give-me-your-kidneys - Tumblr blog

[give-me-your-kidneys]

ok so first actual post that's not intended as a sort of intro type thing.

so anyways I've been kinda struggling with the idea of gender for the past year or so. for the sake of context, I'll try and start from the beginning more or less.

so I was born a man (well, boy if we're being technical, I didn't pop out of my mom a fully grown adult lmao). In middle school I found out that I was bi because I had a crush on a friend of mine and since then I've become very comfortable with my own sexuality. I've been attracted to people regardless of gender and am very confident that I'm bi or at least some other flavor of not entirely straight (maybe there's some other word that is super niche that more accurately describes my own personal feelings, but whatever, that's not important or relevant, nor something I particularly care about). this is all to say that I'm not particularly unfamiliar with being queer.

in the past year or so I've been struggling with my gender. It's not that I don't feel like a man, but it's not something I really have any sort of strong attachment to, it's just how I've been living my life up until now and so it's convenient to continue like that. I definitely don't feel like a woman, and I don't think I'd necessarily be happy if that's how I was perceived either, but it's not something that feels wrong, it feels about the same as being a man, which is to say not like much of anything. but, however, I definitely feel like I'd be happier if I'd be able to present myself more femininely, and definitely not in your typical e-boy femboy uwu kind of way that's become more common in recent years. no shade on the people who like doing that, it's just not what I want to do. it's just a desire to be able to dress femininely and cute while having that be perceived as normal.

and just to be clear, if there was some easy way that I could just get hrt through a doctor (not super comfortable with the idea of diy-ing it as I just don't really trust myself to do that properly) or just really with any sort of professional supervising me that knows their shit so I don't screw anything up, I would, but alas. I also very very very very very much do not want to be seen or look in the mirror and see myself as a man in a dress, or like any sort of male person dressing in a feminine way, as that to me at least, feels like it'd be worse than just living life in the way that I currently am.

to me, specifically in the case of myself and not when it comes to other people, getting on estrogen/all the other various hormones that are part of hrt is what I'd need to really accomplish anything of that sort. it's what I'd need for myself to make it feel real. now, I want to make it extremely clear that this is only a standard that I'd apply to myself as it's a standard I'd only really hold myself to, I'm not some sort of transmed/truscum person. everyone has their own journey and standards that they experience and what I think of myself is just that, only relevant in my case. and in my case, it feels like I'd need that as a way of being able to be more happy with myself, I think.

on an only tangentially related topic, I don't really view myself as nonbinary or trans or anything like that, because for some reason using those terms just feels wrong? not sure why, but the closest thing I could compare it to is like stolen valor or some shit, which I'm aware is a very goofy way of thinking about it lmao. but regardless, it still just doesn't feel right to call myself something along those lines, even though I have spent the last three paragraphs talking about how I view my own gender identity in a way that most people would say at least decently aligns with those terms.

I guess one of the reasons as to why it doesn't feel right is that as someone who has never really been visibly queer, (I just look like some regular joe white dude) despite never really hiding that I was if it ever came up, to me at least, the nonbinary and trans people that I've known in the past were very very open in how they presented themselves and made it very clear to anyone who saw them that they were not cis. it just feels wrong to call myself anything like that when I know people who are that and they are far far braver than I'll ever be for living as who they really are in a world that does not want them to do so.

this ties in to another thing that I've also been thinking about, in that I'm fucking terrified of doing transitioning/getinng/taking hrt[1] for three reasons.

one being that it's a pretty big change. I know that most of its effects are not really permanent if you stop within the first couple of months but still. that's a really big choice to make and I don't want to regret it. this fear of regret is mostly just due to who I am as a person, I know that the vast vast vast majority of people who transition are extremely happy with doing so, and hell that most people who consider it for as long as I have and end up doing so end up being happy with doing so, but still. what if I'm wrong.

the second reason is that, let me be frank, I'm not really starting from the best place when it comes to doing so. this is purely from a physical place as I'm a fairly overweight person who has some physical features that I don't think hrt would necessarily solve (mainly body/facial hair, like holy shit dude there's just too much of it, it never ends). not gonna post a picture because I don't want my face tied to this fairly intimate dump of ideas, even though I highly doubt anyone will ever read this.

the third is that I'm pretty scared of doing so, but for a different reason than in point number one. the world is not very kind to people who transition. luckily, I don't live on terf island, but I do live in the USA, and the college that I attend is in a fairly red state. not super giga red like in the bible belt, but still not great. my family does live in a rather blue state and city, but still, not great. my family would probably be supportive, so I don't think that's a big concern, as would my close friends (especially the ones who I've talked about this with), but everyone outside of that, which is most people I interact with, who the fuck knows? like that shit is scary as fuck.

anyway yeah so definitely still 100% cis lmao.

just kinda wish I was born a girl so that I'd be able to express myself in ways that feel more true to myself

100% cis though.

[1] ok doing a footnote on a tumblr post is goofy as all hell, but what I wanted to write here was too long to do parenthetically. I'm not super happy with wording it like this for two reasons, but I'm keeping it like this with the footnote as I'd rather just keep it as is for the sake of clarity in what I'm saying.

transitioning feels like I'm saying that I'm trans, which I'm not uncomfortable with identifying as that being the endpoint of my own personal journey, but is something I don't feel is truly accurate for aforementioned reasons. still keeping it like that for clarity

conflating starting/getting hrt and transitioning here is for the same reason as stated above, I'm not a truscum person.

[give-me-your-kidneys]

intro

so, I've attempted to keep a journal over the past couple of months and I've started to notice that having a physical one is pretty inconvenient due to the fact that my handwriting sucks giga ass and I can barely re-read what I wrote after writing it down, which is nice for if I don't want to re-experience what I was thinking then, but pretty shitty if I want to try and remember what I was thinking, so I've decided to just start this instead. something about shouting in to the void as opposed to just writing it in the pages of a tiny book in my dorm feels better for some reason, not sure why. of course it also means that certain identifying details have to be omitted, but it is what it is, not much to be done about that.

my main inspiration for actually doing this were these two tweets by Gita Jackson,

because they're absolutely right. I'm not the greatest writer, but I'm better than someone who rampantly plagiarizes, so I might as well just practice a bit. Now, to be clear, that's not because I want to pursue a job that relies on that, I'm. a student currently majoring in physics and really love doing that (very nice job at keeping nay sort of identifying info out lmao), but it doesn't hurt to be a more well rounded person. also, I have a paper due in a couple of days that I want to procrastinate, which is probably the bigger factor. oh well, it is what it is.

I'm not entirely sure as to what exactly I'll be putting on here (well, not entirely, I've got an idea for the next thing that'll be on here but past that who knows) or how often/for how long I'll even be putting stuff on here. there's a non-zero chance that I just delete this in like a day or two, which if so, it is what it is. it doesn't hurt to experiment and see what works and what doesn't.

anyways yeah, that's probably it for now.