I’m Genderfluid. What does that mean? Well it means that sometimes I feel like a different gender than the one I was born assigned to (male), and sometimes I feel the same as my assigned gender. That’s basically all it really means, and it shouldn’t be as big of a deal as it is in our society.
But because our society is the way it is, I spend a lot of time being subtle as fuck about how I… embrace this aspect of myself. I say embrace and not present or express, because I don’t do that. I don’t reveal this part of myself to anyone in the “real” world. I’m more free online, but even there I close myself off a bit, since I know people I’m closeted to follow me in a few places (thus why I’m posting this here, where they don’t know to look).
How do I embrace myself if I’m hiding this part of myself all the time you may ask? Well, for starters, I do things like shave my legs and armpits. I always wear long pants so nobody will notice that I sometimes shave my legs.
And it is just sometimes. I’m masculine most of them time, but sometimes I get a surge of whatever it is that makes me this way and I feel feminine. And trust me, nobody is better positioned to be confused about this than I am. Not so much confused about what’s going on, but more that sometimes I’ll go a month without feeling feminine and wonder if it really was just a phase. Then BAM! I’m in a feminine cycle and I feel a rush of relief, that I’m not an impostor.
That’s my biggest fear when I come out to someone online, that they’ll think me some kind of fetishist, that I do this for sexual reasons. God forbid I feel good about myself when I go “full feminine” and put on a dress after getting rid of my body hair. I should be allowed to feel sensual like that, it should be empowering for me to embrace myself that way. Instead I feel a voice in the back of my head calling me dirty and wrong. That I shouldn’t feel sexually aroused by just putting on a dress.
The thing is, I don’t. I don’t feel aroused by putting on a damn piece of clothing. It’s just that when I’m in a full feminine cycle, the act of bringing myself as close as possible to that physical presentation fills me with satisfaction. I feel complete, like that’s how I’m supposed to be in that moment. Because I’m so often masculine I feel the need to fully embrace when I do feel feminine. And that may include some “self love”, and it shouldn’t be an issue if I act on that feeling.
It’s woolly though, because I can see where someone not in my head would get the wrong idea. How can you tell the difference? I have a counter argument to that question. Why does what I do in private matter at all to anyone else? So what if I potentially am a fetishist? Am I hurting anyone? No? Then kindly keep any sex and body shaming away from me.
Sorry if that was hostile, but I feel the need to point it out anyway. What I do when I’m alone is none of anyone else’s business. Full stop.
Where were we? Oh right, feeling feminine and how that can cycle. For a long time I felt non-binary to a degree, but as I explored myself I came to realize that there was something else going on with me. I thought back to all the times as a kid as early as 5-6 years old I had sometimes wondered what it would feel like to be a girl. It took me decades to realize that not everyone feels that way. That not everyone has this thought on a monthly basis. That I wasn’t simply curious to live in an alternate reality where I was born a woman. That I actually sometimes AM a woman.
And I truly am. In those times I feel like a woman, I am a woman. There are those out there that think anyone with a penis can never be a woman. There are those that think that you have to transition or it doesn’t count. There are those that believe that if you don’t live every day trying to be a certain gender then you are not that gender. Fuck that.
I am what I say I am when I say it. Sometimes I’m a man. Sometimes I’m a woman. Sometimes I’m just tired and don’t give a fuck. It’s literally in the name of the gender identity I have. I’m genderfluid. And like water I ebb and flow, never really still, even if I look still on the surface. I am what I am and I am proud of who that is.
—Kay