Being genderqueer is kind of a pain in the ass sometimes. Perhaps it’s just me but often I feel almost half-formed when it comes to my identity. It’s like being in between man and woman (at least for me) with honestly strong desires to be both makes me feel like I can’t ever be either. I’m too feminine to be a man and too enamored with the idea of having a dick to me a woman. I wish I could change so much about my body but I’m not willing to sacrifice the things I like (my face shape, my eye shape, my hips) for it. I’m in limbo between man and woman and that wouldn’t be so bad if it weren’t for the fact that that’s treated like it’s invalid. It wouldn’t be so bad to be neither “man” nor “woman” if I could be neither and both without feeling like my voice doesn’t matter.

Tumblr and therapy are really the only places I can talk about it. They’re the only places I’m comfortable enough to talk about it. But tumblr has been driving me nuts recently. Women and NB folks are often lumped together in discussion as if we’re the same thing. Or, what’s worse, women and AFAB people are lumped together. I get the reasons, especially when we’re talking about the way we raise people we think are girls, about health care that’s specifically tied to uteri, about the way we treat people we perceive as women, but a lot of time it makes me feel like I’m basically Woman Lite. Like, it’s just assumed that because of the way I was born I can always be lumped in with the girls even if the struggles I face aren’t the same as other girls. My attraction to men is different. My attraction to women is different. My relationship to sex, sexual desire, and my own body is different. And I don’t want to be the soft, cutesy picture of what a genderqueer person is supposed to be. I don’t want soft and fluffy love and pastel colors and sunshine and unicorn puke. I don’t want to be seen as a fluffy little bunny or Woman Lite or “not even a real thing”. I want to be acknowledged as my own thing. I want to talk about how I worry men aren’t going to want me because I would rather rail them into the mattress than the other way around. I want to talk about how to express masculinity in a positive way through nurturing and protection and leadership instead of watching sports and changing tires. I want to talk about the fact that make-up, for me, makes me feel feminine and free. rather than a chain I have to lug around. 

I guess I just… I’m getting frustrated. I want to talk about my gender and I want to talk about it as it’s own thing. Yes, there are times to talk about AFAB people as a whole but I don’t want to see myself tacked on with woman like an after-thought. I don’t want to talk “alignment” to masculinity and femininity as if that is supposed to tell everyone what I “really” am. And I really want people to stop asking what I was assigned at birth because that doesn’t matter. I want advice that goes beyond pronouns and identification. I want advice that goes beyond me being valid. I know I’m valid; I just want everyone else to understand it, too.