How did you figuring out you're non-binary?

[Sarah7]

When I came out and started transitioning I honestly thought I was a run-of-the-mill trans lady person. It was the ice-water shock of meeting other trans people that actually made me realize that I didn't quite fit. Not that being a trans lady person isn't awesome, just the more I noticed how my narrative and that narrative didn't mesh, the more I got a better sense of myself.

For me, transition was about my body, my flesh--reshaping it to match the way it should feel. For a long time I thought when trans women described "feeling like a woman" that was what they meant. But after hearing trans folks talk about the way the inside of their head feels like to them, I understood that something was different for me.

Gender is like ghost flickers and dancing shadows for me. It doesn't feel like anything, doesn't mean anything. I only know it's there because other people tell me it exists for them. And that was very different. So it turns out I'm a female genderless non-binary person who was assigned male at birth. Which seems like a lot of syllables to say "Hi, I'm Sarah." But at least I have words to explain myself to myself now. So I guess that's good.

[Satinjoy]

Like Sarah I have a physical transition, but don't fit the typical trans narratives.

I walk the diamond tightrope between full (nonbinary) transexual woman and androgyne.  I live as both in real life, I have a carry letter that identifies me as a nonbinary transgender woman, which is helpful in a NY bathroom.    My ID's have my nongendered birth name but male gender markers.   My carry letter also lists my transition and writers name, which is Trinity Satin Joy.  I go by Trinity in the trans community.   I go by another name when I am on stage or working in construction.

But I just don't fit any of the traditional narratives.  And those narratives appear to be changing, I hear TS girls acknowledging that they have male components, yet they consider themselves binary trans women.

I just knew I did not fit the normal.   I reject the normal, it isn't me.   But I also need the body I need, like Sarah I think, and I am on the full transition course of action to get it.  It may not be feasible to do GCS.   I am greatful that I should be able to get the right letters though.

My body dysphoria is horrible.   I happen to think the guy in the mirror, when I go in that direction, is pretty hot, so that mitigates it, but it does not change who I am.

I don't do labels, but I am certainly under the umbrella term of nonbinary transgender.   Or even nonbinary transsexual.  Or nonbinary transexual androgyne (which is the closest I can get to a discriptor).

So yes.   I just am different from the girls, but then again, when I go out sh'e, I am exactly the same as every TS woman I am with at the time.

Its complicated.   Most folks cannot understand it, and very few TS girls can even begin to understand who I am.   Which doesn't matter as long as neither of us tries to "fix" the other one, and we can then go out and have a great girls night out.

Satin Joy.

[Satinjoy]

And I figured out I was nonbinary, by posting and reading a lot here....

[starryeyed]

I was actually at the local LGBT center, and someone referred to me with they/them pronouns and it made me really happy and I wasn't sure why.

So, over the next few days I thought about it more and more and realized that I didn't like being seen as female. I don't like having boobs/hips. I remember when I was 16 googling about top surgery. I always got really annoyed when anyone referred to me as a girl. I really hate being called "little girl" or "young woman". I've always referred to myself as a man, sorta of in a joking way but also not really.

All these little things started adding up. I think the reason why it took me so long to realize is because for one, I'm a very feminine, girly person. I love your stereotypical girl stuff. Two, once puberty struck me, everything went wrong. I was a chubby awkward kid with an ugly face and bad haircut. I remember being mistaken for a boy and being really ashamed because boy=ugly. So, for the next 8ish years, I firmly tried my best to become more feminine.
I had all these internal rules about how to be a girl. "Girls don't talk back, they're pretty and they're sweet.etc." And three, I have an eating disorder, so I assumed wanting no boobs or hips was a part of that.

[CV]

@ starryeyed - it can be the other way around. I've talked to many transfolk both FtM and MtF who developed eating disorders at puberty because they started to develop secondary sex characteristics that were "wrong," and a very low body fat / sometimes straight out malnutrition helped delay these from developing, in both sexes. Transition can help that, as you're no longer having to fight those traits developing by restricting your body weight.
As for the typical trans narrative - I refused to do this, too. I refuse to follow the book in most of transition. I made it clear to the psychiatrist who cleared me that I am genderqueer and was not going to pretend to be binary. I was quite soapbox-y about it. Others told me to just tell them what they want to hear, it's the only way you'll be cleared for transition, but thankfully I got an open minded psych. Definitely not the norm among his profession from the horror stories others have told me about their psych clearances.
But I think the psychiatric profession is starting to come around in this regard, and realise there is more complexity to human gender identity than "I'm a woman/man and nothing else."
I'm not dissing binary folks - their gender identity as binary is as valid as anyone's - but in the past genderqueers have had a hard time with this, when we don't fit the model.

[kellb]

For me, I saw the signs in various places all through my childhood but never connected them until I was much older.  I absolutely hated growing hair at puberty and I never fit with other boys.  I realised I was bi at twenty.  At thirty, I worked out I was non-binary genderwise by my attraction to female fashion and my frustration of being on 'the other side of the glass' - I created female online characters to explore it and found that the social and physical modes really satisfied me.  However, I still have quite masculine pursuits and technical career.  Overtime I had the growing realisation that my feminine hobbies ran a lot lot deeper and that I was non-binary, or bi-gender (I struggled to find a name for it).  Then, a year and a half ago, like a lightening bolt, I realised that I had a dysphoria about my male genitalia and sought SRS.  After trying HRT for a year I've found I love it and now I'm working towards a female body but a masculine persona.  I'm changed and drifted a lot over time, and who knows? maybe I'll end up with a social transition to.  Maybe non-binary is a phase, or maybe it'll stick.  Either way, it's been a hell of a ride!

[JillianC]

I am only now starting to figure myself out but feel like the path I am headed down is the one that feels most right.  I've always desired to be a female for as long as I can remember.  Because of these feelings and my size, I am average female height/weight, I never fit in with other males and aways felt like I was pretending.  I have body dysphoria regarding my male parts and would like them gone.  I also have the desire to wear typically female clothes like dresses and skirts.  On the other hand, transitioning to female doesn't felt right either.  I don't want breasts, long hair, or to deal with makeup, worrying about passing, etc. 

So, that leaves me stuck somewhere.  My plan is to talk to my PCP regarding hormones that will make me more androgynous without growing breasts.  Then work on getting an orchi.  Then just being me.
 

[SpeakYourMind]

How did you find out you're non-binary (e.g. agender, genderfluid, demi etc.)? I've heard that some non-binaries do experience gender dysphoria either socially or physical, but other doesn't. How do it work and how do you think your body are supposed to look alike? I'm new when it comes to the new-binary and wants to learn more about the topic. I knows that many trans women dreams about a female body and that trans guys dreams about a male body. But I hasn't heard anything about which bodies no-binaries dreams about.

I'm FTM but i have a Agender side and i'll actually sometimes dream of myself as either gender
Now i'm starting to dream of myself as who i actually am. But I think being non binary my dreams just normally play out with whatever i'm feeling that night it normally ends up very neutral and sometimes it's very male.
.-. This part isn't about the dreams but my ideal body for me is a flat chest and HRT
i don't really think i have any want or need for bottom surgery but that could change sometimes i differ on the feeling. For me i'll never feel like my body will completely match because i'm agender sometimes i personally get confused when i question what i'm wanting so i try avoiding it and just being comfortable with me on hrt and that for me seems to be enough so far.

[AlyssaJ]

For years (since my teens) I had identified myself as a crossdresser.  You see at that time, the web was still young as was social understanding of gender. The only explanations I could find for what I was feeling was that I was either Transsexual or a fetishist.  There was little middle ground that could be found.  I told myself there's no way I'm transsexual (likely a great deal of denial) so I must have a crossdressing fetish.

Fast forward to a couple years ago and our oldest child came out to us as non-binary/gender queer.  I spent a lot of time researching it and over the course of the next year came to find out that much of what other non-binary people described of their feelings were very similar to mine.  I finally had an explanation for the crossdressing that explained why it was more than just a sexual thing.  The final straw was seeing Morgan Freeman's Through the Wormhole on gender.  So much of what they described just seemed to fit.  At that point I knew I needed a gender therapist to help me work through this.

So now, here I am, still very much questioning my identity.  I know I'm not a man, I'm just not sure if I'm a woman or somewhere in between. 39 years of social conditioning makes it very hard to determine what is a genuine link to a male persona versus what is denial. I'm not there yet but I'm still looking.

[MxEnby]

I've barely had any interest in the feminine and I am not conventionally masculine. I've never felt I can fit 100% into either binary gender. But this goes beyond that. I want SRS. I want a flat chest as well as meta. However, I want to keep my original "woman's bit". This has been a desire of mine for many years.

[Cailan Jerika]

For years my husband (MtF) suggested that I might be transgender, because I am more masculine in many ways than most CIS men. He "jokingly" suggested I needed testosterone whenever I tended to become really masculine in behavior. While we were going through the throes of his announcing that he planned to begin transitioning - 18 years after coming out to me - he made the suggestion again, because of things I said during our long hours of talking out the situation, suggested I might be FtM trans, repressed. I vehemently denied it; I am female in my female body and wouldn't give up my vagina for the world! But I've always felt an unspecificed unhappiness with femaleness that I could never pin down, except that it's too male in physical nature. I also had ongoing secret fantasies of being male in sexual situations, which I tried to repress, and often feel my clit is a dick. It sometimes surprises me it isn't. After some soul-searching, and not knowing anything about bi-gender as an option (I only knew about binary trans) I looked in all the wrong places. Finally one morning I woke up at 4:30 a.m., with my guy screaming at me to please, please recognize him after all these years of being ignored.

We went to a counselor, both for our marriage and for each of our gender issues, and here I am. My counselor and I are still feeling out exactly where I fall within the non-binary spectrum (officially), but in my gut I feel I am bi-gender - both genders exist within me at the same time, all the time. Each has areas of my life they dominate, but the other one is always there, screaming his or her opinion on the matter. I can, sometimes, rein one in for a time, and let the other do his or her thing. If we go to a fancy dress event, my girl totally takes over, and the guy gets the short shrift. When I walk into a hardware store and end up in a conversation with the guys behind the counter, I tend to forget I even have a female body. My guy is wholly in command.

The funny thing is that when we told our (adult) children about each of our gender issues, my younger son's response was, in a nutshell: "Dad is a surprise. Mom, yeah, I've known for years." 

[Lunacorn]

I always knew something was funky about gender... i think i knew i fit into the term NB and Agender once i discovered the terms and read the definition .... thinking ... yep thats it

[Jackie S]

It was only in the last year or two that I acknowledged being non-binary to myself. From the time I was a young child I had a bit of dysphoria about the dangly bits... but not hugely. And I was incredibly modest until/through most of puberty. I had little body hair and was scrawny... but average to tall in height. Not exactly the most masculine figure. I liked playing dress-up from childhood (still do). Emotionally, I am more feminine. Mentally, more masculine (note: this is NOT intended to be a sexist remark - it's about brain lateralization, etc.). Physically, a mix of both.  I have WAY more female friends than male friends. (And I don't mind that one bit.)

I became a chameleon, blending into my surroundings as required (protective coloration the biologists call it). For a long time I wore a beard in order to masculinize my look... more protective coloration. 

As I learned more about Trans* a few years ago, I thought that I was a trans woman. That would explain a lot. But, as I journeyed that way, I realized that I wasn't female any more than I was male. I was in-between.

Now, I have come to realize that I am about 30% male/masculine, 30% female/feminine, and 40% fluid/flux. Most days, it is a balance... or a 60/40 mix (which is 60 and which is 40 varies). The role I have to play factors in, as well. (There are some things I am expected to do as a male. There are other things that I have to do from a female perspective.) I mostly present as male... but a very "soft" male. Sort of androgynous.

If I could pull off a completely androgynous look (50% male 50% female), I would. However, I have enough masculine physical characteristics to preclude that (but I am slowly working that way).

But, to echo several others in this thread, mostly I am just me. Neither one nor the other... just me. And I like being me.

Hugs,
Jackie