here’s the thing about being nonbinary for me personally: it is not and has never been about breaking boundaries or daring to be different or freedom of gender expression that made me suddenly choose to be nonbinary.

i have always been this way. i’ve always known but never fully understood why i felt so uncomfortable being a woman. it had nothing to do with leaning more towards femininity or masculinity or gender roles or hating women.

i have always felt that i have never been a woman. it never felt right to me being defined as one. though i share a lot of experiences with women due to society seeing me as a woman and people in society treating me that way, disliking femininity wasn’t what made me think i was nonbinary.

what made me really fully realize and understand was when i realized that when it came to me personally, i didn’t care about femininity OR masculinity. i didn’t really think in those kinds of terms when it came to myself either. the idea of gender isn’t one i felt applied to me, as a person.

i didn’t care about being a woman. i didn’t care about what things were labeled as “feminine” or what i was supposed to be like as a woman. i didn’t WANT to be a woman. i didn’t feel like a woman.

at the same time, i didn’t want to be masculine. i didn’t want to be seen as a man. though i feel i have more in common with men, i still never felt that i was a man.

it was always really difficult and alienating for me, not understanding why i felt so much dysphoria at being seen as a woman OR as a man. why being called either just never felt fully right to me. why trying to be either felt like a chore or a costume i had to put on, and when i was called or mistaken as either i felt like i wanted to scream and cry. why i never understood why i wasn’t good enough as either gender, not feminine enough or masculine enough, not fitting into either category.

i tried to force myself to be a woman. i tried really hard to be more feminine, really hard to force myself to see myself as a woman. i tried really hard to be like the many women i know and have known. and i tried the same on the opposite end. i tried to force myself to be more masculine. i tried to dress differently and posture differently. and it still felt deeply wrong to me.

i’d always appealed more to animals specifically because they didn’t have to worry or care about whether they were seen as boys or girls and they could be loved just as dearly even when their owners had no idea or what gender they were. how being a girl or a boy had very little impact on who they were because it didn’t really matter to them, and how people were always excited to see a dog or cat and what gender they thought the animal was didn’t change how they approached that animal because in reality, whether the animal was a boy or a girl came secondary to the fact that it WAS a pet, a dog or a cat, and in reality nobody really cared about what gender the animal was. and the animal itself also didn’t care or have any sense of it’s own gender outside of hormones and reproduction.

with the several farm cats i owned gender meant nothing when it came to their group dynamics: the cats that were “in charge” or the more combative cats that would chase off and fight cats outside of their colony or the ones who would hunt and bring food to share with each other, who were protective of the other cats in the colony and would attack any troublemakers that intentionally tried to pick a fight; or the ones who preferred to lay back and were more affectionate, who would all lay together and who would simply sit and stare when a cat they were unfamiliar with tried to enter their territory; or the cats that were the ones who seemed to be targeted and picked on by the other cats, who pushed the boundaries of the cats around them, who would randomly pick fights just to lose consistently, who would growl at the other cats and get into spats only to run away or be chastised; gender had nothing to do with which cats tended to fall into which role.

the cats i had that tended to be skittish or aggressive or active or affectionate…gender had no bearing on any of that. i always felt so jealous of that. i wanted to be a cat (especially in childhood lol) because i wanted to live in a world that had a dynamic like that. a world where gender didn’t matter, where no one really had any concept of gender and it really didn’t matter. no cat cared about whether the other was male or female and it didn’t change how they interacted. (unless it was something like intact male vs neutered male or female cat in heat and male cat)

when i finally heard the term non binary, that it was something that even existed, i knew instantly that it sounded like me. i was scared at first, went through a lot of self doubt and questioning myself, calling myself stupid for considering it. but then i started to understand what it really meant.

a gender identity that is neither male or female. a gender identity where the concept of gender simply didn’t apply. an identity where you didn’t have to pick one or the other or lean into one or the other. and once i finally let myself accept that identity i finally felt right. i didn’t have to pretend to care or go out of my way to be feminine or masculine. i didn’t have to care about being a lady or a woman or lean into being a man or wanting to present as masculine or any of that. i didn’t have to be what i was “supposed to be.” i didn’t have to be a tomboy or a girl that was proud to have masculine interests and still be as much of a woman as a feminine girly type of woman. i didn’t have to be a man at my core, being proud to have feminine interests while defining myself as just as much of a man as a more masculine man.

none of those felt right or felt like me or who i was. knowing that i didn’t have to force myself to be any gender or present/lean into any feminine or masculine ideal was freeing to me. that i could like any of the things i wanted without really thinking about whether they were feminine or masculine was so relieving. i could decide it didn’t matter to me. i could be someone who was neither or someone who none of those ideas applied to.

though i still suffer from low self esteem issues and mental health issues, i finally don’t hate myself for not being able to choose one identity or the other. i finally understand why i am the way that i am and why i felt so wrong and inadequate and unable to be the woman or man i was supposed to want to be.

in understanding that i didn’t have to be either if i didn’t want to, i was finally able to accept the person i’ve always been. and i’m finally able to accept that that person exists, even if people don’t understand or are disgusted by them or make fun of them. even though it’s supposed to be one or the other. i don’t have to choose. i don’t have to pick the option my body is biologically defined as.

The first mistake I see people make is assuming there are completely "nonviolent" ways to be transphobic. It seems like some people conceptualize transphobia as being either violent (which is always physical in some way) or nonviolent (which is "simple" emotional, verbal, or psychological abuse)

It seems, also, that people presume that when somebody has "noble" intentions for their transphobia - "I'm trying to save you!" for instance - it is suddenly nonviolent. Consider, though, how a transphobe would "save" a trans person. Would they allow that person to exist unadulterated (including being able to transition), or would they prefer to put them through conversion therapy, or revoke their access to bodily autonomy, or force them to have children, or anything that will prevent them from transition or even identifying as trans or otherwise tying them down with the obligations that prevent transition or identifying as trans?

There is no true "nonviolent" way to be transphobic because being transphobic relies on denying one the ability to autonomy and personhood. Fundamentally, even the transphobes who "want to save us" only do so in their own self-interest to save them from the horror of knowing that more people than they are alive and thriving.

yayo! (real name: yolanda). shes xeress crush. i want to give her some tattoos or piercings but i couldnt think of good ones yet..

Idk why people get upset with people saying "neurospicy" when it's almost exclusively neurodivergent people who say it

Half the time you guys just come across like "I'm neurodivergent but not one of those cringe freak neurodivergents" like c'mon

I guarantee you most of the people who say "neurospicy" do so because there's an element of discomfort in using proper medical terms for themselves and find it easier to talk about when they can be a little silly about it

You don't have to like the term or use it for yourself for whatever reason but you should probably be more concerned with the language neurotypical/able bodied people use for disabled folk instead of policing how neurodivergent/disabled people talk about their own lived experience

ahhhh. another day of hating gender.

funny thing about attraction is that i am Not at all interested in cis guys. right.

except for the literal worst fictional men you've ever layed eyes on.

this character is horrible and *will* harm my general health?

comfort character babey.

occasionally theres the just Regular Ass Guy right, but 90% of the time its either women or the literal scum of the earth (or both. lady villains. aaough <3 yes please)

All of these "who has more anything gender!" polls are just. white man without extreme body builder muscles v white man without extreme body builder muscles. The gender is "masculine" stop pretending it's universal

sometimes I think about writing and singing music not because I’m an incredible singer but because no one has my fucking voice, especially in popular music, and its disheartening to be born a girl, told you’ll only get girl roles or try to voice match other girls, or ‘sing with the girls’ and then only be able to match male voices because you’re a fuckin tenor and not anything higher. I can’t think of any girl Broadway roles I can hit all the notes on. Most songs I love I have to pitch down for myself or use falsetto for singing along to. It bothers me a lot less now because I’m an adult who’s more secure in myself but as a teen in kids musical theatre it FUCKED with me, BAD style. And I know for a fact that even now when I hear people with a voice like mine singing I get excited and immediately invested in their work because they’re like ME, finally, for once. A brother in this world of being afab and having the voice of a recently pubescent boy forever. Maybe I should be that brother too.

like it used to be everyone liked + used the terms transfem + transmasc because they were used to broadly discuss the issues that trans people who transitioned/were transitioning physically socially or both shared regardless of things like their actual gender + presentation + stuff like they are very useful terms bc it covered a lot of different experiences that otherwise would leave people excluded in these discussions so i dont understand the push to change them so they mean... literally nothing essentially. "transmasc means ur trans + present masculine anyone can be transmasc" so its just masc...

I think trying to sort every gay person on earth into either the category of 'monosexual' or 'multisexual/mspec' is silly and just a very reductive approach to attraction

its so weird to read some of my old fics (do NOT do it but i'm just being hypothetical rn) and reading it. like who even was this person?? i completely was in a haze back in 2020. i literally was posting 3 chapters a day. A DAY. what in the WORLD was that shit.

anyway i remembered some STUPID sappy shit and i didnt remember if i'd put it into a fic or not BUT I FOUND IT.

She and Hope had been dating in secret for months anyway, and any attempt to go talk to Ryan only filed her disposition of displeasure upon knowing that she couldn’t tell anyone, Molly especially, it destroyed herself mentally. They couldn’t really go anywhere near the school, always having to lie to everyone about having projects together when Molly wasn’t around them. It’d consisted with 9 PM - 2 AM intervals of being able to actually see each other. Hope would sneak through her small bedroom window with a portable record player and whatever she had gotten from the vintage record store downtown, and Amy would always fall asleep around eleven because of her internal clock. She would always wake up to find a single sticky note stuck on the edge of her desk whenever she woke up to her alarm the next morning. One of them, Amy still had tucked inside of her phone case, a heavily detailed human heart, with blue and red ink sketched onto a neon pink sticky note, there was a caption that headed the small paper reading the phrase over every now and again makes her almost melt every time. “You have my heart.”

yeah idk why the fuck but i thought of this fucking idea again today and i was like "omg did i ever put that heart note thing in a fic???" yeah you fucking did.

all that to say ME AND WHO???? imagine. thats so fucking.... RAHHHH.

I think many people don't take trans trauma seriously, that it's nothing more than a joke.

As a trans person, it was traumatic to feel as though I would be loved only if I conformed to my expected gender. It was traumatic to hide away, to sever myself from every little thing that made me happy. It was traumatic to discover my gender and sexuality in an environment where I felt insecure and scared.

Masculinity and femininity can be traumatic, for trans people, this is especially true. Treating these traumas like jokes only tells me that you don't support trans people, that we have to have certain experiences in order to be valuable.

It absolutely baffles me how someone can say “if x character was x gender I would actually like them” and think that’s not completely and utterly sexist.

hi i’m not really sure how to do this but i came from your uquiz and you seem knowledgeable and nice and so i’m asking you a question now i’m sorry

uhm, so, i think i maybe might be trans (ftm) because i’m super dysphoric and i sometimes look at guys and i get really jealous because they just get to, like, exist like that (i’m not really sure what the “that” is, but god, do i want it) and i very much don’t and when i refer to myself using he/him pronouns in my head it feels, uhm, at the risk of being a cliche, right, i guess.

but the thing is that i don’t really fit into any of the stereotypical trans guy things. like a lot of my friends when i was little were girls and though i have some stereotypically masculine hobbies (sports and physics) i also sew, and when i was little i was obsessed with being a princess for like a month before i started refusing to wear dresses.

i don’t think i’m non-binary, i tried using they/them pronouns this summer and while they didn’t actively hurt like she does, they didn’t really feel right.

so, like, am i lying to myself? i don’t know, maybe i just want to be special (i don’t want it, though, if i could just be happy as a girl i would).

sorry i just unloaded half an essay on you you obviously don’t have to reply and i know you’re probably not qualified to answer anyway, i just needed to tell someone, you know?

anyways, i hope you’re having a nice night or day or whatever. thank you, for, like, existing on the internet i guess. your quiz was very nice. bye.

howdy anon! dw i am always glad to answer questions abt this stuff even tho it make take me a while lol

my best advice for situations like this is i know its easy but don't let yourself get caught up in the trap of "well this is the label that makes me feel best but i dont technically check off every single box for it so am i just lying?" people arent video game quests, you dont have to hit every single box for it to count, youre allowed to have stuff fall outside the technical definition of a term while still calling yourself it. im very similar to you, i was in tap and ballet growing up, wore dresses and makeup for most of highschool, sewing crocheting knitting the whole shebang. but the important part is that none of those things make a difference to your identity. knowing how to sew doesnt make you a girl, it can just make you a guy who knows how to sew. its a thing you do, not who you are.

all that being said, i think another helpful angle to look at things is "does the distinction between two similar labels actually make a difference to me?" using myself as an example again, i dont call myself a trans man because while i do prefer presenting masculine, for some reason the term 'man' just doesnt feel right for me. but at the same time, to the rest of the world that's functionally what i am, right? so does that change /who/ i am? no. so for me personally, ive deliberately chosen not to file myself into either "trans man" or "nonbinary" and just move on with my day, because to me it doesnt actually make a difference which one i am, im still gonna stay on t, i still want top surgery, i still want to be perceived masculine, and thats not gonna change no matter what name is on the box so who gives a shit. just do what makes you happy

my sexuality is such a mystery to me. like yeah im a lesbian but also not but also yes but also m e n sometimes but also-

Here is a little comic I made about some thoughts I’ve been having recently. I don’t ID as transmasc, and I have noticed that since I’m nonbinary and AFAB, some people in queer circles (online and irl) label me as transmasc! This has increased since I started T. Much love to my transmasc siblings, but I don’t identify with that term, and it misgenders me.

I figured if there’s not a lot of acknowledgement or discussion about non-transmasc and non-transfem people who physically transition, I can make some myself :)

Thank you to @/rjalker for the ID below!

[ID: A nine panel comic, done is low-saturated colors, mostly featuring soft yellow and shades of blue and purple.

Panel 1 reads, "I am an AFAB trans person on T." showing a surface with a towel, and an open packet that reads, "1% 25mg".

Panel 2 continues: "And I'm not transmasc." and shows a rainbow flag, and a nonbinary flag hanging above some jewelry.

Panel 3 shows a person walking on a hill, the sky pale yellow and the ground in shades of blue. It reads, "My gender isn't woman, or man, or adjacent to either, or neutra/ 'in-between'." The venus and mars symbols float in the air, in red and blue.

Panel's 4, 5, and 6 read, "It's a separate, other, gender." Showing shoes worn under a light blue skirt, a person wearing a shirt, jeans, and vest waving, and a person without clothes floating among stars.

Panel 7 reads, "Queer people who know I'm on T, or even just know that I'm AFAB, often think I'm transmasc." "They label my experiences automatucally." The same person from before is shown between the two sentences, sweating nervously as though being trapped.

Panel 8 reads, "It feels like misgendering. From people who should know better." The person is shown sittign facing away from the camera, head bowed, lifting one arm across zir shoulder, where half a dozen flags have been stabbed into zir back like arrows, all dark blue, and marked with either the blue mars, or pink venus symbol.

Panel 9 reads, "'Masculinizing' HRT doesn't mean I'm transmasc." Next to a small picture of the person smiling away from the camera, wearing blue glasses, with stubble on zir chin. The next small image is of the chemical symbols for testosterone, with text next to it that reads, "It doesn't mean my gender is male, or male-adjacent." Followed by another small picture of the person, smiling with hearts next to zir face, wearing the nonbinary pride flag like a blanket or cape.

The yellow background fades downward into the nonbinary flag, with stripes of yellow, white, purple, and black, here with the purple and black in shades of blue. The text reads, above a final drawing of the person, wearing a pink sweater and a blue skirt, smiling up at the camera and surrounded by small sparkles, "It just means I'm a nonbinary, genderqueer person who is becoming more like zirself. And that just happens to involve HRT!" with a smiley face emoji at the end.

End ID.]