Gender on my Terms

If you’ve been following me for any length of time, you know I’m nonbinary. Gender makes little sense to me as a social construct because, to me, people are people, but the moment I’m perceived as a woman (along with all the assumptions that come with that), I understand how heavily others rely on gender and how much I don’t like it. I would feel like I was in drag against my will when I was forced to dress femininely growing up. Dysphoria hits me hard the moment I have to wear a dress or skirt or put my hair a certain way.

The problem is that my gender is like Goldilocks. Feminine things set off my dysphoria hard, but if I go too far into masculinity, my brain rebels as well. I don’t want facial or body hair beyond what I already have or a deeper masculine voice. I tend to just say I’m agender because I would like to put gender as a social construct in the trash like moldy leftovers. Still, I find myself on the masc side but lightly. Can fop be a gender? I want to wear saturated colors, wear my hair long but pulled back, and occasionally indulge in frothy lace. Wearing a frock coat and breeches like Anne Hathaway in Twelfth Night is gender goals, even now.

As someone who struggles with changes, I have sort of eased into being a little more masc. This has mostly been because gender is complicated, and as I mentioned earlier, I get dysphoria in either direction. I also don’t want to take hormones or have surgery at this point. Instead, I’ve been stepping back and started thinking, what do you already have or do that’s a little masc that you want to make more obvious?

I have always thought my very square, straight shoulders look masculine, so I decided that I would work out my arms and shoulders to make them a little more sturdy. I do not want to be swole as the kids say, but I would like to be stronger and have more defined arms. For the past few weeks, I’ve been working out my arms, back, and shoulders nearly every day, and I’ve been enjoying it. In the past, I’ve struggled to exercise due to my asthma reacting very poorly to cardio despite being on stronger meds, but weight lifting doesn’t bother my asthma or inflammatory issues at all. I’m already seeing a little progress, which has been gratifying. The workouts should also help to strengthen my muscles and help control the hypermobility in my shoulders. In the past, I’ve shied away from other exercise because it’s mostly about weight loss or looking more feminine, which I’m not interested in.

For a while, I had been toying with buying a compression bra or binder to squash down my chest a bit. I put it off because a “real” binder might compress my ribs too much, and sometimes, due to hypermobility, they slide out of place, which is very painful. I ended up buying a compression bra from a trans-affirming company, and it has been really nice. I’ve never really liked my chest because it’s oversized, and when people register its presence, they see it as feminine, which I don’t really want. Squashing them down but not completely removing them has been enough to make me happy. It also makes working out my arms, back, and shoulders much easier. While these changes might seem small, they have made me very happy.

When I think of what my gender means to me or what it feels like, it’s masculine softness. I tend to think of characters like Stede Bonnet from Our Flag Means Death or Lestat from Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles or even Zorro’s brother from Zorro the Gay Blade. I often joke that my gender is “weird little guy” like Gomez Addams or basically any character Nathan Lane has ever played, which amounts to queer and slightly silly. My gender is tender and loving with an edge of morbidity and strangeness (and probably a few startled yelp-screams as they are the cry of the weird little guy).

My partner is also embarking on a gender journey that will probably look different from mine, and I’m very grateful to be along for the ride to support them along the way. As we get closer to the new administration taking over, I want everyone to remember that bodily autonomy extended to gender expression. We should all be allowed to be the people we want to be or feel we are without government interference, and that includes children. I had dysphoria as a tween, even if I didn’t have the words for it, and if I had been able, I would have loved to have gotten hormone blockers to avoid the dysphoria that came with early puberty. I guess I’ll just end this by saying trans rights are human rights, and children deserve the same right to live as themselves as I and my partner do. Please bug your reps and senators to not throw trans people under the bus.