For a few years now I’ve been questioning my identity, who and what I am. Some aspects were relatively straightforward to pin down, but one in particular remains far from certain, and a source of more than a little emotional disquiet.
My sexuality was one of the less difficult aspects to work out. I’ve never been sexually attracted to anyone, and in fact find the idea of sex a little off-putting. I’m therefore confident I’m on the ace spectrum, though I can’t entirely dismiss the possibility I’m demi. This is not to say I’m devoid of sexual drives; they’re simply modest, and I’m content to attend to them myself. A curious aspect is that they’re tied quite strongly to my emotional state; the better I feel in myself, the less likely they are to surface, while the worse I feel, the more likely they are to stir. That release provides a boost in mood, a rush of endorphins perhaps, that I can build from to improve my mental state, undoubtedly ties in.
My romantic orientation was also not too hard to settle on. Since I’m able to become strongly emotionally attached to pretty much anyone, irregardless of their identity, I lean strongly toward being panromantic. Certainly the emotional and romantic aspects of relationships are what appeal to me, not the sexual ones. Physical intimacy still matters greatly, though, as my creative outpourings pretty comprehensively demonstrate.
The one I’m struggling with is gender. All I can say with any degree of confidence is that I am not the gender I was assigned at birth. I don’t feel like I’m male, but I also don’t feel like I’m female, so initially I came to the tentative belief that I’m somewhere in between, most likely gender neutral. The more I read up about gender, and the more I consider aspects of myself, however, the more uncertain I become.
I have a lot of personality traits that are traditionally regarded as feminine: I’m emotional, sensitive, shy, pacifistic, and empathetic. I have no traditionally masculine traits, unless you count an analytical mind and a sometimes quick temper. I am strongly drawn to female characters, always choosing or creating them in video games, using one for my Xbox avatar, greatly prefer female-led storytelling, have way more female original characters than male, and of the three attempts at a fursona the female one chimed the most. I recently took an online gender test that came out quite strongly feminine. A fairly common dream element is being female, something I enjoy and look forward to experiencing again. All of this is pretty suggestive, to say the least!
However, as my reading of late has made clear to me, a lot of what we consider male or female, masculine or feminine, is a social construct, traits somewhat arbitrarily ascribed to those possessing given genitals. How much stock, therefore, can I put in those traits, or that test? How do we truly define what ‘male’ and ‘female’ are in gender terms? Do we even need to?
Personally, while I’m not the biggest fan of concrete labels, some measure of definition, a decent degree of clarity, would definitely help. Partly through creative exploration I have come to regard, rightly or wrongly, sex as a person’s physical state, and gender as their emotional and psychological state. Sex does not determine gender, but it can have an effect on it. A disconnect between the two can lead to dysphoria.
I am generally pretty comfortable with my male body, but as long as my gender remains in question there will inevitably be a degree of doubt. I don’t know if my disquiet at not having any real clarity as regards my gender counts as dysphoria, but it certainly can have a quite pronounced effect on me, keying into my anxiety; it may even be a core element of the latter, but only recently a conscious one.
If nothing else, I’m in no doubt that the wilful ignorance of many high-profile figures, an insistence on defining people by their genitals, is extremely harmful, and that self-identification is vital. No-one should have the right to dictate who you are except you, and a person’s journey toward that identification should be supported and respected, not undermined and vilified.
I’ll continue my journey, through reading the thoughts and experiences of others, and personal creative exploration – my first trans character was clumsy and likely ill-judged, and I’ve striven ever since to improve my depictions of them and non-binary characters, and hopefully in the process started to understand myself better – and hopefully, finally, feel comfortable in knowing who I am, whoever that may turn out to be.
Foxy Musings 