Saturday, June 5, 2010

On Being A "Boy"

Submitted by Zeitgeist

This year has been such a tremendous time of self discovery for me, and I wanted to write this post on how I came to the identity that most fits for me, that of a genderqueer “boy.”

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This time last year most people would have seen me as a very masculine woman, and I wasn't really letting them think any differently. Sure, I already knew differently by then. I mean, I was the kid who went by the name D all through high school just because they most certainly knew they weren't a woman. Or female. But, the reason I mention that is because people that see me now mostly view me as a feminine man, and I wanted to say how all of this has affected me.

When I first started my transition I knew that for the most part it was because I wanted to be viewed as male. I also sorta assumed this meant that I was or should be a man.

However, from the very beginning I saw myself not fitting in with other trans men. I never really viewed myself as masculine. In fact, I don't view myself as feminine either, even though people have often times given me both of these labels. When I began to become more comfortable with where I was going with my gender though, I immediately was ridiculed by some of my trans friends as being too “feminine.” This isn't to say that all of them felt that way, but I could see how I definitely at least confused a lot of people. I have been in group therapy sessions for trans people before where others honestly thought I was a trans woman. And all of this sorta started confusing me.

It took me a long time to see it, but I was letting it confuse me because although I view my body as undoubtedly male, I really have never been a man. It wasn't because I think that men can't be “feminine” or whatever, because to be honest, I think feminine men are VERY attractive, but even as people labeled me as “feminine” I just didn't view myself that way.

Around this time I knew a lot of people that identified as genderqueer. I was really intrigued by this idea, and I asked one of my friends what they meant by it. They explained to me how to them it meant that they didn't want to identify as a man or a woman, but also not as masculine or feminine. Or in between any of that. From then on I knew that was how I would identify, because it sounded so much like what I had been dealing with.

However, there were some other genderqueer people that seemed to think if I wanted to transition to look male then I couldn't possibly be genderqueer. It seemed like I was hitting the same wall again where if I was one thing, I couldn't be another. They all seemed to want to have bodies that said “hey look i'm not male or female” and although I thought about that option for myself for a while, it most certainly didn't fit. I was still male. I was still genderqueer. I needed to find a way to explain that.

And that goes into why I am a boy.

You see, I did a lot of babysitting in my teenage years. And I noticed something about kids (both boys and girls.) They oftentimes do things that if they did them in just 10 years more time would be considered genderbending. They don't ever question these things. They are comfortable with their bodies, but haven't found a place in the gender binary yet. They are very playful with their genders. I love it.

I'm a male who is also playful with their gender. I don't have to be a man. I can be a boy. I can do those gender ambiguous things and not think anything of them. I don't want my sense of gender to enter the grown-up's world of you have to be one or the other. Man or Woman. Feminine or Masculine.

I'm starting T in just a few weeks and right now I couldn't be happier. It seems to me I'm just moving more and more towards being as much of myself as possible. And I know lots of people don't understand it, but I also know it's what's right for me.

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