Moving Into My Gender

TRIGGER WARNING: misgendering, dysphoria, trying to make yourself be the gender assigned at birth

When I first accepted that I was not a girl, I took a whole bunch of online quizzes, mostly for fun, just to see what would come up when I asked a random internet survey about my gender. One “gender expert” survey asked what my assigned sex was, and my result was, basically, “You seem sorta androgynous, but we think you’re a girl.” I was devastated. Were they right? I knew not to trust some creepy people that also were asking about autogynephilia (or, for that matter, anyone who claimed with any kind of seriousness that they could tell me my gender, whether they were linking it to my sexuality or not), but some part of me was doubtful–maybe I was wrong; maybe I really was a girl.

That night, after turning off my computer, I tried to fit myself back into the gender that had never worked for me. I could just move back into “woman–” I could already feel the familiar contortions so easily. I just had to squeeze into it, in the room of my gender, the room I held in my ribcage near my heart. As a “woman,” I felt metal beams constricting my breathing, before I even got inside that room. It’s OK, though, I could be a woman. All I needed to do was just make myself a cup of tea and curl up in that armchair, in my “girl” room. It all felt tight, tight–just thinking about it felt tight, and I hadn’t even walked inside of this wrong girl-self yet. But I was resigned to feeling the same as always.

When I walked into the room of my gender, though, I was amazed. I hadn’t been back inside recently, and the place was bare. Lackluster boards made up the floor. A faded curtain waved in the breeze through an open window, which shone on a mug with a dried-out tea stain in the bottom, sitting on a bookshelf cleared of books. There was little or no other furniture. One or two books lay scattered, maybe a pen. I realized I had cleared out of “woman” fast.

Feeling what is right for me has been a process. I have been slowly moving into myself, moving into my gender, in a much brighter, fuller room. It is a relief to be free of those metal beams and a room that I had never realized was so drab for me. I hadn’t even noticed I’d sped out of there at the first sign that I could.

Part of this moving has been internal, and part of it has been about others’ affirmations. Some of it has been a search for the right words for myself, and then having others try it on. This is perhaps my favorite way of moving.

Hearing my right pronouns, or hearing someone call me by the right gendered words, is ice cream melting in my mouth. It is the feeling of hot chocolate pumping warmth through my veins. It is as if my whole gut was a rock warming in the sun, filling my body with solidity and lightness all at once. It is a fitting of that last puzzle piece. With the right words, I suddenly become more solid than I knew possible, and yet more ready to skip and twirl at the same time. My wholeness takes its rightful place, from my gut to my elbows. I am simultaneously as excited as a hummingbird and as unperturbed as a smooth lake.

When someone uses the right words for me, finds the right words for me, says those right words, a settling-in takes place. Leaves fall into piles and bud on branches all at once. I am real, I am real, and someone sees me. Thank God someone has finally seen me. Oh, and, here! How about this? Trying this new word–they see something I have been afraid for even myself to notice or become. But now, with a new word echoing from others, I am here at last.

It is so rare to find these right words; it feels like such a journey, especially for non-binary people. But they are there, sometimes. We make them, sometimes. We search high and low and try on everything from hither and yon. This one fit halfway, this one fit for six months and now feels tight. This gender felt OK this morning and not later, or now a few of them are here at once. That word never felt right, except for a few hours last Thursday. But sometimes a glistening Right Word comes, and we move in. We move into ourselves. Moving into ourselves is the best kind of moving there is.