Genderqueer

Visibility and Representation

VISIBILITY

I define visibility as feeling seen by those around you, consciously or unconsciously. This can be specific to a particular aspect of your identity or a recognition of the complexity and intersectionality of different parts of your identity.

Visibility is also being recognized by a stranger as belonging to the same group giving a sense of solidarity and community. Being visible as a queer person can give unspoken support for someone in the closet who may be struggling. This can be done using symbols, colours, flags, or expression styles.

Initially, as a gay person, I used rainbows for visibility. Then, after Jake and I started dating (before Jake’s transition), I was much more visible as being queer by being part of a gay couple and talking about my wife. When Jake transitioned I loss this visibility because I am now seen as part of a straight couple and I talk about my husband. I struggled with this loss of visibility because it felt like a loss of identity. Once I recognized it as a visibility issue I went back to my previous habits of using rainbow symbols and talking about the queer aspects of my identity more openly. It took a bit of work to find ways of doing this that didn’t out Jake as trans but it’s definitely possible.

More recently, I’ve wanted to be visible as genderqueer or nonbinary. This is still fairly new and since I’m not ready to be as open about it with everyone in my life I have to rely on symbols/flags that other genderqueer people will recognize or changing my appearance such as cutting my hair short. More on this to come.

REPRESENTATION

I think of representation as seeing yourself in media, or at least seeing realistic portrayals of a particular aspect of your identity. Often, appropriate representation isn’t spontaneously available and I have searched for it online.

As with visibility, the representation I feel connected to has shifted over time, through Jake’s transition and into my own gender exploration process. Initially, lesbian role models spoke to me the most, then trans masculine role models while I was trying to understand Jake’s identity and experiences, and now, nonbinary and genderqueer role models are what I connect with the most.

I have found both visibility and representation to be extremely important to me, especially with aspects of my identity that are typically invisible. Do you find visibility and/or representation important? How has your need for and type of visibility and representation changed as your identity has evolved? Leave a comment below!

Experimenting with My Name and Pronouns

I recently went on a vacation with my husband where I was attending a conference and was able to pick the name and pronouns that would appear on my ID badge. My husband asked if I wanted to use my male name, Ray, and they/them pronouns as an experiment to see how it felt. After some thought and a couple of conversations with trusted friends I decided to go for it.

My gender identity includes a female component which I was assigned at birth (named Meaghan) and a male component which I began to experience in the middle of grade 10 (named Ray). I am Meaghan in my everyday life and for a long time kept the name Ray and that part of my identity hidden. Since my husband began his transition from female to male I have been exploring my own gender more. (More on my own story here, my exploration process here, and my identity labels here).

Lately, I have begun using the name Ray and using neutral pronouns among other queer/gender non-conforming friends. This group of people are generally better at adjusting names and pronouns because they’ve had more practice and are more flexible in their thinking about identity. This allows me to express the part of myself that generally feels hidden or invisible to society. It has helped me feel more seen, more whole, and more authentic with a lot less fear and judgment.

The first few times I tried this were incredibly nerve-wracking. What would people say? Would they make mistakes? Would they correct themselves? Would I have to correct them? How would I feel? Would I get weird looks from the people around us? As it turned out, my friends were great and no-one around us seemed to notice. Maybe they assumed that by Ray I really meant Rae as in short for Rachael but who cares. It felt awesome.

When my husband was at the beginning of his transition and was trying to find a name that fit we went through a similar process of testing different names. We quickly figured out that when you’re only two people hanging out with each other you rarely use each other’s first name. So we did a trial period while we were on vacation and were more likely to be introducing ourselves to people or talking to each other from a distance. Turns out when the vacation is a camping trip where you are trying to avoid human contact this also doesn’t work very well. But it did give us an extended period of time when we forced ourselves to think of my husband using different names and in the end did help him settle on one. (More on my husband’s transition in Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3).

My situation was slightly different. When I first began to experience having a male identity it included the name Ray right from the beginning. So I didn’t have to look for a name or test a few out and narrow it down. I’m also not transitioning to using that name at all times instead of my female one. I want to be able to use either name depending on the situation and how I feel at the time. Ideally, I’d be using each name 50% of the time but I don’t think that is feasible, at least not yet.

So when my husband suggested I opt for using the name Ray and using neutral pronouns for the entire week at the conference I decided to go for it.

I wasn’t sure how it would feel to hear myself be referred to by that name all the time. What if it felt just as uncomfortable because I wasn’t hearing my female name anymore? What if I got weird looks or comments? What if it was just such an intense experience that it was distracting or exhausting?

None of this happened. It was awesome.

Typically when you change your name people make a lot of mistakes because they have known you by a different name previously. And if you’re just testing out a name and ask them to switch back and forth it’s even less likely to work. Since I was introducing myself to the people at the conference for the first time and I was wearing a name badge with my name right on it this didn’t happen. They got it right the whole time because they had no other name to call me.

The pronouns were a different story. People still defaulted to female pronouns even though I had ‘they/them’ printed below my name on my badge. I wasn’t the only one at the conference that used neutral pronouns. And it was standard that everyone had their pronouns printed on their badge. So in general the conference was very proactive and supportive. But still, people struggled to wrap their heads around using they/them. When this became evident on the first day I changed my expectations from ‘a chance for me to feel seen and live authentically for a week’ to ‘a chance for people around me to be exposed to they/them pronouns and have a chance to practice with them’. This reframing helped decrease the frustration, disappointment, and dysphoria immensely.

The whole experience also gave my husband a chance to practice using the name Ray and they/them pronouns when referring to me. I know he’s nervous about struggling with this, especially because I’m not switching 100% and will potentially be asking him to switch back and forth in different situations. I don’t know how to make this easier for him but I’m sure we’ll figure it out as we go along.

I highly recommend testing out names and pronouns on vacations or isolated opportunities such as social groups, camp, or conferences where you are meeting people for the first time that you are less likely to interact with after the fact. As it turned out, I have kept in touch with a lot of the people I met and therefore have had to re-introduce myself using my female name but hopefully, since they were primed to think of my as Ray first, they will see me as a combination of the two.

Have you experimented with a different name or different pronouns? How did the experience work out for you? Have you ever been asked by someone else to use a different name or different pronouns? What was difficult about this and what made it easier? Tell me your story in the comments below!

My Physical vs Social Sense of Gender

My physical sense of my gender and my social sense of my gender fluctuate separately but can line up at times (here is my post about how I figured this out and tools I used to explore it). Here, I will describe what I mean by physical and social gender, what it feels like when my physical and social sense of gender match or differ in various places on the spectrum, and what strategies I use to manage dysphoria in each situation.

PHYSICAL GENDER

This is based on how comfortable I am in my body as a female-assigned person. If my body feels completely right for me and I’m happy to show off my curves my physical gender is female. If I’m mildly uncomfortable with my curves but don’t necessarily feel like I should have a completely flat chest I’m closer to neutral. If I’m really uncomfortable and wouldn’t want to go out of the house without a binder on my physical gender is male. There are other physical aspects that play into this but shape and chest are the easiest to describe.

SOCIAL GENDER

This includes how various aspects of interacting with other people and being in public spaces feel such as pronouns, gendered language, bathrooms, social interactions, etc. What pronouns feel most comfortable on a given day is a big clue where my social gender sits (usually they/them but often she/her don’t bother me much). Often female gendered language (ma’am, ladies, girl) bothers me more than female pronouns but the days when I would prefer the equivalent male gendered terms are the days I’m likely socially male.

PHYSICALLY FEMALE, SOCIALLY FEMALE

Indicators:
- Minimal dysphoria, physical or social
Effects:
- Generally more at ease, more comfortable
- More likely to socialize
- Causes a feeling of invisibility or like I have to justify my queerness
Strategies:
- Comfortable wearing name tag at work
- Comfortable wearing bras and female clothes
- Will make sure queer symbols are visible
- Wear a piece of masculine jewelry to remind myself/express my masculine side but mostly female jewelry
- hair up nice or down
Personal Reminders:
- Enjoy the comfort
- No amount of femininity invalidates my queer or genderqueer identity

PHYSICALLY FEMALE, SOCIALLY NEUTRAL TO MALE

Indicators:
- Mild physical dysphoria but only when I’m putting on clothes to leave the house and picturing how people will see me
- Internal cringes relating to female spaces or language
Effects:
- Discomfort in social situations leading to fast social burnout and lots of recovery time required
- Strange feeling of needing to wear a binder even though I am perfectly fine with my body when I’m on my own
- Frustration at how people can’t just know that I’m a guy in a female body and be fine with that
Strategies:
- Wear tight sports bra or binder
- Masculine presentation including hair, accessories, and clothing
- ‘Forget’ to wear my name tag at work
- Avoid gendered spaces/bathrooms
- Minimize social interaction at work
- Spend more time alone, in nature, with my husband, or with queer friends who refer to me as Ray and use they/them pronouns
- Converse/interact in more masculine ways
Personal Reminders:
- I’m a female-bodied man
- Think of myself as Ray

PHYSICALLY NEUTRAL TO MALE, SOCIALLY FEMALE

Indicators:
- Physical dysphoria even when I’m alone
- Minimal discomfort with female pronouns or female spaces
Effects:
- Want to feel masculine but interact in ways that appear feminine
- Socially comfortable
- Difficulty maintaining focus, learning new things, or remembering information due to the distraction of constant dysphoria
Strategies:
- Avoid mirrors unless clothed
- Wear binder, baggier clothes, and darker/more neutral colours especially for tops
- Lift weights
- Move and posture in masculine ways but interact and converse in more feminine ways
- Comfortable wearing name tag
- Avoid multitasking
- Write down all new information so I don’t have to retain it
Personal Reminders:
- Acknowledge that I am Ray on the inside even if I’m comfortable being Meaghan on the outside
- I’m a masculine woman

PHYSICALLY NEUTRAL TO MALE, SOCIALLY NEUTRAL TO MALE

Indicators:
- Physical and social dysphoria whether I’m alone or going out
Effects:
- Want to be seen as male and feel physically male
- Difficulty maintaining focus, learning new things, or remembering information due to the distraction of constant dysphoria
- Discomfort in social situations leading to fast social burnout and lots of recovery time required
- Strong feeling of invisibility
- Lots of cringing with female language, pronouns, interactions, and spaces
Strategies:
- Wear binder and masculine clothing and accessories
- Don’t wear name tag
- Avoid gendered spaces
- Workout
- Spend time with queer friends
- Listen to trans podcasts/watch trans youtube videos
- Use self-care toolkit and listen to self-care playlist
- Talk to my husband/commiserate
Personal Reminders:
- Today is just a male day
- I know I’m Ray even if no-one else does

I grouped neutral and male together because I am AFAB so neutral feels the same as male but less intense because it is still towards the ‘male side’ of my physical and social baseline of female.

Do your physical sense of your gender and social sense of your gender fluctuate separately? Do you have similar or different experiences to the ones I describe above? What strategies do you use to manage social or physical dysphoria and make yourself more comfortable? Leave me a comment below!

How I Conceptualize Non-Binary Genders

I’d like to explain a system for understanding non-binary genders that has really helped me make sense of myself and other gender non-conforming people. This system is only discussing gender which is a separate concept from sex. I treat gender as the internal sense of who someone is in relation to society’s views of the binary genders or the assigned gender based on their sex assigned at birth. I am also not talking about gender expression – how a person presents them-self to the world, only how they feel internally.

Typically in mainstream western society there are two accepted genders that match the two accepted sexes – male and female. This is what we consider to be the gender binary. So, when we are referring to anyone that doesn’t feel strictly male or strictly female, we can use the term non-binary or gender non-conforming. Not everyone will personally identify with these labels or use them for themselves but I will use them as a general category for the sake of this discussion.

So, rather than thinking of people as either male or female with no other options, I think of gender as a spectrum from male to female with ‘neutral’ at the middle. This allows for a sense of ‘femaleness’ or ‘maleness’ in any percentage that adds up to 100. But what if a person’s gender doesn’t feel part female and part male? What if they feels neither female nor male? Or fully female and fully male at the same time? These questions require a way to show ‘both’ and ‘neither’. I used to think of it as male to female on the x-axis with neutral in the middle and neither to both on the y-axis, crossing at the middle. When I tried to map some of the genders onto it I found it difficult or ambiguous. So I went searching for a better graphic and found this one:

It still has the ability to represent all the same things but with a lot less ambiguity or redundancy. I also like how it doesn’t represent male and female as opposite but on two completely separate axes.

There are infinite ways to represent gender on this chart. People with a static or consistent gender would place a dot at the spot where they sit. You can see some of them written on the chart – female, male, agender. Demi-boy would sit somewhere between agender and male, demi-girl between agender and female, gender neutral somewhere around the center of the chart.

People with a fluctuating sense of gender could outline or shade in the area that applies to them. Here is how I would represent myself at this point in my discovery process:

Genderqueer Spectrum — My Gender on the Spectrum

I have two stable components to my gender – one halfway between female and neutral and one halfway between male and neutral (represented by the dots). This is the core of my gender but my day to day experience of it is more like the second chart. When I combine two genders into one person one will be more dominant at a given time (represented by the outlined area).

Other examples:

Male to Demi-boy

Gender Spectrum demi-boy — Male to Demi-boy

Bigender with a stable female component and a fluctuating neutral to agender component

As you can see, gender can be infinitely complex and variable. Some of these genders could be represented in a few different ways. Some genders such as third genders may not fit anywhere on this diagram. But it helped me understand my own gender and maybe it will help you as well.

The best thing to do when meeting someone who identifies as non-binary is to use their preferred name and pronouns, and, if you have a more personal connection, ask them how they experience their gender. If you have never felt at odds with your own gender or how your gender is perceived by society you may not be able to viscerally understand how they feel but respecting their pronouns and giving them the opportunity to explain their identity to you in their own words goes a long way to earning their trust and showing your respect and support.

Did this change how you think about gender? Tell me what you think in the comments!

How would your gender look on this diagram? Draw your own representation and post it in the comments below with the labels you use or an explanation!

The Labels I Use And Why

Gay

I use this as a gender neutral term for homosexual. However, it is still a comparison of my gender to my partner’s and if society gets my gender wrong then they’re also going to assume I’m interested in people who do not match my partner (more on this here). This was a great label before I started questioning my gender and before my husband transitioned but has become somewhat problematic for society to understand since then.

Neutrosexual

This is a term I have made up (I think). It follows the same idea as androsexual (male-attracted) and gynesexual (female-attracted) which leave the person’s gender out of it and just specify who they’re attracted to. Neither of those work for me because I’m attracted to people who fall closer to the middle of the spectrum so I prefer neutrosexual. That way, if society still puts me in the female box, at least they’ll understand who I’m attracted to (once I explain the label).

Queer

A nice all-encompassing label. It can be misunderstood by older generations that weren’t part of the reclaiming process and also lacks the specificity I like from labels but has served me well. It can encompass sexuality and gender which is nice but I find that people assume it’s only referring to your sexuality until you specify. Thus:

Fairly self-explanatory. All encompassing term similar to queer but specifying gender! Tends to represent people with a fluctuating sense of gender (which works for me) though doesn’t have to. Comes with its own flag of lavender, white, and green which also happened to be my wedding colours so I have strong positive associations with it (thus the name of the blog).

Gender neutral

This describes my day-to-day experience and expression of my gender the best. Though I do have both a male and female gender they balance out fairly evenly which lands me in the middle most of the time.

co-gender

This is the most accurate term for my gender but is a fairly obscure one. It describes someone who has two or more genders that exist in harmony with each other (such as co-existing or co-habiting). I have read descriptions of people’s experiences of being bi-gender or tri-gender where it feels like there is a gender war going on inside them all the time and they can fluctuate wildly day-to-day or even hour to hour. This does not match my experience at all so although ‘bi-gender’ technically describes me I prefer co-gender. Some people include this in their name for example Meaghan co Ray. Because of the ‘existing in harmony’ aspect it has a spiritual connotation which also matches my experience of my gender. For a long time the only label that I had heard that worked for me was Two-Spirit but as I am not Indigenous I cannot use that label publicly. Eventually I found co-gender which is a good substitute.

non-binary

I don’t mind using this term as an umbrella term to differentiate from binary experiences but as my sense of gender still falls on the binary spectrum I kind of feel like I am extra binary – both of the genders. I also generally avoid labels that describe the absence of something rather than identifying the presence or experience of something else. So non-binary doesn’t specifically resonate with me as a label but I’m fine with saying that I fall under that umbrella if that is the label that society ends up using for all gender non-conforming people.

So there you have it. At the most specific I am a co-gender neutrosexual (which sounds a bit bizarre) but I generally go by genderqueer and gay.

What are your labels? How did you find the labels that fit you? Are the labels that you use for yourself different from the ones you would communicate to others? Does society understand your labels or do people generally have a different definition than the one you use? Tell me your story in the comments below!

My Experiences of Gender Dysphoria and Euphoria

Personal Experiences

I have struggled to write this post because it is so intensely personal but I think it’s important for people to understand what dysphoria feels like. Many trans people talk about how their body has always felt wrong or as soon as they could talk they were voicing that they wanted to be the other binary gender. While dysphoria can present in this way, kind of like a big flashing sign, for me it is a lot more subtle and fluid.

For me, dysphoria feels like wearing a piece of clothing that doesn’t fit. You feel like you keep having to adjust it but no matter how you try it never sits right. It is a vague sense of wrongness. Like if I was a puzzle most of the pieces fit together but there are a few that sit slightly askew and I keep fiddling with them throughout the day to get them to fit. It’s irritating, annoying, frustrating, distracting, and confusing. It is also what I use to show me who I am which gives me a way to frame it in a positive way.

When I’m in an environment or around people who know who I am and are gender affirming regardless of how I’m presenting I get a feeling of ‘rightness’ or gender euphoria. This also happens when I put on clothes and look in the mirror and see a body shape that matches what’s in my head. The dysphoria is gone and because it is so uncomfortable when it’s there, the lack of discomfort feels amazing. These are experiences that cis people have all the time without realizing it because they’ve never felt the discomfort related to gender.

My dysphoria fluctuates day to day. Some days it’s barely noticeable and some days I’m doing everything I can to manage it and it’s still so distracting I have trouble getting through my day. Most of the time it sits at the level of a constant itch that you can’t quite track down. What things are causing dysphoria also fluctuates for me. Some days it is purely physical, some days it is purely social and my body feels fine. Most of the time it is a mix of the two. Separating these out has helped me find appropriate management strategies and allows me to cope much better and live more authentically.

Physical Dysphoria and Euphoria

Physical dysphoria is all those feelings that are centered on a part of my body. For me, this is typically my chest. Most of the time, I picture the shape of my chest being halfway between flat and curved. Some days it feels like it should be perfectly flat but more often I’ll have days where it feels normal as it is. I tend to feel more comfortable in clothing that doesn’t draw attention to my chest. So when my internal sense of what my chest should look like is about halfway flat I will wear a chest binder and that takes away most or all of the dysphoria.

I sometimes feel uncomfortable the shape of my body (curves, hips, thighs) for gender specific reasons ie because of how they are feminine, not because of my weight or size specifically. I generally wear clothes that are baggier or will hang straight down and avoid mirrors when I’m not dressed.

Things that I don’t feel dysphoric about that some people do: my lack of facial hair, size of hands and feet, body hair, or below the belt region.

Social Dysphoria and Euphoria

I generally experience social dysphoria when I’m feeling more male which feels at odds with how society sees me – female. I also experience certain aspects of social dysphoria when I start to have a feeling of invisibility due to no gender euphoria for more than a week.

The things that at times make me feel like I am at odds with how I’m being interacted with are gendered words such as ladies, ma’am, girl (as in ‘hey, girl!), my name, and female pronouns. Female gendered words and titles almost always feel wrong though I’m not sure if male gendered words would feel any better. Generally neutral words most consistently feel the best. Sometimes my name will feel too feminine. Unfortunately my job requires me to wear a name tag and introduce myself repeatedly throughout the day so the best I can do to alleviate this is ‘forget’ to wear my name tag.

Occasionally, female pronouns feel wrong though, again, I’m not sure male pronouns would feel any better on those days. As with the gendered words, neutral pronouns most consistently feel the best. So far I do not feel the need to use neutral pronouns at all times or change my name because my gender fluctuates to the female side enough that the hassle doesn’t feel worth it. I am open to the possibility of doing this in the future if that changes. I can also understand how, for some people, it would be necessary.

Wrap Up

As you can see, dysphoria is generally an uncomfortable experience which takes considerable effort to alleviate to the point of experiencing glimpses of euphoria. The strategies I use to manage dysphoria vary based on where my physical and social sense of my gender sit on the male to female spectrum. I will have a full discussion of this in a future post.

Even when my dysphoria is minimal it is still there at least a small amount and the fluctuations also can be frustrating and destabilizing. This takes a mental and emotional toll and can lead to burnout and difficulty coping with other life stressors. I will also talk about this more in a future post and what strategies I use to keep myself feeling stable.

I hope this description of my experiences helps you understand what dysphoria can feel like or helps give you the words you need to explain your experiences to the people in your life.

What are your experiences of dysphoria? How do you describe it to people who are trying to understand? Does anything here raise other questions you’d like to ask me? Leave a comment below!

My Initial Gender Exploration Process

WHAT I ALREADY KNEW

I am both male and female which leads to a fluctuating experience of gender centered at the middle of the spectrum
The label ‘non-binary’ doesn’t particularly fit because it’s more like I’m dual-binary
My physical sense of my gender and my social sense of my gender can be different from each other
I experience both physical and social dysphoria but don’t know in what ways or how to manage them
I also have difficulty with my queerness feeling invisible but don’t feel ready to ‘come out’ as something other than cis (one of the biggest reasons why I started this blog)

WHAT I WAS TRYING TO FIGURE OUT

How far I actually fluctuate in either direction
What specifically causes my dysphoria
How to manage fluctuating physical and social dysphoria so I minimize the negative effects by feeling more comfortable in my skin and environment and therefore more authentic
How to alter my presentation in ways I’m comfortable with while feeling male or female but also that will be noticeable to the people I see every day so it will influence their interactions with me
Whether I will need to transition socially or medically in the future

TOOLS I USED

Gender Tracker

I created a gender tracker in my bullet journal that has a scale from 5 female to 0 (neutral) to 5 male. Each day I rated my physical feelings about my gender and my social feelings about my gender on this scale. The sense of my gender was based on a combination of what things made me feel dysphoric (feeling wrong for gender reasons) and what things made me feel euphoric (feeling right for gender reasons). I filled it in daily for a month and a half which gave me a good sense of how much I fluctuate (not as much as I thought), how these fluctuations related to other things going on in my life (most obvious influence was my menstrual cycle – of course), and how my sense of gender related to my mood (a couple very specific and useful correlations). I haven’t continued to track it objectively since then but I do use the same system in my head on a nearly daily basis and can now easily identify when my bad mood is related to dysphoria or when a shift in gender might happen.

You and Your Gender Identity: A guide to discovery

by Dara Hoffman-Fox

This is a step by step self-help style book that takes you through three broad stages: Preparation, Reflection, and Exploration. It combines advice and self-reflection questions/activities in a work book style layout. I started at the beginning of the book and worked through the sections that resonated with me and skipped sections that didn’t feel like they applied. I kept my notes in a journal specifically for this stuff so that I wouldn’t be afraid to write down my thoughts for fear that someone would see them in my everyday journal. The sections I found the most helpful were:

Fears
Positive Approach
Gender Questionnaire
Getting to Know Yourself Creative Prompts
Physical Discomfort
Social Discomfort
Exploration Ideas and Process

If any of these sound like they would be helpful for you I would recommend you get the book and work through it! It gave me a guideline so I no longer felt like I was floating in the middle of nowhere with lots of questions and no way to find answers.

Journal

Even before consciously starting my gender exploration process I started using a bullet journal to keep myself organized, track my personal habits and mood, and have somewhere to write down my thoughts and feelings. I found this very helpful during the later stages of my husband’s transition when all the stress and frustration had built up to burnout level. I have continued to use it since then and often journal about gender-based observations, experiences, and stressors. Mental and emotional wellness is difficult to maintain in the face of daily dysphoria. This journal gives me somewhere to put down my thoughts and feelings to help me process them, gives me a creative outlet, and keeps me organized so I don’t have to keep schedule or to-do list in my head.

Self-care Toolkit

Another idea from Dara Hoffman-Fox’s book that I talked about above. This is a physical box of whatever size you need to hold everything that goes in it. Mine is fairly small and I keep it at work as that is where I generally experience the most burnout type symptoms. It includes reminders for self-care activities and positive statements and sensory objects that will either override a negative mental or emotional state and give you something else to focus on or provide a calming and grounding effect. Mine includes:

Reminders for self-care activities that help me such as music playlists and phrases that I can use as a mantra
Scents that I find grounding or calming (sandalwood, cedar)
Tastes that are strong and distracting (mint, cinnamon) or enjoyable and comforting (chocolate)
Tactile objects that fit in my pocket and can be played with as a distraction or for calming effect (soft leather, worry stone, carved animal, chainmaille)

Everyone’s toolkit will be different. I put it together about a month ago and have used it about 3 times since but just knowing it’s there if I need it has been a big comfort.

DAILY PROCESS

When I get up in the morning I check in with my body to see where my physical dysphoria is at. When I’m getting dressed I picture myself at work and get a sense of how I want people to see me/interact with me which hints at where my social dysphoria is at. The clothes I choose (including a binder) used to be the hardest part of my day because they relate to both physical and social dysphoria and if one is female and the other is male it can be difficult. I have gotten considerably better at knowing when a binder will be helpful and what clothes I will be comfortable in since I started the more objective gender discovery process. I pick accessories to balance out my gender presentation. If the clothing I picked to feel comfortable is more masculine I will choose neutral or feminine accessories and vice versa. Throughout the day I check in with myself and alter my appearance as needed – put my hair up or take it down, take my name tag off or put it back on, engage in self-care activities as needed.

This post goes into more detail about what types of dysphoria I experience, what it feels like to have different male and female combinations of physical and social sense of gender, and specific strategies I use to feel comfortable with each version of my gender.

What do/did you use to discover or explore your gender? What parts of my process are similar or different to your own? Is there anything that I used that you might find useful or want to know more about? Let me know in the comments!

Differences in AFAB and AMAB Cross-Gender Exploration and Transition

Note: Since writing this post I have learned that the use of AMAB and AFAB to categorize people, especially nonbinary people, is exclusionary, reductive, and often not helpful in describing experiences in an accessible way. I am working to stop using these terms. I have chosen to leave this post up for now. If you feel strongly about what is written here please leave a comment or send me an email. I appreciate your input.

Historically in society the default has generally been masculine. This is slowly changing but is still true in a lot of ways. One of the main ways this is brought to my attention on a regular basis is that it is deemed appropriate for women to present in a more masculine way but it is not ok for men to present in a feminine way. The ‘androgynous ideal’ is often seen as someone with short hair and a flat chest both of which are typically masculine aspects of appearance.

AFAB people

exploring your masculinity or trying to decrease your femininity

Pros

You can explore your gender and presentation without having to justify it as much.
Cis women who prefer an androgynous or masculine presentation are fairly easily accepted by society.

Cons

Your efforts to express a more masculine or less feminine gender will be seen as changes to your presentation only and will not necessarily be seen as a reflection of your gender. Therefore, people will not necessarily adjust the language they apply to you or your gender category until you explicitly come out.
You may have to over-masculinize to feel like it is having an impact on how people see and interact with you.

As an AFAB person exploring my mostly neutral but somewhat fluctuating gender and trying to present more masculine at times to reflect that, this has definitely been my experience.

AMAB people

exploring your femininity or trying to decrease your masculinity

Pros

Once you are ready to come out it will only take a few minor changes in your presentation for society to start questioning your gender and applying new language to you.
You will not need to overly-feminize (unless you want to) in order for society to take notice.

Cons

It is very difficult for you to explore your gender without society noticing and potentially putting yourself in a dangerous situation
Cis men who want to explore or express their femininity have difficulty doing so without having their gender identity questioned.

This leads to AFAB people having difficulty gaining male privilege because they are still deemed female no matter how masculine they present and AMAB people losing male privilege very easily as soon as they present slightly feminine.

For those people who are interested in undergoing medical transition there are distinct differences in experience with certain aspects of transition due to society’s specifications of how they identify someone as female or male at a glance.

AFAB people

attempting to be read by society as male

Pros

Male puberty overrides female puberty so taking Testosterone results in slow but effective changes to allow you to ‘pass’ as male fairly easily (voice lowering, growing facial hair, building muscle, body fat redistribution).

Cons

Producing the appearance of a flat chest is very difficult either by wearing a binder which is uncomfortable at best and injuring at worst, or surgery which has a difficult recovery and leaves obvious scars.
Surgery to relieve dysphoria associated with genitalia or provide a sense of physical euphoria or completeness has a high rate of complication and may require an extensive skin graft again resulting in visible scarring while providing minimal benefit for sexual function.

AMAB People

attempting to be read by society as female

Pros

Producing the appearance of breasts is fairly easy, either with breast forms and a bra or through a well refined surgery for breast augmentation if hormones do not produce the desired effect.
Surgery to relieve dysphoria associated with genitalia or provide a sense of physical euphoria or completeness, while still having a fairly high risk of complication, also is highly effective.

Cons

Because male puberty trumps female puberty, starting Estrogen after completing male puberty does not reverse the effects (facial and body hair continues to grow, voice remains lower) and though some breast tissue may develop, it is not always enough to provide the appearance of a typically female chest.

Caveat: The pros/cons related to hormone replacement therapy (HRT) will differ if you’re on hormone blockers prior to the start of puberty.

This all results in trans men ‘passing’ more easily but potentially having ongoing physical dysphoria or visible scarring as a result of surgery and trans women having difficulty ‘passing’ but having effective surgical options if desired.

These are my own observations during my husband’s transition from female to male, my experiences as an AFAB genderqueer person, and listening to other trans people’s experiences. If your experiences match or differ from these observations please leave a comment below!

My Story So Far

Background

I grew up in a liberal family in downtown Toronto. I was dressed in practical clothes that I could play around in outside – overalls, jeans, shorts and t-shirts, running shoes. I was surrounded by people of all types. I had a couple close family members who were gay and who had partners that were accepted as members of the family.

I am fairly introverted and luckily, so is most of my immediate family so I was raised in an introvert-friendly environment which helped me develop self-confidence. I don’t know whether it is my introversion or just my personality but I tend to figure myself out using introspection rather than trial and error type experiences. This is probably why I was a bit of a late bloomer, sexually speaking.

Sexuality

Throughout junior high and into the beginning of high school, as my teenage hormones started to make themselves known, I realized I was more interested in the girls around me than the boys. This was partly an innate sexual experience but I do remember thinking about what personality traits I liked in other people and discovered that the females around me had more of these traits.

So at some point in grade 9 I told my mom that I knew I liked girls but I wasn’t sure whether or not I liked boys. She asked me a couple of questions to help me figure it out and I came back a couple of weeks later to tell her I didn’t think I liked boys. This is how I came out to my family. I was also out at school around the same time.

The only time I remember being in the closet was when I went to undergrad and wanted to see what my dorm-mates were like before coming out. That lasted all of two weeks. I couldn’t stand it.

As far as I could tell I had three labels to choose from – queer (nice all-encompassing label but misunderstood by older generations that weren’t part of the reclaiming process and lacking the specificity I wanted), gay (general term for homosexual but usually applied to men), or lesbian (women who like women). I never liked the label ‘lesbian’, originally because it’s a noun instead of an adjective. It felt like I was putting myself in a category instead of describing a part of myself. Now, I don’t like the term because it is strongly female gendered both for me and my partner. So I generally used the label ‘gay’ but I was also comfortable with ‘queer’. More on my labels here.

I didn’t start dating anyone until undergrad, mostly because I knew all the queer kids in my high school and wasn’t interested in any of them and didn’t know many people beyond that sphere. I met my now husband in the summer after second year and we were married six years later in a lovely gay wedding on a beach just outside Halifax.

When he transitioned from female to male I had a brief re-look at my sexuality, decided I still liked the label gay because of its gender neutrality, and attempted to field questions from family and well-meaning acquaintances about whether his transition means I’m straight (more on this here). I also like saying I’m Jake-sexual. At this point I am a person who likes people who are similar to me. I am attracted to that sense of same-ness in my relationship and for me, this falls squarely in the homosexual category, regardless of gender.

Gender

My first experience of my gender as anything other than female was about a year after I came out as gay. I started having days where I felt like a guy. I already had mostly tom-boy type clothes, nothing extremely feminine, and didn’t particularly like dresses, skirts, leggings, makeup, or painting my nails. But this was different. I felt like a boy. So I wore my most boy-ish clothes and tried to make sense of what was happening.

There was a guy in my year named Ray who had a locker down the hall from me and on the ‘boy’ days I felt like someone was talking to me when they called his name. It just happened.

After a couple of days up to about a week, I would switch back to feeling like Meaghan, feeling female again, and go back to wearing whatever I wanted. A week later, I’d have another few days of feeling like I was a boy named Ray. I ended up separating my closet out into girlier clothes and boy clothes so I could just go to one side or the other depending on the day.

After about three months of this I was confused, frustrated, annoyed, and had no idea how to explain what I was feeling to myself or anyone else. This was before google, and YouTube, where you can search for ambiguous things and hopefully find someone describing a similar experience. So, March break of that year while we were at the cottage, I took a notebook and found a secluded spot to sit. I wrote a list of personality traits that I felt like described me when I was Meaghan, and a list of personality traits that described me when I was Ray, and I connected the ones that were the same (about half of each list) and decided that these traits were me. I couldn’t have two people, or spirits, or genders fighting each other for supremacy all the time. I needed some semblance of consistency and identity and these traits became the core of that. For many years I forgot about this three-month experience and left my gender alone. For the majority of the time it remained slightly female of center.

When I was in undergrad I was part of the queer group on campus. I met a few people who were gender neutral or questioning whether they were trans, four or five of whom either transitioned during that time or have transitioned since. I was exposed to new language about gender identity and expression and learned the basics of what it meant to transition. The non-binary label was not pervasive in society or even queer communities yet. I felt a vague envy of the people who presented as androgynous and identified as gender neutral or gender-fluid but didn’t delve into it more than that. My presentation became more masculine, or androgynous. This has fondly been termed my ‘butch phase’ by my older sister.

I was thrown into the deep end of the gender identity pool when my husband started questioning whether he might be trans. With my full support, he explored various aspects of his masculinity and eventually came to understand that he was male and began his transition. Throughout this process we learned all about physical and social dysphoria, binders, packers, how to navigate the medical and legal systems for transition, and had nearly daily conversations about gender (and still do).

As he started being read as male we were suddenly seen as a straight couple. This partly bothered me because it took away our visible queer identity but it also put me squarely in the ‘female’ box. This was uncomfortable enough that it was partly what triggered me to revisit my own gender identity. But now, I had the language to understand it and the tools to explore it.

My experience of my gender and process for exploring it are significantly different from what my husband went through but, seeing as we were both assigned female at birth (AFAB), many of the same strategies are useful, not to mention having a partner that intimately understands what I’m going through. So far my exploration process is mostly on a personal level (which I will now be sharing with you) but I haven’t ruled out the possibility of some component of social, medical, or legal transition in the future.

On the Horizon

Fairly recently we have also been trying to conceive. This in itself has been an interesting process for a number of reasons and is the other part of what triggered me to revisit my gender identity (see the Pregnancy and Parenting section for more recent updates). Hopefully, at some point I will be pregnant which I am anticipating will come with its own shift in gender and dysphoria, requiring new management strategies and tools. And then of course, there will eventually be navigating being a gender queer parent. Exciting times ahead!