For about 8 months at the time of this writing, I’ve been struggling to figure out if I’m Male to Female (MtF) or Male to NonBinary (MtNB). Initially I started HRT (Hormone Replacement Therapy) as an experiment for my mental health; specifically depersonalization and anhedonia; I identified as a cis man who was taking Estradiol for mental health. About 4 months into HRT I started to identify as Trans. I couldn’t specifically say whether I was Transgender or Transexual or just Trans.
A friend mentioned that there is a pattern with NonBinary people eventually realizing they are binary in gender and sent me to https://genderdysphoria.fyi, which really shook me in some of my assumptions about myself and my Trans identity. Around 7 months of HRT I decided to drill into my own gender identity with a therapist who specializes in gender therapy… we actually didn’t talk a lot about gender initially due to all the other issues I had with personalization, so I started carving out time within sessions to work on gender identity and other issues in parallel.
One pattern I realized about myself is that I want to present feminine pretty much all the time. This isn’t so much about makeup, colors, smells, etc., rather having a feminine form, breasts, wearing feminine clothes, etc. I actually prefer to have short hair, wear little to no makeup, little to no jewelry, etc. To me femininity represents strength and an aesthetic perfection of human form, unrelated to a lot of what society categorizes as femininity.
I want to present feminine to the point of even planning FFS (facial feminization surgery) to make my face look more fully feminine, wear feminine cloths, have a feminine body, etc. then why don’t I identify as Female/Woman/She/Her/Ma’am/Miss/etc. ? Finally today during a therapy session I realized, it’s not that I don’t identify as a feminine person, or perhaps even a Trans Woman or Trans Female — it’s that I don’t see gender as my identity at all.
Here is my reasoning: gender is largely synonymous with genitals for the majority of people… you can’t choose your genitals at birth, so why would you couple someone’s identity to something they cannot choose? Obviously an improvement on this is choosing your gender, which is totally valid. So I can be born with a penis and without any other change to myself physically, behaviorally, etc. I can identify as a Woman/Female. Cool, that is valid. The thing that makes no sense to my brain, is why anyone would identify as their genitals or gender to begin with?
I can’t choose my genitals, but I can choose my gender, which typically reflects my genitals… but why are we identifying as our genitals or as what we’d prefer our genitals to be? Why are we so fixated on our genitals instead of who we are?
This is similar to surnames/last names, ie Smith or Shoemaker – we may or may not perform the same role in society as our ancestors who claimed these names historically. We may or may not identify as our genitals… but why are we boxing our identity into these things to begin with? Does being a man or woman change our potential? Does having the name Smith mean we can only choose to be a Smith as our job function? Of course not… so let’s say I can change my name from Smith to Graphics Designer. Now I’m John A. Graphics Designer… but is that who I am as a person? Is it an improvement to Mr. or Mrs. John A. Graphics Designer?
What the heck does any of this have to do with who I am as a person? Is my gender so important in terms of who I am as a person that I should be defined by it fundamentally in every interaction in society for the rest of my life? When I mentioned this to my therapist they said, “That’s a very NonBinary thing to say.” Maybe it is… I don’t really think so.
I’m going to modify MtF to be Masculine To Feminine. I am MtF.
So am I Binary MtF? Well… I also categorize as Agender (feeling no gender), though I do feel some semblance of masculine or feminine, in a rudimentary way… for example I don’t feel like a woman by having breasts, but I can recognize that most people consider breasts to be feminine, whether I do or not. My breasts do not make me feel like a woman, nor do they make me feel like a man.
Reconciliation
I suppose to me, I feel comfortable being labelled as Masculine To Feminine, and maybe in a rough way as Male To Trans Female, but the reality is that i don’t really want to define a person as their genitals in my daily life, or as their preferred genitals, or as their profession or their ancestor’s profession.
I guess I’m still nonbinary in gender identity because I don’t have a gender identity, because my identity has nothing to do with my gender as a person. Defining people by their gender is just a weird idea to me to begin with. Why is there even an established tradition of labeling people by their genitals? I’ve never been much of a traditional person.
I am going to stop chipping away at my non existent gender identity. I am MtF and I don’t identify as my genitals or my gender. I don’t know that I identify as nonbinary or agender much better because the reality is I don’t think gender should be an important aspect of my identity to begin with. I don’t detect binary gender in myself or anyone else and I don’t care about the gender of anyone fundamentally — I care about them as a person.
Summary
- I am Masculine To Feminine because people would categorize me that way externally and rationally I understand why based upon the presentation I prefer
- I am Trans, leaning Feminine
- I am NonBinary because I don’t identify as a gender, nonetheless a binary gender
- I am Agender because I don’t have a sense of gender absolutes in myself
- I don’t think our default identity/label in society should be based on genitals/gender/profession