good afternoon, time for some gender blah blah

Monday, September 3, 2012

good afternoon, time for some gender blah blah

I am very rarely dysphoric these days. Or, rather, when I am it’s not in a way that’s overly distressing to me.

Par example: I have breasts. They are larger than they used to be, large enough that binding would likely be uncomfortable were I to do it as often as I did in high school. They don’t feel entirely natural- I sort of feel as though they’ve been pasted on as an afterthought. But I don’t dislike them. Aesthetically they are pretty pleasing, especially now that I mostly wear women’s clothing. (On those rare occasions when I put on my old dude shirts I kind of look like a shelf, it’s sad.) They don’t feel like part of me exactly, but that doesn’t bother me.

Similarly, I know that I am read as a woman pretty much all the time. I wear girl clothes and makeup and no longer have a shaved head, and my face is definitely not masculine enough to let me pass all on its own, especially when paired with a sizable set of semi-exposed knockers. That does not bother me overly much either, although knowing that people are going to make snap judgements regarding my likes and personality based on my presumed gender does. But then, that bugged me when I was read as a boy, too.

I wonder sometimes if I should just give up on this genderqueer malarkey and just ID as cisgendered. I mean, I am definitely on the receiving end of cis privilege at this point, I don’t ID as a guy anymore, I don’t intend to transition… maybe my genderqueerness is just a sad attempt to sound special.

But then I remember that little puzzled shock when people refer to me as a girl or a woman, and I realize that that’s a bunch of crap.