This is kind of a weird thing for me.
Just as a forward, I don’t question my sexuality. I never really have. I usually tell people I’m bisexual because its easy, but when it comes down to it, gender is not a deciding factor for me when it comes to significant others and so pansexual is probably more accurate. I once told a friend, as it goes with me, I don’t really have a gender ‘type’ that I prefer to be with, in fact I’m pickier about hair color than gender, but thats not what this post is about. The point of this paragraph is basically to say I don’t question my sexuality.
I have been a little unsure about gender though.
I am a female but have always considered myself pretty androgynous for the most part. When I was little I would wear hand me downs from my brother and it never bothered me. I would wear truck t-shirts and blue jeans and I had my hair short and never played with dolls. This was in the early 90s in the Bible belt where I was told I was a tomboy and never thought twice about it. Really, I gave little thought to gender for a while.
When I was older, in my teens, I would sometimes pretend I was a boy when me and my brother would play games together. It got to the point where he would ask me if I was a boy or a girl this time. I started going by a gender neutral name in school and, while it took some time to get used to people not calling my by my name (I have a very feminine name), it never bothered me.
I have never really felt an association to femininity, but at the same time, I never really felt much towards gender. I never dated people for gender, like I said, I didn’t care what they looked like or what they considered their gender to be as long as they treated me with respect. I have had relationships with males and females and for all intents and purposes it felt the same to me, except when I was in a relationship with a female, I felt as though I was the protector in the relationship (not necessarily the man in the relationship) and when I am with a man, I relinquish the protector role. I don’t choose to do this, its almost like there’s a shift in my brain. But anyways.
After some discussions with friends, I thought, I’m probably gender apathetic. It seemed to fit - I really never saw the big deal with gender for the most part, with myself or others.
Last weekend though, I went out on the town and went clothes shopping since I actually haven’t had new clothes for 13 years or so and all my clothes are falling apart. Well, I realized while clothes shopping, I get really uncomfortable at the thought of feminine clothing, basically anything frilly or with flowers or whatever. Dresses are out of the picture unless its a very special occasion (I would wear suits to school dances and whatnot; I met my husband halfway at our wedding by wearing a skirt suit.). Basically anything that would flat out be considered women’s clothes make me feel really uncomfortable, wrong. My husband even offered to look in the men’s section with me so that I would feel more comfortable. I settled on athletic shirts and tactical pants.
But it got me thinking.
I really don’t care about pronouns. I don’t care if you want to call me by my given name or Jim. That being said, I still want to figure out where I stand on gender. I don’t really consider myself gender apathetic so much anymore, because I do have an interest in people like me and where I might fit when it comes to gender classification.
The first thing I went with when I started looking into it more was genderqueer, because, while I’ve never felt a strong attachment to a specific gender, I was never wild about the idea of being female and I have always wanted a more androgynous name. It just hadn’t occurred to me how much I was put off my feminine things until I was staring the thought of looking like a girl in the face and being utterly not ok with it. So I started looking into demi genders and first I thought, ok, demigirl because I was born female but don’t feel a strong attachment to it. But I feel more comfortable with demiboy because, while I’ve always felt pretty neutral, I’ve always leaned ever more towards being more comfortable with the idea of being a boy than a girl.
I’m playing around with genderqueer demiboy in my head to see how I think it fits. I definitely think it’s more accurate than genderqueer demigirl.
But yea. I know there are a good number of people here who identify as non-binary and was wondering if anyone had any similar experiences or feelings. Im just trying to find something that feels right, if that makes sense.
