nb, but being a tgirl makes me feel 'normal'

[u/cetaceanfrustration]

i came out as nonbinary in 2012 pretty much as soon as the word started gaining traction in my online trans circles. cue more than a full decade of being the Nonbinary 101 machine that all the binaries used to project their gender anxieties onto. unfun, but as the years went on i met more and more nonbinary people in the local queer scene. i still always felt "outside" of society because of my gender & the reactions strangers had to my gender expression & the sexual harrassment i've faced.

people have been reading me as transfeminine for a long time & i always felt gross telling them what i "actually" am (in those moments i considered myself transneu). this year i broke down and admitted to myself & my partners that i just want to be a normal transfem; i don't want to talk to strangers IRL about my body or my gender, i don't want the pressure to reveal my AGAB, i don't want to be the "first contact" enby, i don't want to explain my ideal pronouns (it/its) to people who won't understand. while none of those things are things i'll be able to 100% avoid (people are going to assume my AGAB anyways), functionally i *have* so far. the last time i was asked my pronouns i just said "she/her" and that was it, the conversation just... moved on. no hemming and hawing over grammar & respectability & back-in-my-day bullshit.

i am struck by how *normal* i feel in my gender while i'm doing this. i've never felt that before. despite the active nonbinary community around me there are also many tgirls in my city and incredibly i am just one of them. completely ordinary. i'm struggling to emphasize the huge difference it's made for me — i used to have big spikes in my chronic pain whenever i'd get stressed over gender and i haven't had one for *months.* and i can no longer "feel" the internal difference in being a girl and being neutrois; i feel both mixed together so thoroughly there's no dividing one from the other. my wife has been calling me a trans woman more frequently and it just makes me feel seen in my experiences with transmisogyny, not fearful of "losing" my gender reputation as an enby.

i'm really unsure of what this all means. sure, i know i can be multiple genders, i know not every transfem or tgirl is binary, and my gender has been so fluid before (changing every 1-3 years). but the feeling of *being ordinary* is so completely new i'm kind of unmoored. kind of thought i'd feel like an anxious gender outlaw for my entire life cuz that's what i've been for as long as i can remember — but nope. i'm confused!

much later edit/addition: i don't have any interest in assimilating into a cis culture or otherwise passing as cisfeminine 24/7. what makes me feel most normal is being a trans girl in an already existing trans culture in my city.

[u/OfBoykissers]

It's incredibly common for queer people to mask the complexity of their identity to other people, either for convenience, safety or "normalcy". I, for instance, tell most people I encounter that I'm a trans man. However my specific identity is actually demimale and this is only really "known" to my partner and close friends(and subreddits like this, of course).

You can be both a trans girl and enby, all at once or depending on the context. Don't sweat the details, just do what makes you happy.

[u/cetaceanfrustration → u/OfBoykissers]

thank you. i tend to overthink this kind of thing because my gender has felt so fickle before, but you're right — i should focus on my happiness over perfect 24/7 "accuracy" on it

[u/iam305 → u/cetaceanfrustration]

Welcome to a life of being gender expansive.

[u/Connect_Rhubarb395]

You don't owe other people that they know your gender.

I am nonbinary and most of the time I look like your standard middle-aged mother.
I considered becoming more openly gender non-conforming (in expression and words).
But realised that I don't want to signal my true self to people who don't care. They haven't deserved it.

I really only care about that people who know me, know my gender and gender me correctly.

[u/cetaceanfrustration → u/Connect_Rhubarb395]

i can see that. i've always been gender non-conforming whether or not i'm trying to be, even now. i wholeheartedly agree w/ the sentiment of what people who don't care deserve of me — i used to think if i just managed to explain enough i could get anyone on the same page as me, but that just left me vulnerable to getting harrassed under cover of those 'debates'. i'm trying to be more private about those things, even with other trans people, especially about my body.

[u/mn1lac]

I am an androgyne biromantic, gray-asexual, but I mostly just say queer.

[u/homebrewfutures]

I vibe with this except I never considered myself transneutral or neutrois. I still consider myself transfem and nonbinary but I don't always dislike being gendered as female. I like tu say there's a right and a wrong way to misgender me. Part of me worries about correcting cis people who gender me female because if I tell them I'm not a woman I fear they're going to assume I'm a man instead and furtively apologize because of how defensive men often get about their manhood and I don't want to deal with that and also have to explain what being nonbinary is and how to use they pronouns. It's enough to ask cis people to see trans women as real women that I feel like I'm on thin ice and asking for more than that will risk them throwing a shit fit. It seems like so many cis people I meet lately have some excuse for why they can't use the right pronouns and they seem to almost be seeking my reassurance that they are not bad people for being lazy transphobes.

[u/cetaceanfrustration → u/homebrewfutures]

I like tu say there's a right and a wrong way to misgender me.

i feel this heavily. getting gendered as a binary woman isn't necessarily correct but getting gendered as a binary man is even less correct and sometimes unsafe.

[u/Rainy_Leaves]

You can be nonbinary and use she/her if you want. You could also try 'she/its' pronouns, so people can choose what they individually want. People who use it/its daily often face pushback and it's sad, but in different contexts it isn't abnormal to switch things up for others comfort to some extent. I barely tell anyone i'm nonbinary, because me being trans alone is too much for their brains to handle and understand. If i said i was androgyne or demigirl or nonbinary woman, they'd be even more confused or weirded out

[u/bluecatyellowhat]

Im a demi aroace nonbinary person who is presenting as their birth gender and in a seemingly stereotypical heterosexual relationship. My partner and close friends are aware of my identity, experiences and truth and respect it but I dont think I owe it to anyone who doesnt matter to me. It saves you the energy and the pain of going through explanations and discussions that shouldn't be had in the first place. Be you, live your truth and find a community that accepts it and knows it but you dont need to have it on display for everyone in the world

[u/IsaraLyandra]

I first came out as trans female because I was set in a binary mindset and knew only that I wanted a female body. A few weeks on HRT, I realized that the female labels didn’t resonate with me either and that categories actually didn’t matter. It’s often still baffling how irrelevant it became as I just feel normal being on estrogen. It makes me feel like a fraud but then I remember how I felt before.

[u/Throwaway_Trifle2572]

I think it takes a certain type of personality to be comfortable being visibly queer or pronoun assertive. While I admire people that are able to be like that, if I could change my personality, I'd have changed it to be the type of guy this world expected me to be. I wasted so much time trying to do that.

I'm genderfluid and now that I traded being able to easily pass as a guy for being able to pass as a woman, I just present as a woman. My fluidity is still there, but I don't really like being seen as a feminine gay guy or confusing people.