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Will always reblog. 

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Finding Euphoria in a Goodwill Dressing Room

This is a blog topic that was actually requested from me. So, thank you dear reader, this one if for you.

Now, something you may not know about me is that when I was younger, I was afraid of mirrors.

This wasn’t a paralyzing terror or anything. There was just felt a general creep factor to them.

It started when I was thirteen years old, and I saw someone in a door window, a girl I didn’t recognize. I walked up to her, and she in turn walked closer to me, closer and closer. When I got up to the door’s glass, I raised my hand, and to my surprise, she raised her hand as well. We then touched each other’s hands. I gasped as I realized the girl was my reflection.

Now, I write this all dramatically, as if I was really under the impression this reflection of mine was someone else. I knew all along it was me...mentally I did. But emotionally, this is how I remember it.

Since then, mirrors had always creeped me out. I always got the sense that there was someone else looking at me from behind the glass. That at any moment the girl - and then the woman - on the other side would suddenly share a sinister smirk, and then pull me into her other-worldly dimension. It got to the point where I would cover mirrors, or I would double check to make sure the bathroom door was closed before going to bed.

I am beginning to think my phobia of mirrors was a little more extreme than I had realized. But at the time, it was just my normal. I had an irrational fear of mirrors. Big whoop.

Now, something else you may not know about me is that I am non-binary. This week, I would like to tell the story of how I discovered that about myself.

However, before I do, I feel that a primer is necessary for those who are new to the concept of what it means to be “non-binary,” and what it means for me specifically.

First, you should know that “non-binary” is an umbrella term for folx who do not have a binary gender experience; who do not experience gender as a binary “man” or “woman.” For example, I am transmasculine and bi-gender. What does that mean exactly? It means that while I was assigned female at birth, and therefore assigned feminine at birth, I am actually both a man and a woman. I mostly align with my male self, but my female self is present within me. If I were forced to assign a percentage to my man self and woman self, I would say it’s somewhere around 70% man, and 30% woman.

However, I do not necessarily like to put it in those terms, because I don’t sense a split in my man self and woman self. I see them as one gender together.

Anyway, I use the term “transmasculine,” because I feel it best reflects the way I perform my gender. While I am both a man and a woman at the same time, I feel most comfortable and joyful performing masculinity. That is to say, I prefer to dress in a masculine manner, to use they/he pronouns, and I take testosterone so I appear more masculine. But I use the term “transmasculine” as opposed to a “trans man,” because I am not 100% a man.

Now, my non-binary experience is just one example of many different types of non-binary experiences. For example, there are genderfluid people who are men at one point in time, women at another point in time, or somewhere in between at other points in time. There are demiboys (or demimen, demidudes, etc.) who are partially a man, and mostly a woman, or any other gender. Same goes for demigirls. And those are just a few examples.

All of this is to say that gender is a spectrum and no two non-binary gender experiences are the same.

If this is something that interests you, there is a great video on this subject by Luxander. They go more into the dysphoria and medical side of things than I would like, but I find their video on this subject be a good starting place for anyone new to this subject, and also quite thorough in the explanation of “what is non-binary?”

Anyway, now that we have a better understanding of what it means to be nonbinary, one more topic we need to cover is gender dysphoria and euphoria. Something you may hear a lot in Trans rhetoric is this idea of “Gender Dysphoria.” Basically this is the experience of feeling a serious discomfort with the gender assigned to you at birth. The source of this discomfort can be physical, social, or both. This discomfort leads many trans people to transition.

On the other hand, something that you may not have heard of is “Gender Euphoria,” which is the opposite of Dysphoria. It is extreme satisfaction or joy when you are able to express and are recognized for the gender you truly are.

Well, this story is my first instance of gender euphoria and the first time I began to realize I may be trans.

In early 2019, I had started wearing men's’ cargo shorts because I was sick of the lack of pockets in women's’ pants. That’s it. No other reason, just wanted better and more pockets.

Also, shortly after that I had cut my own hair very short. I wish I could tell you why I cut my hair, but I don’t have a reason. I just wanted it short.

I had also purchased a pair of TEVA shoes that my sister-in-law called, “sandals a dad would wear to mow the lawn.” I liked the look of them alright, but I got them primarily because they were comfortable (and still are).

Now, I had never - and do mean NEVER - cared about my appearance. If my clothes smelled alright, and I looked okay in them, then I wore them. In fact I had a very pessimistic view of my appearance. Thoughts like, “might as well put lipstick on a pig,” were pretty common in my head. Not that I couldn’t look good if I tried. I just mostly didn’t care to try.

However, for a time I was sporting men's cargo shorts, dad shoes, and a short-ass haircut - and blouses. I’m talking flowy blouses, pink blouses, blouses that would show cleavage, blouses for GIRLS. Again, with cargo shorts and dad sandals!

Eventually, I had a day where I thought to myself, “yaknow what, fuck it. My outfit is 75% Dude, may as well go the full 100%. Why not?”

So, I went to Goodwill, grabbed a bunch of men's’ shirts I thought were okay, went to the dressing room to try them on, and looked at myself in the mirror, and-

I saw myself for the first time.

Looking back on this it is still surreal. When I looked in the mirror, I saw a boy.

Well mostly a boy, since I’m still pretty short, and you could still tell I had boobs, but mostly a boy. Mostly a boy, but still somewhat feminine. Somewhat feminine, mostly masculine, but all myself.

All my life, I was scared of mirrors, creeped out by them. All my life, I stared into the looking glass and saw someone else looking back at me, someone I didn’t know, had never known.

But that day was different. That day, in the Goodwill dressing room mirror, I saw myself for the first time.

And that feeling of recognition, shock, joy, and unbridled - well - euphoria took my breath away.

...

So that’s it right? I went home knowing I was non-binary, and began my transition!

Well…. Not exactly.

I went home thinking I had figured out why people like shopping so much.

No, seriously that is what I went home thinking. I was so ignorant as to what being trans, or being nonbinary was that I thought I had discovered the euphoria of FASHION.

Literally I thought to myself, “Oh, so this is why my sisters like shopping so much!”

Still, that feeling was so strong that I went home and recorded myself talking about how important - ugh - fashion was. However, I also recorded how much I felt like myself in my new clothes, and how that was something I had never felt before. In spite of my woeful ignorance about gender I still felt in my soul that something was different.

Thankfully I did figure it out eventually, after a lot of soul-searching and research through queer online spaces. And I cannot express to you how much happier I am now than I ever was. I look back at Past Andi, and my heart breaks a little for them, because they went through so much pain and self-hatred.

Because you can’t love yourself, until you know yourself. And I spent a long time not knowing myself.

(Originally posted on andiphillips.com - https://www.andiphillips.com/post/finding-euphoria-in-a-goodwill-dressing-room)

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I never get tired of these kinds of posts. 

it’s easy for hobbies to turn into things we avoid because of the pressure we put on ourselves. but i promise, u have nothing to prove. if u enjoy drawing, draw!! it doesn’t have to be museum worthy. ur baking doesn’t need to be master chef worthy every time you do it. hobbies are hobbies because they make you happy and u enjoy doing them. there is no pressure for u to become a professional in everything u enjoy; enjoy it for the lack of pressure. try and let yourself participate in things without tying ur worth to the final products. if it makes you happy, anything that comes from that is worth it.

[andiphillipsdotcom]

Reframing the Mask

Post has been edited for correction and the addition of a link.

It was not my intention to write another autistic blog, but yaknow, sometimes a topic just gets stuck in your head, especially when that topic is hard-wired into your head. So, today, I want to talk about Masking.

Now, in case you don’t know, “masking” in this context refers to a coping strategy in which an autistic person acts in a neurotypical fashion, in order to blend in better into neurotypical society. This can include stimming in more “acceptable” fashions, or suppressing stims altogether, mirroring people in conversation, and many other strategies.

(If this is a topic you would like to learn more about, may I suggest this YouTube video by autistic content creator, Yo Samdy Sam: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9COmZ2HwXY)

While masking can be helpful to survive in a neurotypical world, it is also exhausting, because you have to put in that extra work in order to maintain and keep on the mask. Also, and this goes especially for autistic folx who are diagnosed or who self-discover late in life, masking can become so second-nature and ingrained, that it leads to an identity crisis.

Questions like, “But who am I without the mask,” or “without this mask, would anyone really like me,” can cause havoc on your mental health.

As for me, I was diagnosed very recently. In fact, this month is the one-year anniversary of my diagnosis. And while I, and everyone around me knew something was “different” about me, I spent my whole life not knowing what that was.

And yet, in spite of that, I have a distinct memory tattooed into my soul of writing a poem in middle school called, “The Masks,” and how I felt I had to wear masks in order to just live, and how hard that was for me. (I have no idea where that poem went. I would love to read it again, but alas it is lost to time.) So, way before I was diagnosed, back before I had any kind of meaningful understanding about autism, I understood masking and I hated it.

So, it is a little strange that I am going to be speaking in defense of Masking today.

Now, I want to make it clear, if you are autistic, and you do not mask, or you don’t feel the need to mask, that is entirely valid. Hell, I would love to live in a world in which masking isn’t required. In fact, I think that part of neurodiverse activism should include working to build a world in which everyone can live without feeling the need to mask.

With all that being said, I am not advocating for the use of full on masks, per se. However, I think it is important to remember that “masking” is actually not a practice that is necessarily unique to the autistic community. Now, don’t get me wrong, masking in a neurotypical fashion is unique to us, but consider for a moment the concept of “code switching.”

Code Switching is a practice in which individuals will change their behaviors and demeanors depending on varying situations. For example many people will act very differently depending on if they are interacting with a friend vs. their boss. This is the sort of thing most people - read neurotypical people - do so often and intuitively, that they may not even realize that they are doing it.

Meanwhile, for autistic people, these rules are not hardwired in our brains the way they seem to be for neurotypical people, and so we have to work extra hard, in order to switch codes, often over-compensating, which leads to masking.

But code-switching is still a necessary social tool. I mean you don’t want to act the same way around your boss as you would your friend. Not only could that put your employment at risk, but it could also get pretty awkward.

Plus, as an autistic person you still have to survive in a neurotypical world.

So, what is an autistic person to do?

Well, something that has helped me personally is reframing how I view masking. First, I don’t think of it as “Masking.” Like, who wants to mask? No thank you. I don’t want to be anyone other than myself.

Instead, I think of my version of “Masking” as “Filtering.”

I have a filter for work, a filter for activist spaces, and a filter for the cashier at the grocery store. These filters help me still be myself, but in a way that fits into whatever situation I am in.

Another reason I use the filter method is because I have a tendency of oversharing, which is another autistic trait. Seriously, if left unfiltered I can share some pretty personal stuff without thinking, or possibly hurt someone’s feelings with how blunt I can be. So using filters, basically taking the time to think through what I am going to say, how I am going to say it, or how I am going to act, helps me maintain healthy boundaries and healthy relationships.

And of course, I also make sure to find folx I don’t have to filter around, such as my family, close friends, and other autistics, so I can give the filter a break from time to time. And when I give the filter a break, I can give myself a break.

I hope this reframing aids other autistic folx. Masking can be incredibly stressful and harmful if you feel like you have to do it all the time, and it can also eat away at your self-identity and self-worth. But, unfortunately - at least in my experience - is still necessary to survive in a neurotypical world. But by thinking of your “mask” as a “filter” instead,  will hopefully allow you to be more of yourself.  

After all, a Mask covers up the real you entirely, while a filter - well, filters - what is already there. With a filter, you are still able to be yourself, even if they are different “filtered” versions of yourself.

Original Post on https://www.andiphillips.com/post/reframing-the-mask

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I had an interesting experience this morning.

I signed up for an “Autism in Adults” study on a whim via Facebook, because I think to myself, “Hey, I’m an adult with autism.” I know, most people will make impulse purchases, but no, I sign up for a scientific study, go figure.

Anyway, I get the screening call today, and it seems to be going fine. But then the person on the other end says something about medication being involved, and I am like, “Hold up, what?”

See, I signed up for this study assuming it would be more on the research side of things. Since there are not a ton of studies on adults with autism (most studies focus on kids). I did not go into it thinking there would be medication involved.

So I ask them what symptoms is this medication supposed to treat?

For the record, I do not like describing conditions of autism as “symptoms,” because not all conditions of autism are medical or debilitating. However, in this context, we are talking about medication, so surely this would be focusing on more debilitating conditions of autism right?

This person just responds with “autism.”

…

*deep sigh*

So, I have to ask more specifically for a list of “symptoms, because obviously there is a lot that goes into autism (and not all of those conditions are even debilitating.) And, guess what, this person does not have a list.

Needless to say, I decline going any further.

(For the record this person was pleasant and professional. I really should have done my due diligence, and researched this study first.)

That was a very interesting experience, because it forced me to confront my feelings about Autism as a condition and as a disability.

For me personally, I do not feel as though my autism severely hinders me. Sure there are some things that are harder for me, socializing, managing my energy levels, sensory overload, sure. But first, these are things I can handle, and second I feel like this is all balanced out by the benefits of my autism, such as my analytical skills, and my sense of empathy.

However, I do still recognize there are conditions of autism that can be debilitating, and even severely so. For folx that are non-verbal, for example, it is truly difficult to navigate in a world that requires you to be verbal, without some kind of support.

I think my issue with the conversation I just had is that “autism” in its entirety was considered the “symptom” in question. Like autism is nothing but a debilitation, a disease that needs to be cured. And really, I beg to differ. For me at least, while my autism makes my life harder in some ways, it is also a part of who I am. The idea of “curing” my autism, quite frankly, is about as appealing to me as getting a lobotomy.

And honestly most of the things that make my life hard have less to do with my autism, and more to do with the world itself. As a very small for instance, some meetings in activist spaces can go on for hours, and this is honestly exhausting for me, as it leads to sensory overload. Not just because I am forced to pay attention for hours, but because of the spaces I have had to inhabit pre-covid. They were loud, and there were so many people. And then there was the emotional sensory overload. It was a lot.

But you know what solved a lot of that for me? Zoom! Zoom is honestly so much better for me than in person meetings ever were. I am in my own space, I can monitor the volume on my computer, and when I start to get tired from socializing, I can briefly excuse myself by turning off my camera and mic. Plus the no eye contact thing is a plus!

(Unfortunately sensory overload is still an issue with Zoom, because of the length of some meetings. I would really appreciate a break in some of these meetings, especially ones that can go on for 2+ hours, but that is a discussion for another day.)

Now, I am not saying *all* of these spaces did not make accommodations. In fact, some spaces have made such accommodations even before pre-covid. The point that I am getting at is this is just one example of how our society may not make accommodations for people with disabilities, or people who are neurodiverse.

And much more to this topic at hand, this - at least in my experience - tends to be the source of my issues. Not my autism itself, but the fact that the world is built for neurotypical people.

So maybe we should spend a little less time trying to “cure” people with autism, and a little more time making the world a better place for people with autism. And while we’re at it, making the world a better place for neurodiverse people and people with disabilities in general.

(Originally blogged on my website andiphillips.com)