come out but being scared process as an adult? Thank you!

Sure!

So we encourage experimentation a lot of the time (and I still suggest it, but I’ll get into that in a moment), but all of confusion and questioning was 100% introspective. I didn’t really have a lot of dysphoria and what I did have wasn’t anything I could do anything to relieve. Plus, my look’s always been fairly androgynous, so I wasn’t really looking to mess with it. I think that if you are curious or want to mess with your hair or binding or tucking or different clothes or whatever else, you should! But since I was there, I also know the side of the story where this isn’t of interest or is basically irrelevant.

What I did mostly was research. I read, read, read, read, and read some more. I followed this blog. I sought out a lot of other nonbinary-specific blogs. I read through queer lexicons for so many different gender terms, I didn’t retain most of them. I found stories by nonbinary people about their experiences (one I related to the most was about street harassment, which helped it click for me why I’d never really been subject to street harassment when my mom and sister deal with it on more than a regular basis) just talking about being nonbinary. I consumed recently written posts and years old posts. I went deep into inactive blogs. I was looking for that magic “yes! it me!” moment.

What happened is that I learned a lot. I knew more about being trans than I’d ever expected to. But I never had that aha moment. And that led to exhaustion. So my next step was the only experimentation I felt ready for, unwilling to confide in anyone the mental struggles I was having: playing around with gender terms for myself. I debated at least a dozen different terms, a lot of them multiply strung together, a patchwork string of labels meant to come together to most accurately describe how I thought I was feeling.

When that failed and I was truly exhausted, that’s when I finally let myself be. I let go of the crudely strung together terms that didn’t really express what I wanted. I let go and gave out just “nonbinary” a shot. It still took time after that. Lots of times. But years later... I realized how much I’d come to peace with how I felt.

Now I went through all that because, as I said in the beginning, it was hearing other people’s experiences that really helped me the most, especially at first. But let me pick out what I was trying to get at, the actual meat of my advice:

Be patient and give yourself time. It’s normal and natural to doubt and be confused. Try not to beat yourself up for feeling this way.

Research! Even if you don’t find anyone who feels exactly like you or a term that perfectly suits you, it helps you feel not so alone.

Experiment! Whether this is boldly changing your look, asking friends to help you by calling you a different names/pronouns/etc, or privately referring to yourself as different genders/etc., there’s a reason it’s a popular suggestion. It helps you settle into a term and titles by getting to see how you feel by using them.

Focus on how you feel now, not how you used to feel or your past or anything. Not everyone knew they were trans as a kid, and that’s okay! If thinking back on how you felt as a kid and teen isn’t helpful, then discard those thoughts! Stay in the present. Daydream of the future.

Let yourself use terms when you’re unsure if they fit you. If you can’t say it, then write it. Write out that you are nonbinary - even if you are still unsure. Take the jump! Try out the label! You do not have to know for sure to use a label. Think it, write it, whisper it to yourself. Give it time to sit and stew. Then try out something new.

Make a decision. It was a very specific choice of mine to call myself nonbinary, to stop thinking of myself as cis, to let myself use the label. I was still completely unsure who and what I was when I embraced the nonbinary label. I had to let myself use the label in order to become comfortable with it, to accept it. So make a decision. Let yourself just be.

Finally, give it some more time. Specifically give it more time after making a decision, choosing to let yourself identify one way. Stop fighting yourself. Stop frantically researching. Make a choice, then just let yourself live with it. Give it time, focus on other things, and one day wake up and see where that’s led you.

And if/when at any point, you feel like coming out to whomever, you can! I still am not out besides online. I came out to one person because they told me they were agender first, and it was a really exciting moment for me. You don’t have to be out to be valid. The hope is that one day we can be out, but sometimes we have to really, really, really, really build up to that.

I know this is kinda vague and it’s a lot of waiting, but for me, this was mostly an internal struggle. It was a specific choice to identify as nonbinary. It was a specific choice to stop fighting myself and just let it go. It was a lot of patience to let go and be at peace with myself. It’s very scary to stand up and go “I choose to be nonbinary” but sometimes, that’s what the path is. Stand up for yourself by no longer fighting yourself. Let yourself just feel.

I hope that this was somewhat helpful to you!

~ Mod Sock

[freshocto]

Of course you are self entitled...Should have known. After all, you changed your name to switchbladelesbian. You definitely have pride control you. And it seems to me that you only show it privately. Where's your pride if its only shown secretly here? Where's that confidence of being like this when friends and family don't know? You haven't accept yourself if you haven't come out to them yet. Because you're afraid. Own it. That was my mistake at first. Now i feel guiltless and actually proud.

yo i don’t remember who you are but i guess you know me?? apparently not too well because i did come out to my mom recently. not about being agender because idk if she even knows what that is and it’s too complicated to explain alongside being a lesbian. But i came out to her about being a lesbian so there’s that. Also like how am i self entitled, I'm tired of people thinking agender and non binary people aren't real. There's more than two genders

[transgenderteensurvivalguide]

Hey, recently I was in the care with my mom, and showing her photos of what haircut I wanted, she noticed that I had searched "undercut haircuts for men"(I'm agender and big out, so they know me as a girl) and asked me if I was trans saying "she had one trans kid and just wanted to know if she had another" I panicked and shrugged while mumbling "I don't know", she just said "it's better to figure it out young but that's a hard road to take" and now I want to come out but have no idea how

Lee says:

I would ask your sibling how they came out, and for moral support if they’re open to that. Then check the links below! If she seems to be open to it, then why not?

Coming out:

How to come out as transgender

A coming out workbook (PDF)

Coming out tips

Coming Out Resources

Coming out (PDF)

How to come out to family and friends

Coming out as genderqueer non-binary

Coming out as non-binary

Coming out when you have anxiety

Should I hint at it?

DEARMAN

How to come out to parents

How to come out as transgender to your parents

Coming out to parents as trans

[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

[bumblbee123]

The Rules: Answer the questions in a new post and tag 20 blogs you would like to get to know better.

I was tagged by @mariahcareysmeltdown thanks 😁

Nickname: sometimes people call me Ana Maria which is my first and middle name. My mom likes to call me munchkin or princess, and my sister calls me brat lmao

Star sign: Taurus

Height: 5'2

Time Right Now: 9:42 PM

Favorite musical artist: i mean the classics like FOB and panic! But i also really like nicki minaj and i used to like kanye but hes a mess so idk about him anymore

Song stuck in your head: rn secrets by one republic cuz thats just the most recent song i listened to

Last movie watched: Sing lmao ive actually seen it 3 times at the movies since it came out

Last Tv show watched: Friends

What are you wearing right now: pjs 😊 which rn are hello kitty bottoms and a plain purple long sleeve shirt

When did you create your blog: i think in the beginning of 2012? Wow those were crazy times

What kind of stuff do you post: a healthy mix of memes, tv shows/movies, and politic/social opinions

Do you have any other blogs: yeah my secret bdsm blog lmao

Do you get Asks regularly: i wouldnt say regularly, but every once in awhile i get asks saying random stuff

Why did you choose your url: well i only recently came to the realization that im non-binary and dont really feel comfortable identifying as one gender, and then the nebula part cuz i love space

Hogwarts House: Slytherin

Gender: non-binary/agender

Pokémon Team: i dont really have one? 😝

Favorite color: Black or very soft pink

Average hours of sleep: man idk i wish my sleep schedule made sense anywhere from like 3-8 hrs of sleep

Lucky number: 420

Favorite characters: hermione granger, draco malfoy, luna lovegood, Chandler Bing, oswald cobblepot, percy jackson, nico di angelo, rogelio from jane the virgin

How many blankets do you sleep with: 1 normally but as many as 3 when its cold

I guess ill tag @falloutbarbie @lucayahearts @life-of-the-lili @witchymusic @starlovespatrick