u/Sentient_Cheese24

Me personally,
I really like the movie “Mulan” from Disney. The film really encapsulates the masculine and feminine balancing the hero has to do in order to accomplish her goal. She has to learn to harness her masculinity while also teaching all the other men to embrace their femininity: like when the three men dress in drag to confuse the guards.

I get boy euphoria from:
Baking 🧁
Running errands 💼
And being good with kids 🫟

And I get girl euphoria from:
Political research & debate 🎓
Studying film 🎥
And painting 🎨

I’m not sure if this is the correct subreddit for this so if now, apologies.
I’m starting university in September and doing an animation course. I will have 8-9 weeks to prepare.
Can anyone recommend some key skills that I should definitely learn before starting. Currently I’m focusing on anatomy and perspective, as well as story writing.

(When I say “it” I mean their story)

I was born afab. 3 older sisters, the eldest being a trans woman.
As a child, I never liked femininity. Dresses, princesses, fairies were all must avoids. Ninjas, minecraft, scary games were my favourite things. Boyish through and through. This is with exception, I had a yellow dress when I was about 5, that I loved to wear. And that was the only thing.

Getting a bit older and a bit more articulate, I was very prominent in wanting to be known as a “tomboy”. I held this title like a gold sheriff badge. I wasn’t just a girl- I was a tomboy. I fell into a boy friend group early on. My best friends were two boys we’ll call “Stanley” and “Dean”. (Fakes names for privacy) and we remained best friends for about 11 years.

When I got to about year 5, a girl I was friends with asked me my sexuality. At that point, I’d never really thought about it, I just knew I didn’t want a boyfriend. I said,
“I dunno, I guess I could date anyone.”
Retelling this story later to one of my sisters, she told me that was called “Pansexual”. And that was my first queer label. I was a pansexual tomboy.
A year later my denial about men caught up with me, and I came out as gay.

From then on, I was gay. Always gay. Never lesbian. I didn’t like the title of lesbian. It made me uncomfortable, like a lot of other titles actually: sister, daughter, “deadname”, girl,
In fact, it kinda hurt whenever someone said on of those things to me. Like I was walking and suddenly felt a rock in my shoe. I brushed it off. Ignored it.

Year 8, I had a girlfriend. Not my first. She was a lesbian. I was gay. We never had any REAL feelings for each other, we were young. But watching episodes of doctor who together was fun. One would typically be disappointed in having a relationship with no romantic feelings but it did make it easier for a conversation we had about halfway through…

I told her one day,
“I… think I might be a boy.”
She was completely supportive. Honestly just a really nice person. Over the next few months, I was awake to ungodly hours contemplating and thinking of what my gender could be.

Am I a boy? That feels so…intense. A lot of commitment. But “girl” hurts. Am I non binary? I mean, I can still relate to being a boy. I want to be included. But I don’t want to miss out on all the girl stuff…
And that repeated for a while. I knew of the term “bigender”. But I avoided it, thought people would take me less seriously. Eventually though, it caught up with me. I was bigender. Half boy half girl.
And I had a new name. A name that I really love to hear people say.

But that’s not the end of the story.

After I came out, my friendship with Stanley and Dean fell through. Not because I was trans or anything. We just grew apart. And for the first time, I was not in a group. I actually joined a group of girls.
It wasn’t great, but thats a different story.

I learnt from coming out to finishing school, that no matter how hard I try and conform to social rules regarding gender. I will never be viewed as a man. Only queer. Only female. Only other.
Rough experience. But it did give me a strength.
Through this realisation, I began to comfortable fall back into some femininity. Once I was secure in my own manhood and masculinity I was free to play with my gender however I wanted. Drag became a small interest, trying out make up and nail polish and skirts. My friend from year 5 is now my best friend and I love her so much. And I haven’t been too deterred from my masculinity either. I love playing sports and heavy lifting, barbecuing and wearing my boxers.

I am (rather) comfortable and at peace with both sides of my gender. Sometimes I am not: sometimes I feel emasculated. Less of a man. Sometimes I feel unworthy of being a woman. But when it’s going right, it’s like my womanhood and manhood are moving in perfect rhythm of each other, and it is very peaceful.

Thanks for reading my story.