I’m (trans) nonbinary, and I’ll try to put to words what this amorphous feeling is. Apologies in advance for the wall of text, this isn’t simple and has been a years long process for me to arrive at this ultimately incomplete articulation.
Spoiler: It all relates back to the social construct of sex and gender and it’s not an either/or as an abstract or deep seated feeling that drives us to change.
Growing up I was socialized as a boy and told who I was supposed to be and how I was supposed to act, both implicitly by society and explicitly by my community (evangelical Christians). I was, however, never able to conform to those norms. I was always left on the outside no matter how hard I tried to fit. I grew up with significant dissonance without understanding that it was these gender labels created for and placed on me causing it.
In my 30’s I started to meet people and acquire language that resonated with me regarding gender. This new language started to connect the dots for me that my ‘aberrant’ and secret feelings and behaviors (wishing I could be a woman while still being a man, being jealous that women got to dress in ways I wasn’t allowed to, wishing I could adopt norms applied to women without repercussion, among others) that caused me so much distress were ultimately due to the fact that I was told they were aberrant and, most importantly, told they were wrong.
So when I discovered that the primary problem was the label, the way to combat that was to accept a new label that gives me the freedom to express myself how I want to. Gender is important to me because I was socialized with gender as a central pillar to my identity, and because society has done the same at scale. That is to say, I look like a man so I shouldn’t wear makeup, shouldn’t paint my nails, shouldn’t wear skirts or dresses, shouldn’t move my body in certain ways, shouldn’t speak in certain ways determined to be feminine, shouldn’t be excited about certain things, and a thousand other ‘shouldn’ts’ that I want to do. I’ve always more closely identified with and been easier friends with women. My motivation for many things has always been in closer alignment with women. But I still feel masculine from time to time and have many ‘masculine’ traits like the desire to protect, an appreciation and love for cars and mechanics, a desire to be bigger and stronger than the person next to me, and a number of other traits considered to be ‘manly’.
There is no paradigm within mainstream western culture to account for this fluidity. I am a deviant from the social norm, and because of that I am an outsider with no community or home. As humans we are social beings and we crave, even need, belonging. So when I discovered that my perceived gender was the source of these feelings of dissonance and loneliness, it became imminently important for me to figure out why, because figuring out why it was important gave me the path to finally finding my community where I can finally experience belonging. Finding the labels that resonate with me helps me find the people that can really understand me. It doesn’t matter how much of an ally you are, if you’re CIS you’ll never truly understand me as a human because of the way that society has structured itself with regards to gender norms. You can empathize, accept, and love me, but that will never fill the void created in me by never feeling truly seen.
With CIS people I will always have to filter and translate what I say in order to be understood as a person, but with other gender-queer people I don’t have to. These are my people, they’ve been on the same road as me, and when I talk about these amorphous feelings md experiences they look at me with understanding and knowing and that’s it. I don’t have to keep going, I can just say what I’m feeling and they not only understand, they are right there in the same space breathing the same air. I have a partner who is trans-masc and one of the things we love to talk about and gush over is when we get misgendered to whatever gender we weren’t assigned at birth. I was recently asked if my pronouns are ‘she/her’ and that filled me with a joy that I can’t articulate. But with them they immediately understood and shared in my excitement. To share that with a CIS person requires significant emotional labor to be put into explaining the context and setting the scene in order for them to be able to celebrate with me (kind of like that last 40 minutes I’ve put into crafting this post). But with this partner it’s immediately known and viscerally understood. Sharing this story with my gender queer friends results in a communal sense of feeling seen and known that I just can’t find from even my closest CIS friends.
I’m fortunate that I don’t have body dysphoria with any of the biology that I have, but this is complicated by the fact that I do have dysphoria with biology I don’t and can’t have. I love having my biologically male body, but I have a deep longing to have a biologically female body too. I don’t talk about this often, so bear with me as I try to stumble through this. This duality is why I know I’m not a trans-woman and why I’ve adopted the non-binary label. It’s also why being gendered he/him is disruptive to me psychologically (I have a bad relationship with masc pronouns because of the quiet trauma I experience being socialized as a boy when I am, in fact, not a boy, and a complicated relationship with femme pronouns, though if I’m going to be misgendered in the binary I’d rather be misgendered in the femme direction). My sense of self vacillates across the spectrum of the binary while sometimes jumping off the scale entirely where gender is meaningless and I best describe my gender as the way kinetic sand drops and falls apart when it’s held loosely (that makes as much sense to me as it does you, I promise…. It just feels right and I can’t explain it. This type of description is common in the nonbinary community). So I have the double dissonance of this physical dysphoria along with my social dysphoria.
And all of this is ultimately important to me because I had it pounded into me like a spike in my head that I am a boy and that I am supposed to experience life a certain way because I’m a boy. Gender is important to me because the expectations for my behavior in society are determined by my (perceived) gender. If I just go along with what society thinks I am, I will never be happy because I will always be stuck trying to conform to what others think I should be. If I could, would express with 100% androgyny, but I can’t for various reasons. So as I hope you can see, I experience gender from both the abstract nature of it being a social construct and as a deeply seated innate feeling that drives me to be different.
What I can say is that in order to not be transphobic (non-binary folks are trans btw), you should learn to accept that we experience the world and ourselves differently than you do. You have no problem accepting that from other people groups, like children, people with disabilities, and people across socioeconomic strati, so apply it to us as well and recognize that we just want to exist as we are and not as we are wanted to be. And you can help by using our pronouns and believing us when we say we are something other than what we look like, even if you can’t viscerally understand it. At the end of the day, if you are CIS, this conversation isn’t for you, it’s for those of us finding ourselves, so of course it will be difficult to impossible for you to understand. And that’s ok. We don’t need that, we need acceptance.
I’m (trans) nonbinary, and I’ll try to put to words what this amorphous feeling is. Apologies in advance for the wall of text, this isn’t simple and has been a years long process for me to arrive at this ultimately incomplete articulation.
Spoiler: It all relates back to the social construct of sex and gender and it’s not an either/or as an abstract or deep seated feeling that drives us to change.
Growing up I was socialized as a boy and told who I was supposed to be and how I was supposed to act, both implicitly by society and explicitly by my community (evangelical Christians). I was, however, never able to conform to those norms. I was always left on the outside no matter how hard I tried to fit. I grew up with significant dissonance without understanding that it was these gender labels created for and placed on me causing it.
In my 30’s I started to meet people and acquire language that resonated with me regarding gender. This new language started to connect the dots for me that my ‘aberrant’ and secret feelings and behaviors (wishing I could be a woman while still being a man, being jealous that women got to dress in ways I wasn’t allowed to, wishing I could adopt norms applied to women without repercussion, among others) that caused me so much distress were ultimately due to the fact that I was told they were aberrant and, most importantly, told they were wrong.
So when I discovered that the primary problem was the label, the way to combat that was to accept a new label that gives me the freedom to express myself how I want to. Gender is important to me because I was socialized with gender as a central pillar to my identity, and because society has done the same at scale. That is to say, I look like a man so I shouldn’t wear makeup, shouldn’t paint my nails, shouldn’t wear skirts or dresses, shouldn’t move my body in certain ways, shouldn’t speak in certain ways determined to be feminine, shouldn’t be excited about certain things, and a thousand other ‘shouldn’ts’ that I want to do. I’ve always more closely identified with and been easier friends with women. My motivation for many things has always been in closer alignment with women. But I still feel masculine from time to time and have many ‘masculine’ traits like the desire to protect, an appreciation and love for cars and mechanics, a desire to be bigger and stronger than the person next to me, and a number of other traits considered to be ‘manly’.
There is no paradigm within mainstream western culture to account for this fluidity. I am a deviant from the social norm, and because of that I am an outsider with no community or home. As humans we are social beings and we crave, even need, belonging. So when I discovered that my perceived gender was the source of these feelings of dissonance and loneliness, it became imminently important for me to figure out why, because figuring out why it was important gave me the path to finally finding my community where I can finally experience belonging. Finding the labels that resonate with me helps me find the people that can really understand me. It doesn’t matter how much of an ally you are, if you’re CIS you’ll never truly understand me as a human because of the way that society has structured itself with regards to gender norms. You can empathize, accept, and love me, but that will never fill the void created in me by never feeling truly seen.
With CIS people I will always have to filter and translate what I say in order to be understood as a person, but with other gender-queer people I don’t have to. These are my people, they’ve been on the same road as me, and when I talk about these amorphous feelings md experiences they look at me with understanding and knowing and that’s it. I don’t have to keep going, I can just say what I’m feeling and they not only understand, they are right there in the same space breathing the same air. I have a partner who is trans-masc and one of the things we love to talk about and gush over is when we get misgendered to whatever gender we weren’t assigned at birth. I was recently asked if my pronouns are ‘she/her’ and that filled me with a joy that I can’t articulate. But with them they immediately understood and shared in my excitement. To share that with a CIS person requires significant emotional labor to be put into explaining the context and setting the scene in order for them to be able to celebrate with me (kind of like that last 40 minutes I’ve put into crafting this post). But with this partner it’s immediately known and viscerally understood. Sharing this story with my gender queer friends results in a communal sense of feeling seen and known that I just can’t find from even my closest CIS friends.
I’m fortunate that I don’t have body dysphoria with any of the biology that I have, but this is complicated by the fact that I do have dysphoria with biology I don’t and can’t have. I love having my biologically male body, but I have a deep longing to have a biologically female body too. I don’t talk about this often, so bear with me as I try to stumble through this. This duality is why I know I’m not a trans-woman and why I’ve adopted the non-binary label. It’s also why being gendered he/him is disruptive to me psychologically (I have a bad relationship with masc pronouns because of the quiet trauma I experience being socialized as a boy when I am, in fact, not a boy, and a complicated relationship with femme pronouns, though if I’m going to be misgendered in the binary I’d rather be misgendered in the femme direction). My sense of self vacillates across the spectrum of the binary while sometimes jumping off the scale entirely where gender is meaningless and I best describe my gender as the way kinetic sand drops and falls apart when it’s held loosely (that makes as much sense to me as it does you, I promise…. It just feels right and I can’t explain it. This type of description is common in the nonbinary community). So I have the double dissonance of this physical dysphoria along with my social dysphoria.
And all of this is ultimately important to me because I had it pounded into me like a spike in my head that I am a boy and that I am supposed to experience life a certain way because I’m a boy. Gender is important to me because the expectations for my behavior in society are determined by my (perceived) gender. If I just go along with what society thinks I am, I will never be happy because I will always be stuck trying to conform to what others think I should be. If I could, would express with 100% androgyny, but I can’t for various reasons. So as I hope you can see, I experience gender from both the abstract nature of it being a social construct and as a deeply seated innate feeling that drives me to be different.
What I can say is that in order to not be transphobic (non-binary folks are trans btw), you should learn to accept that we experience the world and ourselves differently than you do. You have no problem accepting that from other people groups, like children, people with disabilities, and people across socioeconomic strati, so apply it to us as well and recognize that we just want to exist as we are and not as we are wanted to be. And you can help by using our pronouns and believing us when we say we are something other than what we look like, even if you can’t viscerally understand it. At the end of the day, if you are CIS, this conversation isn’t for you, it’s for those of us finding ourselves, so of course it will be difficult to impossible for you to understand. And that’s ok. We don’t need that, we need acceptance.