#you need to become comfortable with neopronouns & people who have 50 sexualities & people who get silly with it

[emdotcom]

I don't think there's many more things cooler than the fact that people are gonna keep having different genders & sexual orientations I've never even considered before. I get to go out & meet people with wildly different identites & experiences than me, & that's just rad af.

[mxadrian779]

I know you've seen me around a lot lately, with pretty much the same old stuff and some reiterations. If you're getting sick of me, I apologise.

A lot has been going on lately, both internally and externally, and I sometimes wonder if the two are related. I've been sick on-and-off since the summer. There's been some extreme red tide in my area that has just been knocking me and my family out. I fell back in class, but luckily managed to get a late withdrawal. I've been at basically a mental standstill, the best I can describe it, and I've had a lot of downtime, which means a lot of Sims, Neopets, and introspection. I've been evaluating my identity yet again. Nothing's changing, per se—I still identify as nonbinary demifemme/genderfluid/transmasculine. What's changing is that my transmasculinity is growing seriously stronger, which both excites and scares me.

I've always been pretty feminine, but with an internal tomboy edge. I enjoyed feminine expression while also enjoying crude humour and other “dude stuff.” I liked the idea of being ascribed “dudely” traits—crude, strong, tough. I liked the idea of being muscular (I've been doing the wheelchair since I was a kid). I remember when I was a kid being like obsessively convinced that my voice sounded like a boy's. A treasured moment was when my boyfriend, his buddies, and I would gather in our cafeteria on mornings and play a card game called “B.S.” I had a ballsy moment and used the actual curse (I was 15). I'm not sure whether I liked impressing my boyfriend or liked being “one of the guys”; maybe both. I collected die-cast cars as much as I collected dolls. I was never a baby-doll person—maybe my mother never bought that stuff for me, I don't remember—and I liked some sporty kids' shows like “Rocket Power.” I was so drawn to the concept of skateboarding and surfing. Later on, I would also become drawn to BMXing. I'm definitely not into sports, but I was attracted to the...what, the speed and adrenaline aspects or something? What would you call it?

Like many trans people, I sometimes feel fraudulent because there were no gender-defining moments in my childhood...and that is something I only realise as I type it now. I don't recall explicitly feeling like a girl or identifying with other girls (autonomously, anyway), although I certainly never identified with boys. I don't identify with the men I know; I don't feel like I'm in their camp, nor do I have any desire to be in their camp. The girls almost looked like me, so they were in my league, and we had some common interests until later on. I was never into specifically (maybe stereotypically) “girly” things like shopping, fashion, or, that I remember, boys. I've had crushes of all genders and all intensities, but I don't recall having the need to gush over them (save for the occasional writing of their names in my notebooks). I hated magazines aimed at teen girls and women; they struck me as so shallow and just one big marketing ploy. I felt like 'what, do you think all girls can do is gush over boys and makeup?' This is likely more a feminist and gay-female notion than a gender-identity notion, but it might have had some tints of identity.

Despite some tomboyishness, I never explicitly felt myself identified as masculine, but maybe I just didn't know I could. It was only this autumn that suddenly something changed—it was like the word “transmasculinity” just came up and slapped me in the face. Something seemed to have suddenly shifted, yet I still can't explain what. I just felt like a masculine identity was unlocked. It seemed like it would just be a phase, a fleeting feeling, but even so, I knew I had to explore it. I immersed myself in transmasculine/FTM culture, and found myself somehow more comfortable than ever. I loved the crowd. The people I saw, the stories I read, somehow resonated with me, and since then, my masculine streak has only been getting stronger. The best I could describe my gender blend is to break it down into percentages. Early on, I was about 50% female (or demifemme), 40% neutral, and 10% male (or transmasculine). These days, I would say that 50/40/10 has changed to about 25/40/35—a big and jarring shift for someone who's been feminine most of their life.

It's been almost two years since I first came to my nonbinary gender identity. My internal feelings hadn't changed; what changed was the realisation that I didn't have to be tied down to my assigned gender, but I still did largely identify with it, as much as I had before. I didn't really have a masculine side then. Now I do. I find myself completely puzzled by it, perplexed yet entranced yet scared...and also kind of doubtful.

I've always been quite severely disabled. Basically a lifelong wheelchair user. I grew up socialised differently. I was held apart from mainstream society. I still am. This is where doubt and confusion sometimes come in. A lot of trans narratives involve never feeling like you fit in, never feeling like you could fit the mold, never feeling like your body fits you. But I've had these all my life, and they revolve around disability, not gender. Here, I don't know where my disability ends and my gender begins—I don't know what feelings of unease, discomfort, and dysphoria I can ascribe to my disability and what I can ascribe to my gender. I always knew I could never fit the mold, no matter what gender it held. I never felt comfortable with my body—I get depressed and nauseous sometimes looking in the mirror. I can't reach back into my childhood, point to a man or a woman and say “I aspired to be them” because I knew I could never do so. I can't say I identified with anyone of any type or gender, as if I knew I was going to grow up like them, because I always knew my world was completely different than theirs. There are so many parts of society, so many physical, emotional, and social things that I don't have access to—I mean, how can I tell you what I've felt or aspired when I've never had access to a normal frame of reference, you know? How can I identify certain discrepancies in my identity when my whole existence is a discrepancy?

I also wonder how much of this sudden introspection isn't real and is just some strange byproduct of being sick. Maybe I've got too much time on my hands and I'm digging in too deeply; maybe the red tide neurotoxins are messing with my head again; maybe this masculine identity crisis is just a way to reboot my system since this semester went so terribly.

I've been checking out some trans books from my library. The first, “Gender: Your Guide” by nonbinary author Lee Airton, is a great book for both cisgender people and trans newbies. I personally didn't get much new out of it, but it was a good read. I'm currently on “Unbound: Transgender Men and the Remaking of Identity” by transwoman Arlene Stein, about transmasculinity. I almost returned it because I didn't like its tone regarding religion and politics, but when I picked it up again and started reading, it got more interesting. Although I never identified, and likely still won't, specifically as a transman, the transmale accounts resonate with me. One transman mentioned, among other things, the fact that he hated the word and ascription of “lesbian” (before he came out and transitioned). He said it was because he didn't like how it assigned him as female. I've had my own problems with the word, and wonder if that subconsciously might have been one of them. The word held me back considerably when I was coming to terms with my sexuality because I didn't like its oversexed association, its sound, or the fact that it felt like another way to hold women as separate��why are gay men “gay” but gay women have to be “lesbian”? But was there another reason for my trouble with the word? Was I resistant to it because of its gender implications? Possibly; as my transmasculinity strengthens, my conflict with the word lessens, as if because it's less applicable to me. What would my sexual identity become, then, with such a strong transmasculine gender identity? I'm still attracted to women, but also transmen—basically, anyone who isn't a cisman.

I've been pondering how to move forward with this. As strong as my transmasculine identity is, I want to hold onto my feminine identity, too (hence why one of my labels is “genderfluid”). I want to create a masc identity—find a name, figure out a look (both of which will probably just stay in my fantasy). How would I go about constructing a transmasculine identity that's slightly feminine? Or take a male name but keep my female pronouns? I really, really do not like “he/him” pronouns for myself. “They/them” are also not quite right for me, but I often use them online anyway, if only to signify my trans status. Neopronouns are not my thing, unless they're a derivative or blend of the traditional pronouns, like ey/em (“they” pronouns without “th”), shey/shem (blend of “she” and “they” pronouns), or, one I was thinking about before, hey/hem/heirs (blend of “he” and “they” pronouns), then maybe I can wrap my head around them. I've been reading about transitions and options, and I find myself conflicted. As someone severely disabled, I've had a lot of exposure to the medical field, surgeries and a lot of procedures, and I swore to myself that I would never submit to procedures that weren't 100% medically necessary. I read about top surgeries, and I have no plans to put myself through that. Hormones, however..I was opposed to them at first, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't incredibly curious about them, although I don't know how they would play with my system) and I've had more than enough needles, thank you).

This has become an incredibly long post, and I apologise. I've written essays shorter than this. This gender identity thing is just throwing me for a loop. I've been fine the last year, year-and-a-half, until summer came and shook things up, and left me God-knows-where now. A part of me loves this, loves self-exploration and finding new things, but what throws me off and makes me slightly uncomfortable is the fact that this transmasculine thing struck me so suddenly and so hard. I've never been masculine, never considered being masculine, nor could I even describe what I'm defining as masculine. It feels like it can't be real, and I'm almost afraid to think that it is. It just comes as a shock to me, and once again, I don't know what to do with it all.

I also feel a little uneasy because I would like to be able to share this with friends, but most won't understand, some might be phobic, but more than anything, it seems too personal to post on my page.