The Gender Tag: This is Number Four

 I was planning to post this last summer but was dealing with way too much stress to bother, so it's going up in March.

1. How do you self-identify your gender, and what does that definition mean to you?

Nonbinary, gender nonconforming, trans, gender variant, or woman are all labels that I use. I'm also considering using the femme label.

What woman means to me is that I feel connected to the culture and history of women who love women, and that I live my life as a woman and experience sexism as a woman, that the ableism and homophobia I experience are also influenced by the fact that I'm perceived as a woman. I feel solidarity with women, as a woman, and don't intend to live as a man or feel that same affiliation with men.

What nonbinary means to me is that I have a complicated relationship to gender and don't think of myself as strictly female or male. Being perceived as strictly female feels restraining, coerced, and dysphoric to me at times. It makes me feel like I'm trapped in other people's perceptions of my body.

What trans means to me is to transcend gender, to not be cis, and to do something to transition in a way that feels more authentic to me.

What gender nonconforming and gender variant mean to me are that I feel more authentic expressing my gender and living my life in a way that doesn't fall in line with patriarchal, cishet expectations for women. I don't do any of this as a deliberate political statement, I just don't see clothes as gendered and want to determine for myself how I dress. But I understand that it is one.

What femme means to me is that I have a subversive, complex relationship to femininity influenced by my gender, disabilities, and attraction to women, that I reclaim femininity from its heteronormative ties and express my  femininity in a way that is inseparable from my sexuality and gender. I'm not perceived as feminine in cishet standards and when I do dress feminine, it's for myself and other women. The most feminine I ever feel is when I have feelings for a butch woman, and I don't think of myself as feminine in a way that allows me to relate to straight cis people.

2. What pronouns honor you?

He/him. They/them is fine, and she/her is okay sometimes but don't use it exclusively and do ask first.

3. What style of clothing do you most often wear?

What I've been wearing most frequently since the pandemic is sundresses, sweatshirts, leggings, jeggings, t shirts, tank tops, button-down shirts, and long sweaters. My style has been described as androgynous by a lot of people, but I draw a lot of inspiration from lesbian/wlw fashion. So I look like a cross between a gay barbie, a grill dad, a Christian tradwife (something I take a kind of sick pleasure in considering how much I hate them, and how much it pisses them off that I stole their feminine domestic aesthetic and made it leftist and gay), and an adult version of a 2015 emo teen.

I also wear a lot of nature-themed shirts (my favorite sweatshirt is a yellow hoodie with a grizzly bear that has mountains growing from its back) and things from fandoms that I'm in, like I have two shirts from Stranger Things and a pair of waffle-patterned leggings inspired by Eleven and her love of Eggos that I wear when I cosplay her, a Welcome to Nightvale t-shirt, a tank top from a Christian feminist podcast I just started listening to, a Lucifer sweatshirt, and two shirts from Warrior Nun.

The shoes that I wear are usually black hiking boots or men's beige hiking sandals. Those are the most versatile shoes I own; the boots look like Doc Martens but are cheaper, I can wear them to work, they're comfortable in most weather, they're nice enough to pass as normal boots, they're easy to clean, and they go with pretty much any outfit and look immediately gay. The sandals are comfortable, resilient, and work great for walking around in the summer.

I'm not comfortable with conventional bras, and binders are not an option to me because they tend to press down on an extremely sensitive and painful area of my back and they cause sensory overload. Plus, when I wore one, people just kept thinking I was a woman anyway so it just felt really pointless and made me feel more dysphoric. So I wear sports bras, if any at all, because they make me feel more supported.

The rest of the time, I go braless whenever I can. Hence, the sundresses, tank tops, and sweatshirts. Tank tops, especially ribbed tank tops, and sundresses with a cinched waist or latticework bust both make me feel supported and allow me to walk around in the heat without feeling uncomfortable. Sweatshirts allow me to feel comfortable without being harassed. You're not really supposed to wear bras all the time anyway, since it doesn't allow your chest muscles to develop properly if you do it all the time.

I also feel like my taste in jeggings and leggings is influenced by disability - the fact that they're so close to my skin allows a brace to wrap more tightly around my leg without pressing directly into skin.

4. Talk about your choices with body hair. How do you style your hair? Do you choose to shave? What do you choose to shave, or not shave?

I'm currently growing out my hair. It's about three inches long currently and I want it to be down to the middle of my back. Then, I'm going to shave the underside of it and dye the rest dark red. I have a few different styles saved on my Pinterest, some of which are stereotypically feminine and others of which are stereotypically masculine.

I rarely shave my legs, but do shave my armpits and everything else. I've thought about growing out my unibrow inspired by Sophia Hadjipanteli, a Cypriot-American model, and her unibrow movement. Now, whether you think Cypriots are white or not  (I've read that ethnically, geographically, linguistically, phenotypically, and culturally they are a mix of West Asian, Southern European, and North African, but many are read as white, some have assimilated into whiteness, and Sophia specifically is light skinned, naturally blonde, and blue-eyed. I don't know how she identifies racially or if the rest of her family has the same white privilege she does.), which is not a topic I feel comfortable broaching, she does ground her movement in her identity as a Middle Eastern woman rebelling against Eurocentric beauty standards. Her country also has a history of British colonialism, which is something I can relate to since I'm working to reconnect to my own culture for the same reason.

And, yes, the fact that Sophia is cishet, feminine, white-appearing, Christian, and has a comfortable well-paid job and college education gives her a lot of privilege to do this and make money off it, but considering how much hate she gets for it on her instagram, the fact that ANY woman is doing this is kind of badass. Besides, she's normalizing gender nonconformity, which is a good thing. Also, the unibrow is pretty hot, which is obviously part of the appeal for me. So, yeah, I kind of want a unibrow, but haven't worked up the nerve yet.

5. Talk about cosmetics. Do you choose to wear makeup? Do you paint your nails? What soaps and perfumes do you use, if any?

Currently, no. My skin is extremely sensitive and I never had much interest in makeup when I was younger so now I just don't know how.

Some forms of makeup that I don't wear are primer, countour, concealer, blush, and foundation, since I don't really feel like those are really about fun or artistry or self expression but were instead created just to make women feel bad about our appearances, alienate us from our natural bodies, and sell things to us that we don't need.

I do wear lipstick, lip gloss, liner, and nail polish - or would, if not for the apocalypse and the fact that my nail polish always chips off after a day at work - since with my skin sensitivity and sensory issues those are easiest for me to handle. I've also been interested in eye shadow and highlight lately, especially brighter or more artistic styles. I would use those if I could find one that wouldn't set off my sensory issues and would be gentle on my skin.

I try to go for unscented soaps and not use perfumes, since I've gotten rashes from both in the past, but haven't had much of a choice lately. I also use unscented lotions, but that's because I have an old burn on my arms and chest that gets dry and irritated easily and needs to be kept moisturized.

6. Have you experienced being misgendered? How often?

Yes, and constantly. I'm closeted at my transphobic shithole of a work - I actually recently found out that my ex-manager is transfeminine or a trans woman (I don't know exactly how she identifies or what name she's using and haven't gotten a chance to ask her or her roommate, but have been told she's on hormones and uses she/her pronouns, so I assume she identifies more with femininity or womanhood or both), and it was definitely a smart decision on her part to wait until she left to come out. So I do get misgendered all the time there.

I'm out to my family and some of them have decided it's okay for them to misgender me because they're "from another time" or they "disagree with my lifestyle choices." It's absolutely not okay, but I've decided that's a battle I'm not going to win and try to limit contact with those people. I've actually straight-up disowned some of them, which is honestly a major relief, but I do want any kids involved to be shielded from harm. It's not their fault they were born into this.

I'm also out on campus and you would think it would be better there, especially majoring in the social sciences, but it's really not. People are less open about their transphobia but that doesn't mean I'm not met with passive aggressiveness and hostility when someone decides they don't want to show me the basic respect I afford them all the time. Out of the three though, I would say I experience the most acceptance on campus - second only to being with my friends, because I don't make friends with transphobes.

7. Do you experience dysphoria? How does it affect you?

It's fluid and affects me both physically and socially. 

Physically - discomfort and distress with my chest, hips, ass, face, thighs, and voice to varying degrees because they're perceived as female. I don't bind for medical reasons, and decided against going on T because of the loss of control over my appearance and also the fact that I don't really want to look like a man either, but I am trying to exercise and cut my hair certain ways to gain more of a stereotypically androgynous frame. Say what you will about skinny white androgynous AFAB nonbinary people (though I've always found those criticisms a little transphobic - lots of people have pointed out how framing cis white gay men as inherently evil and toxic is often homophobic and a way to ignore gay men's oppression, erase trans/nonbinary gay men and gay MoC, and act like monosexual privilege is real, and framing feminists as affluent white western women serves a similar purpose for ignoring and erasing misogyny, but, what, it's totally fine to do the same thing to trans people? And also act like AFAB privilege is a real thing somehow??), but being one has helped my dysphoria so much. It's not my fault that thin AFAB people are more able to pass, it's transphobia's fault and if I can gain security and comfort in that it won't be anything that I object to.

Socially - discomfort and distress when someone calls me ma'am, miss, daughter, granddaughter, or sometimes niece - I pretty much always prefer masculine terms, like sir, son, grandson, or nephew. When someone deliberately uses the wrong name or pronouns or calls me female. When someone uses most other female coded words for me, like sis. Girlfriend, though, is generally tolerable or good. Same for wife. If I wanted kids I would want to be called Mom, and if I had nieces and nephews or ever end up with any (like my wife's siblings' kids or our friends' kids) then I would just want to be called El. I don't know how I would do it or what I would want or be comfortable with when it comes to siblings. It's never really been an issue I had to worry about but it could be when I get married. Plus, I'm a believer in families of choice so if I had a sibling through that, I don't know what I would want them to call me.

8. Talk about children. Are you interested in having children? Would you want to carry a child, if that's an option for you? Would you want to be the primary caretaker for any child you have?

No, no, and no.

9. Talk about money. Is it important to you to provide for a family if you choose to have one? Is it important that you earn more than any partner you may have? Do you prefer to pay for things like dates? Do you feel uncomfortable when others pay for you or offer to pay for you?

It matters to me that my partner and I are financially stable, that our goals and life plans line up, that we are both contributing to the household, and that we both have realistic ideas for our lives that we are working to accomplish. Beyond that, I'm fine either way.

10. Is there anything else you'd like to share about your experience with gender?

Not that I can think of right now.