For many people, they start thinking about their gender expression or identity at an early age like adolescence. For me, this started at age 41. I was sitting in my sexuality class, while working toward my counseling degree, when it suddenly dawned on me that this was the time to start looking at all these things that I was afraid to acknowledge. I think I’ve always been scared to consider that I might be different. There is something so safe about just fitting in and being ‘normal’. I honestly don’t like the term normal. I’ve always wore the ‘weird’ label like a badge of honor. And yet, I’ve often hidden in many of my cis gender presenting attributes to protect myself from feeling like an outsider. That’s a hard thing to juggle–wanting to be truly me, while also wanting to feel like I still belong. Maybe that’s the thing, I was wanting to maintain all the old relationships, when I should probably make new ones with ‘my people’. This is something I’m realizing more and more these days. If they cannot accept me, they truly have no place in my life.
Before I get too deep in what it feels like to be queer, I should tell more about my journey and where I am now. I have never felt like a man’s man despite being put in that box by others at times. I remember growing up never really wanting to play sports and felt very uncomfortable being a very physical kid. I still did these things trying to fit and do boy things, but I always liked girls and wanted to spend time with them. I think I suppressed a bit of that from peer pressure, while still having mostly female friends as far back as I can remember. There were also certainly signs that I wanted to be different. I had longer hair in the 5th grade, bleached it blond, and got my ear pierced. I liked doing things that were interesting and cool that often went against societal norms. I never put much thought into how this made me different from cis gendered boys.
I remember being confused for a girl on at least one occassion. This was disorienting–probably out of the fear that surrounded being anything but a ‘man’. I grew up in a time where guys dropped the f*g bomb every time you turned around. That was every boys greatest fear–to be gay. I could not be that. Every guy would want to hurt me and I would turn into an outcast. So, I clinged to notions of being a boy/man by pointing to my musical heroes that were considered badass guys. This normalized it for me. Of course, this was also during a time when there was so little discussion of gender expression or identity. All of us were doing the same thing. I can have long hair and an earring as long as I’m masculine otherwise. I mean, look at Steven Seagal and his ponytail kicking ass.
From that point on, I always had longer hair until I grew out my own ponytail in high school. That felt more me. I kept that for a couple years until I was confronted with my first form of discrimination around my gender expression. I was applying for a job in fast food at 16. The manager said that I had to do something with the ponytail. He made me keep it up in the hat–essentially doing what I could to hide it. I remember feeling weird about it. It felt wrong somehow. But I did not question this as it seemed like this is how the world worked. Actually, later on in my journey with this company, I ended up cutting off my hair to conform more with what they expected me to look like (i.e. what a man should look like). Further, a retail job I got later in life asked me to remove my all my piercings for work, even from my ear. This had that same feeling. It was like they would still give us the job, but we had to meet whatever standard they had for what is ‘normal’. I remember another employee at this same place that had to wear special clothing to cover up tattoos as well.
That last job was probably my turning point toward conforming to cis gendered. I eventually got rid of my piercings as it was a pain to take them in and out for work. As I look back, I also never grew out my hair again. I had a shaved head or short spikey hair through my twenties and early thirties. This part of me seemingly remained dormant until I started to ponder it once again in school.
My sexuality class discussed all the different terms for gender expression and identity. I was pretty ignorant at the time. I had heard of transgender, but I knew little about it. As we were learning the different terms, gender fluid really resonated with me. There was something about the fluidity of gender that really made sense. I knew I did not feel like a traditional male any in sense of the term, but I also did not feel like a woman. I had no gender dysmorphia, but I was excited at the idea of understanding me and expressing myself more again. Over the next couple years I would try on some terms to see how they fit. I started with genderqueer, which really felt right for a while. I thought about non-binary too, but the idea of giving up my maleness did not feel quite right, and when I say male, I refer to my sexuality/pronouns. I identify my sexuality as male because of my biology and I separate out my gender. Therefore, I am okay with being referred to as he/him, but I am also prefertly okay with being referred to as they/them. I think I play with the idea with she/her. That makes sense to me in a safe place with people that ‘get’ me and are clearly not useing as a way to belittle me.
Where I find myself now is gender non-conforming. After a while, I started to realize that at the core, my gender is about me being different. I don’t want to fit some mold of what it means to be a ‘man’ or a ‘woman’. I want to just be me and express that in whatever way feels right to me. Conversely, I also have a side of me that is strongly feminine. That has always been very clear. I have always related so much with girls/women. They talk about what’s important to me–feelings and relationships. And generally things that matter in life. I tend to lean toward compassion, love, and empathy and cannot relate to competition or aggression. I am such a collaborator and connector, which is another reason I went into the world of psychotherapy–all of the work is connected to the parts of humanity I love. Currently, I feel like femboy best represents this part of my gender identity since I do internally lean much closer to a woman than a man. All that being said, I do not attach to identities as I see the human experience as fluid, but terms are helpful in helping people understand you. Right now, the best terms that relate to my experience are gender-nonconforming femboy, while maintaining my male sexuality.