Hi. So my name is Tim and I am biologically male. I decided to post on here as Harper, because well I like it and it is gender neutral. I am one of those people who never really quite understood American gender-lines. Growing up I constantly displayed feminine actions in public and I am sure most people on here know how that turned out. I had long pretty blond hair and many people who saw me before I was old enough to start school thought I was a girl. I have very few memories from that period, but about half of the memories I have are of a stranger saying I was a pretty girl. Suffice to say, I eventually learned how to pass as masculine and did so because I had no idea that I had a choice. When I graduated high school I started noticing feminine characteristics in my body and I found myself both proud and ashamed of these characteristics at the same time. I attended college out of high school but it didn't stick. I constantly found myself feeling like an outsider and eventually dropped out. Eventually, I began exploring my sexuality and, while I didn't know it at the time, gender through pursuing relationships with transgendered women. At the time I wasn't exactly sure why, but I knew I was very attracted to them. I had several partners who would say things like how pretty I looked or that I would make a pretty girl and this always very greatly flattered me. Unfortunately, I live in a small mid west town and so I did a great deal of traveling during this time, but I eventually decided to return home and finish college. That was two years ago and now, on the cusp of finishing my BA in English, I find myself exploring my gender more than ever. I remember the first Judith Butler essay I read as this was my first exposure to the idea that gender was a social construct and I have to say this made a lot of my life make sense. Along the way, I met a genetic female that I was very attracted to and eventually entered a relationship with her. This relationship was a complete train wreck in all ways, shapes and forms, but I did learn a lot about myself such as that, while I am attracted to genetic females, I am not interested in hetero-normative sex, in fact the idea of dominating someone in any form almost makes me ill. Since then I have been celibate again and I have broken the half year mark. In the past month I have begun to question my gender identity even more and I have done a lot of research on the topic. I feel like, in many ways, I'm not sure who I am, but I know that I do not identify as masculine or feminine, at least not completely. So I guess for now I think I will forgo the labeling and just think of myself as me, especially since all things in my being are fluid, to one degree or another, and as such I am a walking ball of entropy and contradiction. Well anyway, I wanted to educate myself on the subject of non-binary genders and I landed here. Nice to meet everyone.
