Trans/Genderqueer/Agender/Questioning Thread

Well, how did you get from where you were in 1996, to where you are now? How did you fix that knowledge gap?

I'm guessing it involved a lot of research, asking questions, finding stuff out?

What kinds of questions were helpful or useful to you, when you started to explore that maybe you were trans? (I'm thinking of stuff that you can do to help your Questioning Friend, more than anything else.) There are questions that help winkle that stuff out - I'm thinking immediately of things already discussed upthread, like 1) if you could describe your gender without using the words "man" or "woman", how would you describe it? 2) do you have any pictures that you feel like, yeah, I would really like my gender to look like that? 3) if you did not have to go through expensive treatments or painful surgery, and you could just pick a body from a catalogue, like choosing clothing off a rack, what body would that look like? 4) If you woke up tomorrow, in the body of a different sex, really think through - how would that feel like to you? Relieved, disgusted, intrigued?

I think these are pretty AGAB-neutral questions that you can use to help anyone talk through these issues, without having to dig into jargon and terminology that can be kinda off-putting to newcomers who are just starting to question. (Or if you are unsure of identities other than your own!)

...

Can I just ask you a favour, though? Can you please not make assumptions about how I am feeling? "Ask questions, listen to the answers" is really relevant advice here. I get the feeling that you're feeling slightly defensive - which leads you to the conclusion that *I* must be pissed off? Especially after I've just *said* that I don't want to engage with anger today. (Which would surely start with the presumption that I was not feeling angry at the time I made the statement?)

What I feel right now is... *perplexed* at how ~ILX in general~, within 2 weeks, seems to have gone from "trans experiences are EXACTLY THE SAME, how dare you talk about AMAB experiences being different from yours - in fact, we'll bully you off the forum even for using that term!!!" to "wow, AfAB experiences are so strange, so opaque, so completely unknowable, how can we ever understand their mysterious and ineffable differences?" a turnabout which is... confusing to me.

We learn to navigate and understand difference all the time. One might even say that's what ILX is for. We learn by asking questions and comparing experiences.

Well, how did you get from where you were in 1996, to where you are now? How did you fix that knowledge gap?

I'm guessing it involved a lot of research, asking questions, finding stuff out?

lurking! that's the internet i grew up on. just trying to listen to other people. and then i try to mirror that, try to rephrase what i hear in my own words.

Can I just ask you a favour, though? Can you please not make assumptions about how I am feeling? "Ask questions, listen to the answers" is really relevant advice here. I get the feeling that you're feeling slightly defensive - which leads you to the conclusion that *I* must be pissed off? Especially after I've just *said* that I don't want to engage with anger today. (Which would surely start with the presumption that I was not feeling angry at the time I made the statement?)

branwell, i'm doing my best. i really am. but i'm not a tabula rasa. every post i work to put down my assumptions, not put myself in your head, and every time i feel like i've failed. i don't know how to do what you're asking me to do. maybe i should just quit posting to this thread. maybe i'm just not ready to deal with these things yet.

What I feel right now is... *perplexed* at how ~ILX in general~, within 2 weeks, seems to have gone from "trans experiences are EXACTLY THE SAME, how dare you talk about AMAB experiences being different from yours - in fact, we'll bully you off the forum even for using that term!!!" to "wow, AfAB experiences are so strange, so opaque, so completely unknowable, how can we ever understand their mysterious and ineffable differences?" a turnabout which is... confusing to me.

― Extractor Fan (Branwell with an N)

see, i don't see ILX in general as having done that. maybe it's because there are a lot of threads i don't read, but when i look at ILX, i see the only people talking about this stuff being you and me. i don't see you summarizing "ilx in general", i see you mirroring things i personally have said on ilx over the past few weeks. and the way you're mirroring the words i wrote, well, none of that is what i was trying to say, not than, and not now, and i'm just frustrated. if the dialogue has changed, it's because i've changed my words, the things i say, because i'm trying to learn from what you've been saying, and i'm not sure it's been to any avail.

this conversation is really painful to me.

Asking questions of another person, and listening to their answers, is how you learn to tell the difference between "mirroring" and "projection". (There are a lot of people on ILX, besides you, and I have had to deal with an enourmous amount of projection, both in the recent and distant past.)

Maybe go back and look through our conversations on this thread, and look at how many questions I've asked you, versus how many you've asked me? This conversation is starting to feel quite unbalanced, and that clearly isn't fun for either of us.

Maybe our conversational styles just don't mesh, which is unfortunate, because, as you say, we do seem to be the only 2 people interested in having these kinds of conversations on ILX right now. But if we go on like this, we are going to do each other damage, and I wish neither to be damaged, nor to cause someone else pain.

See you around.

agreed, i'm not in a good headspace and it's really important for me to step back from this discussion.

This is quite an emotive topic, so I've been wondering whether to bring it up here or not. My feeling is, it is something I would like to put out there, as important information which doesn't seem to be getting much attention - but that I do not wish to have a debate about it, but neither do I wish to have a performative round of ~t*rf discourse~ from cis people.

Good news first (and I always make a point of linking to the Guardian when they DO occasionally publish a positive piece on trans and nonbinary people, to try and click-train them. I have no idea if it works, but one can try):

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/17/gender-fluid-engineer-wins-landmark-uk-discrimination-case

^^^it seems that nonbinary people, even though we do not have specific protection in law, are starting to win legal protection through judicial decisions, that protections aimed at trans people are considered to cover nonbinary people as well. (I am so grateful, and feel so hugely lucky that I do now work for an overly pro-LGBT organisation, and that my boss and HR have been entirely supportive of me, my transition, namechange, pronouns etc - in a way that previous employers have definitely not.)

This is the worrying news - and this is something that I fear gets obscured, buried and lost in the process of reducing trans issues and trans discourse to a steady stream of 'oh god what has Scottish wizard lady said this week':

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/sep/17/womens-equality-party-runs-consultation-on-self-identification-for-trans-people

^^^This terrifies me.

Background, for people not in the UK, as to what is at stake. The UK has, for several years, been trying to make amendments to the Gender Recognition Act, which would make the legal transition process simpler, less invasive and time-consuming, and cheaper for trans people, and to extend the same protections and recognitions to nonbinary people. More background information on the changes here.

This came up during the Theresa May years, and was ALREADY put to a vast public consultation - the consultation was supported by Stonewall and other LGBT organisations, and several feminist organisations promoted it - it had over 100,000 responses, 70% of which overwhelmingly supported the suggested changes.

Once Boris Johnson came in, he decided to just quietly drop the whole thing. There was a huge push among the UK trans community, to get in contact with MPs, send emails, and try to raise enough noise to get it UNdropped (subtweet - I honestly wish that cis people would put half the effort into stuff like this, that they did into ~publicly condeming Scottish Wizard Lady~) and back on the political table.

Noted Radical Feminist, and serial ~supporter of women~ (yes, this is sarcasm), Boris Johnson, has now handed it over to an organisation called the Women's Equality Party, to do their own private consultation, of their private membership of less than 30,000 members. I have no idea who the WEP are, who is backing them, what their membership looks like (I've seen that they have definitely done business with A Woman's Place, who very much *are* aligned with anti-trans people) or what their policies regarding trans people even are! How is a private consultation of 30,000 members of what looks like a fairly fringe political party supposed to be somehow fairer or more evocative of the public's mood, than an open, public consultation of over 100,000 people, including the trans and nonbinary people this will actually affect?

I do feel like Boris Johnson is the biggest threat that trans and nonbinary people in the UK have faced since Thatcher - and there's a very cynical part of me (forgive me if this is a ~paranoid reading~ but this is a paranoid country) that thinks that all of the very public current fuss over ~Scottish Wizard Lady~ is a *diversion* from what is happening right now with the GRA - that one cis man has the power to handwave away a huge public consultation that was overwhelmingly in favour, and replace it by handing power over our lives and our destinies to a small, private, members-only group. It's terrifying.

I'm going to go and look to see if I can find any other coverage on this, because as mentioned elsewhere, the Guardian is not exactly known for its track record on trans news.

uh i don't think that's saying the uk government is putting the WEP in charge of deciding what to do with GRA reform or anything, just that the WEP are doing their own consultation of their members on the topic to decide on their official party line because they're very internally divided on whether or not to hate trans people. the WEP aren't really politically relevant at all so idk why the guardian is even reporting on this, like 'very minor party consults its members' isn't much of a story at all. idk how dominant the WEP's transphobic wing is either but it also doesn't really matter compared to the many other much more prominent transphobes in uk politics

I really hope that is the case, and that I *have* misread this.

But the link to the last news on Boris Johnson's plans to drop the bill reminded me that there has been no update on this for months at this point. (Granted, other stuff has been going on.)

My friend is a prof who specialises in trans healthcare, and while she was invited to give some evidence, she couldn't face it when the other people invited were so notoriously and viciously transphobic. So yeah, WEP are transphobes. But I think it is just their own internal consultation, not a government one.

OK, that's slightly less heinous - if this is just their own internal consultation. Whenever I hear 'let's hear both sides' it makes me nervous - why would anyone want to have to go and defend our own humanity in the face of vicious bigotry. (And there was some 'but what if cis is a slur' stuff I found on their own internal documentation about the event itself, which was very cringe.)

I'm glad that this is not "the" consultation, but I do live in fear of what horror Boris Johnson will come up with. If it's just going to be quietly dropped forever, which seems very much his style.

On the positive side, the BMA came out in support of self-ID recently: https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2020/09/16/british-medical-association-trans-non-binary-self-declare-gender-recognitio-act/

That is positive news, and I do like to keep positive news centred as a counteractive to all the bad news!

Does anyone have a subscription to The Times, because I'm not giving anything to a Murdoch paper to read this, but all of the news I've seen refers back to this piece:

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/changing-gender-to-get-cheaper-but-self-identify-scheme-is-off-0twtdw5fr

Reading the recap of it in the Guardian it doesn't look good. It doesn't look like they plan on changing anything around self-ID, they are going to continue to insist on ~you have to be officially diagnosed with a mental illness by a medical doctor~ and all the other crap. (And absolutely nothing reported about its effects for nonbinary people?) Being Tories, literally the only thing they care about is what it costs - they might make it marginally cheaper?

Seriously, how can we get cis people to care about this, to make a noise about this, to stop these reforms from being just quietly dropped? I honestly wish cis people would put like 1/4 of the energy into campaigning for meaningful change as they do ~shouting at 't*rfs' on the internet~ it's so frustrating.

If the Sunday Times article is true, then the government will have ignored its own consultation & evidence about the need for transgender rights and self-id. 🙁🏳️‍⚧️

A very troubling last paragraph too, basically saying that the public supports a Trumpian bathroom-bill. They don't. pic.twitter.com/UOJYaoT9AR

— Heather Peto (@heatherisone) September 20, 2020

Lol at the officials implying the 30% of responses against the changes were entirely organic and in no way the result of obsessive lobbying, oh no. Personally my response to the consultation was in response partly to the coverage and partly to a WhatsApp group I’m in flagging up the deadline. Government just didn’t want to put the changes through because they want this as a live issue for when they inevitably fuck up on something else in the future.

Thanks, XYZ and the kind person who webmailed me the archive.

Piece is not very helpful - essentially saying what they are *not* going to do, but not saying what they do plan on doing?

This is just ...

More than 100,000 responses were received to the consultation. Insiders say 70% backed the idea that anyone should be allowed to self-identify. However, officials believe the results were skewed by responses generated by trans rights groups.

So it turns out that the one group who are not perceived as having a valid right to officially lodge opinions on how trans people should be treated is... trans people?

Message of piece clear, though: Polls are only good or accurate when they support what they already wanted to do.

Here it is, just published https://t.co/WQOaLsxEfs#GRA https://t.co/vr3fmtfU5c

— Jessica Parker (@MarkerJParker) September 22, 2020

This is a fucking awful development

.@TheGPhC you've just banned my only source of trans healthcare from being able to work with the chemist that fulfills the prescription

What am I suppose to do? I need this medication. How dare you just dump thousands of people with no alternative because of transphobic lobbying

— Katy Montgomerie 🦗 (@KatyMontgomerie) October 7, 2020

I have sent a strongly worded complaint demanding resolution to this blocking of trans people's healthcare to @TheGPhC using their online form https://t.co/tHgeNnEwP5

Please can you do the same

— Katy Montgomerie 🦗 (@KatyMontgomerie) October 8, 2020

Have just set up a recurring donation at https://localgiving.org/donation/genderedintelligence

I mean, fair play to the windmill fucker also, because he’s been working with trans activists on this too.

The effect of making it impossible for transgender kids to access regulated wrap-around healthcare in the UK was to drive them and their families to piece together bits and pieces of healthcare from across jurisdictions and administer it with the help of YouTube videos... https://t.co/wH18YUDxfq

— Jo Maugham QC (@JolyonMaugham) October 8, 2020

I've made a new thread, for discussion of trans politics, trans activism, transphobia, etc. because ILX really does clearly need one and has done for some time:

Trans Politics, Trans Activism, also 'rolling is this transphobic?' thread

As I said on the other thread, this isn't about trying to ~ban the cises from the trans thread~ - but that constantly reading about people who hate you, in a space which is supposed to be *for* you, is exhausting for trans people. Let's try to keep this space open for centring the lives and experiences of trans, nonbinary, questioning, etc. ILX0rs, and use the other thread for discussions of problems, and what can be done about the problems, in terms of activism, allyship, etc.

thank you

Hey!!! Haven’t seen you post here in ages! How are you doing?

not bad as far as material things go, but my spirit is weary. that said, in regards to the topic of the thread, being now 5+ years into this, feeling like I've "transitioned" rather than being in the process of "transitioning" is a very interesting perspective shift.

how about yourself?

Congratulations?!?! I mean, on reaching that point of feeling "transitioned" rather than "transitioning" - that feels like something worth celebrating. Is it a good shift? Do you feel more comfortable, more rooted, more bodied on the other side of that shift? (Or indeed not - something I think we don't talk about enough is that it's OK to feel bittersweet or have mixed feelings.) But I think that perspective shifts are p much inherently good for you. :)

It's nice news to me, that there *is* a state of "feeling transitioned" on the other side, because I feel like, for me personally, "transitioning" is this endless process that will never feel done. Like, honestly, I have at this point made all the changes I am ever going to make (at this point in my life). Internally, I feel like "there, that is done! I have Socially Transitioned" and that has brought me a lot of comfort and confidence.

But there's this weird combination of both... partly, I feel like because of what my identity is, it's like I've tried to build an island to live in the middle of this treacherous fast-flowing river, and every time I think I've got one part of the island buttressed and reclaimed and done, a flood comes along and sweeps it away. I think it was actually you who reframed the idea of 'coming out' for me - that it's never a one-time thing, it's just this endless process of constantly re-asserting yourself. That never feels done. :(

I'm sorry your spirit feels so weary. What are things that lift and re-energise your spirit?

FGTI, I've thought about replying to this for a couple of hours now, and I don't think I'm going to feel peace until I do, so I'm going to bring it here, in the hopes of having an insider-conversation with a bit more lassitude and feeling free to speak. (If people want to brand me a transphobe or FP me for what I'm about to say... well, they were always going to do that anyway. If this goes at all clusterfucky, I'm out of here.)

It was recently proposed to me that the best way to resolve TERF/trans conflict is the normalization of, and education of, penises as being "normal" on women. I've never felt anything weird about "a woman's penis" personally; the "eureka" was really that other people should be invited to have the same attitude, rather than allowing any concessions whatsoever toward obsolete and incorrect essentialism

I've said it before, and I'll say it again - the term "terf" is not helpful, it does not describe a unified or consistent philosophy or even group of people, it has come to be a gunny-sack that just means "female transphobe" and draws no difference between the various concerns / prejudices driving that transphobia. That there are distinctly different strands of female transphobes, some of whom can be reached by different methods. (And others of whom can not.) I have some criticisms of this suggestion, which I hope you will take constructively - based on conversations I have had with women who have been exposed to trans exclusionary feminism. (Most of whom I was able to reach, and bring them "on side", and the ones I couldn't - well, at least I got them to stop expressing it in public/around me, which felt like progress from where they'd been before.)

1) I've said this to you privately the last time we talked about this, and now I'm going to say it publicly. Why do you always frame this as "some women have penises" and never as "some men have vaginas"?

This may seem like a semantic quibble, but honestly, this gets right to the heart of the matter for many feminists. Why is it always "woman" that is the contested identity, the contested space? Why is it not "man"? CONTEST THE SPACE OF "MAN" FFS!

Many women, especially older femininsts, report having started to feel like ~trans issues~ are something that are being "forced on women" - and *exclusively* on women. The perception is that the conceptual space of "Woman" is being forced to change to accomodate trans women - rather than the bigger truth that all of gender is being widened, changed, altered, expanded - including the gender of "male" and "man". Make it clear that ~Trans~ is not something being done exclusively to women. Trans men exist. Men with vaginas exist. That the category of "Man" is undergoing as many changes as the category of "Woman" is undergoing - or rather, it should be in a fair world!

There is this vast double standard, that "Woman" has been a contested space since the Year Dot of Feminism - hell, since even before the invention of feminism, in fact this belief is part of what drove the creation of feminism to start with - that the category of "Woman" is always up for debate and requiring of definition and redefinition. In a way that the category of "Man" is not a contested concept, but seen as axiomatic and self-evident. These things are not separate - that the constant contesting and challenging of the space of "Woman" is the result of "Man" being uncontestable, the constant against which and in opposition to which "Woman" is defined and re-defined - and that these challenges and squabbles and "TERF/trans conflicts" all taking place in the contested category of "Woman" and only "Woman" actually feeds and supports and enables the categorical uncontestability of the space "Man" - which is a pillar of male supremacy.

If you want to reach feminists, do everything you can to show that the category of "Man" is as constructed and contested and as open to debate and ~trans-ing~ as the endlessly fought-over category of "Woman". That goes double if you have the authority of a name that is read as male, or if you are in any way read as "male" by the people around you. Contest maleness as much as you can. (If you're a cis man lurking on here, that means you too - talk about some men having vaginas!) Because a ton of old school feminists feel like "Womanhood" is under attack from ~penises~, in a way that "Manhood" is exempt from ever being disputed. Dispute and contest and trouble "Manhood" if you want this to look like fair play!

2) which brings us to penises. That it comes up again and again, this idea that what transphobic women and/or trans exclusionary feminists are afraid of is *penises*. I've never had a deep-level conversation of this type, where "Penis" (or "testosterone", which is the other bioessentialist fall-back) didn't turn out to be a metonym for something else. You have to understand that the conversation is almost never about the actual genitals, but about what genitals are understood to *mean*. That what most women are afraid of - terrified of, with good reason - is not penises, but male violence and male entitlement. If you don't recognise that *that* is the conversation you are really having, you just sound silly and obsessed by going on about genitals all of the time. You cannot wave away the deep female fear of male violence and male entitlement with penis-talk, in fact this often reinforces it. (Remember, Flashing is a form of sexual violence.)

For me, the tack I take on this - which I've found usually very effective - is to build solidarity, by talking about the ways in which trans people - especially trans women - are almost always far *more* exposed to male violence. Do not downplay or handwave away women's fear of cis men, but you can use *shared* fear to build empathy.

Almost all of this depends on the idea that you are actually talking to the *feminist*, in trans exclusionist feminists. (If you just use the word "terf" to obscure differences between trans exlusionist feminists, and transphobic women who aren't really particularly feminist because they are still themselves deeply invested in male supremacy and *upholding* the gender binary because they *get* something out of it, these tactics are unlikely to reach the latter at all. This is why I do make such a big deal out of not being lazy about the term, and really specifying who you are talking about, and what their motivation is!)

Sorry this is so long, and that I go over obvious stuff multiple times. I never know what is obvious to other people, and what isn't! I've read this over four times now, and it hasn't got any less contentious, but I'm going to hit post and go to bed.

I've never really questioned my gender identity until recently (I always thought I was a cis male) but over the last few months I've been wondering if I'm non-binary or genderqueer. The main thing that I'm wondering about is whether I'm NB or GQ enough to really go all the way and identify as such.

I think the main reason I'd want to do that is for what I guess you could call political reasons - I think gender is bullshit and it would be great if all that gender role stuff just went away so we didn't have separate pronouns, different clothing sections in shops etc, so I sort of want to be the change I'd like to see and step outside of all of that. In terms of what I actually do/how I present there's not much that I do or would like to do that wouldn't really be classified as 'normal' male behaviour - except for wearing makeup, which I would totally do more of if that was more accepted. I think I'd like to use they pronouns but again I'm just not sure.

Like a lot of people, I've thought that gender roles and what have you are awful for a while so I'm not sure why this is coming up for me now. It could well be because I'm asexual and a lot of the other aces I'm friends with are NB/GQ or trans, so maybe that's been giving me ideas. One of the reasons that I'm wondering whether I'm NB/GQ enough is because it's not like I've been questioning my identity since I was a teenager or anything like that.

My understanding is that nobody can really tell you that you're NB/GQ and that it's just something that you've got to work out for yourself, so if you feel that you are then that's fine. I'm not really asking for anyone to tell me what I am here but I'd be interested to hear how other people have come to realise that they don't fit in the gender binary. Also my understanding is that NB and GQ mean pretty much the same thing and when it comes to deciding which one applies it's about which label people feel more comfortable with - is that right?

imo being nonbinary for political reasons is rad as hell and u should go for it if you want to

I sympathize with the feeling of not being genderqueer enough, but the fact that it’s weighing on you at all is a pretty big hint that you’ll be happier if you start sloughing off the dead skin of your received gender

imo if ppl tell you you’re a man or a woman and you ask yourself “wait am I a man?” and get the answer “no” from yourself, congrats you’re nonbinary, here’s a coupon for a stupid haircut

silby is extremely otm

happy and exciting for your journey paolo <3

also re: becoming nb for political reasons: a lot of my tiny steps toward identifying as nonbinary were like... me walking through a hair products store, wondering why hair products, of all things, were gendered, like wtf

I mean, I probably had less reason than you did to identify as NB (I just started seeing something that wasn't quite as female as I expected in the mirror, but it was enough). Good luck with your journey.

also to your last question, i use nb and gq interchangeably... maybe i shouldn't? idk. i maybe slightly prefer genderqueer bc it's a portmanteau of two words i like, whereas non-binary feels more functional, but i've only actually started thinking about this now lol

I think most people go through the "am I x enough" self-doubt process, but you're absolutely right that if you feel you are, then you are. It's nice to receive external validation sometimes, but there's no test you have to sit.

Having said that, I've been retreating from publicly identifying as NB after making several strides toward it. I believe that gender roles are bullshit and that I don't fit in to standard ideas of gender, but labelling myself as anything makes me uncomfortable, and I've found identifying as NB has been another label with expectations attached rather than a rejection of labels. I don't identify with myself as a body-in-the-world at all. I don't want to be seen *as anything*. There's also the issue of feeling like I failed at being a woman, whereas most of the people I know who are trans/NB find joy in their identities - I want it to be a joyful proclamation, but what I find is that it's another admission that my existence is bad and wrong somehow. I mean, I guess my problem is that my mental health issues are worse than my gender issues, and I'll never resolve the latter unless the former get sorted, and that will never ever happen. So, uh, I guess I'm "not on a binary" but not necessarily "non-binary"? Does that even make sense?

It makes a lot of sense!

it really does <3

It is uh a logical necessity I guess that the people who are most loud about being nonbinary shape perception about what it means to be nonbinary the most, but it’s okay to be quietly and resentfully nonbinary instead of loudly and joyfully, gender is a fuck and finding joy in it is maybe too tall an order for the melancholically inclined. It can be more like a truce, or a defensive position against the prevailing cis hegemony.

imo “genderqueer” and “nonbinary” do not point to third categories in the gender system nor do they indicate the midpoint on a male-female spectrum, but are broadsides against the idea that the supposed categories have any referent in the first place. Not so much a subject position to identify oneself with but a denial of the very terms of the argument.

it’s okay to be quietly and resentfully nonbinary

This is my new mantra. Thank you. (Not even kidding, it's perfect for me)

hell yeah

imo “genderqueer” and “nonbinary” do not point to third categories in the gender system nor do they indicate the midpoint on a male-female spectrum, but are broadsides against the idea that the supposed categories have any referent in the first place. Not so much a subject position to identify oneself with but a denial of the very terms of the argument.

― Canon in Deez (silby)

This is how I approached it, and why I started identifying as NB in the first place. But I feel like it is becoming a third category, and "they" is becoming an indicator of a third category, and I'm just like, no no, singular they should be nonspecific, not picking out a member of this new category. I'm aware that my perception of this might be skewed by a whole bunch of things, but it definitely feels this way a lot to me.

Would agender or nongender work for you?

these anti-categorical moves keep becoming identity categories i don't know how to prevent it and feel bad wanting to do so if people seem to get things out of it

the not (gender)queer enough thing is relatable and extremely common. sometimes i feel frustrated that a even lot of LGBT discourse seems to ask for a level of certainty i've never had (as well as upfront disclosures about genitals and sexual behaviour i'd rather not to make right away)

i always hated being gendered but didn't realise it was about gender for way too long. i mostly keep it to myself because few people I know take it seriously or would do so unless i made a big thing of it and then i might be taken seriously in the wrong way. i don't know if agender or nonbinary is the right word, or both, or neither

i feel like among my queer friends there is a lot of pushback against any solidification of nonbinary as a "category," i.e. there is not one specific way to be nonbinary, that goes against the whole purpose of the idea

so i do not personally encounter this idea of what a nonbinary/genderqueer person *should* be even in passing, and boy do i prefer it that way

I guess my problem is that my mental health issues are worse than my gender issues, and I'll never resolve the latter unless the former get sorted, and that will never ever happen

Haha ... definitely feel you on that (sorry for Americanism) ... I think, for me, they definitely go together, like, tied together participating in some existentially draining 3-legged race ... but there's incremental progress, sometimes? Like, I am very far from resolving this stuff for myself, but I feel like I have a better sense of who I am/how I want to express that vs. the assigned gender of female than I did 10 years ago, 15 years ago ... and I have made progress on the mental health stuff too ... but definitely, nowhere near sorted and resolved for either.

xp i have often encountered the idea or implication that nonbinary people should only present in ways deemed to be androgynous or gender-neutral, which is bullshit. or that they(we) should stop messing around and just be binary cis or trans which they/we obviously are anyway (sometimes similar to stuff you hear about bisexuals)

Thanks for all the replies, these are very helpful!

I sympathize with the feeling of not being genderqueer enough, but the fact that it’s weighing on you at all is a pretty big hint that you’ll be happier if you start sloughing off the dead skin of your received gender

the not (gender)queer enough thing is relatable and extremely common. sometimes i feel frustrated that a even lot of LGBT discourse seems to ask for a level of certainty i've never had

I hang out with other asexuals and quite often hear people wondering whether they're ace enough to identify that way, and the answer is that if you're wondering about it then you're probably on the ol' spectrum there. So maybe I should take my own advice and not doubt whether I really belong.