I am 
I am 
I am 
At some point I decided that I must be a feminine kind of man. A flaming fag, a queen, a femme FTM. I am not exactly sure what led to this self-assessment. Perhaps influenced a lot by others telling me that I am too feminine to be a trans man.
Last Monday my boss told me that he and the other guys in my department had thought that I was a ‘relatively butch lesbian’. I had never heard myself described as “butch” before that moment. It was a bit of a surprise really. I’ve never seen myself as butch. In fact, because my last girlfriends ‘type’ had been ‘butch dykes’, I had wondered what she saw in *me*.
Since last monday I have been called ‘butch’ a few times. I am starting to reassess my ‘femininity’. Particularly when I said to a friend tonight that I consider myself a rather femme guy, and she said ‘Femme!? No, no honey, I’m really not seeing it.’
It then occurred to me that perhaps, just perhaps, I am not a feminine guy. Perhaps my ‘femininity’ was just an ILLUSION created by my previous conformity to various gender norms that I have since thrown out the window.
I mean, there isn’t really anything that ‘femme’ about me, that isn’t directly related to the effects of estrogen on my body. Well, other than my pink mobile phone, and my satchel with the retro 80’s flower motif on the lining fabric, and most people are various levels of shocked when they see me reveal those items.
I’ve been feeling a little insecure over the last few days. I don’t actually like transgressing the norms I was raised to accept and abide by. I don’t feel comfortable perched outside the gender binary. That said, I don’t want to trade one kind of gender oppression for another. What is the point in stepping off the feminine pedastal, only to pick up and carry the heavy weight of masculinity?
Last Monday I started living ‘as a man’ in every aspect of my life. I am Mr Ryan to everyone. At work, as well as socially. I think that change has subtly changed my attitude, and as such I am being misgendered less than every before. I have noticed that strangers refer to me as ‘mate’ a lot. Its a guy thing that I had never noticed before. ‘Excuse me, mate’, ‘Sorry, mate’, ‘Yeah, they’re open, mate’. Three times just this evening.
I don’t feel a need to pretend that I am more masculine than I am. In the past I have felt extremely insecure about being a ‘real girl’, and behaved in hyper-feminine ways to overcompensate for what I saw as my shortcomings as a woman. Now days though, I feel kinda content to just be me, and I am discovering that the person I am, and the person I thought I would be are a little different. I am in fact, more masculine than I thought I was, now that I feel free to express that part of myself.
I have to say that I am a little surprised.
I am left sitting here tonight feeling slightly amazed and bemused by my extreme average-ness. I’ve always been a rather exceptional girl. Into ‘non-traditional’ pursuits, so to speak.
However, I am not special anymore. Not particularly non-conformist, or non-traditional, or subversive. I’m not shattering gender binaries, or being a gender warrior, or trail blazing in any way shape or form.
I’m just a regular guy.
I feel normal for the first time in my life, even though I am about as far from *normal* as one person can get.
May 16, 2008 at 11:44 am
I can relate to quite a bit of this. In particular, the thing about behaving in hyper-feminine ways out of insecurity in the past. But also the new self-perception of being rather ordinary in the eyes of others. I was just wondering yesterday what I will have to do to remin visibly queer. When I’m still perceived as female, I’m perceived as a rather butchy one now. But as I guy, I look like an ordinary working-class joe. But I like being queer dammit! I have a T-BOY wrist cuff but . . . people either don’t notice it or don’t know what T-boy means.
May 16, 2008 at 12:16 pm
I like being queer too. I am always amazed when people perceive me as anything *but* Queer… it just seems like something that is so much a part of me that no one could ever miss it!
I saw one guy with ‘TRANS’ tattoo’d on one arm,a nd ‘HUMAN’ tattoo’d on the other arm. Thats a pretty bold statement.
I think I’ll stick to a genderqueer symbol. Slightly less overt.
May 16, 2008 at 2:22 pm
Plus I’m not sure whether you’d really want people looking at your tatts and saying “Oh he’s a transhumanist, that’s a kind of sci-fi nerd, right?”
May 16, 2008 at 2:46 pm
I’m still sorting out my internal feeligs about alot of this. I have never been able to accept a clear divide in the whole gender binary as catually having a “real” existence. I wasa feminine male growing up, but never overtly so.
When I finally came out as trans/queer I tended to want to express myself as more feminine than I actually felt. Part of it was simply the learning process, compounded by both a sense of real freedom and the impossible-to-fulfill compulsion to make up for “missed/lost” experiences.
As you note, the feeling of normalcy grows with social acceptance and you give up a degree of specialness. For me that seems to be proportionally related. I find myself hovering more around a soft butch expression t5hat does not call questions of gender to the surface as immediately as before. Though I still feel the need on occasion to confirm the high femme in me, I’m not always certain if it isn’t just a desire to feel that specialness again.
If identity expression is withheld and prohibited for a long time, does that set up aits own addiction to an unfulfilled need as part of my expression? If I had the means to express being feminine earlier in life, would feminine mean the same thing it does to me now? These are questions I don’t expect to be able to really answer. The specialness of being trans/queer is a form of expression too, fulfilling special needs that seem hard to give up, even after I gain a degree of acceptance within the binary.
May 17, 2008 at 1:00 pm
[...] Cheerful Megalomaniac puts my fears into words when he writes However, I am not special anymore. Not particularly non-conformist, or non-traditional, or subversive. I’m not shattering gender binaries, or being a gender warrior, or trail blazing in any way shape or form. I’m just a regular guy. I feel normal for the first time in my life, even though I am about as far from *normal* as one person can get. [...]
May 22, 2008 at 12:53 am
[...] Fragile Femininity « Cheerful Megalomaniac Ryan deals with feelings about gender presentation after coming out as FTM at work. [...]