Happy Pride Month! I’d like to take this time to share about my experience discovering my gender identity and sexual orientation 🙂
Sexuality
I identify as pansexual, but it took me a while to understand my own emotions behind this.
I grew up in a family that called me “boy crazy.” I never really knew that there was anything other than boys like girls and girls like boys. It wasn’t until high school when I started hearing about other sexualities that I started to wonder.
I didn’t have the same experience as many other lgbt+ people who felt attraction to other genders from a young age. I didn’t feel the same obsessive crushes for girls that I felt for boys through middle school. (I say obsessive because they definitely weren’t healthy crushes and that’s probably why my family called me “boy crazy.” I have my own beliefs on the reason behind that but that’s a whole other can of worms I won’t be posting about any time soon). But once I knew I wasn’t confined to just liking men my whole life, I began to allow myself to wonder at other things. I let myself imagine dating women, or having a little crush on a girl in high school, or even picturing sexual situations with a woman.
At first this was super uncomfortable for me, and I rejected the idea (sometimes very aggressively). If I’m being totally honest, there wasn’t a lot of support at home for other sexualities at that time. Being bisexual was “a cry for attention” and it kept me from being honest with myself for quite a while. But even still, I kept it to myself for several years and ended up meeting more and more lgbt+ friends in high school or through my first job at a zoo and I became more comfortable with the notion that I definitely felt an attraction to women.
I went on one date with girl in high school. She was younger than me and we met online through a friend. We went to see a movie and I had a good time, but I felt very flustered. It didn’t feel right for a few reasons, mostly because I think our personalities clashed a bit, and the experience ended up scaring me away from trying to date girls again. By the time I felt ready (many years later) I was already in a committed relationship. I developed real crushes on women through my teens and into my early twenties but never did any experimenting.
My attraction to women is something like a wave pool. At some times I can’t be bothered to think about men for even a second (so much so that I joke to David that I might actually be gay and he’s my one exception) and my thoughts are completely occupied with women, at other times I feel hardly any attraction to women. In high school this made it very confusing for me and I sometimes doubted if I really did have any attraction to women or if I was trying to force something. I still experience the waves of this attraction but I’ve come to understand that this is just how it works for me. My sexual orientation is still valid even if my attraction to certain genders comes and goes. Sexual orientation is not defined by time limitations.
I still do wonder about my attraction to women today and how far it goes. I haven’t been able to picture myself romantically with a woman in a more substantial way than a simple date, and I wonder if I could ever be with a woman long term. I think these are questions I may never answer about myself (simply for the fact that I’ve found my soul mate and plan on spending the rest of my life with him), and I think for now I’m okay with that question being left unanswered. I know undoubtedly that I feel a sexual attraction to women, but the romance is unknown. Sometimes I feel guilty about this, but I know that my attraction to a person either romantically or sexually isn’t something I can force or control. Most of my attraction comes from personality, and if a woman decided to shamelessly flirt with me to the point of making me blush (which is hard to do) I’d probably fall head over heels for her. But I haven’t found a woman like that, and I’m not really looking for it now.
I’d love to experiment more with my sexual attraction to women and try to fully understand it. I think maybe one day David and I might find a woman who we could date together and have those experiences with, not just for the obvious appeal of threesomes but to really help me understand my sexuality to the fullest and even see if I could form a true and healthy romantic bond with a woman. I do think that I’d be well suited to polyamory. I love the idea of sharing your full love with more than one person and in turn receiving it from more than one source. I think sharing that connection with more than one person together could be so powerful and fulfilling.
Over the last few years as I began learning more about the gender spectrum, I realized that bisexual wasn’t an accurate label for the sexual attraction I feel to people. My attraction spans to all genders at all different places on the spectrum, and so I think pansexual is the most fitting for that 🙂
Gender
My gender experience has been something similar to my sexuality experience. I didn’t necessarily feel anything other than female until I starting learning about other genders. In my freshmen year of high school I was introduced to the very first transgender person I’d ever met. Then another, then another. High school was a very awakening experience for me in the way of gender and sexuality. I’d never been exposed to anyone who wasn’t cis or straight prior to that. One of my friends in high school even came out as trans after graduating from high school, and I remember wondering why she waited. I haven’t spoken to her in a very long time and I never got to ask her, but I would imagine it had something to do with the big label that was put on her as “the really tall smart guy.” When you have such a prominent label placed on you by other people I think it would be really hard to break free from that. I think I can understand, having been labeled the boy crazy girl in my family and feeling like I could never be anything but that in people’s eyes. I’m really happy she’s able to live the life she wants to now.
There are a few things that really stand out in my memory in regards to my gender. There was a time I was driving with my mom and she asked me what I’m proud of and what I feel connected to (we had been talking about general pride in your country and other such things). I replied that I only feel a connection to the earth and the only thing I feel proud of is being a woman. I can remember going out with a friend shopping one time and mentioning that sometimes I want to be a boy. She asked me to explain what I meant and, being the impressively eloquent person I am (not at all), I said “sometimes I really want to wear boys clothes” because I was terrible at expressing my feelings and that what I really meant is some days I don’t really feel like a girl, I feel like a boy or something in between. My friend, having only my very poor explanation to go on, said “yeah, no.” I can remember having a conversation with a friend who told me that his sister is genderfluid and what that meant to her. That was the first time something felt like it clicked.
Since high school I had been having occasional bouts of gender dysphoria, but it was something I ignored because it only happened every few months, it never lasted long, and I never identified it as gender dysphoria until very recently. There was a brief period where I rejected the idea of gender all together and though I would identify as non-binary and use they/them pronouns purely because I don’t believe people should have to identify themselves at all. We should all be able to use the same neutral pronouns and no one will ever be misgendered again or live in discomfort because we are all just human beings and don’t need genders (a little naïve).
About two years ago I decided to stop shaving my body hair. This was something I hated doing my whole life and I never liked the concept that women had to shave to be pretty and feminine. This was an incredibly freeing feeling and it was one of the best things I’ve ever done for myself. I don’t really like the idea that a person’s body hair reflects their gender because I think that’s ridiculous, but I can’t lie and say I didn’t feel more masculine when it started growing out and I really liked how that felt. After I did it I became much more comfortable with myself and felt like I aligned more with how I was feeling inside. I still didn’t identify as anything but female, and told my friends jokingly that I was simply a “non-gender conforming female” which felt like it fit well enough.
Over the last two years I had occasional conversations with David about my gender and pronouns. I told him I feel like a woman most days but sometimes I feel like I’m in the middle or much more masculine. I told him I’m fine with being identified as a woman but I also wouldn’t mind if someone identified me as a man or non-binary sometimes too.
About two weeks ago I had the worst gender dysphoria I’d ever felt. My body felt wrong. I looked down and saw breasts and felt so uncomfortable. I felt like I was stuck in a body that didn’t belong to me. It didn’t look like the man I felt inside. I began to panic a little and couldn’t look at myself.
I texted my sisters, my closest friend, and David and said “not to be dramatic but I’m having a gender crisis right now.” Yes, humor is my coping mechanism. The amount of love and support that came out of those conversations truly saved me from a full anxiety attack. There was no judgement, there were no inappropriate jokes, there was no downplaying. My sisters asked great questions which ended up helping me talk it out and explain what I was feeling so that I wasn’t so confused. My friend was all love and encouragement. David called me while he was at work to make sure I was okay and reassured me we could talk it out when he was done working. I talked to my sisters and my friend late into the night and finally said I think I’m genderfluid. My sister said “good for you bringing some diversity to our bland ass boring family.” That was the best thing I could have heard and I cried so much that night from all the love I received. My friend talked with me about ways to help with the dysphoria and when I finally got to sleep I was feeling so much better.
I wanted to try some things to see if they would help with the dysphoria. I went out and bought a couple new clothing items, I tried a binder, I tried deepening my voice. I didn’t like the binder at all. It was very uncomfortable and restricted my breathing even though it did help with my outward appearance. Deepening my voice didn’t feel right either. The thing that’s helped me most is the clothing.
I had a great conversation with David a few days ago. We talked about gender and the way I want to be perceived by others and the things I was doing to achieve that. After a long discussion, I agreed that I had been trying way too hard to appear like a boy and act like a boy all in an effort to be seen as a boy. This was turning me into a totally different person and I wasn’t acting like myself anymore. David made some really great points and I think I’ve come to the conclusion that while I want to be perceived as a boy sometimes, I will never pass as a boy without some kind of major modification. I don’t want to do that and I don’t want to try so hard to change myself to appear to others as a boy. I just want to be myself and feel the way I feel on any given day and not worry about misgendering. So I’m sticking with she/they pronouns and I’ll just be whoever I am that day. I can introduce myself as genderfluid and give my pronouns and let anyone I meet know that if they’re not sure of my gender at any point they can default my pronouns to they/them. I feel a huge sense of relief that I don’t need to put so much stress on myself to pass any certain way and I’m thankful for David helping me come to that realization that I don’t have to do anything for other people, it should just be for me. Sometimes I forget that.
I don’t think I’ll be changing my name, but I do like the idea of going by Jo sometimes 🙂
Pride
This month holds different meaning for all different people. For me, I think a lot about the privilege I’ve had in being able to explore myself without judgement from the people around me. Pride month is made better for me through the support of my friends and family.
I think I’ll forever be exploring and experimenting with my gender and sexuality, but I also think that’s how it should be. At only 24 I would hope I still have more secrets to unlock about myself as time goes on. I’ll know who I am by the time I die at the ripe old age of 127 (and not a minute sooner) and that’s just the way I want it to be.
