I keep trying to reply to this, but every time I try to articulate it, the less I feel like I know what I want. Still a lot of figuring-out going on, here.
Level 1 is a definite. My hair, especially, if a huge part of how I express myself-- I can pretty well measure my own path of self-discovery in haircuts. Currently it's very short and pretty ambiguous (it could make sense with a tie and slacks or with a skirt and blouse). Clothes, also... my clothings style (and lifestyle in general, I suppose) can pretty well be summed up as, "female hippie meets male teacher."
I don't wear make-up really at all, aside from the odd occasion where I wear it just for fun (like at my college's masquerade ball, I drew swirls around my eyes in eyeliner instead of wearing an actual mask). But that's a part of my identity, too-- make-up is not "my thing," but I'm beginning to reach a point where I can step out of my shell and play around with things without feeling like I'm betraying myself. Make-up is, in a sense, the closest I can get to being "in drag." It's a way of having fun breaking out of my own mold.
I don't have facial hair, but I think I'll have fun with it when and if I ever do-- I think it would be great fun to wear a beard and moustache with a hairstyle that's on the feminine side of androgynous, if I can ever get away with that (I have to be careful, as an educator-- I need to maintain the ability to look "professional" if need be). In any case, I'm fairly certain I plan on taking T at least short-term, so I'm hoping to at least have the option of playing around with facial hair assuming circumstances allow. Until then, I just... don't shave. Anywhere. I shaved religiously during high school and my first year of college because I felt like that was what I was supposed to do and I was embarrassed not to, but over the last year or so, I just kind of... stopped. It's a lot less hassle, and physically a lot more comfortable for me. Plus, nobody seems to think much of my unshaved self, since as it turns out, neither "female hippies" NOR "male teachers" seem to be required by the unofficial rules of proper gender role etiquette to shave (female hippies are allowed, but not required—male teachers would get looked at funny if they did).
Level 2... I don't think is something I want, but I can't quite be sure. I doubt I will, though, because I don't like the idea of having surgery, and I'm so ambivalent about it that I'm afraid I would regret it. However, binding isn't really practical for me most of the time, because I have back problems and am in general too much of a wimp to handle not being able to breathe properly, especially if I have a binder on during a whole 8-hour day of teaching. (Seriously, I don't think I'd last the whole day without passing out... or breaking in half, one or the other.)
...and frankly, teaching is really the primary situation I would want to bind during, since the rest of time I mix genders left and right and don't really much care what's going on with my chest except on the (very rare) occasions that it interferes with a particular feel I want for an outfit, but while teaching I present pretty consistently as, for lack of a better term, a gentleman. However, it's very hard to pass as "a gentleman" when the most binding I can muster is two sports bras over my unfortunately massive (at least in comparison to my itty bitty body frame) chest, and 8 (or more) hours a day, 5 days a week for the better part of my adult life sounds like an awful lot of time to feel like I'm misrepresenting myself. So I... don't know. Lots of thinking still needs to happen on that one.
Level 3? No SRS for me. Other than the changes T will induce down there, I feel no need to do anything particularly drastic to my underwear region. Even if FtM bottom surgery was less iffy and I was less terrified of surgery, I don't feel like bottom surgery is what I want or need to feel comfortable in my own skin.
As for Level 4... I do indeed want hormones, but I don't know if I want to take T long-term. That's still a possibility, but I feel like I'm far more inclined to take T for a year or two and then stop and let the temporary changes fade off, leaving only the permanent things (voice, hair, underwear regions, etc.) and letting my body shape return to something more feminine. But we'll see.
And I don't really know about Jenny's added Level 5—I have such a hard time discerning souls from the rest of everything (though I do most certainly feel spiritually about the world and my own existence—I just have a hard time making sense of it all). I guess the closest I can come to explaining it is that I've always had kind of this overwhelming feeling that I'm a feminine guy in a girl's body. I've never quite known how to word it, though, so my descriptions fluctuate. As a little kid, I described it (half-jokingly, but not without truth) as "I was supposed to be a boy, but I was born a girl, so now I'm kind of both!" Now I just explain it as "I'm genderqueer." But I don't so much feel like a girl who needs to add masculine aspects to their body to feel properly mixed. I feel like a guy who was born as a girl but had too much of a feminine side to quite admit to being a guy. Except not quite, but that's the closest I can come to explaining it.
But that's all just inside me. It's the part that I can't justify or explain, because it's not my gender expression, it's my gender identity. It's what's in my soul, at least to the best of my ability to comprehend and explain the essence of myself. I don't have any "proof" for this, which makes it the hardest part of all to justify, even to myself.
I'm frustratingly out of words, so I guess I'll stop rambling, now, and hope that made some kind of sense. I'm up way too late.
