As part of Transgender Awareness Week, a UHI student talks about their experience of questioning their gender, trying different labels, and the value of taking time to get to know yourself and how you experience gender.
I first started questioning my gender earlier this year shortly after someone I was friends with came out as trans to me, which kinda came out of left field. I guess it put into perspective that really anyone could be under the transgender umbrella; obviously I knew trans people existed before then but her being trans ended up with me starting to wonder about my own gender in response. We were talking a day or two after where she joked, ‘Are you perhaps questioning your gender?’ This really put the question in my head, and even though I don’t think I said it out loud at the time, I thought, ‘Wait... AM I questioning my gender?’ And it turns out, I was.
At first, I thought I was non-binary or agender, since I didn’t feel a sense of being masculine. And even though the thought of “What if I’m trans?” was there, I didn’t dwell on it. Differences between gender identities are always going to differ per person. To me, feeling non-binary is like feeling a sense of gender without it being directly masculine or feminine, but being agender is like feeling no sense of gender at all, if that makes sense. Being bigender is also different since feeling bigender is like feeling multiple different genders at one time. Feeling trans is more of an umbrella term for feeling a sense of gender that's different than the one you're assigned at birth, be it the opposite gender, non-binary, or none at all.
I didn’t stick with either non-binary or agender for long. The labels didn’t feel right, so I stopped trying to label my gender all together, but that also just felt like… weird? Like something wasn’t right. So, I entertained being bigender for a bit. It was at this point I got a diary and started to note down how I was feeling. Some days I felt feminine, but on others I didn’t really feel a sense of gender: I don’t really know if people are supposed to feel a sense of gender at all times though. One night, a couple things clicked and I felt like ‘maybe I am trans’ for a few days. It felt the most right of the labels I went through, but then I sort of psyched myself out of it. I stopped feeling that sort of gender euphoria I had when I realised I might be trans and ended up back to square one: questioning and trying to push those thoughts to the side for more important things. But, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. It wasn’t too long after when I came to the exact same conclusion of that I was trans. Nothing in particular really made me realise it; I was just thinking about it and it clicked.
The main thought when I first thought i was trans is 'great, i figured it out', but after that initial euphoria of knowing faded, I was left with the question of 'now what?'--which, combined with staying in the closet, led me to thinking that I wasn't really trans. Even after I came to the exact same conclusion again, there still is a lot of doubt: I know I'm trans, but there's always this thought at the back of my mind that's telling me that I'll never be a REAL girl. The way I see dysphoria and self doubt now is that, yeah, they suck, but I don't think there can be euphoria without it. You can't have one without the other, which helps sort of push the negativity back a bit.
It’s been a couple months since then and I dunno, it still feels surreal in a way, like, very few people overall are trans and that includes me? It doesn’t feel real and I still find myself sort of struggling to really come to terms with and accept being trans at times. Since I'm still relatively in the closet and a lot of this stuff is new to me--right now the most I do to feel more authentic is like, shave my arms. I do plan on getting a trans pin at some point, as well as go to charity shops for clothes at a later point in time.
Questioning my gender has been a weird experience, since I really needed to look at who I am now and who I want to be. And even now, I'm not entirely sure of anything, but being unsure is also perfectly okay. Gender itself can be very complicated; it's not like we're supposed to know who we are right off the bat. Actually being able to pause and properly question everything makes it all the more rewarding when you DO figure it out. Like with a lot of things, it's ok to take your time with figuring yourself out instead of rushing to a conclusion.