Post by Jamie Quinn on Apr 20, 2019 10:30:30 GMT 8
Hey there! I'm not entirely sure where to start, but here it goes...
I'm Jamie (irl I'm James, but I'm trying on a gender neutral name while I'm here just to see how it feels to me) I'm Australian, in my late 20's, and I currently identify as greygender. I've been questioning my gender for a couple of years now since I heard the album 'I Am A Bird Now' by Antony and the Johnsons and it resonated with me far more than I was ready for. There had been a few things that had had similar effects on me before (like the character Jude Quinn form the art house Bob Dylan biopic 'I'm Not There', as featured in my dp), but this really shook me. I realised, gradually, just how much effort I had been putting on myself to "be one of the boys" or to "be a man", and when I finally identified as greygender in stead of a man, I felt this immense weight lift off me. I could just be me, whatever that meant.
I still present as male, because my presentation doesn't give me dysphoria and I'm not yet confident enough to really enact a truer performance of my gender. There's a lot of baggage I'd need to work through. I've realised only recently that a lot of my fear of aesthetically feminine things was born out of a fear of rejection by other boys. I've always had some naturally feminine strengths and personality traits, and the tolerance amongst young boys for anything feminine is so low that rejections came very quickly. I wasn't even "allowed" to be platonic friends with a girl at school without being teased and harassed relentlessly. I am, still, more naturally masculine than the woman-friends I have now, which is why I'm floating around the non-binary genders.
I don't feel my gender as strongly as a lot of other people seem to in the non-binary community, which I think is why it's taken me so long to seek out a community. Similar to the way I used to never feel "man enough", I've had a similar feeling of not being "queer enough" given that I still present as my gender assigned at birth. I am (more-or-less) persistently attracted to softly-feminine presenting people, which means on the surface, I'm basically cis-het. There is, as you know, a lot of privilege that comes along with that, which makes it hard to want to explore my gender in a more public way. I'm not sure how I'm going to resolve that, which is part of why I'm here.
I have a supportive partner and best friend, which is very helpful, but I'm still not totally comfortable talking to people I know yet. I think I worry a lot about how this all interacts with how they already perceived me, but I know that's irrational. Still working on that.
I'm still (of course) figuring my gender out. I've found it much easier to understand intuitively using a mood board, rather than labels. If turtlenecks, Doc Martens, the album cover of Patti Smith's 'Horses', singing in the alto range, winter fashion, were genders, I'd be one of those. "Softly-non-binary" works for me too, which is basically how I think of being greygender.
Anyway, nice to meet you all. It's good to be here. I'm overdue.
I'm Jamie (irl I'm James, but I'm trying on a gender neutral name while I'm here just to see how it feels to me) I'm Australian, in my late 20's, and I currently identify as greygender. I've been questioning my gender for a couple of years now since I heard the album 'I Am A Bird Now' by Antony and the Johnsons and it resonated with me far more than I was ready for. There had been a few things that had had similar effects on me before (like the character Jude Quinn form the art house Bob Dylan biopic 'I'm Not There', as featured in my dp), but this really shook me. I realised, gradually, just how much effort I had been putting on myself to "be one of the boys" or to "be a man", and when I finally identified as greygender in stead of a man, I felt this immense weight lift off me. I could just be me, whatever that meant.
I still present as male, because my presentation doesn't give me dysphoria and I'm not yet confident enough to really enact a truer performance of my gender. There's a lot of baggage I'd need to work through. I've realised only recently that a lot of my fear of aesthetically feminine things was born out of a fear of rejection by other boys. I've always had some naturally feminine strengths and personality traits, and the tolerance amongst young boys for anything feminine is so low that rejections came very quickly. I wasn't even "allowed" to be platonic friends with a girl at school without being teased and harassed relentlessly. I am, still, more naturally masculine than the woman-friends I have now, which is why I'm floating around the non-binary genders.
I don't feel my gender as strongly as a lot of other people seem to in the non-binary community, which I think is why it's taken me so long to seek out a community. Similar to the way I used to never feel "man enough", I've had a similar feeling of not being "queer enough" given that I still present as my gender assigned at birth. I am (more-or-less) persistently attracted to softly-feminine presenting people, which means on the surface, I'm basically cis-het. There is, as you know, a lot of privilege that comes along with that, which makes it hard to want to explore my gender in a more public way. I'm not sure how I'm going to resolve that, which is part of why I'm here.
I have a supportive partner and best friend, which is very helpful, but I'm still not totally comfortable talking to people I know yet. I think I worry a lot about how this all interacts with how they already perceived me, but I know that's irrational. Still working on that.
I'm still (of course) figuring my gender out. I've found it much easier to understand intuitively using a mood board, rather than labels. If turtlenecks, Doc Martens, the album cover of Patti Smith's 'Horses', singing in the alto range, winter fashion, were genders, I'd be one of those. "Softly-non-binary" works for me too, which is basically how I think of being greygender.
Anyway, nice to meet you all. It's good to be here. I'm overdue.