Throughout my life I have always been confused about gender. I recall thinking as a child (maybe 10) being confused why girls wore skirts, and boys couldnt. At the time, I thought it must be because its physically impossible for boys to do so.
One thing I have realised recently, I never bothered to try to be masculine. But at the same time I, never tried to act feminine. I suppose at the time I didnt think it was a survivable thing to do, in the sense of not being bullied (in high school i made sure i was a invisible as possible, which succeeded). I think I was 17 when I realised that being feminine was an option for me. There was a guy in my highschool that became a “femboy” and it clicked to me thats a thing you can just do. But it would only be until 19 i started to actually try.
My life before that moment I was without gender really. I didnt perform masculunity all that much (other then the stoic not crying or sharing emotions), partly because I just couldnt and didnt know how.
Then at 19 I started playing around with feminity and that was great. I vibed with it hard. Then a whole damn 5 years later (idk y i took so long) realised I need to transition before I killed myself as my dysphoria compounded and compounded. I could no longer ignore the disgust at photos if myself, and the discomfort. There was a photo of me in a skirt and i could think of thats a man, thats me, and I dont like that I am man in a skirt. I literally cant look at it.
Now that I am transitioning it honestly feels… odd to have a gender. Like I care about being seen as a women, whereas before I could not care less if someone didnt see me as a man. It didnt mean anything to me.
I actually had this conversation with my mum, and she commented how she never had a care for gender. She tends to think (and i agree) you can just do whatever who cares. Interestingly she said she related to the idea of being “non binary”.
Oh also good news i got a hair straightner and I actually liked my hair so much i cried so thats cool.
Ok ramble over
I remember growing up Mormon. For those who don’t know, the cult invests a MASSIVE amount of time and effort into indoctrinating girls into tradwife bullshit. The youth program is unisex until you turn 8, after which boys and girls are split into the Cub Scouts and “Achievement Days”. When you turn 12, you graduate into Young Men’s/ Boy Scouts or Young Women’s.
I remember the deep, existential rage I felt at being pushed into baking cookies, learning how to change diapers, learning how to dress modestly, and sitting through hours and hours of church lessons on pretty much nothing but the values of femininity. I hated it.
Don’t get me wrong, the women in charge of our group are still women I look up to. I still like them and respect them. They were always kind to the weird ‘girl’ who kept trying to find ways to bend the rules so ‘she’ could go sneak off and go camping with the boys. They offered alternative activities sometimes just so I’d have a reason to keep coming to the weekly meetings, and that effort to make me feel welcome was something that caught them some flak.
But deep down, every cell of my body was telling me that this was wrong. It was degrading, it was infantilizing, it was grooming on a cultural scale. And the moms who ran the young women’s group were drilling down on the same bullshit they had been indoctrinated into, straight from the lesson manuals written by old men who wanted to make sure we never questioned that our place was in the kitchen. Sure we had our secret girl talk, almost a subculture, of ways we quietly bent the rules to feel like real people. But I wanted to be me.
It didn’t even cross my mind that I could be trans, or even non-binary, until I was almost 25.