u/embodiedexperience

this is gonna be a really weird question!! 😿 but here it goes!

just for a little background, i was assigned female at birth and am not undergoing medical transition. being assigned female also includes a wide (i'd say infinite!! 🥲) array of different ways a human being can look, and i happened to get stuck with a very very binary body. i do exercise (i love walking, and yoga, and dancing, and i'm trying pilates but i'm bad at balance so i do fall down a lot! 😅 ), and i am a recovered(?) anorexic, so i'm a little sensitive about food stuff being said to me, but i do eat food sometimes. at any weight, i have a very pear-shaped body, with a relatively-small chest but very wide lower body.

this is all to preface that, when i bring up things related to body or shape, or anything like that, people quickly jump to tell me how to change my body - and i don't blame them, because changing the body is the one thing we're taught is okay to do with the body, as long as it results in a very narrow, binary vision of what a "good" body is at the end of the change. this is not to come across as anti-transition or anything like that!!! i'm super pro-body-modification and pro-bodily-autonomy, including but not limited to body mods (duh! 😅 i'm pierced and tatted), transition in any form, losing or gaining weight/losing or gaining muscle, etc. i'm just bringing this up to preface that, as much as i love that journey for others, my struggle with disordered eating and recovery has taught me that that's just not* *my journey, i can't engage safely with the idea of changing the body from a weight/size perspective and have gotten to a place where i'm okay with that. and medical transition... just isn't for me. i already see my body as agender, and no medical paths really speak to me, plus i am currently unemployed and have health conditions outside of a history of disordered eating, so just in case not wanting it wasn't a good enough reason for me to not transition medically... there we go! it is also inaccessible to me, and you've gotta believe me on that! 😀

but here's the issue, though:

maybe this is just my autism and inability to understand gender and social norms in general, but i feel like there's this sense of... responsibility to others in regards to my own body that i just wish wasn't there, but i can't figure out if i'm actually required to feel that responsibility or not and, if not, i would like to stop feeling it, please!! 🥹

sometimes i can figure out that it’s really not my responsibility and it’s something being imposed on me by others that i truly do not care about or wish to engage in. for example, because i pass as a cishet woman with wide hips, living in a sexist society dictates that people feel comfortable telling me childbirth would be easy for me, and therefore i should undergo it. i think kids are cool and would be interested in WORKING with kids, but i dont wish to have any of my own, and also i know the science on hip size = painless childbirth of multiples is rocky at best, so i can disregard that “responsibility”.

but people still feel empowered to say these things to me, because of their assumptions about my body. so at what point do i have to take responsibility for the fact that this is my body?

THAT’S the part that freaks me out because, as evil and selfish and lazy as this probably is, i don’t WANT to take responsibility for this body. yes, i do all the “right” things to keep it alive, i take it for walks and drink water and keep it clean and stuff, but i feel like the shape of this body is a natural process i shouldn’t be expected to take responsibility for. at every weight, i’ve been pear-shaped. i was just born to be pear-shaped. do i have to take accountability for… having gone through puberty and ending up in a mid-sized body post-eating-disorder? do i have to be held responsible for something natural?

and the thing that trips me up is that it IS natural, but it also goes against my wishes, and it COULD be changed, but the changes don’t appeal to me either. i’m not interested in pursuing weight loss - but when people make inappropriate comments on my weight or how my body stores weight, to what extent am i supposed to step back and hold myself accountable for being of this weight/allowing my body to store weight in this way, and therefore allowing them to make those comments by presenting them with that visual data? if i say it hurts me when people aren’t willing to view me as my true genderless self after coming out to them, and they use my natural body type as an excuse for that transphobia, am i supposed to take accountability for giving them that excuse by not going on T or intentionally changing my body shape through building muscle beyond the muscle i already have or something like that? am i complicit in the ways in which people misinterpret me or dehumanize me based on how they perceive my body (and bodies in general), because i’m “keeping” my body like this?

but im not INTENTIONALLY “keeping” it like this. i’m really just doing what comes naturally. but how do i keep myself accountable for what happens to people in natural bodies like mine, and the fact that a different body WOULD solve the problems i claim bother me so much?

i just want absolution. 😢 which is a very gothy, depeche-mode thing of me to say. 😝🥀 but it’s true!! i feel like this body is dirty and unclean and harmful because it doesn’t accurately represent me and allows people to hurt me. i just want to be absolved of looking like this. i don’t want my body to take away my humanity anymore. i just want to be human in this body: neutral, genderless, free. i just want to be pure, instead of having to hold all this blame for seeing myself in a way that’s apparently diametrically-opposed to how others see me, and not doing the “right” thing and making the outside match the inside, but the thing is *there is no matching the inside*. i don’t think there’s any body that would feel 100% for me, i don’t have a list of wants, i just have a list of don’t-wants, and the good thing is i already don’t have most of them: i wouldn’t have wanted a penis, i’d be worried to sit on it funny and break it, because i never learned how to sit in chairs correctly 😅, i admire musculature on other people but i’ve never wanted to be very muscular myself, i’m fine with my height and wear platform boots anyway, so if i ever decide i’m NOT fine with my height, i can just… put my shoes on, lol. 😆

this is the body i got, and i’m resigned to it, the way i would be any other body. i just want to be pure in my resignation. i just want to be pure in my nothingness. i know it’s selfish to say, but i don’t want to be held accountable anymore. not for something that happened to me naturally. 💔

i’m not sure i’ll be able to explain this properly, but here it goes: i feel like people lie to me about my body all the time, because it’s easier than facing the fact that i am justified in calling myself agender. which is already a very strange work of mental gymnastics, because i am always justified in calling myself agender - literally everybody is justified in calling themselves anything they identify with! 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️💕

but from a cishet perspective, maybe not so much.

the other day, my aunt - who is CONSTANTLY literally actually begging me to get pregnant - told me i’m “stacked”. i’m from a rural part of new england, she’s from the city, so maybe it’s a dialect difference, but i told her that, where i’m from, “stacked” is a slang term referring to someone with larger breasts. i do have breasts, but can bind completely flat, and other people have told me my breasts are so small, they’re actually “disproportionate” to the rest of my body, since i have wide hips and thick thighs. i’m dysphoric about all these things but, unless this REALLY IS a regionalism that i didn’t know about, i am quite literally not “stacked” at this point in my life, regardless of whether or not i want to be or things change down the line or my feelings on anything.

but she NEEDS me to be stacked - so i can feed the babies i’m not intending on having, even though breast size does not correlate to volume of milk production. so she refused to listen to me. and she also NEEDS “stacked” to refer to lower body size as well - whether or not that’s a known regional slang term where she lives but not where i live -, because she NEEDS to be able to falsely conflate my, granted, extreme pear shape to both willingness to have a child and fertility.

but LITERALLY: i do not have large breasts (not that there’s anything wrong with that!), i do not want to have kids, and infertility runs in our family (including with her!!), so there’s actually a very notable non-zero chance that i wouldn’t be able to carry a pregnancy to term or would have life-threatening complications in childbirth, regardless of how wide my hips are.

i’m autistic, and that’s part of why i identify as agender to begin with, gender just doesn’t make sense to me from a personal experience, though i love and support all people who experience genders!! 💞 it’s also why i take things so literally, and am maybe rigid in my thinking, i can’t understand how someone could view my breasts as “large” (especially when she herself has larger breasts than i do!!) or could discount my reluctance and possible lack of ability to have children as not a viable reason for not having children. but i’ve also gotten in trouble for taking things too literally before - by which i mean, all my life. 😅 so i can’t tell if i’m being too rigid in not understanding why people express the feelings about my body that they do, or if i’m being authoritarian in feeling uncomfortable with them saying these things to me, or if i’m genuinely incorrect in feeling like they’re lies. because i’m also incredibly dissociated from my body, and always have been, so even though i have the statistics (like, i know my bra size!!), is it possible that i’m… misinterpreting them because acknowledging the truth about my body and how i read in this world would hurt me?

but i’ve also gone to work in full “men’s” attire for years now, only for cishet women coworkers to repeatedly tell me that my body shape makes them “girlier” than they are, so they can’t possibly refer to me by the correct pronouns or see me as anything other than a woman. and i have nothing against women, i just don’t have any real connection to anything, so it hurts when people draw false connections for me based on things i can’t control and don’t feel have any inherent meanings anyway; yeah, my body has curves, but to me, that’s neutral, a body is just a body. i used to wear aviator glasses from the “men’s” section (literally jeffrey dahmer glasses, though obviously i don’t aspire to be him or anything, i just like the 70s!), and someone once told me they “brought out [my] hips”(??) and were the “girliest” glasses they’ve ever seen. am i justified in feeling that wire-rim glasses don’t have a gender? or that NO glasses have an inherent gender?

and speaking of the 70s, i used to work at a nursing home, and a resident once told me that, with my style, i’d fit right in - except there was no-one my size back then. a coworker WHO IS YOUNGER THAN ME agreed with her, which absolutely FLOORED me, because she wasn’t even there! and there were people my size AND LARGER throughout all of time, that’s literally just a FACT! but it’s a fact that benefits ME and makes how I see the world and exist in a body have meaning, and we can’t have that, so anyone over a current U.S. size 12 in “women’s” pants must have spawned right the fuck now, there couldn’t have been ANYONE with thick thighs in the 70s (despite me literally coming from a long line of women who also genetically had big thighs in the 70s).

i really just don’t understand why my telling the truth about my own body and my own gender is less-impactful than everyone around me telling lies. i don’t want kids, i can bind flat, i just need glasses to see. am i justified in how i feel about people lying to me about my own body and presentation, or are they actually telling the truth, just from a different angle that doesn’t suit me personally, and so i’m disproportionately hurt by it?

hello! 🙂

i’m in a bit of a strange situation. i am very confidently agenderfluid, so i consider myself entirely agender underneath everything, but am fluid regarding how i present and how i am okay with people perceiving me and whether or not i’m okay with my body. basically, sometimes i’m able to ignore everything and go with the flow, and sometimes i desperately and painfully wish i was a transgender man. and then i’m back to ignoring everything and wearing athleisure and letting my hair down and letting people she/her me and going with the flow again! 😛

however, because of my dysphoria - both with my physical body and socially, both of which fluctuate -, i am incredibly dissociated from everything at all times. i am not physically in my body literally ever at all, to the extent that it has impacted my personal and family life, career, and even legal record.

and it’s not for lack of trying! i’ve tried everything: drag, changing my presentation, medication (including self-medication 😉🍃), exercise, dieting (well… anorexia), yoga, dance therapy (including pole dancing), talk therapy, religion, switching careers, volunteerism, EVERYTHING. not even major life events - like car accidents, being arrested, loss of a loved one, health emergencies (INCLUDING being infected during a global pandemic), and sudden perpetual unemployment - have been enough to shock me into living the life i’m supposed to live and being open about who i am and what i want, whether that’s with others or even just with myself. it’s not to say i haven’t had feelings during all those things, i definitely have! and on top of it all, i worked in end-of-life care; i know almost better than anyone that our time on this planet is short, and i know i DONT want to reach the end in the wrong body, under the wrong name, and be remembered as a complete stranger.

i don’t consider myself lazy or apathetic - but, if you consider me that way, i guess i can’t really argue with that. i wouldn’t believe me either, but i’ve genuinely been searching for a solution for DECADES. it feels like i’m waiting for a breakthrough that will never come, and looking for solutions to problems i’m the one causing for myself.

my therapist recently mentioned that i’m a solo candidate for hypnotherapy, due to an unrelated lifelong needle phobia that hasn’t responded to any other treatment. i looked into it, and hypnotherapy in my state is not covered by my insurance, and starts at about $180 per session. i’m not against it, i just can’t afford it right now - and even if i do go through with it, i wanna do it RIGHT, in part because it’s time to kick this thing and also because, i mean, it’s $180 per session. 🥲 the needle thing is probably also just me standing in my own way, which got me thinking: if they put me under (or… whatever 😵‍💫), i want to not stand in my own way with ANYTHING when i come back up. including gender. is this possible, has anyone tried this?

and if this DOESNT work… maybe there’s always ketamine and psychedelics. 🌀 not in my state, but i have a car and nothing else going on, so i guess i could travel! 🧳

if i don’t figure this out, i’m worried i run the risk of repeating these same behaviors and patterns that keep me dissociated, no matter how hard i try to break them. is there any other, more cost-effective way? are these even genuine ways? let me know! 😪