Gender Confusion

@Wakawakatnt

Figuring out your gender can be very confusing so I understand. It can be hard to work out definitions of labels, and if any fit your own experience. You should remember, even if it is confusing and you're not sure, there is no wrong answer with how you experience gender and your expression of it. Any way you want to express your identity is valid and ok, and it doesn't have to have a label yet (or ever if you just don't want one).

I tried to make these definitions simplified but I understand they can still be confusing (I myself often find them confusing still)

-Bigender people feel they have two genders at the same time.

-Genderfluid people move between different gender identities, and sometimes expressions, at different times. It can be described as a 'fluid' experience

-demigender is a partial connection to a certain gender. This includes the partly female identity demigirl, and the partly male identity demiboy.

-Genderqueer: Any gender identity or expression which is queer, gender identities that are not solely male or female‍—‌identities that are outside the gender binary. This can be an umbrella term, or a specific identity

-Nonbinary means any gender outside the gender binary. That is, any identity which is not solely male or female all the time. Though there are many kinds of nonbinary identities, many people use this as the only name for their gender.

-Agender can mean anything from genderless or lacking gender, gender neutral, having an unknown or undefinable gender; not aligning with any binary or non-binary gender, having no other words that fit their gender identity, not knowing or not caring about gender, deciding not to label their gender, identifying more as a person than any gender at all.

It's ok to be unsure about it, there's no rush to figure anything out.

@Wakawakatnt

What you said sounds genderfluid to me, but really, you dont have to find a label right know, and I know its confusing, but just try to feel comfortable and thats it. Im sorry about your family, you can talk to a lot of people on the internet with similar problems who have a better understanding than me. Have a good day! ❤️

@Wakawakatnt

Hi! I'm 38, nonbinary, and just started HRT a few months ago, so I know the struggle. In the opposite direction--I was assigned female at birth and recently started testosterone. I consider myself to be bigender.

It took a lot of soul-searching to figure out how I felt about my gender, and even longer after I felt pretty sure to have the courage to take the first steps. Even so, I'm not out to everyone, and I'm not in a rush to be out to everyone. There isn't one way to transition or one Trans Narrative. The discrimination and transphobia in the world are real, and those are genuine considerations we must navigate.

No one can "diagnose" your gender for you, of course. Liking to play with Barbies as a kid might give you some retroactive sense of gender continuity, but it doesn't "prove" anything in the end. Ultimately you are the gender you say you are, you know?

But something I find helpful when sorting through gender confusion is to set aside labels for a moment. A lot of people get it backwards and want to find the label first and then take whatever transition they think "comes" with that label. But transition is an intimately personal thing. If you take hormones, it should be because you understand and want the effects of those hormones, not because they're the hormones you "should" take for your label.

So let's break it down a little into some of the things transition could include. Note that plenty of these things are not things all women do in the first place, but they're ways in which some people like to explore or express femininity.

- Clothing style. Do you want to wear more feminine clothing? How feminine? What's the style that appeals to you most? You can experiment with this, wear the clothing you want in private, wear women's underwear under your clothing as something gently gender-affirming for you that others can't see or judge, you could get into drag performances in places that are accepting of drag, or you could just wear what you want, where you want.

- Hairstyle. Do you want longer hair or a more feminine style? What kind of style? You can also express some of this with wigs.

- Makeup. Do you want to wear it? What kinds, what styles, how much? You can experiment with it, you can do it in private only, you can be subtle about it and just wear a little bit of lip gloss and clear nailpolish or something.

- Hair removal. Do you want to remove body hair? Do you want to remove facial hair? If you want to remove facial hair *permanently*, that might take laser treatments, though you can get a temporary stubble-free softness using depilatory creams.

- Name. Do you like your current name? Do you have something else you wish others would call you? Would you be fine with your ideal name being a nickname or something friends call you, or do you need it on your legal documents so that you never have to use your birth name again?

- Legal gender marker. This usually comes after you feel more "figured out" on what labels you want, but it's still worth it to probe how you feel about it. Do you want your ID to say M, F, or X on it? (X is still not possible in all locations, but figuring out if you want it or not can still be helpful.)

Pronouns. When people talk about you, does it feel most easy and comfortable if they call you he, she, they, or something else? Is it vital that everyone everywhere know the right thing to call you, or would you be okay with just in-the-know accepting friends getting it right?

Hormones. This might seem like a bigger step, but in some ways it can be surprisingly subtle. You don't have to full-dose it, either, or go on the ideal doses for binary trans women. If you take the "full dose" of estrogen with an anti-androgen, you will see the most dramatic feminization, with breast development likely. (You still may be able to conceal hormonal transition a surprisingly long time or indefinitely, if you choose to.) But people do other things with hormones, like taking estrogen without an anti-androgen so that it's added on top of their natural testosterone, or alternately taking the anti-androgen without an estrogen, or taking it with a SERM like raloxifene or tamoxifen, which will lead to some estrogen-like effects but not cause breast development if that isn't desired. Talking with a doctor who understands nonbinary options well is really great for figuring out your options here if you're curious, if you're in the US, telehealth services like Plume and Folx (availability varies by state) have trans healthcare providers who are really understanding of diverse trans healthcare needs and won't shoehorn you into a narrow idea of what hormonal transition has to be. Because transfeminine hormones are less controlled (than testosterone is), many transfems also choose to DIY them with online pharmacy services.

Personally I put off hormones for a while because I was afraid of crossing a kind of point of no return socially, but I thought of them constantly for years, and it was clear to me that some of what I wanted just wasn't going to be possible unless I took this step. What you want may be different! That's why it's worth asking yourself what you want out of hormones--do you want softer skin, fat redistribution, breasts, a more noticeable waist-to-hip ratio? Not all the effects are even physical, a lot of what I wanted testosterone for was just to feel more myself somehow in my own brain. Some people report feeling more psychologically "right" when their hormones match their gender more closely. This is not guaranteed for anyone, so don't go into it with too high expectations, but...it's one of many things to consider.

Voice. For those who have been through testosterone-based puberty, hormones alone won't do much to change your voice since the effects of testosterone on the voice are permanent, but voice training can do a *lot* to change how your voice sounds and is perceived. It really isn't as simple as "men have deeper voices than women," there's a ton of overlap, and how you use your voice matters immensely. So experimenting with a more feminine, gender-neutral, or variable voice is something you can do without hormones.

Access to gendered spaces. This is unfortunately a pretty binary world--though I've accepted myself as nonbinary, I still need to pick either the men's or the women's locker rooms, and the men's or the women's bathrooms, and so on. Does which you're included in matter to you a lot? For myself it didn't--I continue to use the gendered spaces of my assigned sex because for right now I just need a place to pee and change and it isn't worth it to me to worry about. It may or may not be worth it to you.

Assumptions of strangers. In this world, when the cashier wants to tell you you forgot your bag, you're going to get either "sir" or "ma'am," and the poor worker only gets an instant of deliberation to pick one. Likewise, you'll occasionally get a random "she" or "he" from strangers, or be described as "that woman" or "that man." If it matters how they see you, and if you don't want the sir/he/man starter pack you were dealt, that's going to mean presentation change on a level people can't ignore.

There are other things you can suss out--whether you want your SO to call you boyfriend/husband or girlfriend/wife (or partner/spouse, or something else....), if you want to try tucking or wearing hip padding, if you're interested in any surgeries--some people have gotten breast implants without HRT, many people who take E don't need breast implants because they grow their own, and FFS (facial feminization surgery) can make life-altering changes to your face, whether any siblings you have should call you brother/sister/sibling/something else, whether you want kids (or have them already) and if so if you feel like a father to them or like some other role, even ways in which you might want to still express and enjoy masculine things and masculine presentation.

It's a lot of little things, really. And it can get quite fine-grained. I'll absolutely love wearing some women's clothes, but others make me dysphoric, and I can't even clearly explain why sometimes--it isn't as simple as some being more feminine than others. Some men's clothes I love, while others are just pitifully boring to me. There's no set rule that needs to be followed.

And when you've figured out what changes "spark joy" for you, what you hear about and go "yessss I need that!" and what you hear about and go, "nah, I could do without that," eventually you round all that up and go, "which label communicates this thing I'm feeling best to other people?" I mean, you don't *have* to go with that, if another label just feels super right to you anyway go with that one instead, but in the end for me terms like "nonbinary," "bigender," and "genderfluid" helped to explain to other people both how I felt and how I wanted to live.

And yeah. Not everyone needs to know about it, especially not all at once. You can explore it slowly, one thing at a time. You can try the reversible things first before you try anything medical. You can only tell people you trust with it, especially in the beginning. I've more or less decided to just not tell the less accepting members of my family. I hope that someday things will change enough there that coming out will be easier, but I'm not going to do it in a situation where I can read the writing on the wall that it's gonna go over like a lead balloon. You have nothing to prove to anyone, live your best life, present with the mix of authenticity and eye to personal safety you feel most comfortable with.

It's all just looking into your heart of hearts and asking, what do I NEED, here? What do I have the ability to make happen? What costs are too high, and what do I need to do to protect myself going forward?

Genders are hard to figure out. Take your time and try to find what’s best for you. There’s so many genders out there I’m sure you’ll find one that fits you :).