Apologies in advance for the forthcoming wall of text, this is largely new to me and I'm still figuring things out.
- Your gender? Your sexual identity? (Preferred pronouns?) I've recently come to the conclusion I'm some variety of non-binary. I go by him/he exclusively IRL, undecided if I would feel any different about it in online interactions, I guess.
- Your sexual orientation? Attracted to women.
- Where Are You From? US of A
- Where Do You Live? Seattle area
- How Old Are You? Let's just say that for my midlife crisis, I apparently decided I was going to realize I'm non-binary and reconstruct my entire sense of self.
- Favorite Type of Music? Mostly metal, but a lot of female-fronted pop on my phone as well.
- Profession or Career Interest? I currently work in the tech sector. I like it well enough.
- Favorite Video Game(s)? Soulsborne and SRPGs
- What Are Your Hobbies (Other than gaming)? I read/listen to audiobooks. A lot. Think I go through an average of six a month. I like comics, but rarely actually read them, it seems.
So my entire life I've identified as a straight cis male. I unironically like rainbows, unicorns, glitter, and Lisa Frank shit. All my close friends are women, and I'm more comfortable around women than men. For me, that always fell within the bounds of normalcy for a straight cis male. Call it being in touch with my feminine side, call it being secure in my masculinity, whatever. I was a dude, I liked women, therefore the label fit as far as I saw it.
What was
not in the bounds of normalcy for me is that sometimes my internal conception of myself doesn't line up with the physical me. Most of the time this is happening in dreams where I'm a low-femme woman. Big deal, those are just dreams. But sometimes I catch myself thinking of myself in those terms in waking life as well, and I have a hell of a lot harder time dismissing that.
I also sometimes get intensely jealous of women's bodies, even as I'm attracted to them. I will simultaneously want to be them and, ah, be intimate with them, which is a really strange sensation. This also happens on a nonsexual level where I get envious of a woman's hair or figure or attire and wish I could have that look.
Those gender-swap selfie image filters that were all the rage a while back
really did a number on me, and I would constantly download one of the apps and run the filter on various selfies. It was kind of like viewing that internal conception of myself that I mentioned earlier, only it was no longer just imagination. It was what I might look like as a woman. But then I would go and delete it because it made me feel weird and uncomfortable until I would work up the nerve to download it again.
I want to be clear that I don't think there is any meaningful degree of dysphoria here. I'm totally comfortable in my body, and while I have these impulses to want to be a woman, I never want to surrender my male identity. I downright, straight up, like being a guy. These are two states that exist concurrently in my head, I'm not going back and forth between genders and don't feel like I'm living the wrong gender. That made for a lot of cognitive dissonance: I am, with absolute certainty, a straight man. So why would I have these thoughts and feelings? I didn't have an answer and conscientiously avoided trying to think about it.
I think I've been wrestling with this stuff on some level for a very long time. I've lurked LGBTQ+/Trans threads for years, though never actively participating. I mean, why would I? I'm a straight cis straight guy, I wouldn't belong there, right? But I was still always caught up in the orbit of any threads about gender, even though I never had a conscious reason.
eJawa posted
an article in another thread that I found had a lot of truth in it (though I still wouldn't identify myself as trans) and echoes a lot of feelings I had as a teenager around the same period of time. But still, there was denial. I am a guy, I like women, the rest was maybe just a kink or something.
And this part is really fucking stupid, but Sayonara Wild Hearts kind of upended my whole psyche and sense of self.
This transformation sequence where the player character turns into the Fool—who happens to be very similar to that occasional self-image I would have of myself as a woman (minus the superhero accouterments)—it just… it fucking broke something in me. Hard. I identified so completely and utterly with the character so much that the heartache and longing literally hurt. Plus it's a game about lesbian sword dancing on the back of motorcycles at 200 mph, so it was already up my alley. So that was the thing that penetrated the shell of denial and at least got me questioning things, though I was at a loss as to how I would describe a gender identity for myself beyond very broad generalities of "non-binary."
I finally found what I'm almost certain is the answer when I found out that being
demiflux was a thing. It recontextualized
everything for me and immediately gave a kind of relief for being able to put a name to what I had going on. I identify as a straight guy, but I simultaneously identify as varying degrees of female. Sometimes that degree is neutral or agender leaving me with only the male aspect. Other times it can be fairly strong, but I wouldn't go so far as to say I go full bigender. And maybe if I stop trying to run away from or suppress those feelings I might find out that I'm really
am bigender or genderfluid or something, but right now this fits me to a fucking T, regardless of whether or not it is officially recognized as a legitimate gender orientation or whatever.
I am fortunately married to the most loving and understanding woman in the fucking world, and I didn't hesitate to talk to her about all this beyond making sure to do so while no one else was around because I am absolutely not ready to be out of the closet about this with anyone but her, and may very well never be ready. She was and continues to be incredibly supportive about it, but I never really thought it would be otherwise, because she is an amazing and open-minded person. Bizarrely—and maybe a little spookily—she had spent the commute home that very evening wondering how relationships pan out when one or the other partner comes out as trans and ultimately decided that nothing would change if it happened to us because we're still us. And it's true, I'm still me, we're still us, I just have a better understanding of exactly who I am now.
In a lot of ways, I still feel like I'm intruding here. My counting myself as non-binary seems like a technicality or cheat since I still consider the constant, static aspect of my gender identity of being a cis hetero male, and so am arguably still one foot in the conventional gender binary even as I self-proclaim I'm non-binary. I'm also cognizant of the fact that my own trials and tribulations regarding this have absolutely nothing on those who have been persecuted and marginalized by society for their own sexual and gender identity or suffer physical and emotional distress because of it. I could see people who have struggled with this stuff to a far more significant degree viewing me as a poser, and I would be the last person to disabuse them of that perspective, because even I question whether I can rightfully claim a place there.
So. Yeah. That's me.
Hi.
