Had an epiphany last night about my gender, and I feel so much better
So, for a long time, I've identified as a trans man. I'm a notable ways into my medical transition and happier with my body than ever. But this summer, I opened up the can of worms I've been avoiding for a hot minute: Am I As Binary As I Thought? I find joy in androgyny, I don't connect with manhood in the same way as some other folks, but I also don't relate to being completely nonbinary, or relate to being a woman at all.
The answer? Long story short: For the most part, but there's more complexity there than I've been willing to acknowledge thus far.
I've believed for a while that gender's a spectrum, but I finally had my It's Always Sunny 'Oh my god, I get it' moment. Me and my friends are gonna do a presentation night today, and I was polishing up mine on the complexities of taxonomy and how it can be messy sometimes. I recall my biology professors talking about how "People like to put things in neat little boxes. But the more you learn, the more you know that's not always the case in reality."
And then it hit me: I'm a man the same way some transitional species, like Archaeopteryx, are their phylums: for all intents and purposes, that's basically the case, but if you really wanna dig into it, it's more complex than that.
I still consider myself a man, a guy, a dude. I use he/him. But in the way that "fish" is an informal group, not a phylum. I've found I really connect with the genderqueer term and it makes me feel much more secure to accept the grey area, complexity and androgyny in who I am, rather than let it be an itch in the back of my head. It's a huge relief and it feels great to finally have the language to describe it.
So yeah, I'd call myself a "genderqueer man." I don't really post personal things like this hardly anywhere, but I thought this perspective was helpful enough for me to figure out that somebody else might benefit from reading it.