#it feels like a lot of enby-inclusive language is still binary. I get why. but I'd like it to change

[my-gf-is-kazuichi-soda]

need a phrase for girls/genderneutrals who take testosterone/are gonna take testosterone (mee)

for some reason all I could think of was "trans testes", "testosterone lesbian", and "testosterone bitch"

[korvakisubodex]

Well, this seems like a nice safe place to put some Feelings. Firstly, I’m aromantic. While that’s one of the parts of my identify I’ve only figured out recently, it seems like it’s one of the most stable elements. Ever since high school, I’ve watched my peers pair off and obsess over who is dating who; I was never interested in participating in the whole parade of love and romance, as presented by teenagers still figuring it out themselves. I stood back and watched. I looked on as the people around me fell in and out of love, gossiped about each other, and generally made mountains out of what I perceived as molehills. People teased me for being single. I shrugged it off, figuring that I was just me. I wasn’t anything weird, or different; the feelings would come when they were ready. In preparation, I studied what was happening around me like an anthropologist watching a new animal species. It didn’t make sense, so I added the word ‘yet’. Now I’m in my 30s, and I’ve found the word. Aromantic. I know why none of it makes sense, but I still don’t feel different. Romance is a part of other people’s lives, a part I can observe and in some ways I can understand. I have nothing to say on the subject, because as long as it makes you happy to be romantic, I’m happy for you. Go ahead, and love whoever you want. I’m happy being aromantic.

Secondly, I’m asexual. I knew I was asexual before I really understood my aromanticism. That’s because my asexuality is a lot more volatile than my aromaticism is; it requires more of my attention. I fluctuate between a very sex-positive, inclusive attitude toward sex and an equally strong revulsuion of it. It can be confusing and very difficult to navigate sometimes. I never know what I might react to, and which form that reaction might take. I spent a long time searching for the perfect label for my asexuality - one single word that would describe my extremely complex relationship with sexuality. One word that could mean ‘yes, I like sex’, ‘No, I hate sex’, ‘I don’t want to talk about sex’, and ‘I want to know everything about sex’ all at once. That word, if it exists, hasn’t appeared before me yet. I spent those years of fruitless searching simultaneously denying that a label was important, a self-deception born of disappointment and desperation. I never found it, and so, I am simply ‘Asexual’, and that means to me what I need it to mean - I have a complicated relationship with sex, but I won’t be having it. The questions I still struggle with regarding asexuality are my own, but they still worry me. I embrace my asexual label like a life raft, like a safety net; I fall back to it often in a way I don’t need to with my aromantic label. I consciously remind myself that it’s okay not to have the answers; even if I get them tomorrow, they’ll change next week. It’s okay to move my boundaries, because the people around me will move with them. I’m comfortable being asexual, and that’s okay.

 Lastly, I’m non-binary. This realisation is new to me. I’ve never felt comfortable referring to myself with gendered terms, either pronouns or labels. I’ve never wanted to be more feminine, more masculine, more androgynous. I am who I am, and I wear clothes that fit and are comfortable, and have some god-damned pockets. I present with the least amount of effort required because my sense of identity is in no way linked to my body or my appearance. The gender binary as a concept makes no sense to me; it isn’t useful, so I’ve abandoned it in favour of the wider terrain of enby gender. Which exact one speaks to me the most is difficult to tell, since they’re all shouting so loudly right now. Soon I’m gonna try out some new gender-neutral pronouns. For now, I’m building myself up as a person, removing all that pointless gendered language from my own mind, and disconnecting what I’m ‘supposed’ to be from what I expect of myself. It’s simultaneously freeing and terrifying. It’s like knowing there must be land somewhere ahead, a place to rebuild and create a person I want to be, but being uncertain I can find it before my hand-made boat falls apart beneath me. Being scared to drown, and so staying within sight of a shore that isn’t home, but might not kill me. I’m non-binary, and I’m scared. But It doesn’t mean I’m not going to move forward; I just need to take it at my own pace. And that is also okay.