As I listened to Anne Lawrence tell me in her usual cold, matter-of-fact manner that it was incumbent on me to identify as either male or female and not leave it up to other people to try and figure out what my gender is, I thought "Really? Why would I want to make it easy, when I so enjoy stepping into others comfort zone and rocking their secure little boats?

Marcie Bowers looked at my little ding-dong and empty scrotum she was telling me how able she was to fashion a nice pussy via labiaplasty along with a spiffy labia minor and a really sensate clitoris. All the while I'm thinking, they are so nice and such neat little things as I had dreamed of having been made that way for several years. My mind floating to the scene of an older man with his back to me leaning over at the park with this repulsive pair of gonads in a stretched out sack hanging down the inside of one leg. (shudder) As I considered what she was saying I thought why? It would be nice, but what's the point? No-one will ever see it, and as far as I know now no man will ever enter it.

The Clinique technician at Macy's had just completed making up my entire face, it was to be a quickie make-up course to familiarize me in technique and products. I looked in the mirror and saw a very attractive woman looking back at me and suddenly thought, why would I want to go to all this trouble day after day? What would be the point? Besides it's a lot of work and I'm just too lazy even if I was to use far less, it would be another of life's burdens.

Loving women's fashions as I do and having vicariously enjoyed womanhood and beautiful attire as I helped my spouse with her choices of clothes, shoes, jewelry, purses and matching ensembles, coats and attractive Fall and Winter boots, I began to ponder the lengths I would have to go to to be a well dressed and passable woman. I then began to watch other women in the area and how they dressed and had a momentous epiphany with the realization that most women here in the Northwestern United States don't dress well for the most part, unless they have to go somewhere that requires it. That is the reason that I get maam'ed and mistaken on occasion for a cis woman, because they all wear jeans, sneakers and hoodies or some other equally non-descript get-up.

This then along with a probably of a less than stellar transition outcome and a trainload of ongoing personal frustration and money is my answer to this pregnant question. Unlike many I am now at peace with the rebel that I am and have learned to enjoy being me.

I'd like to hear other's take on their internal struggles with their own situation and how they are or will resolve it.

I got a lot of pressure early in my transition to go a certain way, ostensibly in the name of passing. Though that's crap because I never passed well as a guy pre-transition anyway. I grew my hair out down to my shoulders. I agreed to wear femme-y girl clothes - though I drew the line at some things, like skirts. I let my sister put makeup on me, and tried to use it myself. After about two months into living as female, and feeling kind of weird and off balance, I dug out one of my men's button-ups that had survived the purge and put it on. It didn't really fit, but it made me feel better. So I braced myself, went downstairs, and got in a big fight with my mum. That was in September 2011.

By December, I'd forced my hairdresser against his will to cut my hair short. I'd collected a new wardrobe of boy clothes that I liked. I was learning how to do cool metrosexual-esque things with makeup, and I generally felt a lot more like myself. And... eventually everyone successfully categorized me in their head as "lesbian" and got over it.

Two months later I had my bottom surgery without a blink of uncertainty or regret.

These days I mostly wear nice men's button-ups, with sexy women's jeans, a nice jacket, a little bit of men's jewelry, and my converse or black boots. I'm just over 6' tall and my hair is cut fairly androgynously. I like to say I do "boy" better than the boys. Why do men dress so badly when their clothes can be so nice? It baffles me.

Most people see a 20-something andro dyke. Very occasionally they see an adolescent boy. Always women from not-the-big-city, Arab guys, and gay men having wishful thoughts.

The most recent time that happened was a week and a half ago. A bloke walked up to me in a clothing store and asked me if I was a model. When I said no, he gave me his card, told me to look him up online (so I could see he was legit) and asked me to call him. Seems like that ridiculous story, right? But I looked him up, and he's definitely legit, so I called him out of curiosity, and met with him... He thought I was a 16-year-old boy, but it didn't seem to matter that I was a 28-year-old female. It's just the "look" that matters I guess. And there is something that I really liked about being seen as beautiful first, regardless of gender.

He doesn't know I'm trans, of course. Nobody ever does. Things like me are supposed to be impossible right? But I'm unbelievably lucky enough to be friends with another person just like me. Just the fact that she exists makes me feel better when I start feeling like I'm too weird and strange and broken. When I get frustrated at the people who want me to be a certain way or think a certain way or expect things of me because I'm supposed to be a woman.

I guess I've always been super clear that my body is and needs to be female. But gender? I'm not sure I like gender very much.

This is a very pertinent topic to my current thoughts. I know I'm non-binary, that I have a lot of male traits, that I'm much more comfortable with my male genitals than most MtF's, that I don't feel like a female, even though I really, really, really want to be one and to have a female body.

I have come to the conclusion (subject to change, of course) that none of that really matters. My core gender is female. The male parts are grafted on, but the nucleus of my being, even while using male pronouns for itself, really wants me to be a female.

For these reasons, I want to transition and live as a female. For a long time I thought that we non-binaries had to sit back and watch MtF's and FtM's happily transition while we were stuck on the sidelines trying to figure ourselves out.

We don't.

We're just as entitled to adopt the presentation that works most naturally for us.

I also stopped stressing about what gender I am. I know orthodoxy says that if you're a woman, you're born a woman, always were and always will be. That's not how I experience my transgender. There is a brain structure somewhere in my head that wants me to be female. I was probably born with that. But my gender is more than just the brain structure. My gender is also made up of my physical body, my presentation, how people treat me, the rest of my brain, how I was socialized and the expectations I absorbed. All of these can change, and I hope will.

In short:
* I am not a woman.
* But I want to be one.
* I hope one day soon to become one.
* If I can't become one, maybe I will be content to live as one.

Sarah and agfrommd, you both have made terrific statements about the validity of the fact that there is a wide and colorful spectrum of human expressions. Sarah, your comment about men's clothing struck home with me, I love color and style much of which is sadly missing in men's clothing lines. I gave business suits and attire to Goodwill long ago, but recently bought a nice fitted sports jacket I love to wear with women's skinny jeans and a colorful Victoria Secret long sleeve T. and dress boots. The effect is rather stunning I think.

To those binary types who through their own expectations of others apply peer pressure thus pushing them into full MtF or FtM transition, it is quite possible that within our own lifetime we may experience a paradigm shift where gender suddenly ceases to exist. GID issues or whatever we wish to identify it as may cease, and those that identify here as non-binary are simply just hypersensitive to the potential of such an event and are simply ahead of the curve.

I love this thread. Realizing there is such a wide spectrum of gender and expression out there was one of the few things that pulled me out of a depressive muck and into a much better place. It also helped me to be more comfortable with my own body, which was always a bit "in between" genders from word go.

As for clothing, I've really become an advocate for androgynous fashion. I even have a tumblr blog dedicated to it: http://clothesmakeyoufeelgood.tumblr.com/ I love to mix women's fashion into my wardrobe.

Why am I androgynous though? Well, besides coming into the world that way, I just feel that I will never be the "manly man" and I'm in no way a woman, regardless of what physical parts of me are, so I'm okay with having an androgynous appearance. I would rather be more androgynous male, but that's something I'm working on.

I meet women who are more masculine than me, men who are more feminine than me. It's all just convention.

I'm female (my body's catching up with that) but neither feminine nor masculine. It infuriates me that the world doesn't want to see me as a woman, because I'm not Standard Issue. And while that's the case, I'm unsure whether I want to be seen as a woman, because I don't want to be Standard Issue .

It feels complicated. I'm inclined to identify as androgyne (though female), personally - but I don't want other people assigning androgyne or gender-neutral to me as a label, if they're just doing that as a way of avoiding just seeing me as a non-Standard Issue Woman.

And while all that awful intellectualising is going on, meanwhile my body and heart are quite happy to present sort of like a tall hippy dyke tomboy and not care what people think or what they call me. I never wanted to wear a denim jacket when I was still "passing" as a man - but now with a more feminine body-shape, I revel in the denim . It's a mystery I enjoy.

There's no rule that says you have to pick a gender identity and stick with it. The nature of my genderqueerness is such that at times, I feel more female, at others more androgyne - but it's vital to me that I be androgyne in a female body, because that's who I am.

Yes I love it too because we are real and the binary world needs to get over it!

Quote from: insideontheoutside on November 11, 2012, 03:53:32 PM
As for clothing, I've really become an advocate for androgynous fashion. I even have a tumblr blog dedicated to it: http://clothesmakeyoufeelgood.tumblr.com/ I love to mix women's fashion into my wardrobe.

Oh man, I love your taste.

Quote from: Sarah7 on November 11, 2012, 10:52:05 PM
Oh man, I love your taste.

Why thank you

I want that red jacket that Daniel Radcliffe is wearing!

Quote from: Padma on November 12, 2012, 01:49:41 AM
I want that red jacket that Daniel Radcliffe is wearing!

Ha! So do I

I'm not androgynous for the sake of androgyny.  I simply believe in having a maximal set of clothing options, not simply the arbitrary combinations and presentations that can be classified as "masculine" and "feminine."  If someone asks if I want tea or a soda, I'll have some water, thank you.

Let's see. I'm prone to skin problems, so I wear foundation even in guy mode. My eyelashes are naturally long, I had to pluck my brows just so they wouldn't get hit all the time. My hair is shoulder-length because I like it that way, it's coloured chocolate because it was starting to turn grey, and when I wear it in a ponytail (as I do most of the time because I don't like getting hairs in my eyes, it tickles), I tie the ribbon near the crown of my head so I look like some kind of geisha. I love women's fragrances (Miss Dior Le Parfum, atm, smells awesome), hate baggy clothing, enjoy walking with a bounce in my step, that kind of stuff. It may not be appropriate for cispeople my age, but then again, their stupid conventions really mean nothing to me.