I’m nearly 21-years-old. Shouldn’t I know by now?
There have been a lot of threads in which I would’ve liked to have participated on these boards over the course of time I’ve lurked here (perhaps two years? Though I’ve only subscribed just this past January), but have avoided doing so because it would have “outed” me. Not as a homosexual. As someone who is physically female.
I do not know if I’m so reluctant to reveal that because I should start introducing myself as Mr. Objection!!, because I’m flooded with feelings of unnecessary happiness when I am “mistaken” for male, or because I am still actually female and am merely ashamed of it due to a deeply rooted misogyny.
While we are on the subject of misogyny and homosexuality: I am acquainted with quite a few intellectual, independent, masculine, heterosexual women, and I certainly admire them. I realize that because I do not try to “pass” as a man physically, people generally tend to perceive me to be a strong intellectual woman as well. While, I’m flattered to be seen as akin to them, at the same time, it often deeply hurts to be reminded that I am physically female and that people perceive me as such.
I use the word “often” in this case, and therein lies the most problematic issue: My gender identity seems to fluctuate based on time and circumstance. There are times in which I know for certain that I am gay man; even questioning it seems ludicrous. I just know. Whether it is a conscious statement of fact or an unconscious slip of thought. (There was a good friend whom I was absolutely enamored by in high school, but knew I wouldn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell with him. In sophomore year of college, after not communicating for nearly two years, I heard from a mutual friend that he had come out as homosexual, and saying “my heart leaped in a pang of hope” is really the only way I can describe what I felt in that moment, until the realization dawned on that that no, no wait, I’m not actually physically male.) It is during these moods that my reflection doesn’t make sense, that I feel compelled to bind my chest and detest my hips, and cannot stand being referred to as “she” or “Ms.”
Then there are other times where I am okay with wearing make up or having long hair and looking “pretty” rather than masculine. Most of the time, this is due to a strong desire to attract some guy I like, but every so often, I do just “want to feel pretty”. And then my mindset will randomly change back to “But I’m male” and I’ll feel a strong dysphoric “This isn’t right” that overwhelms my ability to properly interact socially.
There is also a third gender-related mindset that I often find myself in, and that is one where I am not conscious of my gender. And, as how Spanish takes all the Neuter words in Latin and makes them Masculine, when I am forced to consider my gender in this third mindset, I will default to masculine, but am not distressed when I am referred to using female pronouns.
If I could just permanently stay in one of these mindsets, the issue could be resolved by permanently altering my appearance to that of the preferred sex, but this fluctuation prevents me from making a decision. So I could just identify as genderqueer, but that still doesn’t alleviate how much it hurts to be referred to as female during the times I feel that I am not.
To help clarify (or perhaps further complicate) the situation, I do not believe I’ve always had these three gender identities in conflicts with one another. Memories of my early childhood are few and far between, but the second memory I ever had that I can recall is of my four-year-old self looking up at my father and wanting to be “strong and tall like him” not realizing that could never happen. I think after that, ever since I was made aware that I was a girl, I had been actively trying to emphasize the differences between myself and my older brother*, through gender appearance and activities and through other means as well (I may have purposely done very poorly and acted out in elementary school to prove I wasn’t a genius like him). This hyper-feminine behavior and interests lasted until I was around 10, when my brother left home for college. I remember thinking the day he left that I had to replace him in my parents’ eyes so they wouldn’t be sad. From then until I myself left for college, I acted and dressed like and considered myself a boy geek (though I never told anyone I thought of myself as male, for fear of ridicule), as if I took it upon myself to become my brother. In college, I met some friends who, though they considered me asexual, managed to get through to me that sometimes it is okay to be a girl, and I had my first ever female teacher that I could identify with (all the ones in high school who had made it through to me had been male). So now, it is okay to be female, sometimes, except when it’s not, which is most of the time. :smack:
I suppose it would also be useful to point out the gender structure of my family. I was (not intentionally) raised to believe that intelligence is the most important thing about a person. My brother is a genius. My father is certainly a very intelligent man always striving to learn more about the world. My mother… does not consider intelligence to be terribly important. She seems to consider knowledge as a means to get a better job, and therefore support yourself better, but knowledge for the sake of knowledge is a foreign concept to her. We often had a nanny, who was always an older woman of foreign heritage. These nannies never came across as very intelligent to me as a child due to a language barrier. I assume through this and other influences, I came to believe that being rational and intelligent were masculine traits (obviously, I know that to be false now, but probably still feel that way a little unconsciously), so, if I considered myself as such, it made sense that I was male.
/rant
There are several women on this board who have revealed that they were born male-bodied, but I am unaware of the number of men who post here who are female-bodied. I seem to vaguely recall a thread with such a query perhaps three or four months ago with little to no response. I believe there was one person who identified as genderqueer. So I ask all those here, whether you are transgendered or born with the correct genitalia, when and how did you know you were what you are?
(I apologize if my manner of speaking or usage of quotation marks around certain terminology offends anyone. I do not mean to marginalize anyone else’s way of life.)
*He is also on these boards and may happen upon this thread. My perceptions of you as a child were not well-founded, and my perceptions of your childhood today are perhaps not entirely accurate due to this.
(Now if only I could figure out what was right…)