I read an interesting article that was shared in one of the Facebook groups I am in. The
article is about non-binary people and how many experience a form of dysphoria. This got me to thinking (what doesn't, on average??).
Terms like non-binary, gender queer, genderfluid, gender non-conforming, etc. have different meanings but tend to be used interchangeably. And I think that because such a small number of people seem to identify in these areas of the spectrum, or are known to, there is either too little information about them or conflicting information that makes trying to explore these aspects of my identity frustrating. It makes me give up on trying to find what's been written and studied and experienced by others, and just go back to trying to understand myself, outside the context of others. Which can be good in some ways but frustrating in other ways because it can make one feel alone.
Secondly, some of the viewpoints shared by the group the article author surveyed resonated with me. The off and on again feelings about body parts that are used to identify gender. The realization that many times, my feelings about my gender are mental and emotional and physical. For years I went back and forth in my head about whether I wanted to be a male or wanted to have more of the emotional and physical attributes society associates more with masculinity than with femininity.
The only thing I could really define is that I could not and did not want to overtly demonstrate a lot of the emotional and physical attributes society associates more with femininity. I was and still am comfortable with a more masculine physical appearance in terms of dress and grooming. The older I get and the more I allow myself to explore who I am, the more I realize that I am fine being female with the appearance and behavior that makes some people call me a man. I hold within me a fluidity of the characteristics, behaviors, and traits commonly associated with both genders.
If I could live my entire life over, I know in my heart, in the fibre of my being that I would be a gay man. I don't know how to explain that without boring others more than this post probably already is, but I have no doubts that I was a gay man in my past and either loved very deeply but lost it, or never found that type of love, because when I see love and relationships between gay men, a part of my heart, mind and body aches with profound loss and longing.
Most days I barely think of myself in terms of a gender at all because of the fluidity inside of me. If "Me" was a gender, that is what I would say I am. There is no one else who has the gender I have nor does my gender stay the same even for myself because it changes daily, minutely even, based on any number of factors. Where the woman ends and the man in me begins or vice versa, I cannot define and don't see the need to. That I have decided to dress more for the man in me is purely because of the comfort, confidence, and calm it provides me. Dressing in what society sees as more feminine usually makes me feel under confident, uncomfortable and anxious. But the woman in me, that femininity, is as strong or as muted as the masculinity in me, depending on any number of factors.
There are days when being called "she" or "ma'am" annoys me. A large part of me enjoys being called a man though I don't want to be one 100% of the time. When I am mistaken for a man, I don't usually mind it at all. I know I am not a man, but I like that others see the masculinity that I am comfortable wearing (physically and mentally). Part of me gets amused and a bit annoyed when I tell others that I am mistaken for a man and they say that they can't understand that or that whoever made such a mistake was blind. I think partly when they say that, it's good-intentioned: They think I am upset that others did not identify me as a woman. In their minds, that's the normal reaction to being "mis-gendered". The idea that a person can hold both genders inside themselves fluidly is so foreign if someone has grown up always seeing a binary inside themselves and assuming it is there in others as well.
But the times when someone sees ME and doesn't define me in terms of he or she or attach strict gender norms to me or judge me because I do not demonstrate the gender they expect or the gender they see or know me to be, that's when I truly feel SEEN.
Because it seems to me anyway that there is so little known or reliably known about these identities on the spectrum or (probably more likely) these identities are so individual to the people who have them, much of who I am I have discovered for myself through a lifetime of introspection, journaling, and discussion with a select few who found a way not to judge me or dismiss me.
I am not sure I would describe how I feel about my gender as dysphoria. It's simply me. Is it hard to understand? Yes - for many people and even for me sometimes. Would I change it? No. Even on the hardest days, when I feel alone and like some bewildered flower trying to grow in a grey cracked jungle of conformity, and I entertain for a moment what it might be like to be binary, my heart, body, and mind reject it like something we know instinctively as bad for our health or well-being.
