#I myself am agender and very masculine and feminine (^:

[crabussy]

nonbinary robot call that androidgynous

(this post was made by @silly-solar-robot!!! please check reblogs for a version of this post without the credit, just thought at 14000+ notes I should mention it on the original post. no clue why they used my account, maybe cause I have more followers but please check his account out!! he’s wonderful)

[cardentist]

hallo, hi...sorry for probably asking something small. but i see you explain things very well and if its okay i wanna have a person explain this to me.

what's a transfem and transmac? i don't quite understand what those terms are. i think i see people use them in context different from just "trans man" or "trans woman"...and looking online i still don't really understand it.

if i am being a bother, please let me know!

@re-ikrmso

well ! the first thing to understand is that these terms will ultimately mean different things for different people !

labels are for people, people aren't meant to conform to labels. so ultimately people will have their own ideas about what different labels mean to them on a personal level.

it's kind of like how there really Isn't one firm definition that separates bisexual from pansexual, the distinction is largely personal and highly dependent on the context of an individual's life. their experiences, what communities they grew up and/or found themselves in, etc !

which ultimately makes it very difficult to give a definitive definition of labels like this that won't risk alienating people, or that other people won't simply disagree with.

THAT SAID.

to my understanding, "trans masc" as a term simply means anyone who is trans in a masculine way, while "trans fem" as a term means anyone who is trans in a feminine way.

for example:

someone who is a Trans Man is most likely someone who was assigned female at birth who then identified as a man (if you'll excuse the outdated terminology for convenience).

but trans Masc may include a variety of other trans identities !

a nonbinary person who transitions or presents in a masculine way may consider themselves trans masc, or at least consider them relevant in discussions about trans masc people, because they have similar experiences (such at with testosterone, bottom/top surgery, how they're treated because of their presentation, etc).

and this Can be true whether this nonbinary person considers themselves Aligned (meaning they are nonbinary in a masc direction) or Unaligned (meaning agender or completely separated from the gender binary). it's ultimately up to personal preference.

or an intersex person may be assigned male at birth And Be Trans Masc, may still transition (medically or socially) into a masc presentation.

they're also convenient terms for people who play further with gender. genderqueer people, genderfluid people, bigender people, etc.

because ! for instance. I am a trans masc person. I was assigned female at birth and I have identified myself masculinely. I would like to take testosterone and go through the social transition into a masculine person.

I also consider myself a trans fem person ! I would like to present femininely as well as masculinely, and importantly I wish to continue doing so after I HAVE medically and socially transitioned. after I've had my name changed, after I've had my legal sex changed, after my body and voice has changed.

there will be times where I will be visibly identifiable as a trans body presenting femininely, And I Like That. I won't just be presenting femininely as a man, I want to be both a feminine and masculine person.

and what this means for me is that I will share experiences with both trans masc And trans fem people, especially socially (and especially where I live, in the deep south).

but there very much so Does need to be a distinction between me (an afab person who is trans in both a masculine and feminine way) and a trans woman (an amab person who is a woman) (again, apologies for the outdated terminology).

and in that sense ! trans fem is a good way to get across the fact that I share Experiences with trans women, but am not one. in much the same way that amab nonbinary people can say the same.

so in other words ! trans fem and trans masc are umbrella terms that loosely connect multiple different sorts of people with similar lived experiences and needs. which is a convenient way of speaking About said needs and issues that may affect all sorts of these people in as efficient a way as possible.

instead of Specifying trans women and a list of other identities that may share things in common with them (a list that will never encompass every kind of person who may), you can shorten it to one more generalized term.

the Drawback of this is that not everybody sees the term that way. some people see trans fem and trans masc as identities in and of themselves that trans women and trans men aren't a part of. some people are people who Do share lived experiences with either trans men or trans women but don't consider themselves either trans fem or trans masc.

and that's like. Okay Actually. it's just expected that for any term that exists in queer spaces there will be people who don't like it or don't personally identify with it or just have a different experience with it.

but ultimately I do find it convenient to use and I choose to do so.

[queerpossumtrenchcoat]

Let's talk gender expression, awful haircuts and realisation of who I am! I came out as gender fluid approximately around the age of the third picture above- and I got an awful haircut to match it, but at the time I felt like THE gender vibe; I was 13, or so, and didn't realise I looked like I'd had a fistfight with a weed whacker. It was a stepping stone however, for me to discover who I was; after this time I started to experiment with my look, name and pronouns, leaning more towards he/they and slowly changing my name from Jaimee to Jai and or James- small steps, I know, but crucial ones in me realising my dead name no longer really fit me as a person. James was a family name after all. Finding myself wasn't always glamorous, the look wasn't always particularly handsome or pretty, it was colour the tips of my hair with sharpie markers and conditioner until my hair had a distinctly petrol-and-macadamia type stench or cutting it with a cheap, disposable razor which ended up giving me hair reminiscent of the early 2000s emo scene (which I totally was, even if I only saw 6 years of the 'early 2000s!'). I would hack off chunks, flatten my chest with cheap Duct Tape and wear boxers I stole from my dad in order to feel some semblance of who I was, using makeup to poorly build cheek bones and eyebrows so I could look like my hero at the time, Brendon Urie (God, that aged poorly..) In time I got creative, I learned that my parents wouldn't let me get a 'real boy's haircut' so I'd have to improvise; here came the next 6 months of beanie hats and ponytails pulled over to create a 'boy fringe' which, in retrospect, was giving more Justin Beiber than Emo Quartet, but that all chained when I turned 16 and... Got to dye my hair for the first time!! It was the greatest experience for my gender to date!! My mother bought me midnight blue hairdye for my 16th birthday and helped me dye it; I looked in the mirror at my fairly short ish, dark blue hair and I saw it. I saw him, stood staring back at me with tears in his eyes. I saw ME. I told my girlfriend, at the time anyway, straight away and she accepted me with open arms- I think she was expecting the genderfluid-to-trans masc timeline, which funnily enough he followed in 2022 during lockdown. Lockdown dug its claws into my gender and expression quite deeply; while at home with my mother, father and two very young siblings I came to experiment with my gender a lot more, dressing in more masculine clothes and cutting my hair off for 'sake of ease', or that's what I told my parents anyway- they believed it too, surprisingly. I went through college having to somewhat pretend I was just a feminine man, I was exhausted and on the brink of suicide, as most people my age at the time were, and went by Eden because it seemed more palatable to the others around me- didnt stop me being picked on, but it wasn't by students... It was my own teacher! Shout out to Miss Dunsby! Then I dropped out of college. I picked up a shitty little cafe job as a barista and linecook, cooking meals, making coffees, pretending I gave half a shit about a joke I'd heard over and over again; I dyed my hair neon green and used my pay checks to get it cut SHORT short for the first time- I looked hella fine, in my opinion, but I was also starting to realise something.. Maybe I had been right the first time, because I didn't feel like a man all the time. Back to the drawing board... One shaved head and a job at a gay bar later, I started using the art of drag, performing as a female persona, to realise that I was Masc-Agender, like a boyish presenting genderless person. Easy enough, I suppose. I started wearing makeup, being myself and wearing whatever I damn pleased, uncaring of social cues and rules, I was me. I was happy. I AM happy. If there is anything you can take away from this, once you find the part of yourself you can express your feelings, thoughts and emotions with, go wild!! I did and it made realising my truth so much easier!

[hopeleselygay]

I need help from everyone under the trans umbrella

I'm afab and have been struggling with my gender identity for years. I currently identify as transmasc, because I prefer to be referred to with masc or neutral terms and I'm uncomfortable with she/her pronouns.

However, I don't actually feel comfortable identifying as such. It just... doesn't really fit right. I don't really identify with masculinity, but I also feel uncomfortable identifying with androgyny or femininity. No gender identity or label really fits me well. I feel a very deep disconnection to gender identity as a whole to the point that I don't find any identity within gender.

I identified as agender for a few years, but now I'm not sure if that fits. I've felt similarly disconnected to sexual/romantic attraction and it has took me almost 20 years to figure out that I'm on the aro/ace spectrum. Until then I identified as unlabeled.

But now that I know the difference between being unlabeled and being aro/ace, I find myself extreme uncomfortable to identify as agender- because it doesn't fit. My sexuality is defined by a lack of attraction to any gender. My gender identity is not defined by a lack of gender identity, but rather by a lack of identity to begin with.

I feel like I can't really put a label on it because there is simply nothing to label. But I still want to have something, a word, to describe that experience somehow.

I feel like something that would be closer to "unlabeled" but for gender identity would be extremely fitting, but... is that a thing? is it just unlabeled too? I am just confused. I also want to know if anyone feels even vaguely the same. I just feel lost

[terfarchive]

How can you not support trans people if you're gnc? They're your closest allies. People are always going to have diffrent experiences with gender. And all the laws that hurt trans women will just come around to hurt butch women to.

Hell, you sound a lot like I did before I came out as enby. Have you ever considered you might not see gender identity as real because you're actually agender?

pfft…

ok but i’m gonna like actually answer this cause it seems fairly genuine.

i’m gnc because i literally wear whatever i want and thus am perceived as gnc by both the patriarchy who demands that i conform to gender roles and be more feminine and by tras who want me to conform to a label. that’s literally all tras are doing, they’re putting gnc women into another label. i am just me. clothes are not gender, i do not have an obligation to be masculine or feminine, and if me wearing what i’m comfortable wearing makes me gnc, then so be it.

sorry but my ex and ex friends say otherwise. they emotionally abused me for years, bullied me, and doxxed a schizotypal avoidant trans person and got them sent to a psych ward because they wanted to get to me. i know this is not the case for every tra (or even like, most people, my ex friends were literally just assholes) but i find it laughable that those people are supposed to be greater allies than the radfems who have treated me with respect and kindness ever since i’ve peaked.

yeah people are always gonna have different experiences with gender because gender is a social construct that isn’t real…i have a question to ask you - 1. what exactly is gender, and 2. why shouldn’t we abolish gender?

of course, we don’t want to ban gender affirming care, and we don’t want to harm trans people. we do not want to kill or harm anybody. i am of the belief that anyone should be able to recieve gender affirming care if 1. they are over the age of 18, 2. have had a diagnosis of gender dysphoria for at least 2 years or more, and 3. therapy has not helped with gender dysphoria and there is a risk of the person harming themself or others if they do not receive gender affirming care such as surgery or hormones. i think we are prescribing surgery willy-nilly and considering the long term effects of surgery, i think it is a scam. i had hormones suggested to ME and i do not have gender dysphoria at all. this was because 1. i was autistic and had an eating disorder and 2. my chronic low mood was mistook as gender dysphoria.

we also want trans people to use the bathroom in peace and not be subjected to prejudice, discrimination, or violence. however, there is a substantial risk to women to allow any trans women, regardless of how long they’ve identified as a trans woman or if they even have gender dysphoria, to be allowed into a women’s restroom. there are statistics and news articles i can send you about trans women sexually assaulting or raping women in restrooms. i believe trans people shouldn’t have to go into their agab bathroom if it makes them dysphoric, but they should have their own restroom to use and should have the basic human rights that everyone else is entitled to. we do not want any legislation around trans people other than that they get their own federally protected spaces and having laws to prevent hate crimes against transgender people.

this may come as surprising to you, but i am a very new radfem. i peaked in january and officially joined the movement this month. i used to identify as nonbinary, autigender, schizogender, agender, aegosexual biromantic any/all pronouns divinekin like…literally last month. now i’m just aroace. i have been trans for a very long time, around 5 years. i do not believe that simply because i do not identify with gender roles prescribed to me, that i am a different gender. i am female, and the rest is up to me. my personality and my appearance have nothing to do with my sex or my gender. i am much happier just being myself than having more labels forced onto me because i do not fit in with other people. i think self expression is beautiful - a male can dress however he wants, name himself whatever he wants, use whatever pronouns he wants, but he is not a woman because a woman is not defined by stereotypes. man = biologically a male, woman = biologically a female, and that’s it. there should be nothing else that defines woman or man other than their biological genotype.

[our-trans-youth-experience]

Can you give me some advice as I'm questioning my gender yet again.

So basically, I'm an AFAB teenager, and up until about 8 I went with girl [and was very feminine], then 8 til around a year or two ago, I didn't really care cause it just didn't matter to me. Then I identified as demigirl, then genderfluid, and now nonbinary, and I was just considering starting to use he/they pronouns when I started to get stressed about gender. I feel dysphoria sometimes, and I was so upset when I got my period and stuff, though I don't know if that was just not wanting to grow up. I don' understand women, or why you'd want to be one, but occasionally I feel more fem, but I don't want to be a girl. If I could have been born a boy I would've, and if I ever think into the future, I'm only happy if I think of being a man. Sometimes i don't feel dysphoric saying 'I am a woman' and sometimes [usually] that feels so wrong and stresses me out. IDK,I'll probably just stick to being non-binary, but I also want to be a man, and I wish that I'd been born one. Also,i've been quite depressed lately, and I've hated myself since I was 11, however, because I only started questioning my gender a year or two later,it can't really be connected to that, can it?

Hope you're doing good, and thank you for taking the time to do this.👍

Hey there anon, thanks for sharing your experience!

I don't know your brain so I can't tell you a specific label, but I can try give you some possibilities. From what I've understood, you are NOT a girl but occasionally feel more feminine, you feel non binary and also male at the same time.

Have you heard of bigender before? One of my friends is a bigender guy, meaning that he has two genders (male and non-binary).

Another one of my friends is aboy (agender boy) which means that it doesn't have a gender but wants to be perceived as a boy.

You could be a demiboy (someone who partially identifies as a boy), or genderfaun (fluid between multiple genders, but never female/feminine)

Or you might be like me! I'm a transmasc person. This means that I am a very masculine non-binary person, but not male. I use masculine and neutral terms, but obviously that is completely up to you.

About your period, being upset about your period definitely counts as dysphoria, you are not just afraid of growing up. If having a menstrual cycle becomes too distressing for you and you are in a situation that allows you to do so, I'd recommend that you look into ways to stop your period.

Hope this all helps a little, happy gender hunting!

[transenbyconfessions]

I'm very, very confused about whether I am allowed to call myself nonbinary. In my heart I think I am agender. I am afab and short and I have a large chest and a stereotypically feminine face and voice. I'm okay with these things when I'm alone. I think of myself as a little cute (gender neutral) guy with boobs. But they distress me in public sometimes - I like and try to dress masculinely or androgynously but it's hard to find clothes that don't emphasize my figure. I get disappointed when I get called ma'am or miss but I don't want to change my body because I am truly happy with it when I'm alone. I don't know if that means I am or am not dysphoric. I haven't told anyone in my life that I think I am nonbinary because I haven't heard of anyone else who feels the same way I do (happy with their body but unhappy with how it's perceived by society) and I worry that I am not nonbinary enough to count.

Submitted May 7, 2023

[tittyinfinity]

I think I've never really fully talked about my (lack of) gender before

I'm agender. I like that label because I've always just felt like a person and hated how having a gender assigned to me affected major parts of my life. Girlhood/womanhood wasn't nice to me. Thinking about what I've gone through as a "woman" hurts because I never chose to be one. I've always wanted to scream "I'M JUST A HUMAN, JUST LIKE YOU!"

There are still parts of me that feel like a woman because I experience life as a woman due to how people perceive me. But it's not in a way that I actually "feel" like a woman, it's just a reminder than womanhood is what shapes my experiences, and it's not a feeling I'm really comfortable with.

I am definitely more masculine in nature. I always struggled with friendships with other girls because I just felt so...different. most of my close friends since high school have been men. At least 90% of them. And it's not because I don't want to hang out with women – I just can't figure out why my it's so much harder to relate to them. Femininity comes with a lot more social rules, and as an autistic person, I can't handle that. But I also do think women are very pretty and I get nervous, so there's also that.

While I am agender, I also feel genderfluid at the same time – no gender, but I'll perform whatever gender is the most convenient/feels right at the time.

Since I have no gender, any gender is a performance for me.

It felt really good to type this all out. I love the transgender community here so much. Thank you for helping me find myself ❤️

[onyx-got-clowned]

I’m starting to realize how trying to force myself to accept myself as transmasc affected me lol (quick disclaimer, i am NOT trying to invalidate or attack other trans people!)

i had more breakdowns over dysphoria because of being too masculine or feminine, but i brushed it off as me getting used to being masculine.

Being perceived as a dude made me feel happy, don’t get me wrong, but it didn’t feel right either.

Sometimes I’d get lost in thought fighting with myself that i was transmasc, and just adjusting, MONTHS after I’d openly come out as trans to many others.

i didn’t want to come out again or burden others, so i just gaslit myself.

i liked it better how my name could be seen as neutral instead of purely masculine or feminine.

i never felt connected to other transmascs entirely, i felt like i couldn’t relate as much whenever the topic of being super masculine helped them more than anything.

and there were signs that made me go: “ohhhh maybe i am agender”

i literally made my self indulgent link oc nonbinary

i always enjoyed confusing people on what gender i was, ask my parents.

I’ve always drifted towards gender neutral pronouns.

in games with open mic if someone asked what gender i was I’d shrug or mess with them.

I’ve done these for years 😔 idk how i came to conclusion i was transmasc but i feel very comfy as agender now :’3 also! I’ve found that i have not had any dysphoria episodes since coming to terms with myself as agender which is pretty neat

[genderqueerdykes]

I don't understand myself. Like I feel disconnected from gender a lot, though I am often finding myself dreaming and wishing I had been born a woman, I'm Amab. I almost feel like I was Stockholm syndromed' into accepting myself born this way. If that makes sense. Ive always hated the traditional masculine aesthetic and prefer a more female aesthetic. Same goes for cllothing. These days I internally sorta call myself agender, cause I just can't be bothered. Not to mention where I live it's just not safe. Maybe I'm overthinking everything.

It's okay to be confused and to not understand, gender is a very confusing experience and it's not made any easier by how strangers in person can treat us. It's okay that you don't know what your identity is right away

I do understand what you're saying. I'd like to point out that there are very few reasons for you to have forcefully made yourself believe that you should've been born female other than that's how you feel. I do understand hating the gender you were raised as in general, but I do think that if you have such intense feelings, I think they are there for a reason. Again there are very few reasons why you would force yourself to feel that way if at least some of it wasn't true.

I'm glad that you've realized what you do and don't like. I'm glad that you've realized that you don't like being forced into traditional masculine aesthetics and that you'd prefer to look, dress and be feminine. It's definitely okay to call yourself agender and still feel that way and like those things. It's up to you to decide what terms to use, but it would in fact be okay to call yourself a girl to test out the waters, if you feel like that would be something you would enjoy. If not, you are more than welcome to identify as a transfeminine or feminine agender, nonbinary, third gender, or unlabeled person, it's up to you.

Either way, thanks for feeling brave enough to tell us about how you feel. I don't think you're overthinking things, I think questioning these things can be very overwhelming, and you may just need some time to sort it out. I wish you the best of luck in figuring out the right words to express who you are. Take care -K

[andreablog2]

I love when gay men refer to themselves as like a gay almost implying a third category bc tbh in the world of patriarchy all queer people are really in this third category that even the most queerphobic people agree is a separate category from cisheterosexuality. I feel like the expectation of all queer people to fit into binaries of masculine and feminine has caused division amongst lgbt people that should have never have happened. As a trans woman I see myself in gay men and I see myself in trans women/trans men/cis het women/cis lesbians etc and I know a lot just in the way we truly exist in the world and there are margins of privilege of course but it’s not clear cut like there’s plenty of self identified lesbians and gay men who experience far more queerphobia than you know like a person that falls under the trans umbrella bc they identify as non binary and their struggle doesn’t define their experience however in modern era where queerness is becoming more accurately anticipated & defined within people…this idea of like gay men experiencing masculinity in the traditional way or belonging to this socially homogeneous group of men is foolish and same goes for trans women like I am not very open of my past yet plenty of people identify me and know me as trans enough to have unconscious bias and socialize me differently and even if they didn’t I have experienced male socialization tbh in the future everyone is going to experience completely agender socialization and that’s going to suck in its own way but right now I feel like all queer people are really being put into this box of queerness and I have no thoughts on it other than that but it’s happening and it’s interesting to see what’s going to happen.

[happysadyoyo]

can i ask you something? i dont know how to word it without coming off offensive however i am curious as to what trans men think about manhood as a concept. i consider myself to be pro-trans rights but as I've learned more about gender and sex, I've started to interpret male/female binaries as being inherently rape culture compliant (not the individuals who partake in gender/sex as a construct, just the construct itself like as a concept). my question is i understand the whole concept of positive masculinity but also i genuinely cannot come up with any set of qualities that are inherently and only masculine (also have the same problem with feminine qualities). like every man (not just trans, cis too) who wants to deconstruct masculinity ends up sounding a little sexist to me because i just do not know how something like idk "protectiveness" can be seen as only masculine. the way i view gender (and sex) honestly is mostly as a relic of the past but i dont know if this line of thinking is transphobic or not. bcuz i dont want trans people to not exist or not be trans, i welcome it while humanity is in this transitional period but i also think that gender neutrality is/should be the norm. i hope this wasnt offensive or anything, you dont have to respond or anything i just would like to know more i guess and understand better.

Well, luckily I'm able to read things in good faith, regardless of the actual words used. It's hard to discuss things sometimes without coming across as a dolt, especially if you're struggling with a concept as complex as gender identity.

I've been going back and forth on how to reply to this because I could like. Respond with a detailed breakdown but I'm not sure it'll help you, not really.

Because look at how you write. You're coming at this from like this inherent idea that men as the villains. Rape culture is a particular tell, as rape culture focuses on women as victims and minimizes/erases male victims. Meanwhile, since 2008, when I first became truly aware of how often women are victims of assault and harassment, the statistics on male victims have been slowly creeping up to meet female statistics. Rape culture is also a phrase I personally find adjacent to SWERF rhetoric, as they have this idea that all sex work is inherently rape, regardless of the actual autonomy of the women (never the men) in the situation.

You also focus on how masculinity and men deconstructing gender come across as sexist, with little thought to how women are just as sexist when it comes down to it. There are a lot of problems within feminism, and it's something we see clearly as they constantly have to redefine what a woman is as they acknowledge (or refuse to acknowledge) the different experiences of womanhood.

I'm not blaming you for this. Feminism makes dissecting womanhood and villainizing manhood the default for almost all discussion, and there's been a lot of work done to allow for a diverse array of women to exist in the world. Masculinity and manhood though, it's hard to pull it apart from the villainization that's been done to it. Because honestly, it's easier to demonize men than it is to deal with the fact the reality that the true villain is the very societal framework we exist in (capitalism).

I realize I'm probably not making all that much sense right now. But while I largely agree with you that we are heading down the long and arduous path of decoupling the idea of gender entirely from existence, becoming something we may choose for ourselves rather than something given to us at birth, I disagree with how your thought patterns betray your current biases.

Trans men, and indeed men at large, are not a monolith, nor are women or nonbinary people or agender or genderqueer identities. We are all at the faults of whatever framework we approach it from, and largely the group I am part of speaks from a very Western idea of gender. The fun part, though, is deciding what your gender means to you. Which is why I do see myself as a protector, very stereotypical, but I love glitter and silly and goofy bright musicals and magical girl stuff. I don't wear skirts or dresses, but maybe I'll pick a romper. And I work very very hard to see more than just my side of a story and don't try to make a list of "what is wo/man" cause honestly, I don't see the point.

This is my positive masculinity. I wonder what my followers see as theirs.

[thepoetrytheorist]

New Identity Submission: Genderquantum

Hi! My name is Draigìn, and I'd like to talk about my gender identity. I haven't seen anyone else refer to themselves as Genderquantum before, so I think I'm the first one. If you feel like you identify as Genderquantum, feel free to add this label to your endless pile of labels.

Genderquantum is a subset of genderfluidity. I used to identify primarily as genderfluid, but it frustrated me that people would assume my gender was one and not another, and would say "How should I refer to you today?"

Genderquantum is based on the concept of Quantum mechanics, in which partial states may be identified, but identifying one state omits the whole. If you think I am a particle, then I am a wave. If you think I am a wave, then I am a particle. I am all, I am none. My gender fluctuates very quickly between feminine, masculine, and agender, and as such can never accurately be identified at any given time. As such, I am simultaneously male, female, and none. Genderquantum is a form of bigender and multigender. Here's how pronouns work for me: I go by he/him and she/her, but I don't want others to stick with one and use it per day or per occasion or based on my appearance. I invite others to switch out my pronouns as they choose. For example: "Draigìn likes to work on his needlecraft in her freetime." This may or may not be the same for you.

Genderquantum is not the same as Schroedigender, although the two are similar. Genderquantum does not seek to be one gender encompassing many, but rather to encapsulate the shifting feeling of gender and the plurality of gender. Genderquantum identifies the absence as well as presence of gender in our society.

Above is the Genderquantum flag, created by myself. It is a black base with a white helix [or a sine wave and a cosine wave] crossing horizontally. In the center is a white dot with a lavender gradient, surrounded by 9 half-moon like strokes to represent quantum energy shells. Each stroke is a color of the gender fluid flag [pink, purple, blue]

[flannelsandviolets]

google searching "am i butch?" || 001

It starts with an idea, a possibility. Could I be butch? 

I’ve known that I like women ever since I discovered it was possible - that was around the age of 11 or 12. Over the years, I’ve fluctuated between bisexual, pansexual, queer, sapphic, but eventually at age 22 coming to the conclusion that I am, most likely, just a lesbian. 

I’ve also been on a journey with my gender identity - at age 14 I came out as a trans man, and I lived as a trans man for seven years. However, people change over time, and people’s identities can change too. I realized earlier this year that I no longer identified as a trans man, in fact, I didn’t really identify with any gender at all. I started labeling myself as agender. I stopped taking testosterone (for several reasons). 

For several months, I thought about what I wanted to do moving forward. Life would surely be easier if I no longer made my transness visible and public… so after those months of deliberation, I decided to detransition and try to live as a woman. This didn’t last very long. I went into a residential mental health treatment program, and being in a social setting with dozens of my peers quickly made me realize something. I didn’t want to be perceived as a woman, I didn’t want to live as a woman, there was something fundamentally unrelatable about womanhood. But I didn’t want to live as a man either. I am nonbinary, and I wanted to be perceived that way. So I came out again, explaining what I have just explained to you, that I don’t want to try to force myself to live as a woman when I am not one - even if it would be “easier” I would not be happy. 

I’m still very connected to masculinity, even though I am no longer a man. And I’m still very connected to femininity, even though I feel so disconnected from womanhood itself; I was raised female, I was socialized as female, I have spent about two-thirds of my life as female, of course I feel some sort of connection to it. This dichotomy of feeling simultaneously masculine and feminine is pretty damn confusing, and might deserve its own post eventually. But for right now, I am content with knowing I live with a foot in each world. 

That brings us to where I am today. I’m firm in my identity as an agender queer lesbian. I started to learn more about being a lesbian and different identities within the lesbian community, and that led to learning about being butch. At first, I thought I knew what being butch meant - that’s just a masculine lesbian, right? 

Doing some research, especially hearing directly from people who identified as butch, showed me that my view of butchness was very narrow. Being butch is more than just being a masculine lesbian. It’s a gender identity, it’s a feeling. It’s a choice, and simultaneously it’s not a choice - being butch is integral to who you are, it’s not a costume you can take on or off. But choosing to embody that identity, that part is a choice. Is being butch even something I can claim for myself? Or do I have to wait for others to view me in that way, to perceive me as masculine enough to deserve the title? There’s this energy, this feeling, that I am masculine and feminine all at once, I am this weird little creature who doesn’t quite fit in either world. Being butch is about how I present myself, and it’s about how I feel inside. 

I’ve spent so long rejecting the label of “butch” that I never stopped to explore what it could mean for me. “I can’t be butch, I’m a trans man,” or, “I can’t be butch, I like some feminine things.” 

I think being butch can give me a new lens to view my connection to womanhood and femininity. My gender and my sexuality are both so deeply and inherently tied to the experience of womanhood (or lack of it), and trying to describe those experiences in any other words, words that DON’T acknowledge those ties, is simply insufficient. But trying to define myself as a woman is not accurate either, even as a butch woman. I am agender, I am queer, I am sapphic. And I just might be butch too. 

[evillainist]

does anyone else have like, super contradicting gender/sexuality labels? like i call myself a nonbinary transmasc demigirl and a lesbian (long post ahead)

i use transmasc VERY loosely here because i started transitioning at 13, and, in some ways, masculinity is integral to my identity, but i also do not identify as a man at all. i think the best, albeit still confusing, way to describe it is that i identify as somewhat masculine, but not in a man way

i think that part of the reason why i still keep transmasc as part of my labels is because i solely identified as a boy from when i realized i was trans after starting puberty (so at around 11) to when i realized i was nonbinary when i was around 17, and now i feel like i have to keep the transmasc label around for some kind of self (or honestly even social) validation of my transness. the discourse surrounding afab nonbinary people that’s been rapidly increasing recently definitely doesn’t help (for the record, they’re all valid). it’s really hard to accept myself when i see so many people invalidating people who have similar identities to me

my gender is so unstable and constantly shifting, but since i realized i was nonbinary, i’ve been slowly “reclaiming my femininity” for lack of better words. within the past month or so, it’s gotten to the point where i identify most strongly with femininity, but also nothing at all at the same time. being nonbinary, maybe agender, is the core of my identity, but i’m slowly becoming more comfortable with the idea of presenting and identifying as something girl adjacent recently. it feels different now that it’s something i want rather than something that was forced onto me from birth

don’t get me wrong, i do not regret transitioning, and i’m definitely not detransitioning. being trans is an integral part of my identity and that isn’t going away just because i’m finally able to embrace my femininity

me being a lesbian is something i’ve only started to realize and accept recently. i didn’t think it was okay for me to call myself a lesbian even though i’m a feminine-ish identifying person who is only attracted to women and feminine identifying nonbinary people

i hold myself to weird standards compared to everyone else. it’s self-hypocritical of me because i believe that transmasc lesbians are valid, he/him lesbians are valid, and so many other “contradictory” lesbian identities are valid, but me identifying as a lesbian? not valid. i’ve finally started to accept it and embrace it because i AM a lesbian, but there’s still that small part of my brain that’s like “you can’t be a lesbian”

this post is not just me seeking validation (although it would be nice because of how much my brain tries to convince me i’m not valid). i’m just kinda rambling/venting/ranting, whatever you wanna call it.

anyway, tldr; gender and sexuality are fucky. i’m kinda a girl, not in a cis way even though i’m afab. i’m just reclaiming my femininity, and if anyone is even reading this, i just want you to know that you’re valid

[vanillaverses]

I headcanon pv as transmasc but specifically in the ‘I have made exactly 0 effort to transition but I am still absolutely the gender I identify as and shall be referred to as such becauz I know who I am and what I want’ kind of way. like. okay I like to think that his chest *is* naturally quite small and isn’t noticeable under his baggy robes. but also they’re noticeable when he’s just wearing the brown turtleneck thing and he does not give a single Fuck about it. could easily give himself top surgery Does not could dress more masculine Does not. i also like to see his voice as his korean voice over his english one becauz. I like to think this man has not ever touched testosterone in his Entire life. he just doesn’t give a shit and thinking that he doesn’t makes me happy :3 I’m not transmasc but I am genderless/agender(though I prefer using the term genderless to refer to myself) and Very obviously afab irl so. idk he’s not transitioning Neither am I. he’s feminine looking as fuck in every way but everyone still sees him as a man becauz he IS!! and nothing about your body or appearance should dictate your gender <3

also not relevant at all but idk where else to say this so. I like to think pv has no ass this man has negative ass to me. people can give him a big butt I don’t care but to ME. this man’s flat as a board there is no curve there it’s just a straight line