I reintroduced myself in the regular introduction area, and now here I am. I have always exhibited the "symptoms" of being bi-gender, but I either failed to recognize it, or I was in denial. I'm really not sure which. For a long time I was very confused, because I had the desire to have penetrative sex with my own penis but I didn't want to stop being female. It made no sense, so I shoved it into a corner only acknowledged it occasionally, and only in the dark of night in my own imagination. I also never understood why I always felt slight uncomfortable/awkward/not right in my daily female presentation, despite enjoying being female and loving the feeling of a skirt swishing around my legs. Now I know it was dysphoria, coming from the male side.
My counselor only wants to classify me as "non-binary" at this time, though I feel in my heart "bi-gender" is the correct term for what it is I am. I have an ever-present male and female side who generally don't like each other all that much. Each prevents the other from being happy, and it results in a whole lot of gender dysphoria. In outward ways the female side (which happens to match my body) has prevailed, but my personality tends to be more male than female.
I'm married (27 years) to a MtF, who has not really begun transitioning, but expects to begin this summer. It's a rocky path, because the female part of me desperately needs him to stay male. She needs a strong male in her life as a lover and partner. My male half is more okay with the situation. My husband and I are working through ways to meet in the middle, though it's beginning to be more of a struggle as he becomes more she, and urges me to embrace my male half and transition. I think mostly because this fits his (her?) desires - to still have me and have a male-female relationship, just with our roles switched. It would kill my female side to transition all the way to male. I prefer to have my female side just a little dominant. I am also unhappy with how my body looks as a male right now. I have absolutely no clue how to transform myself, and the YouTube tutorials don't help at all, because I am hopeless with makeup and such. I really need someone who knows this thoroughly to hold my hand through the process. I'm in a remote rural city, no gender groups to help me out, except for a MtF group that talks inclusion but ultimately rejects anyone who isn't a really femme MTF.
We both came out to our local immediate family this week. Their reaction of surprise (and almost immediate acceptance) of my husband went well. As to my own bi-gender identity, my younger son's reply was "Mom, with you that's no surprise. It's been obvious for years." Huh. Maybe it was because I was unaware of my male side (willfully unaware?) and therefore not really trying to hide my male side. I don't know. But somehow I was the last to know.
As part of an exercise in advance of a transgender conference we plan to attend we were asked to provide new names to match our genders, so we worked on it. I came up with Kailan Jade - a unisex name for a bi-gender person, but Kailan is slightly more masculine, to represent my male side, and Jade is slightly more feminine to represent my female
side.As a whole, *think* the name creates a unisex image - not sure what gender the person is. If I'm wrong, please let me know!
My younger son commented that the name sounds like a fantasy book character. I reminded him that my given name is literally straight out of Lord of the Rings.
